Hardwar
The Software Refinery / Gremlin Interactive
My most desired genre:
When I was young my friend showed me Elite
for his BBC Micro, "WOW" I thought to myself. We spent ages playing it either
trading, fighting pirates, stealing cargo, avoiding the police or getting out arses kicked
by Thargoids, absolutely brilliant. Then the second one came out, which I got hold of for
the Amiga and played it constantly for about three months, I later returned to it and
started playing it again when I got it for the PC, this time for even longer than before.
Then came the third one, bug ridden as it was I still played it for about 4 months
constantly, plus I had another stint at it after the final patch came out. This has to be
the ultimate game type, atleast in my eyes, mostly due to the open endedness and the
ability to purchase other ships and upgrades. Thinking about it, the best games are the
ones that last longest, an example is my top three as it were. They include Settlers (now
in it’s third incarnation); Elite 3 (first Encounters) and Total Annihilation (big
game man), notice the lack of FPS games? Other games that have killed alot of my time
include Tie-Fighter and Diablo (which is boring thanks to the cheating). Now all of these
games are large or open-ended, all have taken up alot of my time, but when you start
thinking about why there are no FPS games you realise that they are updated too fast. Doom
1&2 lasted me a long time; this is because there was nothing else until Duke Nukem and
Dark Forces, now look what happened. In the space of a year we have had Hexen 2 come and
go (fast), Quake 2 (pointless one player), Jedi Knight (over way too soon), Sin (one big,
easy bug), Shadow Warrior, Blood and Redneck Rampage (dated at best), Shogo (excellent but
easy), Unreal (long but easy), Klingon H.G. (Just bad), Rainbow Six (rapidly lost
it’s appeal), Blood 2 (Fun but simple) and Half-Life (superb, but over too soon
also).
While multiplayer is a different story, FPS
games can not compare in longevity to these other games, that is their weakness. Well, I
have wanted a new Elite type game to make up for Privateer 2 getting old and finally now I
have one, say hello to Hardwar.
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