Battlecruiser 3000 AD is the game that started it all. It was immensely hyped before its first release and then plummeted because it had a bad case of the bugs. It should become the first title in a long-spanning series, with Battlecruiser Millenium following, and then Universal Combat. All of those are basically the same game in various stages of polish. Where BC3K had not much in the ways of planetary surface exploration implemented, you were able to do all this in Battlecruiser Millenium. Universal Combat added yet more stuff, but if you've played all three, you might have noticed that the engine is aging very badly.

Anyways, about this game. You are put at the helm of a so-called Battlecruiser and are master about all of its devices. It has fighters, shuttles, turrets, all kinds of on-board systems and a few dozen crewmen. This means that you have to have your eyes everywhere, especially in combat situations. If your cruiser loses its shields, your armor and hull will take damage, and so will your ship's systems. There are zillions of spare parts and a handful of systems engineers on board just for the case that one of those needs repair. Likewise, you have medics, because your crew will see combat. The enemy has the odd habit of transporting his troops onto your ship, where they wreak havoc, kill your crew, sabotage your systems and try to make off with your valuable cargo in one of your shuttles.

Now I thought this idea was awesome, but sadly it's a little one-sided. If all goes well, you'll never only injure an enemy ship, you'll destroy it. And you can't beam your own men aboard other ships. You can of course send your fighters out, but that is very risky business. A fighter is like a paperweight with powerful guns on it, and the turrets of bigger ships can rip through their protection very quickly. The space action is not too dynamic, either. Ships are usually either headed straight for you, guns blazing, or going about their business pretending you aren't there.

The universe warps ships into the system randomly, but you can also follow them around to other systems. There are more variables here than meet the eye. Scientists, colonists and traders all have a function that can alter prices, for example. But most of this happens without your knowledge and is actually barely noticeable. What's left for you is trading, patrolling, watching other parties' engagements and getting into combat yourself. If the big ships were more fun to take into combat, I'd give a better score, but it all feels a little experimental.

BC3K is a little rough around the edges, but thorough commanders will enjoy the control they have over what is going on. I've played all three games of the series and would probably recommend Battlecruiser Millenium (also made freeware by now) if you just wanna dip your toes into the genre.

NetHack is well known among the oldies. A descendant of the game "Hack", which in turn is a descendant of the game "Rogue", the depth of gameplay that NetHack offered was up to that point not seen before. You create a character, where you can select from various classes with unique strengths and weaknesses. A Caveman starts the game with good strength, whereas the Wizard, physically weak, is predisposed to learning spells. Generally, NetHack is a heavily D&D influenced mash-up of fantasy lore, but this is not all that important for the game itself.

The game is displayed in all ASCII letters and symbols. Most of the screen is taken up by the map, the bottom rows are reserved for displaying the status of your character, while events and observations are displayed in text at the top. If you are truly interested in the NetHack experience, then don't dare to use a tileset for the game. Play it in ASCII, your imagination will thank you it, as well.

The learning curve in this game is steep, though. Many combinations of items and actions didn't even occur to me until I read somewhere about them. Likewise, your character is prone to starve if you don't let him chew on his fallen enemies every once in a while. But you can only know what's digestible and what's going to make you die painfully if you have found out by trial and error already.

To summarize, you'll probably die a lot, start to like it, die a lot more, die a few times more, get really far and die, and then proceed to tell everyone how great it is, like me.

First of all, the Realms of Arkania Trilogy (German title: Das Schwarze Auge) was not developed by Sir-Tech, but by Attic Entertainment. It follows a group of adventurers as they thwart the Ork hordes with the help of a magical blade, find a stone to reunite the Elves and the Dwarves, and investigate a troubled city, Riva. All three games are based on the same roleplaying system, and they all have isometric, turn-based fights, but the presentation has seen some vast improvements throughout the trilogy.

While the first game has a completely fixed north-east-south-west point of view and little in the way of graphics that aren't equally boxed, the second game improves upon this by a free 360° viewpoint and 3D rendition of buildings, too. The third part does away with any chessboard-like maps finally, and presents the player with a true 3D environment. Battles are always handled from a 2D isometric point of view, and you'll never see any people walking around when not in a battle. Any interactions are usually handled with popup boxes containing text and pictures, as well as choices of action.

Dialogue with characters is handled in full-screen, with a number of options to the right and the conversations to the left. The options grow depending on what your group has already learned about, and while there are certain generic answers, conversations are usually never boring.

A quirk about this game is that "Warrior" is a career choice, as well as "Elf" or "Dwarf" or "Gypsy". Dwarves are just short Warriors, though, and Elves are pretty much a mixture between a Hunter and a Mage. If you are a hardcore Roleplayer, you'll be pleased to hear that there's lots of lists and numbers to browse through if you select Advanced Mode. I've found that this is usually the way to go, since you'll want to control which spells your characters get better at. Certain spells such as Teleportation can mean the difference between your group being stuck in a dungeon and starving to death, or escape.

Yes, they need food and water. They also need something warm for their heads, a raincoat and a decent herbalist in case that they get sick. And there are plenty of diseases and sicknesses for them to catch. None of these are harmless, and most of them can mean that your character loses some permanent stat-points or even dies if left untreated. Their shoes wear down with use, their weapons get chipped and break and if they haven't had any peace during the night, for example because they were ambushed, then their wounds won't heal.

On the flipside of this, you can sing, dance and cheat at cards when you're in a tavern. You can order food, and see your group comment on the quality of the meat (It's still moving on my plate!). You can rob merchants and you can haggle prices. You can hunt for game and sources of water in the evenings, as well as send someone out to collect herbs. All these are talents represented by numbers, and some of your characters will be much better at them than others.

The spells are quite powerful. You can wake up dead enemies to fight for you, speak to deceased party members, summon demons, blind your foes, rust their weapons, turn them to stone, make them turn on their friends or make them flee. And you'll want to use all of them, because there is no cannon fodder in this game. No enemy is too weak to hurt you, and every enemy that ran away means a better chance for your group to survive.

All in all, I grew up with this trilogy and can only recommend it. It's gritty, and it's fun, but I think the English translation may convey the humour in the dialogue not that well.

1602 A.D. (German title: Anno 1602) is an easy to learn game. You and all your opponents start out with ships, and then it's island picking time. Once you've established your first island, you'll quickly be reminded of any city building game. With a few quirks. First of all, many buildings have a radius of influence. Higher level residences will only appear if they are in the radius of more and more other buildings, such as baths, schools and doctors. So you expand and expand on your island as all the opponents do on theirs.

Additionally, every player retains his ship from the start, which which he's able to sail around and buy goods from different islands. They all come to your island too, buying your things and, if they have it, selling you what you have flagged as needed. Not all islands are alike, they all have different climates. That means not all farms will work on your island. Same with ore, not all islands have it, and not all have the same ore.

So eventually, you'll load stuff from your island on the ship and sail forth to establish another colony or two. Here comes my gripe, though it's pretty obvious by now. The game is very insular. Everyone builds for himself and has his own problems to cater to, and the most interaction you'll get is the constant sailing back and forth of ships. Military is clumsy to handle, and it's obvious that this is not the focus of the game, either. I wasn't able to load any of my men onto a ship. You can fit the ships with cannons, but taking over other islands seems impossible.

Overall, the building and trading aspects are great, but the warfare feels simplistic and out of place. It's fun for a while, but it gets old.

Europa 1400 (also called The Guild) consists of a good dozen or so professions with politics and intrigue sprinkled on top of it. It is not entirely historically accurate since there are some items with near magical properties, such as an alluring perfume, or a ring that makes people think you are cute despite that ugly beak of a nose. But for all intents and purposes, it is set around 1400, where you set out to build a strong dynasty for yourself.

First and foremost, you have a business to run. You have to make money. Whether you're a smith, an innkeeper, a boss of a bunch of cutthroats or an undertaker. None of these work the same, but to take the smith as an example: You fetch the raw materials by cart, either directly from the mines or from the market. You smelt and refine the ore into various intermediate products. And then you work those products into items (such as different kinds of jewelry, or swords) that the cart can take back to the market and sell there. All the routes are more or less dangerous, as there are robbers out there who want your goods, and you have to consider paying for an escort.

To advance in your profession, you can go and learn more about the trade. Then the guild certifies you, and you're allowed to add more utilities to your smithy, increase the size of the workshop and produce new stuff. At the same time, you can advance to the higher reaches of citizenry and improve your house in the same way. Parallel to your job, you can have a civic function. Rising up those ranks usually requires favours and intrigue, but grants more political power. For example will a position with the police enable you to have houses searched, that of a judge allow you to rule over court cases and yet another one give you a veto for all changes made in law.

Then of course, there's the matter of courting a suitable wife and have offspring with her. Courting may take a pretty long time, and can have a sudden and very disappointing ending, especially if you try to marry above your class. Options have to be carefully weighed against each other. If you don't want all the fuss, you can just marry a farmgirl. Much easier, but you won't get any respect, money or estates this way. Lastly, when you die, your son or daughter will take over all your stuff, and the whole process repeats itself - although usually from a better starting position.

Lastly, you're not alone in all this. Many other dynasties are fighting over prices, land and politics as well. Some may like you, and some may hate you, and some of them might end up in powerful political positions themselves. Better watch out who you piss off.

All in all, this game is very different from the usual stuff, and solid for what it does. I was a little disappointed by the efficiency of your AI underlings. You can churn out a better profit if you watch the business yourself, but such is life, I think.

X-Com Apocalypse is the reiteration of a theme: Aliens come and try to conquer the earth. You are the commander of the defense forces. Your job is to build/buy vehicles, equip your men, meet the aliens on the battlefield and scavenge their artifacts for research. While the first X-Com did this on the scale of entire planet Earth and the sequel took the fight underwater, the third game is scaled down to just one huge city, Mega Primus. The size of the city, as well as other numbers, can vary greatly depending on the difficulty you choose. My experiences come only from the three easiest settings.

The city houses many different factions. Megapol and Marsec being the police and military suppliers, respectively, and the ones you better don't piss off. Then there are others for energy, sanitation, transport, production, food, politics, and even crime syndicates and a notorious alien-cult. You'll often witness a shootout between one of the gangs and Megapol, and as with every city-view battle, stuff breaks. If a rocket doesn't hit the enemy or a laser is badly aimed, it could just take out the nearby transport tube or vaporize the front of an apartment block.

The player has one base at the beginning of the game, but he can expand to other buildings as well. All your stuff is stored in this building, so guess what happens when someone shoots a hole in the ceiling? That's right, people die and equipment breaks. It's crucial that you keep control of the combat zones, on city-level as well as squad-level, or you're screwed in the long run.

When the aliens come, they send down troops and hatchlings to secure a building block and eventually take over the organization that it belongs to. You have to send your vehicles out quickly to meet the UFOs in the air and destroy them before they are done and retreat to the alien gates hovering over the city, indestructable. If they managed to send down troops, you have to send in your agents and root out the aliens face to face.

While the strategic view is exclusively real-time, for the squad combat you have the choice between real-time and turn-based. These play very different, and generally, real-time is easier for battling aliens. Their tactics often revolve around getting close to your agents before killing them, or taking them over. Do you really want to give a walking chemical bomb the favour of all its movement points before you can counter it? I didn't think so.

Eventually, you'll have technology to enter the alien gates and take the fight to their homeworld. The technology in this game fills a book all by itself. There are lots of different weapons for your agents, different armored suits, various hoverbikes, hovercars, jets and even APCs and tanks. All these vehicles, you can fill to your heart's content with engines, lasers, plasma guns, different missiles and anti-missile systems. It's really a joy if you are into those kinds of things. And dozens of alien technologies still await to be researched and used by your agents.

All in all, X-Com Apocalypse is very fun to play. All the elements come together seamlessly to create a working, faceted experience. It can be challenging until you've learned the ropes, but it's well worth wasting nights over.

In Driver, you play an undercover cop who's looking to gain entrance to the world of organized crime. As such, you take missions from those guys. It's all fairly straightforward. As an example, one early mission makes you pick up a bunch of bank robbers and bring them home safely. There's also a couple of practice and minigame modes you may choose.

The physics in this game are alright, but if there's one thing that annoyed me, it's that there is no buffer. You scrape a car lightly, the cops come. You drive too fast, the cops come. Etc etc. And when the cops come, they come full-force, trying to ram you into oblivion. It's like you are the only driver who's forced to behave, or else. Cars have a health meter, but don't try and out-damage a cop. Your only solution here is running fast, and remaining out of the line of sight of any cops until the timer runs out.

It's much like GTA 3, except that it's entirely missing the pedestrian component. Hell comes down, there's no way for you to get out of your car. This, as demonstrated by the behaviour of the cops, is a big loss in realism, and it is why this game comes across as an all-or-nothing game. You either get away scot-free, or you get trashed and have to reload. As opposed to getting out of the car, jumping into the bushes and jacking another one, somewhere.

The graphics are crisp, and the music is some typical 70's stuff. I enjoyed it up to a point, but at the end of the day, I'd rather take GTA with me on the island.

Gothic is an ambivalent game. You have a top-notch story. A prison mining camp has been magically sealed off from the outside world, but when the magic gets out of control, the prisoners start a bloody mutiny and take over. Now the king has to deal with them if he wants the ore shipments to continue. And of course he does, it is war, after all.

Enter the hero. With a secret letter from the outside world in your pocket, you are tossed into this prison. You soon learn that the prisoners have split up into multiple camps, each with their own ideology, and at some point you'll have to make a choice. Up until then, you roam around and take up quests where you please. Outside of the camps, death comes quickly. To reiterate: This game is hard, very hard. The all-keyboard control scheme doesn't exactly make it easier, either. You control combat directly, by using key-and-arrow combos to swing your sword left and right, stab and block. Timing is essential here, as the enemies are just waiting for you to let your guard down. At night, even worse beasts come prowling out of the forests.

If you're able to overcome these obstacles, or you are very careful, then you are rewarded with a truly alive gameworld. In the evenings, you'll see the miners and guards sit around the fire, roast meat, play guitar and talk with each other. During daytime, everyone goes about their jobs. The guards make rounds, disciples train with their weapons, the diggers make money in the mines or spend it again, relaxing in the camp. You're able to interact with the world in many different ways. You can roast and boil food, take fur and claws from animals that you killed, if you learned how to do it, and fashion your own weapons. The graphics and music and sound effects all suit the game and add to the immersion. English voice acting is good (I was a little disappointed with the German one).

If you can live with very hard combat and regular use of the save and load buttons, this game is about as immersive and well-crafted as a RPG is going to get.

Daggerfall has arguably the biggest explorable gameworld of any computer game to date. There are thousands of dungeons, towns and cities. One province alone, of which there are many, is big enough to house several RPGs inside of it. There are many guilds represented in all bigger settlements. The amount of quests you are able to enlist for is near endless. How you go about your business, how you solve tricky situations and where you make friends and enemies, that's all up to you. Instead of using pregenerated spells, you can use the magic toolkit to design your own. You can also catch diseases such as Vampirism or Lycanthropy from certain enemies.

Now for the flipside of the coin: The gameworld is utterly bland. There is no individuality in anything, save for the few people of high importance in the game. Those that you meet by doing the main quest, and a few of the rulers of said provinces are the only ones who have something truly unique and interesting to say. Everything else is cookie cutter.

I soon found myself caring not one bit for anyone I met. Once I realized that I was playing one huge random game generator with no script, once I reached a decent level, had a good weapon and armor and was able to defeat my enemies easily, the game became pointless. A freeform game requires the imagination of the player, but it needs to retain enough character and challenge for you to be interested in what happens. Daggerfall fails at this. If you want to play a game along similar lines but crafted with more care (and a much smaller gameworld), I suggest that you play Morrowind.