Platoon

Hot on the heels of last week's Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which is proving popular with thousands of Mac gamers. America's Army: Special Forces 2.3 was released for Mac OS X today. AA has the somewhat dubious honor of being endorsed by the US Army as a recruitment tool. Unlike ET, AA is based on Epic Games' Unreal Engine 2 and minimum system requirements are higher. I'll leave you to deliberate over any ideological concerns. IMG Pro users can download it now (759MB).

In other gaming news. There's a new unofficial MacMAME Xcode build available. Sega's Thunder Blade (1987) is finally 100% accurate. I remember playing the notoriously difficult Thunder Blade at Exeter's Megabowl whilst MTV was showing Madonna videos back to back.

The Long Good Friday

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory has consumed many, many hours since its surprise debut on the Mac this week. The past few nights have witnessed the destruction of tanks, city walls and beach defenses! In the latter I served as an Axis soldier equipped with a Panzerfaust. For an adrenalin-fueled 30 minutes my team (of 30) held back Allied forces and prevented them from breaching the sea wall defenses. The maps are lavishly detailed and none more so than the Cathedral and Egyptian tomb (evoking the adventures of Indiana Jones).

The key ingredient in ET is team co-operation (up to 64 players) and the ability to increase one's skill (not unlike an RPG). Incidentally PunkBuster precludes any players from cheating and a voting system kicks troublesome team mates (those who deliberately engage in friendly fire) off.

A technical tip for anyone using that pile of junk known as DivX. To avoid the DivX conflict uninstall the application (it's taking up valuable HDD space anyway).

Enemy at the Gates

Castle Wolfenstein (1983) was originally released for the Atari XL and Commodore 64 by publisher Muse Software. id Software purchased the rights to use the name and released seminal FPS Wolfenstein 3D (1992). The first sequel, Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2002), ensnared me with its pulp Sci-fi/Nazi mythology and dark atmosphere. Now id/Splash Damage/Aspyr has ported Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (2003) to Mac OS X. Originally planned as an expansion pack for RtCW, ET is a free multiplayer online FPS (sans bots).

After downloading ET (258MB standalone installer includes PunkBuster and does not require a commercial copy of RtCW to run) I leapt online and started playing the "Dora" Rail Gun map. Dora was the largest artillery gun built during WWII and its purpose was to pummel defenses during Operation 'Barbarossa', but did not see active service until 1942. The Rail Gun campaign sees Axis players defend and man the Dora as it begins bombardment of a nearby city. Allied forces are charged with blowing up the track and gun before the first shot is fired. The abundance of crystalline detail, fluidic animation and sound surpasses even Raven's Jedi Academy Quake 3 engine modifications. Now if only there was a Rachel Weisz avatar!

Improvements in ET will filter down to RtCW (Mac client) in a future patch. Therefore I'd encourage any Mac gamer, who doesn't own RtCW, to grab a copy.