Games section

6. Epilogue regarding the Napalm-Test by Manni Froitzheim (by Manni Froitzheim)

Due to the reactions regarding my test report of Napalm I want to give a last comment to close the chapter once and forever.

It seems, that I'm a voice crying in the wilderness... There were some nice mails in the last weeks and a lot of evil ones... who cares...:-)

First, it is so, that I don't intentionally talk a game bad, nor (because everybody does it) praise it to the skies. That the APlus (remark of the translator: = Amiga Plus, a German Amiga magazine) always rates higher than 90%, fine... but that the Fever (remark of the translator: = Amiga Fever, a German Amiga magazine) and the AOS (remark of the translator: = AmigaOS, a German Amiga magazine) praise Napalm is a miracle to me... and why all the world likes it (due to the advertising of Clickboom or the uncritical reports in the prefessional journals...?) is another unsolvable miracle to me.

If they would forego on the word "strategy" regarding Napalm, I would feel much better. All the "strategy fans", who find Napalm so - super - fantastic - brillian - I suggest to read quickly "von Clausewitz", especially because his book "Vom Kriege" (translated: From the war). Napalm is NO strategy game, because it doesn't have any elements of strategy!!! Only because tanks move in it and everybody says it, it doesn't become a strategy game.

Shall I give you an example? Mission 6 of the robots: Your job is to send a spy to the enemy base and you have 30 minutes to do it. Hm...

What does this mean...? Well, I first looked, if there is an extra character SPY (there isn't)... hm... then it might mean to send an "technician" into the base (or into the HQ or into another building)) Hm...

Well, then I tried various times everything possible, from the complete distruction of the base to send a "technician" into (different) buildings (what wasn't possible in any level), then just keep him alive until the period of time... nothing, absolutely nothing... evreytime "mission failed" and then I became angry due to such a trash... A completely ambiguous "blah-blah" mission, I tried everything various times and always lost....IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE STRATEGY?

Don't make me laugh!!!

Am I a guinea pig in a skinner box, that gets something to eat using the "try and error" method? No, folks, to say it drastically: Napalm is trash...

Sorry, but that is the worst of this game for me. With the rest someone can live (for 30.00 DEM / approx. 15.31 Euros)... And if the rest of Amiga community doesn't care about those things and wants to pay 100.00 DEM / approx. 51.02 Euros), it is not my money and of course not my problem.

And I ALWAYS say what I THINK and I don't care... I would like it much more to get a new, good strategy game... but Naplm isn't that, of course!

But a small hint, anyway:

Who wants to play a different level has just to rename any file to 01.dat and select "compaign" in the main menu... The game cannot be saved correctly, because the previous mission wasn't played and with "restart game" the original 01.dat file starts.

to Andreas Falkenhahn: I shall be happy, that existing games are under continous development...? That's the minimum or is it not? (A new bug in Napalm V1.2, that wasn't there in V1.0 led to the failure the previously described Mission 6...) And it is a big difference, if a good game is made better than to make a bad game playable!!!!! And the remark in the readme file of V1.3 to use the same revision on BOTH Amigas is nice, but it still doesn't work... The network connection is no longer aborted, but the clocks don't run synchronous. That means, that on computer is 5 minutes advanced... and sees and shoots on vehicles, the opponent already moved away (on his monitor), Bäh...!

That is similar to the A-class of Mercedes: The thing lands on its roof, an electronic (additional) walking stick is being build in (thought as an extra for the S-class), without it the car would be insecure and everbody buys this trash and doesn't think about that this car is a faulty design.

Regarding the company Clickboom: what's with QuakePPC? The user want it and why doesn't anything happen? Is the customer a beggar or don't they want to make money?

Unfortunately I can't program, but I want to make a summons to all the (dissatisfied) strategy game fans, to contact me and to make a concept for developping a "real" strategy game to present it the companies or to look for programmers, that can/want/will do the conversion.

Manni Froitzheim <M.Froitzheim@t-online.de>