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{subhead} Napalm{def}{p}
Review by Neil Williams
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Napalm is a "RTOL", which is another disgusting acronym from the PC
world.  For normal people, it means real time strategy.  Or in
other words, a war game.
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You control a small army.  With this small army, you must in some
way defeat the enemy (who also has a small army, for if they
didn't it'd be a very easy game indeed).  As you progress, you
start with more resources and can build and buy better equipment
until before you know it you're throwing nuclear bombs around.
Although, if you are on the Robots side, you can call on some
`friendly' aliens to decimate the Humans base...  If you've played
the Napalm demo much, this is the big thing that wipes you out
after 20 minutes!
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Unlike the demo, the full game does let you play either of the
opposing sides.  There's the robots, who are basically a slave
race; and there are the humans, who are in this case slave traders.
The poor robots have had enough of being told what to do so they
are rebelling against the human masters.  The humans fight back.
There's your plot - do with it what you want.
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The name of the game is weapons really.  Big, chunky, don't-
legalise-these type weapons.  Your basic unit is the infantry,
followed by the "Bazooker" (Bazooka?) guys.  These are cheap to
buy/build/train and so make up quite a bit of your defense.  These
guys aren't much good when when the robots start sending their
Predator Tanks and Threelers towards you (or indeed if you're the
one sending these against the humans!).  So, we have some bigger
stuff too.  And, as I've said, lots of it.  You have Jeeps - which
are good for scouting out enemy bases with their quick speed and
small weapon.  There are tanks of various flavours, from light
(quick to build, and powerful in numbers) to the really scary
Triple Tank.  Generally, as the vehicles get better armed, they're
also much heavier, and so also much slower.  This is where the
games grouping comes in.
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You can take a number of units, select them, them assign that
selection to a key.  In this way, you can build up companies or
groups of units and get to them by hitting F1-F10.  This is where
the strategy comes in.
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The game really is good in this respect.  It looks well thought out
here, and sending a group of tanks ahead to clear the way for a
group of soldiers who are in turn protecting a group of engineers
(these are units who can enter an enemy structure, such as a power
station, and take it over for your side) is really something to
behold!
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There are some problems with the game.  Firstly there's the system
requirements.  While a certain similar game running under a Mac
emulation can run full screen extremely quickly, Napalm need a
fairly fast machine to do the same.  The 16MB RAM and CD-ROM
requirements are what should be considered normal now, and many
people have CPUs faster than the 68030 now, so it isn't too much of
a problem.  My only other real gripe is a small thing with the
controls.  If you happen to have units selected and scroll to the
edge of the playing area with the right mouse button, the units are
deselected.  This should only happen when I right-click on the
screen!  This, while seemingly a small bug, can be quite a pain!
Other than that, I'm happy with the controls in general.  The unit
and screen `book-marking' features are very well done.
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Technical Bits
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The graphics are top-notch, as you may already have seen in the
demo or screenshots.  There is nothing to beat sending a
Nitroglycerin carrier into the heart of an enemy base, clearing
your defenders away quickly, and blowing the whole lot.  Likewise
with the sound.  The CD audio is good (although the intro is spoilt
if you have fast (32x) CD-ROM drive which insists on spinning up
and down to load the game then play the music) and the in-game
sounds suit the situation perfectly - i.e., there's gun sounds and
there's explosion sounds, and you don't need much more other than an
air-raid siren (which you get anyway, so...).
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I'm not sure there's much more to say.  The game may not suit you -
being a real time strategy, you have slowly over time build up to
the action bits by building research centers, and building an armed
force, and then once you start an attack (or receive one) you'll be
fighting simultaneous battles and will get as much action as you
want and more!  This works well, but may not be what you want.
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I've deliberately not gone into too much details of the weapons
available in the game.  This would spoil the game, I feel.  It's
much better to see, for example, tunnel being built and used than
for me to try to explain it here.  Lets just say that you shouldn't
be disappointed, and if you are there are plenty of completely
insane military dictators in the world who'd love to employ your
services.
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Overall then, a good game marred by some small mistakes.
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{bold}Created By{nobold}     : ClickBOOM - {link http://www.clickboom.com/}http://www.clickboom.com/{end}{nobold}{p}
{bold}Available from{nobold} : All Amiga dealers{p}
{bold}Requirements{nobold}   : AGA, Picasso96 or CyberGraphx{p}
                 68020 CPU or better{p}
                 16MB or more fast memory{p}
                 2MB chip memory{p}
                 2x or faster CD-ROM drive{p}
{bold}Media{nobold}          : One CD, requires some hard disk installation
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{bold}Graphics{nobold}      : 92%{p}
{bold}Sound{nobold}         : 87%{p}
{bold}Playability{nobold}   : 91%{p}
{bold}Lastability{nobold}   : 95%
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{bold}Overall{nobold}       : 93%