WIN THESE GAMES

The Gamesman has a copy of each of the reviewed products to give away. E-mail entries to ADFgamesmen@telstra.com with the name of the game you would like to win in the subject line. Only one entry per person please as subsequent entries will be discarded. Include your full name and mailing address in the e-mail or your entry won’t be accepted. Congratulations to our recent winners: Peter Wilcox, RAN Submarine Program, (Virtual Sailing 4); and OCDT Ashley Brown, ADFA (EA Sports V8 Challenge).

The Gamesman - Capt Jason Logue

Throughout the year the companies supporting this column often forward products within their portfolio for platforms other than the PC.

In this column I thought I’d take the opportunity to look at some of the product currently available for the PlayStation 2 and give readers a chance to win some of the hottest games of this year. Thanks to the crew at Ubi Soft, Guillemot, EA and GameNation for their continued support.

Medal of Honor: Frontline
http://www.moh.ea.com
Publisher: Electronic Arts http://www.eagames.com

The success of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for the PC meant a console port would not be long in coming. In fact the Medal of Honor series was born on the PlayStation and this second iteration of the game has leapt on to the PlayStation 2 and quickly become one of its highest selling titles.

Essentially the same as the PC version, Frontline puts the player in the shoes of Lieutenant Jimmy Patterson, an operative for the OSS, landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day before heading inland for more specialised work.

The game plays quite well in its console format with well- designed menus and controls and long-time PlayStation gamers will have no problems controlling their virtual character with the game pad.

PC players more used to the normal mouse setup of playing FPS games will find targeting quite tricky for a while.

Medal of Honor: Frontline is one of the games that has kept PlayStation 2 well in front in the cutthroat console market.

If you don’t have it you really are missing out on a quality console game that pushes the graphical capability of Sony’s machine to the extreme.

Conflict: Desert Storm
http://www.conflict.com/conflictdesert storm.html
Developer: SCI Games http://www.sci.co.uk/games/
Distributor: GameNation http://game nation.com.au/

Conflict: Desert Storm is being simultaneously released across the XBox, PlayStation 2 and PC at the end of September. The Gamesman previewed the PC version back in April and following a release delay we were happy to get a copy of the game.

It plays differently to most modern tactical shooters in that it is nearly all done from the third person – something that does take some getting used to but it does have the advantage of providing a wider field of view.

Set in the Gulf War in 1991, the game puts players in the shoes of a SF patrol wreaking havoc in the Iraqi lines.

While it is not strictly historically accurate and is at the arcade-end of the gaming scale it is very enjoyable.

The best feature of the game is its multi-play capability on the console platforms. Players can lead three AI-controlled teammates, play split screen with a friend or link their consoles to enjoy true team-based console play with four gamers linking for the fight.

Conflict: Desert Storm is a great playing game that is highly suited to the console platform with its simple controls, easily navigable menus and great graphics.

ThrustMaster Desert Eagle .50AE
http://europe.thrustmaster.com/products
Developer: ThrustMaster http://www.thrustmaster.com
Distributor: Guillemot http://www.guille mot.com

Light guns used to be all the rage with the old Atari console systems and despite resurgence with later generation console releases they have never really taken off.

However, a new range of pistols from renowned controller manufacturer ThrustMaster could change this general trend.

The Gamesman was lucky enough to get one of the first Desert Eagles to reach Australia recently and immediately put it to test.

The pistol is an accurate model of the real Israeli Industries weapon, except it is made of plastic and weighs about 10kg less.

In fact it was so realistic Guillemot couldn’t import them in their normal black colour scheme. The Aussie version is a great fluoro green – just so no one gets the wrong idea.

The beauty of this pistol is not only is it a shooting device but it features all of the controls of a basic PlayStation gamepad.

There is a D-Pad on the side for directional movement, the A, B, C, and D buttons are located around the pistol (the C button is the hammer) and it features a blow-back device to give tactile user feedback.

Accuracy is OK but is nowhere near what you would have experienced on WTSS but in most console games this isn’t a real problem as a level of auto-targeting usually kicks in when a player gets the reticule close to the target.

It comes complete with fittings for both generations of PlayStation and worked with everything I could find although first-person view games are obviously better.

If you can get past the fact you’re standing in front of your TV with a pretend gun shooting pretend bullets at pretend bad guys it is a great addition for FPS fans. The recommended retail price will be under $100.

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