We're excited to have caught the busy Glenda Adams, the Director of Development at Aspyr Media, for an extended interview. She was patient enough to answer a deluge of questions we had, ranging from Doom 3 development and its optimization process involving Apple, ATI, and NVIDIA, as well upcoming titles, and mod compatibility issues for existing Mac titles from Aspyr.

As a short introduction for those who don't already know, Glenda's CV is impressive-- before joining Aspyr she co-founded Westlake Interactive, and also worked for LookingGlass Technologies, TechWorks, and Impressions software. The titles she has worked on as programmer or lead programmer ranges over many high profile titles such as Duke Nukem, Tomb Raider (I, II, Chronicles), Railroad Tycoon II, Deus Ex, Unreal & Unreal Tourn ...

Once In a while it's good to go back and look at an old game that has stood the test of time, and review it against today's newer games. Without Further ado...

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Tom Clancy’s: Ghost Recon

When it comes to first person tactical shooter games, Ghost Recon is certainly at the top of the list. It is not your everyday first person shooter, which is denoted by the "tactical." Like its counterpart, Rainbow Six, Recon requires a good deal of planning and strategy to accomplish your goals. But unlike R6, you won’t spend all your time in the planning stages. So in that respect, it is ...

Doom 3 Performance Followup
by Santaduck, Rogue, and Adamward
in collaboration with Rob-ART Morgan of Barefeats.com


Introduction
We've had another week at Macologist after posting our original review to further investigate Doom 3's performance issues. We have also been working with Rob-ART Morgan of www.barefeats.com, who has provided his expertise as well as contributing benchmarks on a wide variety of machines, including the fastest G5s with X800XT or Geforce 6800.

Our original review focused on the game and history, along with introductory benchmarks. In this followup, we will be focusing more on performance and actual playability ...

Game Review: Future Boy
The Return of Interactive Fiction
Review by Santaduck

Future Boy, by General Coffee, carries the legacy of a gaming genre as old as personal computers that once dominated the gaming industry, but now has largely been forgotten except by hobbyists: Interactive Fiction adventure. Future Boy marks the first credible attempt in recent memory for a game that may be capable of reintroducing this genre to a new generation of gamers unlikely to have even heard of it, other than random references to Zork. Read on to see how a game released in 2005 has the potential to resurrect an entire dynasty dating back to the first Apple Computers.

What is interactive fiction?
Back t ...

Review by Adam Ward

Doom 3: id Software

Overview
Doom 3, one of the most anticipated games of the last five years, was finally released for the PC. On the auspicious day of March 14th, it will come to the Macintosh, allowing another league of gamers to battle the forces of Hell on the red planet, Mars.

In Doom 3, you play a lone marine just transferred to the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC). As soon as you arrive, you start hearing whispers and reports of problems on the station. People are missing, as well as other problems such as odd activity, weird noises and equipment breaking. Most people stationed on UAC hope that these are nothing more than old fashioned ghost stories.

Unfortunately, the ghosts are ...

Mod Comparison: Star Wars Shootout

Warlords (HW2), Galactic Conquest (BF1942), Troopers (UT2004)


Ever wish you could dive further into the Star Wars experience than games such as Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy? Now you can, with three of the most popular Macintosh games: Battlefield 1942, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Homeworld 2. Each of these mods go to a different game. Warlords is for Homeworld 2, Galactic Conquest for Battlefield 1942, and Troopers: Dawn of Destiny for Unreal Tournament. Warlords is a RTS (Real Time Strategy), Galactic Conquest is a FPS (First Person Shooter), and Troopers: Dawn of Destiny is also a FPS.


Warlords- Homeworld 2 ...

Game Review: Call of Duty

Introduction:

Call of Duty (CoD) is a first-person shooter (FPS) game which takes the gamer through 24 intense missions in World War II. You play as three sides of the Allied front: American, British, and Russian, as they work together to take over the German empire. Along the way you will be faced with intense and immersive action that will certainly have you coming back for more! Thanks to Call of Duty's online multiplayer mode, you will never run out of fresh action. This game has everything we look for in FPS games, and more...

Made by some of the best in the business, Call of Duty w ...

Ever want to jump off a cliff? What about knowing that 200 ft down you can grab a rope and climb to safety? You can do just that with the 2nd place winner in Epic’s Make Something Unreal (MSU) Contest, Damnation.

Plot of the game:

There is a war between the Uplands and the Coalition. 27 years into it, the death-count continues to rise, rising to the millions. One man, W.D. Prescott, in an attempt to rule the Western Territories, sells destructive weapons to one side, but also sells the counter-measure to the other side. The effect is nothing but an even longer, and bloodier war.

However, all is not lost, for there are the Peacemakers. One of these will be who the player (you) will use in ...

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

CSI, by Aspyr Media, is an interesting video game adaption of the hit TV show bearing the same name. I say "interesting" as the game, while doing several things right, falls short in key areas that would make the game a truly memorable experience. For the purpose of this article, I will cover installation, graphics, sound, and game-play. Our test machine for this game was a dual 2GHz G5, July model, with 2 gigs of ram and the ATI 9600XT video card.

Installation:
The game comes on 4 CDs. Installation is quick and painless. It would be nice to see a DVD version. One of the most noticeable facts was that CD media is not required in the drive to play this game, which is nice for mobile users.

The game requir ...

Joining us today at Macologist.org is Fred Echols, Quality Assurance Engineer at Gearbox Software, the makers of the eagerly awaited game Brothers In Arms. Some questions were referred to Gearbox president Randy Pitchford, as indicated.


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INTERVIEW DATE: Feb 12, 2005
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Thank you for taking the time to sit down and answer a few questions for us.
Can you tell us what your job at Gearbox entails? ...