Reviews

Killing More Than Time With Some Of This Season's Best Gaming Services

by Jeff Newman

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The year is coming to an end and we've fulfilled our enormous responsibilities for yet another year. Soon it will be time for the corporate brass to tie up year-end finances, while we kick back for some fun. Everyone knows how technology drivers relax: We like to kill things. Last year we reviewed network games; this year, it's Internet gaming services.

You know the games. You just need more e-blood. By now, you're probably top dog on your network and the local talent has left you wanting more. You need to acquire new territory, expand, invade the shores of others. This year, we evaluated gaming services that bring together the best contenders in the world. Activities ranging from a simple round of Spades to the most grueling game of Quake were put to the test.

We reviewed five online gaming services-DWANGO (Dial-up Wide Area Network Game Operation), ENGAGE Games Online, Mplayer, Total Entertainment Network (TEN) and Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Gaming Zone-and found that most of t hese did an exceptional job of providing a meeting place for gamers with easy ways to assemble and tools to communicate and, of course, to com pete. When the dust settled, we found that Mplayer provides the best layout and services. Following closely is Total Entertainment Network (TEN) and Microsoft's Internet Gaming Zone with their easy-to-use interfaces, intriguing games and ability to facilitate communication among gaming competitors. Although all still are in development stages and waiting on third-party support, these services provide enough active games online to make their sites fun places to hang out and blow off some steam.

Mplayer

Mplayer provides a graphical front end for Microsoft Windows95 that lets you log on to its service over the Internet via your local service provider and assemble with other users in hierarchical fashion. Once you have downloaded the client software and the game you want to play, it's a simple, painless process to get started. Like most of the services tested, the Mplayer site leans heavily toward action and role-playing games. During our review, none of these services offered many strategy games, but the developers say such options are in the works.

You connect to the Mplayer Web site over an Internet connection and select a game. The Mplayer client launches and you're off and running. Mplayer, as well as ENGAGE, DWANGO and TEN, lets participants use shareware versions in addition to the full release versions of popular games, such as ID Software's Doom series and Quake. This is accomplished through the use of enablers, which you download from the site. Enablers basically are patches that let your system communicate with the online gaming service.

Once you're logged into the server, you can enter chat or game lobbies, both of which offer multiple game rooms. The first to join a game room chooses the parameters of the game and initiates it. Once the game is complete, everyone returns to the lobbies to chat or start another game. The entire process is organized, ea sy to follow and well-integrated with game play. We especially enjoyed the chat rooms. We've been playing locals for so long, that it was refreshing to pull up a stool and chat with a 20-year-old from Sweden and a 19-year-old from Italy after spilling blood on the killing fields.

Specific to Mplayer is the ability to page other competitors who could be lurking in another game lobby-a great way to tell them to meet you in a certain room. Mplayer also offers a feature that lets you send voice messages to others if you have a sound card and microphone. And if that isn't enough, Mplayer includes a feature called ScribbleTalk that lets users share a whiteboard to plan strategies for team play or demonstrate hints. No other service offers these useful tools.

The performance of Mplayer was comparable to the other services we tested. We found it to be exceptional while using a Dell P90 over a 56-Kbps connection to the Internet. The only glitches we noticed were during a friendly game of Quake, when our network started getting bogged down. We found it difficult to kill when our enemies were moving fast and smooth and we were slow and jumpy. Other gaming services suffered in this respect as well. It helps to have a reliable connection to your Internet service provider (ISP) when using these services.

Overall, we found the experience hassle-free and entertaining. Mplayer's support of so many addictive games pegged out our anti-productivity meter.

Total Entertainment Network

The Total Entertainment Network (TEN) does a good job of providing an attractive Windows95 user interface and an easy-to-follow client for meeting and organizing people for fun competition. It's laid out much the same way Mplayer is, and offers the same hierarchical chat format Mplayer and Microsoft's services have. Once we downloaded the client software and the game enabler modules, we were on our way.

Not as flexible as Mplayer's chat function, TEN's services would not let us cr eate our own private or public chat rooms for specific topics. Chat rooms must be created by the TEN sta ff. Although this isn't a major issue, it gave us a sense that we didn't have much control.

One feature that we found useful is a routine that constantly checked the status and bandwidth of our connections. It would recommend a zone you should or should not enter because of inconsistencies or limitations of your bandwidth. Matching people with similar bandwidths kept game play as fast as possible for everyone involved.

Feature for feature, the functionality that put Mplayer ahead of TEN is Mplayer's additional communication aids, such as paging, real-time voice transmission and shared whiteboard features. We had few problems with TEN's service and enjoyed playing with the other participants in the death matches.