Snowball Run

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Reporting on a recent press showing of the 3D political strategy game Republic: The Revolution, the Game Domain has put together an overview of the event that focuses mainly on the creator, Demis Hassabis, and the basic mechanics of the game. From the report so far, Republic certainly seems impressive, with an incredible array of choices allowing for completely non-linear gameplay.

For those who have never heard of Republic, the basic premise is that you are in command of a political faction in a small former soviet state. Your overall game-arching goal is to end up in control of the presidency of the country. The part that makes this game so impressive is that you can achieve this by any means neccesary; through force, political influence, or just flat out bribing. Hiring thugs, holding political rallies, and even handing out political pamphlets is all in a day's work in this game.

Here's a clip from the Game Domain preview:

Particular characters respond to different ideologies, and the same applies to the population. Working class areas are largely force-oriented, middle class influence, and upper class areas unsurprisingly think only in terms of cold, hard, cash. "Depending on which way you want to go, you'll need to appeal to that class of citizen." Your own faction's ideology starts off oriented somewhere on a sliding scale between them, but as you continue to exert influence in terms of your actions in the world, that ideology can shift to determine your endgame. "Every action you do in the game contributes in a small way to your ideology," he continued. "If you start off very money oriented, by doing a lot of force actions: military and criminal actions, your faction will start becoming a force faction, and will start appealing to force characters."

Game Domain Preview of Republic: The Revolution

Republic: The Revolution

Elixir

Feral Interactive

Buy Republic: The Revolution

Macintosh gaming heroes.. I mean publishers MacPlay have announced their First Annual Spring Fling sales promotion.

For five days starting at midnight April 9th, MacPlay is offering players as many copies of the company's fourteen budget series for five dollars US each, if ordered through the MacPlay online store.

This new promotion covers the following games in the MacPlay roster:

In addition, players ordering before the deadline of midnight (CST) on April 15th will get $5.00 off MacPlay's new titles Snowball Run and Power Chips & High Roller.

Click on the link below to take advantage of this event.

MacPlay's Spring Fling Sales Event

MacPlay

Aliens vs. Predator: Gold

Birdie Shoot

Earth 2140

Fallout

Giants: Citizen Kabuto

Heretic II

HeXen II

Incoming

Knights and Merchants

Majesty

Sacrifice

Sin Gold

Zork: Grand Inquisitor

Buy Earth 2140

Buy Fallout

Buy Giants: Citizen Kabuto

Buy HeXen II

Buy Knights and Merchants

Pre-Order Sacrifice

Buy Sin Gold

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Gamers who have been enjoying UbiSoft's recently released MMORPG Shadowbane may have noticed difficulties with various servers, including server crashes and speed performance issues. The system administrators have made note of the problems, and have posted a public service announcement regarding their intentions to address the various issues.

The bulk of the announcement is as follows:

We are currently experiencing a slow down with our storage equipment, which is causing data rollbacks on two servers, and lowered performance across the service. We have identified several problem areas in the server configurations which will soon be corrected. These improvements should make all of the servers run faster, prevent data rollbacks, and correct the login server delays we have experienced over the past few days.

Those interested in reading the full announcement can find it at the official Shadowbane site.

Shadowbane Service Announcement

Ubisoft

Wolfpack Studios

Shadowbane

It's time once again for the Annual Moofie Awards. Four years in the running, the Moofies are Applelink's way of celebrating the Mac gaming industry. A parody of award shows such as the Academy Awards, various Moofie categories include Actor in a Leading Role, Original Score, Short Film, Screenplay, and of course, Best Picture.

Games chosen for the running had to undergo a most strenuous selection process:

The nominees for the twelve awards were chosen by the Academy of Bots and Polygons; a staff of experts (read, gaming geeks) from Applelinks and MacGamer. To qualify for nomination, the game had to reach store shelves in 2002...and it had to be good. This year once again finds a couple A-list games dominating the categories, but also sees some surprises working their way into the mix.

Those interested in voting can find more information at Applelinks.

Applelinks - Voting booth now open for the Fourth Annual Applelinks Moofie Awards

Mac game publishers Delta Tao Software have made available a public alpha test for the latest version of their popular card game Eric's Solitaire X.

This new version, built from the ground up by designers Eric Snider and Joe Williams as a native OS X application, features several new card games, while keeping the famous wit and fun of the original versions.

The time-limited alpha test, which expires on June 1st of this year, is being released to the public in an effort to root out any final bugs that may still be lingering in the code. Fans of the game wanting to help out should download the game and play it extensively, reporting any possible bugs back to the game designers. According to their license agreement, however, the likelyhood of finding any bugs appears to be, at least in the eyes of the programmers, slim:

**Warning** the code contained in this product is god-like and perfect. When we work on it choirs of angels gather around and sing. Mortals must keep out. This code is so blindingly beautiful that your eyes will melt if you look at it.

Delta Tao

Eric's Ultimate Solitaire

Apple has added more free games exclusively for its .Mac members - eight free Freeverse board games, and a discounted price for Freeverse's 3D Hearts and 3D Spades games.

Apple has made the software available for download to members of its subscription-based Web services community.

Up for grabs are: Tic Tac Toe, Chess, Checkers, 7th Fleet, 4 in a Row, Go, Mancala and Reversi. These titles normally retail for around $20.

3D Hearts and 3D Spades is a 3D card game. A shareware version is available; upgrade ($14.95 with discount) for additional features including: music, and backgrounds.

.Mac: Freeverse Game Giveaway

Apple

Freeverse

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Several IMG readers have emailed IMG to let us know that they have received Fed Ex shipping notices from Aspyr Media that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has been shipped to them. The sequel to the first Harry Potter game went into duplication on March 28th.

Here's a bit more info about the latest Potter game:

Be Harry Potter and unlock the mystery at the heart of the Chamber of Secrets. With dire warnings from strange quarters and dark schemes afoot, Harry's second adventure will be every bit as magical and dangerous as his first. But this time the spells are more potent, the foes are more fearsome, and Harry's friends are more important than ever.

MacOS 9.1 or later (9.2.2 recommended)
MacOS X 10.1 or later
G3/G4 CPU 350 MHz or faster
128 MB of Memory (256M recommended if running OSX)
3D Graphics Acceleration required (minimum of ATI Rage 128 with 16MB VRAM)

Be sure to check out our preview of Harry Potter & The Chamber Of Secrets, linked below. We'll also be posting a review of the game shortly.

Westlake Interactive

Aspyr Media

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Buy Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

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