Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (Triumph Studios PC M15+)

By PETER ELEY

(Herald rating: * * * * *)

Good computer games, like good movies and books, manage to suspend disbelief and immerse the player in analternative reality.

The Age of Wonders games have done that brilliantly. The only problem is that players have needed not much short of a PhD in advanced gameology to pick up the conventions of this huge and complex turn-based strategy series.

The latest episode, Shadow Magic, is an attempt to make Age of Wonders more accessible to the average player, the sort who likes to get a few hours' sleep each night.

This approach is most evident in the lengthy tutorial, which takes newbies through the basics of turn-based games in a clear, simple fashion.

It also introduces the characters and races, and explains the mechanics of production and combat.

At this stage, players used to simpler games may start to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Age of Wonders. There is just so much to do, build and conquer, not to mention magic to master.

This, of course, is the beauty of the game. You'll still be playing

Age of Wonders when other $100 games are just a forgotten cluster marked for deletion on your hard drive.

While much of the content comes from Shadow Magic's highly complex predecessor, Age of Wonders 2, it has a new story, three new races — the Nomads, Shadow Demons, and Syrons — and new characters.

The aim is take your character and rise to power as a wizard-king. To do so requires a mix of magic, empire-building through diplomacy and trade, and combat.


It's a good idea to keep the 170-page manual by your keyboard. There is so much going on and so many options that you'll need to consult it frequently until you get up to speed.


Combat, though, can besimplified. When opposing armies come face-to-face, you can choose an option which lets the computer calculate the respective strengths of units and decide the probable outcome.

One fault with Age of Wonders 2 was that it lacked a random game generator. Shadow Magic has rectified that.

The Generate Scenario option offers four types of scenario, from quick battles to drawn-out, intensely strategic ones, with four map sizes to choose from in each.

Shadow Magic's graphics are adequate for a turn-based game where solid strategy is more important than good looks.

But the two-dimensional art is well-drawn, with vibrant colours and good effects. This relative lack of visual sophistication means it will run on 450MHz systems with 128mb of ram and a 16mb video card.

Strangely, it is rated M15+ by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification because of low-level animated violence.

Take it out of the Australia-New Zealand packaging, and a box inside is stamped with its British rating, 12 years plus.

That's a huge difference, remembering that Saving Private Ryan, with its horrific and realistic scenes of battle in World War II, was rated R15 in this country.