Squad's Felipe Falanghe is the creator and lead developer of Kerbal Space Program, and his work space feels a lot like a command module in a rocket soaring to Mun. When he's not busy developing one of PC gaming's most delightful simulators, he's using a gigantic array of peripherals to play games. Felipe was kind enough to take a few moments away from firing Kerbals into space to tell us about his setup.

What's in your PC?
On the inside, my current PC specs consist of an Intel Core i7 3820 CPU, 32 GB DDR3 RAM, a GeForce GTX 690 GPU, a Samsung 840Pro 512GB SSD, a 2TB 7200 rpm HD, a 1kW PSU, all aboard a CM Storm Trooper Case.

What's the most interesting part of your setup?
I have to say, I love my peripherals. I have a thing for human interface devices, and I ve been collecting them since I had my first PC. As for a favorite, I really had to think about that for a while but if I had to pick one thing, that would have to be my Matrox TripleHead2Go and the 3 screens.



What's on your desk?
On the "main deck," we have a Logitech X550 5.1 Surround System, Another 1TB Toshiba external drive, a G19s Keyboard, 3DConnexion s SpaceMouse and SpaceNavigator, RAT 7 Mouse, F350 Gamepad, the Saitek X52 Pro, a 4-port USB Hub, TrackIR 5, MS VX1000 webcam, and the monitors, 2 LG 1920h LCDs (left and right), and an LH E1910 at the center. The three used to be the same model, but one of them sadly burned out a while back. On the "lower deck," I have a Logitech G13 and a Razer Nostromo, plus my trusty Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet. Under the desk, sit the ProFlight Rudder Pedals and the pedal set for the Driving Force GT Wheel. The wheel itself takes the desktop front and center when it s time to drive, and the right rudder pedal doubles as a clutch pedal. For flying, the Saitek X52 Pro takes center stage.

What are you playing right now?
I really haven t had much time to play much at all in these last few months I did manage to get a few hours in on Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag these last couple of days, and before that, I was playing Just Cause 2, Skyrim some indies as well, like Papers, Please and The Stanley Parable. And DayZ, lots of DayZ.



What's your favorite game and why?
Now that is a properly hard question I m very picky about games, because I usually dedicate a lot of time on a single title, so I definitely have a few favorites of recent times, DayZ being one, but I ve always been a big fan of all of Bohemia s Arma series all the way back to the original Operation Flashpoint.

An all time favorite though, that s very hard to pick I do have a few which have stuck with me since I was little, some of which I still get around to playing every now and then, on emulators or VMs. I think Fragile Allegiance, from 1995, has to be my favorite strategy game. I was playing it again just a few weeks ago on my laptop, running DOSBox. For RTS, I would say Total Annihilation. For flight sims, Microsoft s Flight Simulator series, definitely. I ve had all of them since MSFS 4.1, which came on a single 3.5 floppy, all the way through FSX. I couldn t leave out Orbiter either. I ve been an Orbiter fan ever since I first played it back in the early 2000 s.

I have a few console favorites too, although you can probably tell from those pictures I m not a console gamer most of the time. My favorites are from the N64 era. Of all those, I would put GoldenEye 007 at the very top. I actually never owned it, I used to rent it at Blockbuster pretty much every weekend, and I got so many hours into it, I have some of the levels forever burned into my brain, to the point I could map it out by memory. And of course, I couldn t not mention SimCity 2000, 3000 and 4, and The Sims as well.

I know this is hardly a definitive answer, but these games were the worlds I would live in when I was a kid, then through my teenage years and college days, so they ve all influenced me as a game designer now, and I still refer to them as my role models for fun and immersive games.

Something about 1849 really appeals to me as a non citybuilding fan. Is it the California Gold Rush setting, which reminds me of the brilliant sweary-murdery TV show Deadwood? Is it the music in the latest trailer, which makes me nostalgic for a bygone (and almost certainly horrible) world I never knew? Or is it the adorable pixel art characters, who hustle and bustle around pre-rendered buildings, like NPCs in some late '90s Square RPG? It's probably all three, and if your proclivities broadly match up with mine, you're going to want to join me after the break.

As devs SomaSim state on their IndieGameStand Early Access page, your goal in 1849 is to "build towns, populate them with workers, and make sure that they are housed, fed, and entertained. You ll have to manage and coordinate extensive production and trade networks to make sure your towns thrive". The latest update went live a few days ago, and added a sandbox mode and additional city scenarios, plus, er, more trees and rocks.

If you've held out this long though, you may be better off waiting for the finished version of the game, which will go panning for gold on May 8th. This trailer shows a few of the things you can expect:



Thanks, Joystiq.

Experienced racing gamer Craig Lager teams up with Tom Hatfield, a man who's only Rally experience involves driving around the streets of Birmingham UK. Together, they take on the extreme course of Elephant River in rFactor. Craig takes the wheel, while Tom plays navigator, calling upcoming turns from a map of the course. Will they make it to the end? How many elephants will they hit first? Will they learn anything about rally racing, and the stressful joy of co-op gaming?

Craig: We're going to crash into that crowd of people, and those elephants, maybe those gazelles. The car glides along the dirt on its side, my continued pushing of the brake pedal futile. "Err, slow over crest" Tom says, 3 hours too late. I can feel the now upside-down animals staring at us as we settle into the dirt of "Elephant River". The engine flaccidly buzzes, somehow not stalled. I should remember this corner by now.

The mission should be simple, really. Me and Tom have formed a rally team. Driver and co-driver mashed together through rFactor and skype. I'm driving, Tom is navigating, and we're going to do this ridiculous "Africa rally" track in the only car appropriate, or rather, the only car Tom actually recognises.

Tom: It s a mini. I used to drive a mini. They also used to race them on rally tracks, I know this because I saw it on TV once. This makes it the perfect car for our race around this mildly offensive series of Savannah stereotypes.

I don t really know much about cars or and the racing thereof. My real world driving is limited to taking friends to Nandos, and my video game driving experience mostly consists of bouncing off walls repeatedly and missing with the red shell.

But I can write things down and say them out loud! At least, that s the theory. By the magic of rFactor s multiplayer system, I m going to park myself down in the passenger seat of Craig s car like a co-driver, then write down directions and pace notes in a real-life notebook. Without the pressure to memorise the course, he can concentrate on pure speed. At least that s the theory.

Craig: For gods sake, Tom. The car isn't just "a mini" it's a 205bhp rear wheel drive Z-Car mini. These things are tuned to hell and back, and are very very fast. Before Tom "gets in" said car though, I take one out for a spin on the course. A couple of things become apparent quickly.

First, the car has no suspension. Or, at least, it has suspension for super smooth tarmac. Africa is really bumpy. Sometimes the car just slams itself into bumps and is completely uncontrollable for a second. I fix this by pushing the ride height as high as it can go, but now the car has a bit of a tendency to roll over. Hmm.

The second problem is that the mini only has options for slick tyres. If you don't know, slick tyres don't have any grooves - they're perfect for road tracks, but for dirt they are literally the worst tyre choice you could make.

A few proper rally cars are available for rFactor. We both agree that we're going to keep the mini because it has a union jack on the top and Tom has already downloaded it.



Tom: As we drive around the course Craig rattles off descriptions for each corner: Easy left, slight right, kink left over crest. I am not sure exactly what the difference between an easy left and a slight left is, and I m pretty sure Kink Left is some kind of progressive BDSM website, but I jot them down anyway. I assume he knows what he s talking about.

The problem is that Craig is having to try to take these corners at full speed to assess them, so I m struggling to keep up. Also he crashes. A lot. Sometimes this leads to panicky descriptions like: Hard long right over crest! Also bumpy! And tightens! With a bridge!

I cross everything for that bend out and replace it with the words balls corner.

Craig: I have no idea how to take pace notes, I know how to receive them, but I have no idea how to dictate them. I jump through styles, sometimes giving Tom gear numbers, sometimes using "easy", sometimes using "slight". I'm making it up. This isn't my area, I'm a track guy. I learn tracks. I m a driver, not a navigator.

I'm trying to drive at pace to get the best idea of what Tom needs to write down, but it's a mess. And it doesn't help when Tom ends up two corners behind or has stopped to look at a butterfly or whatever the hell he's doing. Fortunately, there's bits of scenery that help us keep synced up.

"Brake at the giraffe" is one of the most accurate, helpful notes we have. "Watch out, Elephant River" is another one, though our notes leading up to Elephant River are so confused that we always crash into Elephant River. By our 10th attempt to get an under 5:30 minutes time, I fucking hate Elephant River.

Tom: Look Craig, it s really hard to write this down and pay attention to the screen at the same time. Do you know how long it s been since I actually wrote things down with pen and paper? I feel like some kind of primitive neanderthal daubing stick figures on a cave wall.

Actually that s not a bad idea. Doodling a small picture of a giraffe takes up less space than writing the whole word. I also draw pictures of elephants and rocks around the borders. I m helping!

We crash into an elephant. Hard. So hard that we ricochet off its impossibly solid trunk and flip upside down in the middle of Elephant River. I really do have to remember to tell him to slow down on the crest.

Craig: It's all very well drawing pretty pictures, Tom, but when this happens (and this did happen!) it's pretty hard to keep my cool, calm, Kimi Raikonnen driver composure:

"Tom: hard left, easy right"
*crash*
"Craig: I don't think your notes are right"
"Tom: oh, yeah, I just have a drawing of some rocks here"
"Craig: ."
"Tom: or maybe it's a hill."

At least we're getting somewhere. Even if "somewhere" is Elephant Fucking River again.



Tom: This is way more stressful than I bargained for. I m supposed to have the easy job, but you d be surprised how hard it is to match up where I am in the notes with where Craig is in the course while keeping one eye on the next few turns for danger. There are moments when my voice suddenly rises in panic as I realise we have to brake right now because we re about to enter That Incredibly Bumpy Bit where even driving too fast in a straight line can flip the car over.

Also being in the passenger seat with absolutely no control over the vehicle as scary as hell. It must be even worse for Craig, who has to drive blind, gunning the engine as much as possible, acting as if my incompetent directions could ever be reliable enough to drive by.

Craig: If this were a buddy movie, at this point we're in the inevitable "I'm never speaking to you again" phase. I'm trying to gun this stupid Mini (why did we choose this mini?!) and Toms directions are, well, idiosyncratic.

Tom: We re nearing the finish and we ve somehow stayed on the track. All that s left is the final section. Unfortunately because we keep having to start from the beginning again, this is the part I know the least about. For instance I know there are a lot of crests in a row, but I m not exactly confident on the number.

Still it s just a few hills, easy enough to navigate. I ll just have to break it to Craig gently.

Hill, hill, hill. Another hill. Possible one more hill? Or maybe two? It could be three actually. Basically there s an indeterminate number of hills ahead, but then we re finished.

Craig: After a couple of hours we've started to get our notes pretty much right. Either me or Tom is making a mistake on every outing though and we're still dragging ourselves in with times of over 5 minutes, no consistency and some significantly broken car parts.

It's as we start to give up hope of ever getting anything tidy, though, that we finally pull it out of the bag. We re actually doing well! Far from perfect. It's messy. Very messy. With the "indeterminate number of hills" taken at speed, we gather some quite scary air time, planting the bulk of the mini firmly into the African dirt, which it doesn't really like. I'm actually sweaty at the point, fighting the severe force feedback over this amount of time is tiring.



Tom: Since we ve never made it to the end of the course before, we have no idea what is awaiting us. It turns out to be nothing, the course stops abruptly a few metres beyond the finish line. It s nowhere near enough time to slow down, and we slam into the barriers, flipping the car upside down one last time, as the poorly animated crowd cheer us on at three frames a second. Slow over crest I remark.

But we've made it! And in under fives minutes! We do a virtual high five. Upside down.
What we learned
Craig: At this point I have a whole new level of respect for rally drivers. On a circuit you need to memorize at most 20 corners. This is a whole different thing with bumps and changing conditions and so many corners and elephants. It's really really hard, and from what I gather doing the co-driver stuff isn't much easier.

Also having a good co-driver is necessity. Without being able to learn the corners and so many of them being blind, you really need to know if you're approaching an open, smooth road or, well, Balls Corner.

Tom: Honestly I d always wondered how much a co-driver helped, considering how much dead weight they were, but now we have the answer. We cut around a minute off Craig s "recon" time, which is bloody impressive for a five minute course.

More surprising was just how fun and stressful the whole thing was. There s almost a whole game here, in between jotting stuff down and keeping pace with the bends. Perhaps future racing games will support our shenanigans, one man on the wheel and the other clutching a map, desperately trying to figure out the way to Elephant River. I d play it.

Wasteland 2's Linux build is no longer on the way; it's just been added to inXile's post-apocalyptic RPG beta, along with around 400 other changes and additions including a new area, a redesigned vendor screen, and new tutorials and music tracks. Listing everything would keep me occupied until the real apocalypse, so I'll give you the highlights of this giant list after the break.

I'll stick with the "High Profile Fixes", which are easy enough to copy-and-paste from what might be the biggest list of patch notes I've seen.

The Titans have been released! A new area is available.
The vendor screen has been completely redesigned!
Tutorials have been added
New Mark Morgan tracks
Large balance pass on weapons and dropsets across the world
Large armor penetration pass on weapons and armor class pass on enemies
Many optimizations and compatibility fixes
Tons of new ambient tracks and in-world sounds added to all AZ levels
Ag Center/Highpool/Prison now unlocked from start
Ag Center and Highpool can both fall now
Reduced loading times across all scenes
HOTFIX: fixed infinite loading issue in certain areas


inXile reckoned they were in the "final stretch" of Wasteland 2's development back in February, so this latest humungous update brings them several hurdles closer to the end. If you bought into the Early Access version on Steam, you should find your game has automatically been updated, but be warned that the patch will "break all saves" as usual.

Ta, Polygon.

I was a bit concerned about Schrodinger's famous cat for a while there - being both alive and dead can't be particularly healthy - but he's turned up in the land of the living in Italic Pig's colourful puzzle-platformer Schrodinger's Cat and the Raiders of the Lost Quark. The reveal trailer, below, doesn't give much away, but we can expect "a wacky action-adventure-platformer-puzzler that blazes irreverently through the wild wonders of the Standard Model, combining lateral-thinking multi-solution logic puzzles with Fists-of-Feynman kickass combat action". All of which sounds pretty good to me. Theses puzzles will involve words like 'quantum' and 'quarks' and oh dear my brain has melted already.



Schrodinger's Cat is set in an around the Particle Zoo, an "interdimensional subatomic holiday destination where patrons young and old can observe anthropomorphised elementary particles of the Standard Model roaming free in their natural environments". Unfortunately, the enclosures have been opened and all the particles have escaped, while one person cat has been sent to put things right. You'll do so by acquiring colourful Quarks, and combining them to create "temporary matter" such as ladders and grenades in order to pass through obstacles in the environment, or to beat up enemies. If it all sounds a bit complicated, you're right - there are more details about the recently announced game here.

Italic Pig (of Hector: Badge of Carnage fame) are teaming up with publishers Team 17 to release Schrodinger's Cat on Steam in the latter half of 2014.

Thanks, That Videogame Blog.

You may need to check your diary to make sure you're not in 2001 while you watch the following video for Wolfenstein: The New Order, which resembles one of those WW2 shooters we were collectively bored of well before Modern Warfare moved its action to the presentish day. Supernatural elements, dynamic crate destruction and optional stealth do update things up a bit, but there was little sign from Bethesda's recent 30-minute livestream that Wolfenstein will be anything other than another mundane, gory shooter. Make up your own mind with the following footage, but be wary of an American soldier creeping around your Nazi compound looking to shank you in that mind from behind.



Chris went hands-on with Wolfenstein back in February, and he left fairly impressed by what he had played. The latest trailer certainly showed an extravagance in short supply in the above video, so there is some hope for BJ Blazkowicz's alternate-history anti-fascism rampage yet.

Thanks, Destructoid.

Intruder reminds me of the golden age of Half-Life 1 modding: games like Action Half-Life, Science and Industry and Frontline Force, which experimented with the basic multiplayer FPS formula. It s a team-based stealth game where one group of players has to defend a pair of valuable briefcases from a squad of intruders. Everybody begins the game equipped with an assault rifle, a silenced pistol, satchel charges, proximity sensors, lockpicks, grenades and a camera that allows you to peek around corners. How you decide to use all of these tools to complete your objective is up to you.

Bullets are almost always lethal and being killed knocks you out for the entire round. Intruder encourages a sense of uncertainty, however, that makes it feel unlike any other online shooter I ve played. There s no kill log, so your only way to confirm a kill is to find the body. Even then, you might be surprised: players can choose to ragdoll their character at any time, and non-lethal wounds might leave a character prone but very much alive. This creates fascinating tension: I hit that guy, but is he dead? Can I shoot him again without attracting more attention?

Factor in full friendly fire and you ll see that Superboss Games have created something rare a shooter where you really have to think before pulling the trigger. It s the work of Rob Storm and Austin Roush, who originally planned to create the game as a mod. The Unity engine has not only allowed them to create a standalone game, but also to invest that game with a level of detail that wouldn t otherwise be possible.



If you make a mod, there s a strong chance that it s still going to feel like that original game in some way, says Storm. Intruder has its own feel because we built the controls and character movement from the ground up.

Interacting with the game takes a bit of getting used to. Almost everything is affected by dynamic physics, from opening doors to the players themselves. Characters have a balance meter that reflects their stability on flat ground you ll be fine, but leap onto a narrow balustrade and you re very likely to fall over. This injects a vein of slapstick that might seem at odds with Intruder s realistic tone, but it forces you to rethink the kind of actions that your character is capable of.

Our entire approach to the game isn t making things larger, but making them deeper, says Storm. I think about what I would do in real life. I wouldn t just swing a door open I d open it a crack so I could see through it. We want to make people say, If I were really here, right now, what would I be doing?

Also key is the game s use of sound. Player microphones auto-transmit by default, and any noise you make is broadcast to anybody in earshot. If you talk too loudly, people will hear you. We re so used to seeing chat as something that exists outside of the game proper that the removal of reliable communication is a strangely isolating experience. If you need to talk to your teammates at range, you ll need to use a radio and even then you are at risk of being heard by the enemy team.



During one match, I was playing as a guard when I heard gunshots from downstairs. I didn t know if one of my teammates had been shot, if we d nailed an intruder, or if there d been some kind of accident. Then I heard a voice from a nearby vent: one of the intruders, urgently radioing to find out what had happened to his compatriot. In that moment, I knew that the other team was just as confused as I was and, crucially, I knew where at least one of them was.

The game is currently in paid alpha, and keys are released in batches of 500 to keep player numbers manageable. I didn t experience any stability issues but there are bugs, flat textures, and stiff animations. One of the advantages of being an early adopter, however, is a community that is currently very small and tight-knit. Most players respect the spirit of the game, which is crucial given how badly it could be broken by the use of external voice comms.

Storm acknowledges that cheating will always be an issue but it s a risk that Superboss have to take in order to make an emergent multiplayer FPS. Private servers, coupled with the fact that the game is perfectly playable with small numbers of players, should ensure that the real experience remains available as the game expands its audience.

Keep an eye on this one. Intruder isn t ready for mass consumption just yet, but for a certain generation of FPS fan it has the potential to be something special.

Find out more on the Intruder site.

Were you looking forward to Tex Murphy's grand return to the sci-fi gumshoeing circuit on April 22nd (AKA 'tomorrow')? Well I have some bad news: Tesla Effect has been delayed to May 7th, for reasons of...actually, no reason was given, but I'm assuming it has something to do with an FMV dame, or a shiny MacGuffin. It usually does.

Developers Big Finish Games announced the delay on Facebook with the above image, which should succeed at making you feel old if you played the Tex Murphy games first time around. A casual scroll down reveals that we totally missed news of a demo as well, so go grab that on Steam that while you wait.

One other thing you could do while you wait is check out Richard Cobbett's crapshoot for Mean Streets, the very first in the Tex Murphy series. It's not quite as FMV-y as you may be expecting.

Star Citizen's recent blast of gameplay footage is what happens when you give the Once and Future King of space games $41 million to make his dream space game a reality: ie much whooping and unbridled excitement over one admittedly pretty stonking video. But what if you could watch the same video again, with added interview bits and extra footage, including stealth manoeuvers (in the dark) and a moderately terrifying Gravity-style spacewalk? If your answer contains hollering and/or whooping, you may join me after the break.

The video, below, describes the prep for the PAX East presentation, before showing the impressive demo in full, and eventually moving on to some additional footage, including an unscheduled spacewalk among the stars. It also delves into discussion of Arena Commander, Star Citizen's upcoming online dogfighting component, which will be released some months before the main event. (Thanks, Polygon.)

Every Sunday, reviews editor Tyler Wilde publishes a classic PC Gamer review from the '90s or early 2000s, with his context and commentary followed by the full, original text from the archived issue. This week, NHL 97 is reviewed in the December 1996 issue of PC Gamer US. More classic reviews here.

I have the flu. Thanks PAX. I very much wish I weren't a sweating, shivering slug monster, but it does mean I get to regress into delirious, selfish childhood for a few days. That's a perfect excuse to whine about the lack of team sports games on PC while celebrating something I don't get to write about much on PC Gamer the NHL playoffs! I'm sick, I get the remote, and I'm putting on M*A*S*H after the Sharks game, so deal with it.

The PC is master of racing, and there's FIFA and Football Manager and some golf games. But EA's NHL series hasn't been released on PC since NHL 09, while NBA Live 08 and Madden NFL 08 were the last of their kind on our platform. Even fewer 2K Sports games made it to PC, and the nature of sports games and licensing means they've since evaporated. The PC is a sports desert.

Phaneuf remains collected as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck attempt to chase him off the Origin store. (Sorry, FIFA fans)

Things were looking good in 1996 when we reviewed NHL 97 and boasted that "top of the line PC sports games are now superior to their console counterparts." It even holds up visually, kind of the low-poly models look a bit like they could be modern retro. What hockey on PC looks like now, though, is a single, sad NHL game in the Origin library. NHL 09 is a fine game, but at five years old it doesn't carry much classic charm, just the sad state of being last.

I get it: sports are mass market, consoles are mass market, voil . Go where people are buying. I just drank some cough syrup, though, and right now I'm willing to bet that the PC is a great place for licensed sports games if done with modern sensibilities: online multiplayer, tournaments, leaderboards, a healthy metagame with updating rosters, and a business model that makes more sense than selling a new game every year. Or hell, it doesn't even have to be licensed as long as the Predatory Fish beat the Joffrey Baratheons tonight, I'll be happy.

***
NHL 97 review
EA's excellent hockey series just got better than ever with the hardest hitting action in the world.

After taking a look at the utterly amazing NHL 97, it s obvious Electronic Arts didn t become one of the largest software companies on a fluke. It's with a touch of arrogance that EA Sports ad campaigns boast "If it's in the game, it's in the game." But the fact of the matter is, it's true. No one makes more compelling sports games for the PC, and no division of any company has consistently put out such a high volume of good product over the years. But this year, the sports games that EA has put out for the PC are superior even to their console counterparts. Frankly, this is a milestone top of the line PC sports games are now superior to their console counterparts.

NHL 97 is the best example of this. This is, quite simply, one of the most realistic sports game ever done, in terms of look and play. The secret behind NHL 97 s seductive appeal starts with the graphics. They are the best in you ll find in an action oriented sport game, period. The virtual stadium technology that made its appearance in NHL 96 returns in a sharpened and more fluid form, with more intuitive camera views and a proper overhead view that recreates the classic view of earlier games. But the big difference this time out is that the bit-mapped players have been replaced with extremely lifelike motion-captured polygonal characters. Although sports sim fans may not really care whether the players are fast-moving 3D polygon characters are the defining characteristic of quality action games these days, a la Quake. But the fully rendered polygon characters in NHL 97 are sharper, faster and smarter than the characters in Quake.



Thanks to a wealth of motion-captured data the NHL 97 players glide, slide, check and shoot, just like the real thing. They do one-timers, sprawl in front of the net, and even fight. Like previous games you ll control the action with a gamepad, and all the different actions that you need to do are controlled with only two buttons. Score one for simplicity, but this does mean that a lot of times you will be pounding on a button to speed up or check, only to have another of your players take control of the puck and then fire off a shot or pass you didn't intend.

The artificial intelligence of the players is commendable, in that the players move where they're supposed to go and set themselves up for rebound shots and passing plays. And when they do stupid things such as rush offsides or make two-line passes, it is because the game is taking into account player ratings, and the bad players make far more mistakes than the better players.

All the player motions are quick and fluid, with stunning goalie moves, exceptional checks and realistic stick handling. During the fights however, the characters are slow and move like zombies. They stand there, locked with their opponents, getting slugged repeatedly, but that doesn't matter. It detracts nothing from the actual game itself. It's a bonus feature that didn't quite work out, and you can always turn fights off.



You can also check and hook, though with the various penalty settings, whether or not you get called for your dirty tactics is up to you, as there are half-a-dozen levels of penalty-calling to choose from. Let's just say that the satisfaction you get from checking someone driving on your goal in both visual and audio effects is more accurate, more violent, and faster than any tackle or slide or dunk in any other sports game. Last month we had our sports awards; had this game been ready then, NHL 97 would have won the gold.

The way to play this game is at the Pro or All-Star setting, with the line options on manual. You really cannot appreciate hockey strategy without the tiring of the lines, and this game takes that squarely into account. The game can be played head-to-head on one or two PCs (using the built-in local area network, TCP/IP, or modem options), and using a Gravis GrIP system, up to eight people can go at it in true team fashion.

There's little in this game to criticize, but even a diamond has flaws, however minute. EA focuses far more on in-game play and the recreation of the pageantry of pro sports, without the detailed management options and customizability of other sports sims. In NHL 97, you don't have the ability to make your own leagues, stats, uniforms, or plays as you would in the Front Page Sports series, for example, and you're not going to be going on the Internet downloading new teams and leagues, although you can create new players and trade them with other teams. The AI also seems to be slanted to keep even bad teams in the game, especially on their home ice.



And, as ever, performance has a price. This game will slog on anything less than a P90, and even on that level you had better turn off as many inconsequential sounds and graphics as is possible, in order to guarantee smooth gameplay. Only high-end machines can make this game sing, but if you ve got the system to run it, don t hesitate to experience the finest sports game around. Even if you don t care for the sport on television or can t grasp the concept of icing, once you ve taken out your first wingman or hammered in that first goal, you ll probably find yourself hopelessly addicted to NHL 97 s stellar action. If you ll excuse me now, I ve got a score to settle with the Blackhawks. Jason Bates