Mega-lo-mania brings back some memories! This is probably the most madly addictive strategy game of all time. Lead your people from stone throwing savages into the technological supremacy of the future, battling over a series of different maps against different AI players. Now, that on its own sounds fairly run of the mill. But something makes it different. A lot of strategy games require building one particular unit type and running over your enemies (lets face it, all the modern ones are like that!) but this is different.
Mega-lo-mania requires some thought. How? In a style similar to the classic Lemmings (if you liked Lemmings you will love this) you have to find the “knack” to get through a lot of the levels.
It is also quite interesting in that the AI seems to work. Some are naturally aggressive and some are more passive. Some you will find you can trust (most of the time) and some will sneak attack you as soon as possible!
Graphically it was impressive for its day. Bi-planes buzzing around were particularly pleasing! Still, I expect they’ve aged horribly, but you don’t play strategy games for the graphics, right?!
Right this is supposed to be a review, but I’m struggling to think of any
bad things to say about it…. Umm….. a lack of a random map feature could make it repetitive, so maybe the life of the game is limited. That said, I remember playing it for ages and ages. There is some resource management stuff, but set it going and it looks after its self in the background. (No worrying about where your miners have disappeared off to).People are an important resource though. Don’t waste people in this game.
So conclusions: this is a fun game to play. Once you get the knack of a level it will fall easily to you, but the method to get through each level does require some thought. The learning curve is challenging. Extremely so at times. You will probably spend time trying to puzzle out the knack when you’re meant to be doing other things. But that’s a sign of a good game right?
Modern strategy game makers should have a good look at mega-lo-mania and have a really good think about what makes it so good.
