Remember gathering a group of friends and playing Bolo over your school’s network? Ah what fun that was, gathering those pillboxes and refueling at appropriate bases. Well a long time has past sine Bolo was first released and hungry Mac users have been waiting long enough for a game to fill the technological gap between Bolo and a next generation network game. Enter Battle for the Planets. Although Battle for the Planets doesn’t have as large a strategic element as Bolo does, it (as its name implies) leans more towards the simple destruction of your opponent.
The next level of netoworked gaming. Battle for the Planets is currently due to come out this September, however the demo was released long before that date. What does the demo have? Not much, really. With a 3-minute time limit per game before quiting Battle for the Planets Demo doesn’t even give you the time to explore some of its better features. Having bases “build” some of the better power-ups can take up to 180 seconds. So even if you do get a base to build one of the better power ups early on you won’t be able to use it. However the manual gives you a good enough idea of what each power up does; and in that respect you must remember that this is only a demo.
Battle for the planets does look exceptionally promising. Everything from cloaking devices to bombs to blow up oponents’ bases is here. Vissualy stunning graphis give the user some pleasent eye candy - certainly more than the ailing Bolo. The one area that needs some work on are the weapons. With a choice of only three, more would be a greatly welcome addition. The demo, as mentioned before, doesn’t give you a good enough feel for the game to decide if the $15 price tag of the full version is worth it. One player play against the computer seems to be virtually disabled, as the computer doesn’t manuever its ship(s) at all.
 
Bolo or Battle? Battle for the Planets currently is the best shareware networkable game. Bolo is, though, free of charge and is not at all crippled. And if Ambrosia continue's their tradition of a friendly reminder at the start of the game, the much anticipated Avara could deliver some hefty competition for Battle for the Planets. But Avara is a couple months away, and so is the full version of Battle for the Planets so it really is too early to tell which of the next-generation shareware networkable games will be the leader for the coming years.
 
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Battle for the Planets' System Requirements:
• 2.1 megabytes of hard drive space
• 3.6 megabytes of RAM
• monitor capable of displaying 256 colors at 640x480
