by Edward Carmien Mindscape (SSI), $20. Requirements: PowerPC, 16MB RAM, System 7 or better, 4x CD-ROM. Contact Mindscape at http://www.mindscape.com If you're familiar with the popular Warcraft series, you're pretty much familiar with this real-time strategy wargame. It takes place on Mars, the bad guys are Aliens, the universal resource is called Petra-7, and it is multi-player capable, via TCP/IP, among other methods. Sometime in the past, somebody at SSI must have said "Gee, that Warcraft game is really raking in the simoleons. We should do one of those." Some- body else replied "Sure thing. I'll get right on the engine." Somebody else chimed in "I'll do the structure and interface." Then the boss said "What about a background story?" Nobody said anything for awhile, then a little voice piped up "Story? Schmory! We'll tack something on at the last second." The whole "it's a war for Mars" storyline is weak, and I'm comparing it to the realm of back-stories in computer games which on a greater scale of things are weak already. Mars has been terraformed into a land of lush jungles, lakes, and rivers? Why is this story taking place on Mars again? A more attractive option would have been Earth: why aren't the aliens duking it out for Earth? Things make even less sense than usual in this game. It's as if someone designed a bunch of graphics and then someone thought up an excuse for what had been created. Dreck! The game plays just fine. The training scenarios take about half an hour to complete (that's a big "about"). After that, you, the commander of whatever side you've chosen to play on, begin fighting the good fight on Mars. Or wherever. The Mac version clearly came second here. The game is designed for a two- button mouse. Be careful what you decide to build: there must be a way to decrement your build choices, but I haven't found it yet. On a PC, it would be as simple as using the other mouse button. There are some other minor interface problems that result from the port, but once you're used to it, you can get around in the game just fine. Since Bungie's Myth came along, real-time strategy games live and die by a different standard. If you've played Myth, you'll miss the unit-handling elegance of that game vs. the clutzy unit-handling routines in Dark Colony. No formations. Moving units en masse sensibly takes a long, long time- taking the "select all of one type" shortcut invariably results in goofy unit moves. Even selecting units is tricky: picking one unit out of a crowd is nearly impossible. Often, the only way to do it is to set the whole pack moving so they straggle out a bit, giving you some "mouse" room. Time is a bit of a problem in this game. While the manual suggested there are some scenarios with time limits, the early scenarios do not appear to have them. Since the major resource, Petra-7, tends to run out, it is easy to fall into a steady-state situation in which neither side can seriously harm the other. Though main bases always provide a trickle of income, a trickle is only enough to leave one with a looooooong wait to build up a force to attack with...and all the while, the other side has been doing the same. Deadlock and dead-end.   The baddies are bad (I played as the good capitalistic human destroyer of ecologies team), but there is a depressing aspect to your foe.... Sadly, the two sides are nearly identical save for graphics. There's even a chart in the game book that sets out the different unit types, along with the species-specific units each can build. Each side has infantry, each side has an armored infantry-killer, each side has flying scouts, each side has mobile artillery, each side has units that can move to a certain place, then dig in and become hardened anti-aircraft and artillery emplacements, and so on, and so forth. Dreck! The manual is full of excuses such as "The Taar modeled their bases after the Humans in order to be able to use the same foundation plates that were set down by the pre-colonizing terra-form teams. Though visually distinct, the function of each structure effectively mimics the human equivalent." What this really means is "By keeping the units and structures largely the same for both sides, we save time and money by avoiding having to write more complicated code." Sheesh. It's not all bad. The game does become more challenging as time wears on. You'll know you're in for a few replays when you get to the "Darkest Hour" scenario. The unit mix does allow for a range of different strategies, unlike some games in which the most expensive unit you can make is always the key to victory. Here, you can choose between a mobile force (and the tactics a mobile force suggest) or a more static force (though of course you'll need both to some degree in almost all scenarios). You can go with a horde of flyers, or hardly any. And since unit types can be upgraded, you can exercise control over your force effectiveness via yet another avenue. If you're a big Warcraft fan, and you can't get enough of that particlar brand of real-time game, Dark Colony is a good choice. For someone looking for a good introduction to this sort of game, another title will likely prove to be a better choice. Highs: • Runs Smoothly—No Crashing! • Good graphics and sound • Nice Unit Mix Lows: • Deadlocks Possible • Aliens/Humans Just Clones in Different Pants • No Time Compression Option • Interface Problems Due to Port