Messiah
        (ACTION)


   Be prepared to be amazed. Messiah, a new 3D action game from
   Shiny Entertainment, the creators of the smash hits Earthworm Jim and
   MDK, promises some revolutionary things for the 3D genre. Many games
   can claim this, but it looks like Shiny will be true to their word.
   RT-DAT is the reason. What is RT-DAT you ask? No, it's not a
   previously unseen Star Wars droid, RT-DAT stands for Real Time
   Deformation And Tessellation. RT-DAT has previously been only
   available on high-end workstations, but the gang at Shiny now brings
   this amazing technology to your PC. Real-Time Deformation creates
   characters with all the characteristics of a real, live being. Every
   character has a skeletal frame with muscles holding it together and a
   textured "skin" stretched over the top. This might not sound
   extraordinary, but this allows characters' clothes to crease and pull
   tight as they move, and their chests to rise and fall realistically as
   they breathe.
                                      
   Tesselation has been attempted in the 3D gaming world for years, but
   until now, had never been available in a PC game. Tesselation allows
   the computer to scale a model's polygon count by factors of 100 or
   more on the fly, with no loss of speed. It also scales to the
   environment to keep a constant framerate. As more models come
   on-screen, the number of polygons used for each may lower to keep the
   framerate constant. To accomplish this, polygons will be removed from
   unnoticeable areas (like from the inner thigh, or the calf area). The
   skin texture stretches over the polygons, and the way that the engine
   interpolates the curves between the joints allows for greater polygon
   loss with less impact on the character's overall form.
                                      
   As players upgrade to Intel AGP, Pentium II, and second-generation 3D
   accelerators, Messiah will automatically add more polygons to the game
   world, yielding ever more complex graphics. This technology is so
   revolutionary to the 3D gaming genre on the PC, that a patent is
   pending on it. The target machine for Messiah is only a P100 with 16
   Meg of RAM -- on this machine, it will run in a lower resolution, but
   it will still achieve 30 frames per second (FPS). On a Voodoo 2
   Pentium 300, the graphics will be photorealistic and fluid!
                                      
   Ok, so now you're sufficiently impressed with the technology behind
   the game, but what about the story, right? Well, it seems there are
   seven seals scattered throughout the Earth and the ultimate battle
   between Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, God and Satan, will not occur
   until these seven seals are broken open. The Evil One himself has sent
   an emissary to Earth to find and open these seals, to hasten the
   eventual apocalypse. You, Bob, are the representative of Good in the
   game. As a vertically-challenged cherubic angel (think Cupid) you are
   sent down to Earth to thwart the plans of the Evil agent. It's not
   exactly a politically correct storyline, and already Shiny has
   received some flak from some fanatical religious groups.
                                      
   At first, Bob has no weapons and no armor; he's basically a baby being
   sent into a warzone. Bob (as well as his evil counterpart) has the
   unique ability to "possess" anyone he happens upon. You control him
   (and the characters he possesses) from a third-person point of view (a
   la Tomb Raider) and to possess someone, you simply fly up behind them
   and enter their soul from the back. When you possess someone, you
   control their moves and actions and have access to any weapons or
   abilities he/she/it may have. There are over 60 different characters
   whom you can possess in this fashion, making for a wide variety of
   ways the action can unfold, and quite a few strategies for getting
   through the game.

   All in all Messiah seems to be one of the most promising games awaiting
   release.