The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 62

Thursday April 4 2002 The Guardian 8 1 online IGames Warriors take itto the kings ontheirturf The Warrior Kings HMBMnr City? Prepare for more argu-' ments with your partner, as Anarchy Online is the most 1 addictive and time-consuming game around at the moment. AO is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), a genre that started to take off in the late 90s with the likes of Everquest and Ultima Online. But where these titles were set in cliched fantasy environments, AO's sci-fi backdrop opens it up to a wider audience. This is a traditional RPG with players gaining ence points to improve their character, but it's the scope here that so impresses. Rubi-Ka feels like a ent world, with huge cities, lush forests and barren deserts waiting to be explored.

Characters are customisablc and it's highly unlikely youH meet players who look like you. Teaming up that incorporates all the best recent innovations, i Combat is also entcrtain- ing, with epic battles involv-i ing hundreds of units, clashing swords or exchang-I ing magical attacks across wide expanses of terrain. This is not as fluid or as fast as the action of Battle Realms but i the sheer number of units at your disposal makes the indi-! vidual animations less impor- tant. Lie back and let the I mythology take over: it works surprisingly well. Unfortunately, it seems to have been rushed on to the shelves, with security prob-' lems that required downloading a hefty patch, and driver i issues that prevented it run-j ning on two of my three PCs.

Second, by only partially adhering to line of sight (for example, you can shoot ene-1 mies over the other side of I hills), you can be defeated by 1 anomalies rather than your opponent's tactical skills. Despite this, Warrior Kings is bold, ambitious and well worth the effort. Moreover, it's nice to see a new British developer taking on the US and Japanese masters in their own backyard. MilecAndcriesz but it is the total involvement in a virtual world and economy that grabs you. There is always some new weapon to sell, some item of armour to hunt for, or some new area to explore.

Of course there are technical issues players regularly have to download update patches and lag is a problem at times, although AO plays perfectly well on a 56k modem. Greg Hoic.son, aka Synthta "watch A virtual world that will keep you online Anarchy Online PC C9.95 a month 9. 99 or download from www.anarchy-online.com Funcom Remember the late, relationship-threatening nights spent with games such as Championship Manager and Sim World of Aqua becomes a damp squid AquaNox PC 27.99 ishtank InteractiveMassive Development One of the few titles to meet the needs of fans of underwater combat was Archimedean Dynasty. In it you played Emerald "Deadeye" Hint, a mercenary captain trying to protect the sub-oceanic world of Aqua from malicious organisms known as Bionts. Now Flint is back, and Aqua is under threat again Big fix Most of the virus and security problems people have with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Outlook Express are due to bugs that have been fixed, DATA RECOVERY when I.T.

matters VOGON Tape, Hard Disks and Optical! Tel: 0800 581263 www.vogon-data-recavtry.coni PC 35 Black Cactus Microids It seems to be a golden age for strategy games, with every month bringing a new contender and widening the genre with new possibilities. Warrior Kings marks an impressive debut for new boys Black Cactus and solid food for anyone weaned on Battle Realms or Shogun. Gifted with an ingenious plot, which branches out to accommodate the three races you can choose from, your 20 missions feel a lot more expansive than most realtime strategies. Special mention must go to your units (more than 90 in all) and your more powerful heroes, including the monstrous Behemoth, all beautifully animated. Add to this an impressive 3D engine and excellent sound and resource management, and vou have an RTS Explorer at MenuPrograms, using FileNew Folder to create i new sub-folders.

You can also reorganise your collection of bookmarks at Favorites in the same wav. 1 Too much! Windows should be able to address up to 4 gigabytes of memory, but the reality Is different. Systems fail to boot with more than 1GB because of "insufficient and with slightly less than 1GB, give an "out of memory" error to any pro- gram thatcxeceds 512MB. RGSilson.Tring JS: Windows 9x has a bug, or feature, that goes back to i Windows 95 but did not matter until people started installing large amounts of physical memory. Briefly, i someone decided that the more memory you had, the more the virtual cache man- ager (VCache) would need.

If 1 the memory is hig enough, VCache takes so much memory i from the system area there's i not enough left for programs. The solution is to use the MaxFileCache setting in the System.ini file to limit VCache to 512MB or less. Sec http: support.microsoft.comsupport I i 1 i i to hunt monsters is the fastest way to "level" (gain experience points to move up a level) but playing on your own is equally useful, with numerous missions to complete. The community is mature (average age is 28), and a Norwegian development team has helped the game gather a European, as well as US, audience. Stunning graphics and impressive player animation all appeal, you point you ship upwards, distant natural light ripples across the ocean surface.

The various craft look nifty, and the explosions of vanquished enemies are ample reward for your efforts. There's nothing particularly watery about the game-play: currents don't seem to have any effect, there's no pressure gauge and therefore no depth limit, and you can't spring a leak. Partly because of this, the gameplay rapidly becomes samcy. Sure, things get harder as the game progresses, but the techniques hardly vary. You start out in a tin can armed with a peashooter, and must earn credits by complet sions.

See the unofficial page at http:members.aol.com don5408fprot.html for details. The free F-Prot does not run as a background task, you have to run it manually. This is one reason I like it. However, it means my first line of defence is the ruthless deletion of unsolicited email attachments. Since almost all are, in my case, sent by PR agencies, this is not a problem.

Grabber Could you recommend an offline browser or piece of softw are that would enable i me to, for example, look at i the full list of Guardian sto-; rics and simply click on the ones I wish to download. John Murphy, Bouniagues JS: This is probably not the i answer you wouldgetfrom anyone else, but I use RcGet Deluxe or ReGet Junior (www.reget.com) to do this. For example, Search Guardian Unlimited for a list of stories, right-click on the page, select Download All by ReGet Deluxe from the menu, and it downloads them in seconds. (You are given a list first, so you can untick any you don't 1 want.) You can then read the i stories by double-clicking them. For added convenience.

ing missions to upgrade your craft. The difference in handling between the ships is perceptible, and your choice of weapons guns, lasers, and a smorgasbord of torpedoes can have a huge effect on your battles. The control system is simple enough and the same goes for the interface between missions. Unfortunately, these segments add little in the way of enjoyment, since you never get any dialogue options or, indeed, any say in which mission you do next. Despite the impressive graphics, the limited game-play means AquaNox soon becomes a bit of a damp squid.

Andy Boil le move all the pages (plus almost anything else you want to include) into a folder, then import them all automagically into AskSam (www.asksam.com), a free-form database. ReGet works with pages of photos and other types of file, as long as it has direct links. FlashGct (www.amazesoft.coni) and some other file down-loaders do the same thing. Sort Start The number of programs on my Start menu in Windows 98 means I have to scroll down to And them all. I would like to have two lists side by side.

Martin McGuigan JS: The Tweaking Toolbox is one utility that will do that, or you can try a registry hack also described here: www. It may be belter to make the Start menu's list of programs shorter by moving them to sub-folders such as Applications, Utilities, Multimedia, Genealogy, or whatever, to avoid scrolling. You can "drag and drop" Start menu entries to move them where you want. However, it's easier to do this in Windows from the Bionts, from terrorists, and from a new race of giant squids. This is the excuse for 20-odd missions of aquatic carnage.

AquaNox looks the part. The graphics are murky without being unclear, and when some of them in the last century. Most people have things to do besides track fixes that, ideally, would not be needed in the first place. However, occasionally it is worth making the effort, and this is one of those times. Microsoft has collected its fixes for IE5, 5.5 and fi.O into cumulative update packages, which can be downloaded from www.microsoft.comwindowsie downloadscriticalq319182 The download also removes two new vulnerabilities.

However, it cannot be unin-stallcd later, so make sure you have appropriate back-ups. AVcheck My virus-checking software is to become unsupported. Can you recommend a good package preferably free! Nick Peed Jack Schofield replies: Try AVG Antivirus, which you can download from Grisoft (www.gnsoft.com) in Czechoslovakia. AVC. 6.0 Free Edition is available to users and all other non-European users.

(Kuropeans outside the UK are offered a trial version of AVG fi.O Standard Edition.) An alternative is the DOS version of which is also sold in commercial ver kbarticlesq253912.asp or search Google for Q253.912. However, any PC with this much memory would usually be running a much more efficient operating system such as Windows NT2000XP or a version of Unix. Training time Where can I find information about places for IT training? Frederic Hardy JS: The Institute of IT Training has an accreditation scheme and a website where you can search for a training company (www.iitt.org.uk publicfindproviderfind.asp). You can also search for courses at www.learndirect.co. uk(England and Wales) and www.learndirectscotland.com (Scotland).

Finally, the government's c-skills office provides a concise overview of IT career possibilities at www. No doubt readers will provide better sources. Send your questions and comments to Jack.Schofieldguardian.co.uk Published letters will be edited for brevity but please Include full details with your original query.