Games That Stole My Life - M.A.X.

Reilly 2040 was probably wondering when I’d get to this, MAX, acronym for Mechanised Assault and Xploration, because MAE wouldn’t have been as good a title.

The Story, aliens come to earth and say “Hey, we bring technology etc, all we want is for you to colonise planets and mine stuff for us” and mankind says “Nah, no thanks” however some of the more unwanted groups, religious nuts, hard-line communists, Nazis, samurais, corporations and many more take the aliens up on this offer and go into space on giant ships. You play a MAX commander, a human brain in a robot body used to control ships in hyperspace where the human body can’t stand the stress. You then command the mechanical vehicles and units to colonise worlds for alien benefactors. Yes, it’s an RTS.

MAX came out in the mid to late 90s when Command and Conquer commanded and conquered all. There was a plethora of RTS games out at the time of varying quality; MAX had some interesting strategic levels. At the time being able to zoom from a worldview to very close up was pretty rare, also the fact that each faction used the same units meant that, upgrades aside, you could roughly judge how soon enemies would reach you. There was also the tactics of land, air and sea combat, with certain units being required to attack air units, and some sea units that could only be attacked by air or certain sea units (Such as submarines).

MAX seems to have been created initially as a turn based strategy game, which was then tweaked to work as a real time game, sort of. The game still requires turns to be taken, but in simultaneous mode everyone takes their turn at the same time, giving a real time feel. However this feature is what made MAX so addictive for me.

See, confession time, I’m not really that good at RTS games. I like them, but I’m not good at them. I loose track of things, get confused and have a habit of lumping all my units together in untidy charges. MAX offered me something more interesting, it had a multi-player mode called “Hot Seat Game” In this, each player took ether turn in sequence, but on one computer, so you could invite 3 friends round and spend hours playing MAX turn by turn. Better yet, if you weren’t good at RTS, you could play yourself. This is what sank time in for me. Huge 4 way battles with me running all players. Sounds dull but I enjoy it so much I still play it under emulation. Because it's not real time it allows me to drop the game at a seconds notice and react to my life’s responsibilities. MAX, you are great. You still steal my life though.