Global Operations (Electronic Arts, PC R16)

By PETER ELEY

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Online games are huge. They have fuelled a boom in internet cafes, where young males get access to fast machines and bandwidth to burn for a few bucks an hour.

One Auckland cafe offers 11pm-11am sessions for $10, and throws in a Coke and free noodles.

While computer games get better looking by the month, artificial intelligence has lagged behind because even a two-gig Pentium can't match the cunning of the human brain.

Online games overcome this by pitting person against person. It's a jungle out there in cyberspace.

The killer game is Counter-Strike, an online spin-off of Half-Life. It divides players into terrorists and anti-terror squads and gives them an online arena to fight it out.

Global Operations is an assault on this huge market by Electronic Arts.

It picks up on the terrorism theme, with settings in Chechnya, Central and South America, the United States, and Sri Lanka. Missions have objectives such as rescuing hostages, disarming bombs and escorting hostages.

As in Counter-Strike, you can play on either side.

You'll see elements of the top military games here - Rogue Spear, Counter-Strike of course, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein - and it is certainly their equal.

While it is essentially an online game, EA has covered its bases by including a single-player game, too. Few true online games have had truly satisfactory single-player versions, and Global Operations is no exception.

Its single-player mode looks great and has the same in-depth, 13 missions of the multiplayer game, but the computer-controlled characters simply can't compare with human ones.

It is useful for training though, and new players should spend some time learning the game off line before venturing into cyberspace.

Getting killed every few minutes doesn't do a lot for your self-esteem.

* peter_eley@nzherald.co.nz