The Heroes of Might and Magic series has made a consistently satisfying splash in the strategy game world, and this third edition shows more refinement than ever. It keeps the sense of balanced, and deviously addictive, gameplay intact within its humor-tinged fantasy setting while sprucing up the graphics and tweaking a bunch of new little features here and there. Most immediately noticeable is the shift to 800x600 resolution, which broadens the spread of the map/exploration screens and adds some needed elbow room to the tactical combat screens.

	Your Heroes (of Might and Magic) will have plenty of exploring to do.
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In Heroes of Might and Magic III, you begin a map with one or more heroes, based in one or more towns, and a smattering of creatures of legend to serve as your small army. As your hero and his mystical troops wander the countryside, they can find resources to use back home, groups of enemies itching for battle and little helpful incidents along the way that might boost experience levels, add warriors to the party or surprise you in other ways.

At home in your hero's town (one of eight beautifully drawn varieties), you can erect or upgrade one building during each turn, provided you meet that building's resource needs and prerequisites. Various buildings provide more or better combat units, more spells for your magic users, ways to convert resources, protection for the town and so on. A traveling hero can visit his town to take advantage of any such useful developments, like picking up any available new combat recruits, and learning new spells.

Bump into a foe on your travels and victory will be decided on a grid-lined combat screen on which the opposing sides advance from opposite ends of the board, which is a bit like chess. The battles are interesting because the character types inflict varying degrees of damage; some move farther than others in a turn, some can fly, some resist certain kinds of attacks and so on.

Your hero does not himself engage in a fight, though he can spend mana points by casting spells (if he is a magic user). Choose your battles carefully, though. Your hero will slink away if his army suffers a defeat, and you'll need to hire a new hero (or two) at your favorite town's tavern. If the battling aspect of Heroes III gets tedious, you can automate it to focus your attention on the other aspects of the game, a welcome flexibility.

Single missions can be undertaken or categorized by map size, or your heroes can embark on one of the well-conceived campaigns. Multi-player options include swapping turns at the controls, or connectivity options with MPlayer and Heat.Net offering the matchmaking. Should all those options still seem limiting, Heroes includes a relatively easy mission editor to dream up your own challenges-and certainly, homemade levels are available at fan sites on the Net.

The Heroes games have a certain attractive simplicity to them, and a fair balance between the combat units, all of which is carefully maintained in this third edition. There are enough options and new instances of everything-from towns and heroes to skills and spells-to lend depth to the game, but this sequel's additions never overwhelm the ideas inherent in the basic game. Presented as such an enticing stew, with richly drawn graphics and fine sounds, it should easily swallow your time until the wee hours. Considering that I'm reaching right across a genre that usually doesn't appeal to me, I'd have to rate Heroes III as grade A fun.

To make this game work heroically, your PC should run Windows 95/98 or NT 4.0, have a Pentium 133 (P166 recommended), 32 MB RAM, a quad-speed (4X) CD-ROM drive, 200 MB of free hard drive space, one of the major DirectX-compatible sound cards, a DirectX 6.0 compatible video adapter that can handle 800x600 resolution and 16-bit colors, a keyboard and a mouse.

The Quake 2 Quad Pack is a boxed set put out by id Software containing four Quake II CDs. Included in the package are the original game, two expansion or mission packs, and an Internet pack called Quake II Extremities.

	A sniper's vantage point, in Quake 2 Quad Damage.
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For those of you who have been vacationing in Siberia, Quake II (Q2) is probably the last chapter in the first-person-shooter, a la Doom, mode. Granted, it is more challenging and entertaining than Doom, yet still has all the old dilemmas. These include things like, why a guy who can take on the world cannot jump on a small box or, why he can't grab a ledge and hold on. However, these quirks have become accepted by now, even though other games, such as Tomb Raider, have done away with them.

If you like first person shooters, check Q2 out. If you know you'll like Q2, then you might like the Quad Pack instead. You'll save some money by buying it all in one shot. If you already have Q2, then you can buy the pack and dish the original CD to a friend. If you can get them hooked, you will have someone to compete with on the net. (I'll talk about that more in a minute.) The mission packs bring some new weaponry and opponents to the game. The weapons are a bit more impressive than the new opponents, however. I guess it is harder to come up with new interesting bad guys than new ways to blow them up.

One CD is called Ground Zero. Of the two, this one is the least changed from the original. Basically things are just a bit more accelerated. You get the shotgun in no time. On the other hand, the other CD called The Reckoning is a lot more challenging than the original game. Ammo on this CD can be scarce, and every room seems like an ambush of some sort. Therefore, the expansion CD's are neat but if you're not a real Q2 fan you won't need them.

However, whether a Q2 fan or not, you need the Net Pack. There's nothing like real competition between two players or teams of players. So many people have discovered this that there is a virtual Q2 subculture out there! There are international teams that meet on the net and form clans that then have set practice times. They compete with other clans. This grows into records kept of wins and losses, rivalries, and, of course, a lot of bragging. Clans also have developed internal ranks and specified purposes for different members. It is pretty incredible how it has all developed. So, get out there and get shot! Oh ... and don't be surprised at how fast you die as a rookie. These guys are good!

Finally, I say if you love Q2 go get the Quad Pack. If you just like to play once in a while, grab the Extremities CD and hop on the web. The Quad Pack gets a big A+ from me. I like the game, and always enjoy large a company allowing me to save some cash with convenience.

The Jack Nicklaus series of golf games has really been worth watching if you have any interest at all in computer golf games. With the franchise freshly under the Activision umbrella and the recent Nicklaus team of developers apparently intact at Hypnos, the sixth title is a fine example of computer golfing. Jack Nicklaus 6: Golden Bear Challenge includes a well-rounded set of features like 3-D modeled golfers with motion-captured animation, multi-player capabilities, the ability to play as or with Jack Nicklaus, and a full-featured golf course editor.

	Perfect your mouse swing in Jack Nicklaus 6.
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Of course, any modern entry in this genre has to come equipped with realistic graphics. Jack 6 makes you feel like you're right on the green with detailed and lovely scenes of the grounds, apparently modeled very closely to the real-life courses, and traces of birdsong for ambience. The random appearance of rocks and trees seems very natural. You'll long to be standing right there at, say, Shoal Creek Golf Club or Sherry Montecastillo, in Spain. It's no nature walk, however, as you've got two CBS commentators and a reactive audience on hand to spice up the soundtrack -- though none of them appear on-screen.

Adding to the "TV sports coverage" feel of the game is the picture-in-picture feature, allowing a second camera viewpoint in a smaller window to show ball flight and replays. The viewpoint in the main window changes automatically too, so the visuals aren't as static as you might think.

Playing a computer golf game isn't anything like playing "real" golf but Golden Bear Challenge builds in enough flexibility to make you quite comfortable. There are three swing interfaces: two-click, three-click (the standard), and one that tracks mouse movements dynamically. When setting up your player, you can not only set your handicap and effect the speed of the swing meter, you can also assign points to improve your player's skills like putting or full-shot power -- as if you're creating a character for a role-playing game!

The course and hole editors seem fairly complete, though I wasn't able to use them without getting help from the manual. And, over half of the 108-page Golden Bear Challenge manual is devoted to this feature of the game. (It's a shame Activision still isn't providing this level of documentation for their flight simulators ... more on this in an upcoming column.) You can even add sounds to parts of your course, or change settings that control the horizon and sky. But it's the user-created courses you can find on the Internet that will broaden this game's scope far beyond the ten beautiful golf courses that are included.

I haven't played them all, but Golden Bear Challenge has got to be near the top of the golf game heap. The graphics and sound provide a very pleasant atmosphere. The playability and flexible level of difficulty are fine. The television-like soundtrack makes things comfortably familiar for us armchair golfers and it's multi-player features and modifiable courses should keep away any hint of staleness ... until Jack Nicklaus 7, I suppose. Grade A on implementation, but grade B on the fun meter.

Nice job Humongous! The third in a relatively new line-up of games based on the Blue's Clues TV show, Blue's 1-2-3 Time Activities delves into fun little games that just might bolster your preschooler's math preparedness. You'll recognize number lines (Mother May I?), weights and measures exercises (Bell's Souvenir Stand), pattern recognition (Baby Bear's Card Game), and some basic addition and subtraction (Tink's Train Ride). As always, you can expect the cast of Blue's Clues to be their friendly, talkative, helpful selves.

	Weigh and compare, in Blue's 1-2-3 Time Activities.
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What did Light Blue say about the two original Blue's Clues games last December? "... warmth ... fun ... visual style ... Clickable points abound ...enough guidance for a bright youngster to find her way ..." Well, you get the picture. Our illustrious reviewer may also have said something like, "Meets Humongous' high standards for charm and politeness. The software is quietly slick and friendly." Suffice it to say that this sequel is cut from the same cloth, which is a good thing! Grade: A-, for ages 3 - 6.

Falling from atop the Grievously Overdue Software Reviews Pile with a sword-like clatter, Quest for Glory V provided plenty of adventuring fun this month. As with the other titles in this series, Quest for Glory V mixed some light RPG elements in with Sierra's sorta-standard graphical adventure fare. One such feature that's alien to most adventure games: you can import your character from Quest for Glory IV into this sequel, even one in the otherwise unsupported Paladin class!

	Finding useless things in Quest for Glory V.
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The biggest frustration of Quest V for me was the complexity of its combat interface. I would have enjoyed an option to make this feature skimpier, much like earlier Sierra adventures allowed players to skip arcade sequences. This and the occasional search for usable on-screen objects ("pixel hunt!") bogged down parts of the game that would have been more enjoyable. On the other hand, for an adventure this game has an unusual amount of replay-ability: playing as different character types or partaking of the interesting "side quests". An unusual amount of puns and groan-worthy humor, too. I thought it was a worthy adventure: grade B.