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Bungie Software shattered real-time strategy norms with its 1997 release, Myth: The Fallen Lords. Eschewing the tried-and-true formula pioneered by such classics as Command & Conquer and WarCraft, Myth broke through the shackles of resource management and unit creation and put strategy and combat at the forefront. In fact, perhaps Myth erected its own genre--the real-time tactical game.

Myth: The Total Codex combines the original Myth: The Fallen Lords with its sequel, Myth II: Soulblighter, and the expansion pack Myth II: Chimera. Equipped with over 50 single-player levels, dozens of multiplayer maps, and nearly a CD full of user-created levels, maps, and modifications, Myth: The Total Codex is a package that no strategy gamer should pass up.

The beauty of Myth lies in the interaction between its well-balanced, fantasy-based units. For example, archers (bowmen in Myth II) can shoot arrows with frightening speed and accuracy, but get pummeled by melee units unless they're protected; dwarves toss devastating bombs, but poor rate of fire and unpredictability sometimes make them a liability; and the powerful Trow Giant can eliminate nearly every unit in a single blow, but is too slow to overcome a force of greater numbers. Myth's intuitive interface, featuring a rotating camera system, the ability to zoom in and out of battle, plus unit formation and waypoints, allows for precise control of your army.

Though its single-player game never ceases to entertain, it's Myth: The Total Codex's multiplayer game that shines. Players trade for available units (the more powerful the unit, the more expensive it is) and compete on vibrant, varied terrain in games like Last Man on the Hill, King of the Hill, Territories, and Capture the Flag. If you've never experienced Bungie Software's brilliant real-time tactical game, Myth: The Fallen Lords or Myth II: Soulblighter, do yourself a favor and plunge into its fantasy world of strategic combat with the complete compilation, Myth: The Total Codex. --Doug Radcliffe

Pros:

• Three full-length single-player campaigns
• Excellent multiplayer support on Bungie's free online service
• Intuitive and highly customizable interface
• Windows and Macintosh versions are included on the same CD Cons:
  • If you already have Myth and Myth II, the expansion pack might not justify the price

Review

It doesn't take much to ruin someone's day in Bungie's newest real-time strategy/tactics game, Myth: The Fallen Lords. For example, an opponent in a network game may spend a good three or four minutes setting up the perfect fir'Bolg archer line along a canyon rim, and along comes a pack of enemy ghols behind the archers. The ghols toss a few pus packets and, after the resulting explosions and paralysis, proceed to make short work of the bowmen. Suddenly, it's a whole different game. That is the essence of Myth - judicious use of the right kind of character to face the enemy and the constant shifting of fortunes as troops skirmish and fall. Oh, and the knowledge of when to stand your ground and when to retreat. Retreating is very important.

In single-player Myth, a player controls troops from the armies of light (warriors, archers, berserks, dwarves, and so on), moving them about on the game map and attacking enemies. As a player works through the 24 included scenarios, a storyline about the cycle of darkness and light emerges, with the player striving to set things right through a series of battles. Sounds simple.

Well, it's not. Each character type in Myth has its own strengths and weaknesses, and it's important to know those strengths and weaknesses. The player who pits thralls against dwarves probably is going to lose a lot of thralls, whereas the player who pits berserks against the floating soulless will know victory. The landscape in Myth also complicates matters, as the ground is truly three-dimensional. Perch some archers and a couple of dwarves on top of a hill, and those characters will gain a tremendous advantage over an enemy trying to take the hill. Characters also can use the landscape for cover, hiding behind trees to avoid arrows, pus packets, or Molotov cocktails.

Control in Myth is easy. Just click on a character (or characters), then click on a spot on the map where the character should end up. To initiate an attack, select a character, then click on the enemy who should be attacked. The battlefield is viewed from an unrestricted camera, which lets you rotate and zoom around the scene of carnage, viewing it from all angles.

Myth would be a pretty good game as described, but the folks at Bungie paid special attention to the little things, nudging Myth just a notch higher into its own rarefied category. Soft, subtle sounds immerse you in the Myth world. Arrows clatter when they hit the ground, armor rattles among restless warriors who are standing around, and water splashes as soldiers cross an icy stream. Myth's audio uses stereo panning, making it louder in the right speaker if the sound source is to the right of the camera, or louder in the left speaker if the sound source is to the left of the camera. Myth's physics model is accurate, too. Arrows bounce off shields and trees, blood spatters the landscape, and body parts fly through the air. These items don't disappear, either. The debris of battle builds up on the field.

The single-player Myth scenarios are only half of what's great about this game. After all, there's nothing like playing against another human - or humans. Myth includes a network module that lets players compete via an AppleTalk and TCP/IP network. Or gamers can connect to Bungie.net (http://www.bungie.net) and compete against Myth players anywhere. Bungie.net keeps track of players' victories and defeats, and assigns a caste based on these records. Up to 16 players can play in a network game at one time. Teams of players can form orders, and these orders can challenge others to network combat. Even better, players have the opportunity to use units from both the light and dark sides. (There's nothing like the thrill of a trio of trow stomping a foe.) In the first weeks following Myth's release, Bungie's servers have been hit hard, and it's not always easy to connect. Hopefully, access will improve as time goes on.

Bungie pushes real-time gaming into a new realm with Myth. The game's amazing rotating 3D camera, the realistic landscape, the gore, the physics, the attention to minute details, and a great network component make Myth one of the most inspired games for the Mac in the past year. We've come to expect nothing less from Bungie, makers of fine titles such as the Marathon series. If you enjoyed games such as Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer and Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft, you will positively love Myth. - David Reynolds

Good News: Challenging scenarios. Beautiful 3D graphics viewable from any angle. Realistic physics and gore. Amazing attention to detail. Great network play, even over a modem.

Bad News: Supports only 3Dfx acceleration. Dwarves are exceedingly stupid and will destroy their own troops if not watched very carefully.

Rating:4/4

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Myth II: Soulblighter

It would have been easy for Bungie to just leave things alone after Myth: The Fallen Lords. The game was a huge hit, met with critical acclaim at nearly every turn, and continues to be one of the most popular multiplayer games on the Internet. But thankfully for gamers, Bungie went back to the drawing board to craft a bigger, better Myth.

The game takes players to a time 60 years after the events of the original Myth, when peace reigns and the once busy Legion has very little to worry about. But this pleasant state of affairs is about to change. Responding to reports of brigands terrorizing a small village, a small group of warriors stumbles across a much bigger problem: Undead creatures are popping up all over and, even worse, the Fallen Lord named Soulblighter is behind it all.

The single-player campaign comprises 25 missions, each of which is remarkably well designed and - on the harder difficulty levels especially - enormously challenging. Scenarios range from simple skirmishes and NPC escorts to the infiltration of a massive keep and even some indoor missions. Fans of the original game's Shadow of the Mountain level will love Myth II's The Great Library and Redemption levels, along with a number of other great defensive missions. The coolest (and creepiest) level in the game is one in which you must make your way through a haunted dungeon, where friendly and hostile ghosts appear and disappear without warning.

Bridge? Keep? Yes, Myth II makes extensive use of large buildings and interactive terrain to liven up the 3D battlefield. During the game, you'll run across massive fortifications, destructible bridges, a working drawbridge, a ship, a windmill, and a slew of other eye-popping items. The enhanced 3D engine also supports a number of other new features, colored lighting and shadows, and an underlying terrain mesh that's four times finer than the one used by Myth. The result is a smoother-looking game with more realistic settings.

Other, more subtle features like the increased ambient life also help to create a more realistic environment. Chickens peck around in the villages, deer bound through the forest, and various birds soar overhead on most maps. Of course, you're not limited to looking at these creatures, you can interact with them as well (meaning that you can blow up most of them). The ambient sounds are also enhanced in Myth II. Between the sounds of wildlife in the background and Dwarven bottles exploding, there was never a moment of silence in the game.

Although the animated cutscenes in Myth looked good, they were too brief and cryptic to convey much of a story. The Bungie developers must have agreed, because they went out and hired a new animation studio to do the Myth II cinematics. The results are astounding. The cutscenes are still brief, but they look fantastic, and you can always tell what the heck is happening - or at least what is being implied.

The AI and pathfinding for all units has been improved, so your troops don't mill about endlessly when they can't reach their initial destinations. There are some glitches with Myth II's pathfinding, such as the ludicrous conga line your warriors form while chasing down an enemy unit, but for the most part, units move and behave much more intelligently than in Myth.

Myth II's interface and controls are also more intelligent than those we saw in the original Myth. Players who found the keyboard camera controls confusing in Myth can now move and rotate the camera angle simply by moving the mouse. I personally found this more confusing than the old method (which you can still use), but there are undoubtedly some gamers who will welcome the mouse option. A handy control bar now runs alongside the bottom of the screen, providing easy access to commonly used commands and unit formations. Also, you can tell a unit's health status simply by passing the mouse over it. Formation facing is much, much simpler than that clunky "gesture click" system - you can either turn your troops with the left and right arrow keys, or hold the mouse button to turn your troops at will (an arrow appears on the screen to help you line up the troops properly).

For those who found some of the levels in the original game far too difficult, Myth II features a vastly improved set of difficulty levels. These are well stepped and let gamers of any talent and interest level jump in and enjoy the world of Myth II. Kudos to Bungie for making the game so approachable for novice players without sacrificing the challenge hard-core gamers crave (and those higher difficulty settings can be pretty damn hard).

Hard-core Myth fans will also appreciate the improved multiplayer support in Myth II. The game offers a ton of new multiplayer features (such as player alliances) and scenarios (several of which involve the aforementioned ambient life in strange and unusual roles). Bungie.net has also been updated, and the performance of games over Bungie's free service seems faster and more reliable in general.

Rounding out this epic game are two of the tools Bungie used to create the game. Fear and Loathing are powerful editors that players can use to craft their own missions and maps. Though you'll need some practice to master these complex utilities, they can be used to create and modify Myth II levels in just about any way imaginable. These tools should certainly prove popular to the thousands of devoted Bungie.net users, as the service lets players easily exchange custom maps.

Bungie basically improved all the good features in Myth; added a number of gameplay, multiplayer, and graphical enhancements; and then threw in some slick and powerful editing tools to boot. The end result is one of the best games to be released this year, and one that should easily find a home in any serious gamer's library. --Michael E. Ryan
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review