Eco Game Is No World-Beater

There’s not a lot good to say about Millennium’s “Global Effect,” which the game designers call an “environmentalstrategy simulation.” There’s not too much especially bad about the game either. It’s just hopelessly mediocre.

It’s a middle-brow “SimEarth” with a dose of thermonuclear war. You play the role of world controller, manipulating human and natural developments from the keyboard. The key to play is to build up a sufficient power system to run a metropolis and a worldwide military threat.

There are really two games in “Global Effect,” the environmental simulation that you pretty much play on your own and a strategic war game that you can play against another person or the computer. There are 14 different scenarios, ranging from creating and developing a proto-planet to trying to restore a horribly polluted one.

Neither part of game is especially easy to get into, and the manual is of very little help. It’s long, but holds remarkably little in the way of useful game information. (But it does contain one of the more obnoxious off-disk copy protection codes around.)

There’s no subtlety or elegance in “Global Effect.” The sound effects are unimpressive, the graphics common and the overall facility of play downright unfacile. It’s mostly a ham-fisted effort to cash in on current environmental consciousness while still appealing to the core game audience of post-adolescent males playing Gen. Schwarzkopf for a day.

Global Effect

Rating: **

IBM and compatibles; 640K RAM, VGA and mouse required. List: $49.95.

Computer games are rated on a five-star system, from one star for poor to five for excellent.