Finally, after two and a half decades, the inaugural chapter in the ever-illustrious vampire saga is once again available to the masses. Blood Omen is a dark fantasy Zelda-like starring a newly initiated vampire named Kain on a quest for vengeance that turns into an epic storyline with mad sorcerers, conquering armies and time travel galore. The world of Nosgoth is highly atmospheric, the voice acting is superb, the writing is as exquisite and flowery as it is immensely quotable and the exploration is as satisfying as ever. The PC version found here, while a tad slower than its PS1 counterpart (fixable with Verok's fanmade patch), boasts improved loading times that take away the one glaring flaw of the PlayStation original. This is the game that kickstarted the cult classic Legacy of Kain series and put both Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics on the map, way before either wrote a single line of code for Eternal Darkness or Tomb Raider respectively. Everyone who likes vampires, fantasy, Zelda-likes or just good games in general owes it to themself to experience this masterpiece.
...if a tad uneven and rough around the edges Pros: An expansion-legnth campaign - easily took around twenty hours to complete. Great writing and dialogue. The quests love to introduce twists on top of twists and it keeps you wondering what comes next. Great location design - all of the locations look distinct and believable, none of them have the "This tile goes here" problem of the core NWN1 campaign. Good graphics and sound - there's new music unique to this module and some pretty decent voicework. Also there are new exclusive monster models, well-animated and textured, not to mention storybook style intro and outros. Good attention to detail, especially when it comes to the Forgotten Realms lore. Now for the cons: The difficulty curve is pretty uneven. It starts pretty challenging, then it gets pretty easy and stays that way up until the end, but the final boss still gave me a hard time. The locations can feel a tad empty at times, due to low amount of sidequests in them. The amount of quests overall is decent, but some locations can feel pointless at times. It gives the impression that the devs had more content planned but had to scrap it. The pace also gets uneven in the second half of the expansion, when you start sailling around the four major cities of the Moonsea - there's less questing and more running around here and there. There are currently some bugs that weren't there on release and will hopefully be fixed later down the line - one semi-optional quest is impossible to complete. I say "semi-optional" because while it is not mandatory to beat the game without it, one particular place can get very hard without specific character builds or equipment. Another sidequest didn't even start for me, so I wasn't able to complete that one either. Even with all those caveats, I would still say it's a worthwhile adventure and a great addition to the Neverwinter Nights experience.
Did this idea sound good in your own heads?
A lot of people regard Advent Rising as somewhat of a hidden gem or a diamond in the rough. It's neither. The controls and camera are notoriously bad. Compared to games like Jedi Outcast that did the same thing when it comes to shooting + extra abilities or Psi-Ops, this one is just awful. The game has your powers and guns occupy the same slots and swapped through the same uncomfortable and unintuitive controls, which means that A) In order to equip your powers you need to unequip your weapons and B) When you equip either, you are likely to want to stick to it since the controls and the menu are awfully clunky The game's combat encounters are horribly paced. It doesn't know when to stop spawning enemies. Compare that to Serious Sam in which combat encounters with dozens upon dozens of foes are tense and fun. Yeah. This one just makes them dull, constantly spawning more enemies on top of the ones you just killed, probably in an attempt to prolong a game that would otherwise last around four hours. The enemies don't feel good to kill and while there is some enemy variety, they don't *feel* different. The controls are a mess. You are either stuck with a clunky as hell autoaim system or with just as clunky manual aim. Manual aim is clunky because if you aim just a little lower than normal THE MAIN CHARACTER'S MODEL OBSCURES THE CROSSHAIR. What?! Did anyone playtest this? Probably not, because all the bosses take VERY specific ways of defeating that the game doesn't feel like telegrahing you about. Not to mention that the game is a complete shitshow from technical standpoint. By default it runs in letterboxed widescreen but doesn't support WS resolutions outside of the box. Once you mod that in, there's still the issue of missing shadows which were intended for some Radeon card from God knows when and crashes. It crashed on me several times, including right after the epilogue. Lovely. Don't play this game. Play Jedi Academy and Mass Effect. They did it all better.
It will take a lot of patches to fix this mess and it'll take a lot more to regain my trust. I've supported CDPR since Witcher 1, but they've just proved they don't deserve any support. They're no better than EAs and Ubisofts and Bethesdas of the world.
The Force Unleashed is a hack-n-slash game in the vein of God of War. While the story is just okay (and non-canon anyway), it's the gameplay and graphics that matter. At the time of its release, TFU was simply beautiful and in many ways, it still holds up, with the visuals being sleek and stylish. The sound design is also pretty stellar, with good voice work and nice music. The gameplay is pretty much what you'd want from a Star Wars hack-n-slash game, it's pure wish fulfillment. You get to swing your lightsaber at rebels and stormtroopers alike and perform some really nifty Force moves - and boy, do those still the show. The Jedi are at their most over-the-top overpowered in this game and it's glorious - you'll be throwing TIE fighters around with your mind like there's no tomorrow. The Ultimate Sith Edition also includes three additional levels, one taking place during the story of the base game and two being an alternate what-if continuation of the Dark Side ending. They are pretty nice and allow you to visit iconic Star Wars locales. As for the cons - the PC port has some poor optimization (which is now a non-issue anyway since the hardware is much more powerful) and some questionable control choices (irrelevant if you have a controller). To this day The Force Unleashed remains the last time LucasArts put enough money and effort into a Star Wars game and remains the last truly good Star Wars video game.
"Where's the SNES version?" - not here. This? This is the far superior Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) version made by the same team that later moved on to found Shiny and make Earthworm Jim. The graphics are stellar - the developers actually collaborated with Disney animators for the game's animation to make it silky smooth. The soundtrack includes both songs from the game and original music by the ever-great Tommy Tallarico and the new tunes are pretty nice and memorable. The platforming is just fun: levels are well laid out and look great, the game follows the plot of the movie pretty well, making alterations for the sake of gameplay. Yes, Aladdin has the sword. And you know what? It's more fun to fight enemies with the sword than just throw apples at them or jump on them. This game is great fun and I cannot recommend it enough.
