I did not play this when it first came out so everything I write is based on this particular version. I understand that some people think it did a terrible job. As far as I can tell the experience that this offered when the original came out is completely intact; you just press F10 and that is what you receive. This is incredibly funny and it's one of those comedy games that appreciates that in addition to delivering jokes it can also have the player do something that is inherently comedic. Two minutes into this I knew that I was going to love it when I was able to attempt a conversation with a dog. Not one that speaks English mind you it barks and growls and so can you. It features basically every single type of comedy that it at all is able to with a lot of verbal wit similar to Blackadder. As someone who finds it too limiting these days I greatly appreciate the multi-part puzzles in this where you have to go to a bunch of different locations like over half a dozen on at least one occasion, many with characters for you to engage with etc. There are definitely some times where you're stuck with moon logic. Overall I do prefer the ones where you can figure stuff out without that sort of thing but I do respect that this was something that was true of a number of these from back then. From what I understand, basically the idea was that a friend group could cooperate on solving it. You'd split up and attempt different things and then compare notes in order to get all the way through it. The user interface here is not as smooth as that of the Curse of Monkey Island which came out 12 years before this did. I realized that it came out seven years after the original version of this but this is a Special Edition. They changed some things in a major way. I would say that one is the Goldilock Zone. A perfect mix of streamlining for accessibility and letting you actually solve stuff rather than just having you click on things until eventually it works out.
Overall I definitely recommend the first two Earthworm Jim games over this, which feels hit and miss in comparison. Since I already did review those here I will focus on what this does instead. The zany humor doesn't fit as well here because it coexists very awkwardly with this H.R. Giger stuff which by itself is incredibly cool. I really wish they had picked one of these two. This is first and foremost a shooter and I would rather play Doom or Quake in part because of the arsenals of those and the tone not being confused. This is more third person shooter than first person shooter and there definitely are some very fun guns. Each level was designed by a different person and it really shows for better and worse. On the plus side there's a ton of creativity and most of them really stand out. Though some don’t last long enough to leave much of an impression. Unfortunately they also don't all really feel like they belong together or lead into each other. I do appreciate hiding loading in simple mini games instead of having to sit and wait through a still screen. It is a genuinely fascinating world and I appreciate what this contributed to the nuclear arms race to deliver the most intense and ridiculous gore that was taking place in the 90s. Certain parts of this, it's really down to you having to figure out the solution rather than it being that challenging to carry out. I don't quite know why anyone's claiming that you can't save in this it's right there in the manual. Same thing for changing difficulty settings and such, adjusting controls etc. I played this through once in about five hours and I don't really see myself playing it again. At most there may be certain levels and in lieu of a level selector which I acknowledge was not something we expected back then… yeah. I appreciate that you get to do some things in this that you normally don't do in shooters. There's some vehicles stuff and bombing runs and such.
If you really love Clive Barker and the kinds of ideas he comes up with the kind of stuff you see in Hellraiser Candyman Dread and such there's definitely some great stuff for you here. For me that just wasn't quite enough. There are parts of this where it's unmistakable that Clive Barker is an author first and foremost. Some of the world building I'm sure would have been deeply compelling if I was reading it but for a video game it just bogged down what should have been a more straightforward experience. This also has quite a monster closet problem. It helps you appreciate how important pacing is for enemy encounters. Way too often in this game you go to a place a ton of enemies come out and all attack. It's not paced anywhere near as well as other first person shooters from around the same time like for example the second Alien Versus Predator game. I do think that the core concept which explains the title of the family that is Undying is a very clever idea. I just wish the game around it was significantly better. Some of the level design kind of felt like we were getting multiple separate games combined into one. They're just a bit too distinct from each other to completely feel like they exist in the same world. There's also some times where puzzle solutions feel overly confusing a non-zero amount of times in this I actually stumbled ass backwards into a solution after pretty much giving up even being able to solve it and it just is nowhere near as satisfying. I do think that some of the locations and enemy types are deeply compelling as well as some of the weapons and I'm always glad when I find a horror game that is able to deliver an action component without ending up just not being scary at all. Like, without a doubt this has a number of situations that really get your pulse pounding. There's also at least one area that badly needs to let the player just have a map because you really struggle to find your way. This came out after the first Silent Hill.
I quite enjoyed the first Alan wake. Haven’t played the second one yet, would like to. Too bad that this is basically the less interesting follow-up to the deeply compelling original but this does have a lot going for it. As absurd as the following is going to sound to anyone who hasn't already played this, I'm going to try to describe the core concept. Alan has an evil twin who is a serial killer and who keeps appearing in disturbing videos that feel like they make up the dictionary definition of this sort of thing. There's definitely some Hannibal lecter going on. Alan of course has to stop him and in doing so it is going to be necessary to go through a time loop multiple times. Got all that I've seen some criticism that this does indeed mean that we play through the same basic areas multiple times. I said the following for The Room as well, the fourth Silent Hill game what people are saying here is technically accurate but I believe they are missing why this decision was made. It literally does play differently. You find yourself worrying that you can't stop what is happening because you keep trying, you keep doing more or less the same thing and you're unable to progress even though the game is technically communicating to you that what you've done was what it required of you in order to proceed. I do think that this needed to do more to really justify itself as a separate release rather than free DLC. It's too short if you only play the campaign and while the arcade mode is quite enjoyable it's not quite enough. The gunplay remains very similar to the original and doesn't really make sense with the various changes and style. I do like some of the new guns. Honestly I got much more out of playing the two actual DLC for the first game even though those are also not really important to play. What they did with some of the characters was quite engaging, especially Barry and I actually think that's where the possessed humans taunting Alan made the most sense.
These days people know Frictional Games for the masterpiece SOMA and the Amnesia games, the first two of which are excellent. I haven't played the rest of them yet. It's easy to forget how great this debut was. The graphics are not quite as strong which is completely understandable considering when it came out and the budget they were working with. The story and characters just don't quite grab you the way that the aforementioned three games do but you can see what they were going for and it is very much a case where they listen to feedback and improved. And the hook here is pretty good. Basically you play a character who is searching for answers about his father's past. What Amnesia 1 did with a Prussian Castle and SOMA did with an underwater science facility, this does with various structures underground in Greenland. It really captures the intense cold and isolation. There's a good variety to the different places you go without it ever feeling like you've just teleported to a completely different place or something. The meat and potatoes are the same here as in their later games, physics-based puzzles that start out fairly straightforward and end up getting immensely involved and challenging. In my several replays I always look forward to the very last major puzzle. We also have the element of enemies that you have to avoid and may not be able to look directly at in this. Sometimes you can defeat them and it's just very difficult, other times you do have to avoid them, maybe hide somewhere or escape to an area they can't reach. I think they actually handled that better here than in the Dark Descent. Personally I don't think you have to play Requiem but since it comes with the package you might as well give it a shot just don't feel bad if you lose interest quickly. The one thing it still has going for it are some quite interesting puzzles but it has nothing on the story and character stuff of the first and the atmosphere is not quite as good.
This improves on everything from the first except arguably the story being less focused on account of increasing the cast of villain characters. I do personally also miss the Titan Goons but they did bring in other stuff to prevent the freeform fighting from getting repetitive. You now have to contend with enemies that cannot be blocked. This adds a bunch of gadgets for both traversal and combat; they have different effects and different situations that they excel at. You don't find yourself just spamming the most powerful the way you do in some of the Prince of Persia games. I've spent a lot of hours playing this and never gotten bored. There's simply so much variety. This presents a proper open world and it feels incredibly cool to glide for hundreds of meters uninterrupted as you explore this city that's been walled off to contain the criminals where various recognizable members of Batman's rogues gallery have different sections that they control with gangs that dress in a way that's thematically appropriate for them. There's a good variety to the different places you visit. The non-campaign stuff is a lot of fun you can actually play as others than Batman himself and though I don't think any of them quite match him I don't think they’re meant to and they do all have distinct enough fighting styles it absolutely does not feel like mere reskin. Personally I don't think Harley Quinn's Revenge is quite worth the time spent on it. If you are going to play it, note that it does that thing where it is somewhat more challenging than the main game similar to expansion packs to Command and Conquer games. Basically the difficulty starts at the level that was reached at the end of the main title and goes from there rather than resetting like the sequels do. It almost feels redundant to praise the voice actors; they're all spot on special shoutouts to Kevin Conroy(rip) and Mark Hamill who I will always consider the definitive versions of their respective characters.
If you've played later entries in this franchise but not yet this it definitely will take some adjusting as there were a number of things they hadn't quite ironed out yet. With that said there is a lot to love here and you can very clearly see the early beginnings of some of the stuff they mastered later especially by Blood Money. One thing to keep in mind is that there are levels in this game that you simply can't complete remaining stealthy and ghosting your way through the entire time and some frustration is experienced just by trying to figure out which ones. It's one of those that is more enjoyable on replay once you know what is expected of you in the various levels. It doesn't quite have the openness to you discovering your own solutions as later entries do and I wish that they had been more honest with themselves about that because there are multiple times in this where you'll come across something and it'll look like an alternative solution but it's unworkable. This does fair pretty well with the gradual drip feed of the backstory in a series that sometimes struggles to provide a compelling plot. A little too much of the time the game is basically you figuring out what you're meant to do and then just do it. This is also one of those early IO Interactive titles where for some reason they were married to this thing of weapon recoil that I can imagine is accurate to real life but is frustrating in games where even a single missed shot can mean failure and having to do a bunch of stuff over again. I really wish they had opted for the kind of focus aim that we saw not that many years after this came out but even if you're standing still taking your time to aim you might miss. The weapon selection is quite good and I cannot hate a game where if you feel confident that you only need one bullet and one specific gun it 100% allows you to buy exactly that and only that and save money for later. It just makes you feel like a complete badass.
This definitely manages to improve on a number of things from the first. The stealth is somewhat more logical. You’re less likely to be confused by someone seeing through your disguise though it does still happen. The UI is better. This is when we get the introduction to the titular rating and most levels can indeed be completed in a way that earns you Silent Assassin. A number of them you can still shoot your way through if that's what you feel like but it is much more rewarding to play it the way it's intended. There's a lot of variety to the levels you travel in a number of different parts of the world that look and feel very different and they tend to be executed rather well. I don't love that there are levels where you’re basically just going from the start of the level to the end of the level as you gradually make your way towards an area where your actual target is several levels ahead but I will be honest and admit that while it's worse here this problem was also present in the first one. There are some levels that are quite large andor allow you to choose between different sometimes equally compelling ways to carry out your mission and I don't think this one has any of the fakeouts that make it look like you can do a thing but then when you try you just run your head into a wall. The final level does expect you to handle yourself well at something that you haven't been expressly made to up to that point which I think was a mistake. I appreciate the attempt to make the plot more engaging, consistent and clear. I don't think it completely works but certainly it is difficult to tell an overarching story whilst also delivering a series of at first seemingly unrelated, individual contracts. I really wish this allowed you to turn off this thing 47 will do where if you are very close to an enemy and you press fire he will pistol whip instead of shoot which is obviously significantly less effective. The graphics are immensely upgraded.
Basically the only criticisms of this that I've heard that make any sense are, one, that you pretty much spend the entire game fighting doing puzzles engaging in acrobatics sometimes a combination of these(basically some people feel there's not enough different gameplay elements here and I will say that if you don't like these couple of game mechanics I'm sure it will fall very flat for you and there were other games around this time that had more variety such as beyond Good and Evil), two, the fighting is a tad limited, something they changed for the sequels(well, I can't speak to the most recent one haven't played it yet). I don't disagree and it is a matter of subjective opinion whether it's good or not that they made that choice. But I think the context is important. Keep in mind this was basically a “shot of adrenaline, leap into 3D” version of the first two games after the third game made a rather pitiable attempt at that sort of thing. The fighting is basically like chess moves and counter moves. But for sure if you think it might be too limiting for you go with one of the sequels. My personal favorite is the Two Thrones. And to the first point I would argue there's just enough the variety that in my multiple replays I've never been bored playing this. The music is tense, exciting and fits the environment. You get to visit a number of different types of areas not quite as much as the Shadow and the Flame but I do prefer this more focused approach where you spend a lot of it in one area of several kilometers rather than traveling quite that much. Here it feels more localized; it's one situation that you really have to resolve. The Prince is fairly immature here and I wouldn't rule out some would find him to be too annoying. I think it works. Let's keep in mind that this is basically the first time he's experienced something of this scope. So yeah he's bickering with the female lead. He's talking to himself trying to rationalize their feelings for each other
This was not the leap forward that the second game was. I forget if I ever seen evidence for the following theory but definitely it feels extremely likely that simply they made this to keep people interested in the property until they could finish Blood Money which is indeed another massive improvement on what came before. This doesn't have very many new features. However it does have some very impressive elements. The levels are sometimes absolutely huge even once you know exactly what to do it'll take a while just to carry it all out. Where before this one sometimes you genuinely did just have to figure out what your meant to do and then do it it wasn't necessarily easy but it was less compelling than this. There's also sometimes complications. On a non-zero number of occasions you not only have to deal with the regular stuff but there's also a SWAT team or equivalent that you have to choose between engaging with or possibly being faster than. It is simply not an option to just ignore them. This is the kind of thing that you would normally only experience in one of these if you had failed stealth. Literally every single level of this allows for a Silent Assassin rating. Some of them are massively difficult to obtain of course that simply makes it that much more satisfying. I haven't played past absolution yet but so far this is the only one of these that this is accurate for. All the others have at least one level where it simply is not possible; you are forced into armed conflict. The overall storyline continues to just be fine. The non-linear narrative with flashbacks association and a flashy gritty look is very of its time and doesn't quite work as well today as it did when it was released, which I think is completely forgivable. This is also one of the most fun to return to if you just feel like running around and playing in the world of Hitman. I'm somewhat mixed on the reinterpretation of levels that we've seen before.
