No spoilers. This picks up immediately after the first one. It has all the strengths of the original and improves on several things. You are given a run function to speed up backtracking. Now you sometimes hide from the various terrifying creatures adding another gameplay element related to the horror. I'm glad that it's stealth and not combat I don't think the latter would have fit and I say that as someone who does love that in the Silent Hill games. The Stealth is not so frequent that it gets to be irritating and it is very easy to use both of these things are also true of the game Darq. You find a potential hiding place, which is easy to recognize and you'll usually spot it before you need it, maybe make a mental note of it. Then you walk up to it, the prompt will show up to use it you press Use and you just wait until it's safe and then press a movement key to leave. You spend this solving puzzles. I didn't find a single one that I thought was just obnoxious. Both of the other games by one man studio Jesse Makkonen that I've played, Distraint 1 and Heal, have one each of that kind of puzzle - very impressive considering how many puzzles there are, dozens in each. Whilst not reaching the level of Heal this does have more variety to the puzzles than the first game. Obviously, since it does not have mouse input, that does limit it somewhat. But he clearly did appreciate feedback about a lack of variety to the puzzles in the first one. In order to solve puzzles you may have to find an item for your inventory then use it at the correct place. You have to go between different locations, activating things, gathering information to help you solve the puzzles. The graphics get an upgrade. Music is absolutely amazing, and there's a good variety to it considering that all of it has to feel like it's of the same world, it all has to be creepy. This jumps between locations more - not in an overwhelming way, but reflecting the personal growth of the player character.
Dark forces 2: A lot of things about this are improved in Jedi outcast and Jedi Academy, so it's easy to forget how well it actually is done in this one. While it is not the first to feature a lightsaber and allow the player to swing it at will it is the first where you have a good amount of freedom to it. You choose which direction to swing. The blade can also deflect blaster fire. You get to choose Force powers. Early on you can have both light and dark side but in the long-term it does demand that you choose a side. Unlike Jedi Academy it's not about a one-off decision, it's a consistent pattern of behavior; if you want to be light side you have to play like that. You have to Protect the innocent. if you want to be dark side, you take them out. Both sides of the force have 5 unique powers each and all of them are useful and significantly change how you play. It's not a huge surprise that the lightside is defensive while the dark side is destructive. But they do a great job. I’ve played through this a bunch of times and enjoy light side and dark side equally for slightly different reasons. Mysteries of the Sith: in a number of ways this is very much like Jedi Academy I do think that one overall fares better. I've gone back and forth on how I feel about this one many many times so what I'll do is just try to neutrally report what this offers. Some parts feel more like light RPG than action; the huge levels that both of these feature are sometimes full of regular people going about their business in situations where you don't have to put yourself in danger by protecting them. In addition to core plot, this has individual adventures that all feel at home in the Star Wars universe. Because of this you get to enjoy some stories that absolutely would not support an entire full length game, but make for deeply engaging one offs. The weapons in this are among the best I've experienced in slightly over two dozen years of playing first person shooters
The original Silent Hill did not need a sequel, but with games 2-3, they did both of the perfect ways to do it. After this one they tended to just do the same thing with a little variation over and over. This was not originally meant to be part of the franchise; it feels like an experiment which is largely successful but definitely not what people expected based on the trilogy preceding it. If for you those three represent ideal Silent Hill this might seriously put you off; if you are okay with something that goes in a different direction than this has a lot to love. One of the biggest things is that while this is often creepy it is not anywhere near a scary as the trilogy. The tank controls are changed so now no matter what directional key you press you actually do immediately move in that direction. This can get annoying when the camera abruptly shifts. Some really hate how this changes some of the lore and certainly it does show that this was not the original plan. The player character is a charisma black hole with no personality - he lacks a personal connection to the supernatural phenomena unlike the trilogy and this of course means that you don't care as much about him and he feels slightly divorced from what's going on. The inventory system now resembles Resident Evil’s and provides a different kind of challenge to the trilogy. If gun use is very important to you for Silent Hill, this is not for you. This has some of the most mind-blowing puzzles. Multiple levels clearly seek to get the player invested in what happens to certain characters and frequently it just does not quite succeed in this despite how well the trilogy did at accomplishing the same thing. The story itself is good; throughout I found myself really wanting to learn more about what was going on and be part of resolving the conflicts set up. A significant chunk of this is one of the dreaded escort missions and it definitely could easily have been avoided with a rewrite early in development.
Overall, I would definitely recommend the second game over this one. But with that said, there's still a lot to love here. Unlike many real time strategy games, this does not have any base building, nor do you train or build individual units. If the people you're in charge of die you lose the level rather than being able to simply replace them. You can essentially think of this game as an entire game made up of those Red Alert 1 and StarCraft 1 levels where you are inside of a building with a set team but with more focus on stealth. Each Commando has their own special abilities and tools there are certain weapons they can use that none of the others can, and in order to complete the game you have to master all of them. There's a good variety to the different ones no two feel like they're just the same. There's a lot of levels albeit certain of the early ones are fairly small almost serving to familiarize the player with certain Commandos. Over the course of them there are a bunch of different objectives including blowing up important German installations. It's very easy to pick up and play. The stealth is fantastic. Basically you have to hide from the line of sight of enemies. You can view the cone of the line of sight of any one enemy at a time. You wait for them to turn to look in another direction, maybe walk/patrol to somewhere else, then you get close, take them out silently, hide the body, rinse and repeat until you're able to complete the main objectives. The expansion pack is incredibly challenging. Others have pointed out that at times it is deeply unfair, tricking the player into wasting a resource early in one level that they'll need at the end, when really you could have just been given that resource shortly before needing it, or at the very least not have a setup that makes it appear that you should be using the resource early on. However, success is incredibly satisfying. I've replayed the expansion pack more times than the original, rare for me
Commandos 2 is up there with the first two Thief games, most of the Hitman games and some of the Splinter Cell games in delivering the best stealth experiences. It is very much about taking your time and planning ahead, though it does definitely also deliver on short term gratification. The gameplay is addictive; it is hard to put into words how satisfying it is taking out Nazis. This game takes you to a lot of different parts of the entire planet, ones affected by World War 2, ensuring that you never tire of any one setting. The different Commandos each have skills, equipment and weapons that are unique to them, and the more you master, the greater variety is available to you. It's hard to overstate how massive an improvement this is on the already amazing original game and its expansion pack. There are several brand new features that greatly open up the game, including the inventory, the ability to actually move around inside of buildings, rather than just temporarily hiding, and the dramatic increase in how many different tools you have at your disposal. There are some parts of this where you can approach a specific situation )let's for example say that you have to get one or more Commandos from point A to point B) in a handful of distinctly different ways. You can play this many times without having to solve very many obstacles in the exact same way. I haven't played the co-op here on GOG, so I can't speak to if it runs well; but if it does I can tell you that though it definitely requires patient players it can be incredibly satisfying. Also note that for certain levels, chunks of the level won't allow use of each of the Commandos, meaning that a player may just have to sit and wait until the other player reaches the part where you get to play. I would recommend playing the levels solo first. Commandos 3 is fine; just soulless and a letdown compared to the Commandos games and expansion packs before it.
This improves on a lot of things from the already great first one, including the gunplay and the variety to the psychic phenomena. The story continues to really grip you and this provides some more truly chilling backstory. I am so glad that they did a perspective switch, as frustrating as it of course is to not immediately see what happened after the end of the original, which I will not spoil here. The AI is masterful, providing an actual challenge; it's in that regard a spiritual successor to Half-Life, and I'm here for it. Since this contains both the main game as well as the DLC, the latter is only a further investment of time, not money, and I will judge it based on that. “Reborn” definitely does tell some story that helps explain one really major aspect of the third game; you'll be confused if you jump directly to that one. Other than that this does feel like you don't affect the plot very much, however. The DLC also features some enemy encounters that are very tedious.
If John Woo action like Face-Off and J-horror like Ringu sound like a very weird combination… yeah, you're absolutely right. These two never really gel together; but if that doesn't bother you too much, this is a ton of fun to play. It does deliver on both of those things, though never at the same time. The horror is legitimately very effective. Creepy atmosphere, the mystery is engaging, the story compelling, the psychic phenomena intense. The FPS is deeply satisfying, the slow motion well implemented and not OP.
Amazingly varied point and click puzzles. Thick atmosphere. Everything in this works together to convey the themes. There is one puzzle that is very frustrating, but only one. The game gives you almost no context at all until the very end which is either going to intrigue you or put you off.
In this creepy, atmospheric game you spend most of your time solving varied puzzles that operate on dream logic, with stealth and chase elements sprinkled throughout. It's all rather well handled. I wish that you could save your game during the individual chapters, but this is apparently something that the developer has expressed that he regrets it and will try to do better in the future so it's great that he listened to feedback. And since there are no randomized elements in this, if you have to stop playing before completing the level you're playing, you can recreate what you did quicker, provided you remember the solutions. And if you die during a level, it does not force you to replay very much. I think there's one part where you may have to do two, almost three minutes if you don't quite complete it, but frequently it's less than one minute and you can almost always tell why stealth or a chase failed, and how to succeed on the next try.
This is more of an interactive walk through a short story than an actual game. There is essentially not a single actual puzzle in this; you are carrying out tasks. You'll never actually be trying to figure out what to do. The appeal, then, comes from the fact that everything you do in this serves the themes perfectly. At the very start it sets up a sense of finality, and you spend most of your time in this bittersweet series of goodbyes to all the things that the protagonist is going to lose. You come to appreciate why this life he's led meant so much to him. Of course if you don't really connect with it, it is essentially a farming simulator. The perfect rating is what I feel it deserves, not meant to counteract negative ratings.
