The engine and homage to Fallout seems decent enough. But after playing for a few hours and the slow, laborious pace, I just couldn't be arsed to continue the slog through a derivative work of the classics.
I bought Arcanum maybe 4 years ago and have never been able to get it running smoothly enough to play until recently. It's hyped up everywhere as one of the best CRPGs ever, so it was painful to know that I had it in my collection, but still couldn't get through it due to loads of frame rate and crashing problems. So, now that I've run it on Windows 10 and on Linux through WINE without those problems, what did I get? Not a particularly good game, unfortunately. The world building and writing all seem great, to start off on a positive. Nothing about this game seems poorly written. The music is also very nice and helps to get you into the atmosphere of the game. Okay, so maybe those are the only two good things I can say about the game - on to the problems. Character building is robust, yet poorly paced. There are too many stats that don't seem to be well-balanced with how few (1 or 2 per level) character points you receive for progression. I'm butting up against the word limit here, so I can't elaborate too much. Suffice to say, my first character struggled through the first third of the game and then suddenly became overwhelmingly powerful and the game just became too easy thereafter. To keep on about combat, a few mechanical issues I disliked. Enemy levels just don't make sense. What should be harder - a lvl 25 ore golem or four lvl 3 wolves? I had my lvl 15 party entirely wiped by the latter and breezed through the former. I wrote down a number of these examples and they are all equally nonsensical. I also dislike that there are dungeons that took HOURS to crawl through, only to find a bed, that I can't sleep in. Why, when there are no threats, can I not rest like in other CRPGs like the Infinity Engine games or Fallout? This just pads out the time spent per dungeon and forces me into boring backtracking. Ultimately, I made it about halfway through the campaign and just couldn't force myself to finish. 20 hrs. is plenty to spend with this below-average game.
I'm glad RWS gave this game away for free - super generous of them! I've been a Postal fan since I played 2 way back when. I never got to play this original version, so it's nice to have a GoG release. The game itself is really rudimentary, but well done for what it is. I only played it for like 30 minutes before uninstalling. I like the direction RWS took with Postal 2 and the expansions more. Soon, I will probably drop some cash for Postal 4 on Steam!
Got this during this past winter sale for free. I appreciate that there seems to be a lot of love put into this game with the scenario and the design assets - but the game is just really boring. I can't say I'm really inspired enough by the story to continue on past this first hour or so I've sunk into the game. Additionally, it's really weird to me that everyone is supposed to be in hard times and there's no sun or food or fun and DOOM! is upon everyone. But then, I look at my characters in my inventory screen and they have some fat, full faces. In contrast, I think of Summoner where a lot of the characters were in a ravaged world and they absolutely looked the part - gaunt, skeletal peasants scrambling against an empire. The combat system is interesting, but ultimately felt a bit lacking to me. The main fighter nearly singing all of his combat lines is both incredibly hilarious (unintentionally funny) and also super cringe inducing. I gave it a shot, was left wanting more. While I also wasn't that impressed with Pathfinder, it was a wee bit better than this game. The standard bearers for CRPGs will still be Fallout, the Infinity Engine games, and some of the early, 3D BioWare titles like KoToR.
No nostalgia goggles on – this is genuinely a really unique, quality, and enjoyable FPS is you are into Tron or sci-fi in general. I’m not sure if Tron: Legacy was already planned for a future movie release or what, but there is some mention of it in this game, which is really cool from a continuity standpoint considering I missed this game when it came out. The visual style holds up well and the writing is clever, intelligent, and lots of fun if you are into computer lingo at all. The gameplay is a lot of platforming and disc-based FPS. Your primary weapon is basically a frisbee bommerang that you need to careful utilize so that you won’t get killed by the system or corruption goons too quickly. Combat is fast-paced and generally enjoyable. There is one part that is fairly obnoxious where some of the scout-type enemies must basically hit-scan you and can be a long, long distance away. I was quick saving like crazy and praying I could make it through, as there are scarce healing stations in that section; and the scouts don’t drop health like the other enemies. I didn’t fully appreciate what the LOL program did at the time, either (it’s a sniper rifle; uses a fair amount of energy per shot, though). There are a couple of other questionable sections, namely a few of the more crowded light cycle arenas with low visibility. You’re kind of stuck hoping that the computer walls itself off and commits suicide while trying not to do the same to yourself, which is pretty boring. For a ‘movie game,’ though, it’s still among the best. I highly recommend this FPS if you are looking for something with a ton of style and a unique set of FPS rules to play by.
