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The graphics are a little dated (but still do the job of atmosphere well), enemy and ally A.I can be wonky sometimes, and there's no iron sights. That's the only problems I had with this game. Otherwise this is the kind of game I've been looking for for awhile: a completely gameplay focused FPS with missions and variety. Medal of Honor is like a hybrid of Call of Duty and Doom. You have an entire level to explore, enemies to fight on your terms, a few vehicle on-rails sections between times to enjoy the tension and power of an unlimited ammo machine gun but no real cover, objectives to complete that vary by each section of a level, medals of unlock by accomplishing things not necessary to complete the level but still very satisfying (in one level you CAN finish a level after a POW gets killed...but if you save him you get a medal for your trouble!) A.I is not as advanced as other games but enemies do duck behind things, run away when under fire, throw grenades, find sniper vantages, and even go prone if you start to snipe them from far away. There's four missions in the main campaign but each of these is a bunch of story-based sequences involving sabotage, rescues, collecting intel...things like that. Great music, earnest voice acting (I think the guy giving you your orders is the same actor from Civilization V) and it's not afraid to let you play the darn game. Mission briefings can be skipped and in-game cutscenes are just a few minutes of interaction or dialogue, then back to the action! Great fun. I don't mind a little age on my game if it's fun and clearly made with passion.
I was expecting a lot more in the way of stealth missions but this is a bit more like GTA. Half the time when I thought out solutions to dealing with a problem without raising the alarm but all the suggestions said to go in guns blazing anyway. The combat is fun but it's irritating when the Nazis never stop spawning unless you can outrun them or hide. Driving is fun and there's lots of cars but unlike some other open world games running over people doesn't seem to matter unless they're Nazis or allies and cars don't handle that much differently. I liked the cutscenes and voice acting, although sensitive souls may take issue with the profanity and nudity (the nudity can be turned off in the menu). If you like blowing stuff up and shooting Nazis this is a fine sandbox, but it's not very meticulous as a stealth game similar to Assassin's Creed or Hitman which I thought it might be like. Not a bad game, but not very realistic and a bit chaotic.
I was reluctant to get this game at first because games like Titan's Quest and Diablo 3 look pretty but get boring quick. Sacred sidesteps this problem by having some brilliant animations, charming graphics, an insane level of customization and replay value, and a frankly wonderful level of care and detail. Your character has different vocal responses to different kinds of enemies! My dwarf was wandering around and remarked on human buildings with disgust. You can go to areas without enemies but tons of books about the backstory. You can go through forests with just wildlife to admire or towns of furtive peasants going about their business. There must be hundreds of enemies types and unlike a lot of other ARGs which have them different colored flavors of a base type they all seem to have a purpose. I ran into multiple classes of bandits, named enemies that weren't bosses, massively over leveled enemies I could still kite and fight on my terms. It doesn't seem to be randomly generated either: the whole map is custom made with fixed encounters not all directly related to a quest. I came across a group of deserting soldiers summoning demons just because I wandered into a cave. You can practically go anywhere at any time and you start dirt poor and wielding a stick so it really does feel like a rise to power using skill choices by level to refine a play style. It still looks great, the tutorial is helpful (and you can skip it) you can do more quest types than collecting things or killing people...it feels like an isometric open world game instead of just spamming area of effect spells. I hope the sequel is half as good!
Imagine if someone made a video game about The Titanic...but used it primarily to complain about some kind of contemporary political issue. This game is unsubtle to a ludicrous degree in using the context of Nazi Germany not to investigate history but to make yet another rant about the present. 'Goebbels Wants to Drain the Swamp' is an actual headline they use. Ha Ha. People actually fought and died in this time period for more than hurt feelings. Believe what you will using poe-faced history as a tool for what amounts to uncreative satire is the height of disrespect. Beyond this the game has a distractingly crude art style, repetitive music, plays one sound effect over and over, and amounts to little more than shifting around groups of numbers for a better change to accomplish interchangeable missions...which make other numbers go up and down. It's like a mobile game without any sense of progression and relying mostly on luck. You want historical depth you might find it here scattered around but a lot of the time it feels like a parody of the time or an animated Disney adaptation. I found it tedious and the fact that the 'story' was just more opportunities to make clever comparisons about 'children in cages' killed any of my remaining interest.
This game is a bit like the missing link between Command and Conquer and Warcraft 3. For an early 3D effort this still looks glossy and has tons of personality. I was surprised how smoothly and stably this ran in any resolution! The campaigns are voiced well. The situations are intriguing. You need to stagger your unit creation so unlike some RTS games you can't just mass produce a bunch of ground units to overwhelm anything and your base building is much more effective than other games thanks to energy walls branching between sentry gun placements. The first Dark Reign had a few more options, but for a classic this is a meaty and not horrible to look at experience!
Until Gog or Steam releases a classic Command and Conquer collection, KKND fills that gap very nicely! The graphics are pure nostalgic bliss: sharp and full of personality. The story and characters are firmly tongue in cheek: like Mad Max meets Terry Pratchett. This is the kind of game where units are cheap, plentiful, and battles are as huge as they are decided quick. You spend a lot more time rounding up an army to go hunting enemies than building a base and there's plenty to see in the expansive and detailed maps. The music is appropriately weird and gritty. When you're finished with two campaigns Kaos Mode will provide skirmishes. I like that you can cue infinite of a unit type or set priorities for unit creation so you don't have to micromanage building an army too greatly. You can crush enemies under the wheels of your vehicles, including your resource collectors! It's not perfect but it's breezy and fun in my experience. Fair warning... Cons: This game is pretty old school. You can't select all of the same unit with double click. Pathfinding is a little rough. You have to keep checking on your units all over the map to make sure they're attacking the enemy (they forget some times or attack one at a time) and there are NO audio indications your people/buildings are being attacked unless you hear the distant gunfire. You don't get map radar until a certain tech level (which was a daring choice) Ally acknowledgement dialogue can get repetitive. Units are a bit slow. KKND was an interesting discovery I've played quite a bit! I bought Dark Reign and it unfortunately didn't work, but KKND and the sequel worked great.
I bought this game in box form way back when and awhile back I lost the copy. I remember playing this game to death in college between courses and into the late nights and then giving it to my friend who just disappeared for weeks at a time playing this same game. Would it still be great after all these years? Yes! The graphics compared to the power houses of today are...antiquated, but undeniably charming. This whole game I feel has an eternal appeal even when the glitz and glamour wears off with age. It's still just so much fun to stalk dungeons, wander around the country side on horseback, talk and haggle with people, make spells and potions. The seams can show sometimes in weird voice samplings, some glitches...but nothin I've encountered is game breaking. Fallout 3 is fun for the world but it crashes a little too often for my tastes. Oblivion is a comfy, gigantic, ever enticing walkabout fantasy unwinding simulator. Still so cozy and entertaining after all these years, and with all the expansions rolled in all the more so :)
Compared to a lot of other adventure games this one distinguishes itself with a surprisingly in-depth world of wandering NPCs and detailed first and third person perspectives as well as a general hands-off approach to solving puzzles. At times you'll be asked to prove things using notes and times and testimony and although your inventory keeps track of everything it will not implicitly tell you what to use. There's a LOT of running around collecting things, doing tasks for people, looking for surprisingly hard to see clues...it's NOT easy. But it's clearly a labor of love. The historical accuracy is very faithful to the time period and books. I didn't catch any bugs. Translation can be wonky with the subtitles but not difficult to understand. All told if you like Sherlock Holmes, detective work, the time period, pick this up and enjoy! If you get stuck look up a walkthrough. It's a story worth seeing through.
I found Max Payne 3 miserable, but Stranglehold is all the same balletic carnage without the constant griping. Tequila is essentially a superhero and he kills THOUSANDS of men in the course of the game, but you're allowed to enjoy the variety and beauty of the violence instead of constantly being chided for it. This is classic cop drama stuff, especially in the cutscenes, and I love it. Chow Yung Fat is a badass who seems to be enjoying recreating one of his most famous roles and everyone else is acting to the hilt: no phoning in here. I found the action a LITTLE stiff in places. Max Payne kept coming to mind in how smooth and ridiculously accurate he is, but the irony is that the more 'realistic' delay in Tequilla's maneuvers and slightly inaccurate firearms encourages the kind of blazing away the films this game is based on relish. You are SUPPOSED to fire a million times until your clip runs dry into a single enemy because it racks up the style points and shows off the physics engine. What are style points for? So you can kill even MORE enemies in MORE stylish ways. It will become repetitive like all things but the game has a nice pace, switches up venues, and isn't that long. This is a big greasy hamburger compared to a lot of games, but it's delicious and decadent and fun.