I love the old school RPG's of the 90's and early 2000's like Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale. Pillars of Eternity pays respects to those games in many ways and tells its own story, in its own world, with the players character in charge.
4 Stars because of the game engine & AI not aging well with modern PC's / CPU's. The Medal of Honor WWII Saga (not including Airborne) is a nostalgia trip worth riding along side the original Call of Duty & United Offensive. For the time, the cinematic battles, orchestra music and narrative drove MoH to a fantastic gameplay experience. For modern systems Win 7 and Higher; youll definitely want to make a stop at PCGamingWiki to make a few tweaks to maximize your experience. i.e. Widescreen resolution, the Unofficial Patch, Audio Patch; etc. They show you how to increase the FPS, particularly for Spearhead. IMO, its best to lock your FPS to 60fps or 30fps. The reason I am saying that, is the games engine heavily utilizes the CPU for running the AI commands on NPC enemies. The higher your FPS the more dangerous the enemies response becomes. For a good portion of playing through this I had the game hitting 200+ fps with everything maxed out. The Enemies were targetting, and picking me off through cracks in debris, through walls or snipers instantly 1-2 tapping. Their response and accuracy drastically increases. Once i locked it to 60 fps they were more like how they played back in the early 2000's when the game launched. A few other games had this kind of issue, like Call of Duty (original & UO xpak) and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Thats due to how the Quake Engine was designed apparently.
I absolutely love the RoboCop movies. Mixed feelings about #2. The shows absolutely are cheesy terrible once youve seen the movies. I have RoboCop Rogue City on Steam. RoboCop Rogue City is a true to the source successor to RoboCop 1 & 2. Its done in a similar style as Terminator Resistance (also same developers) staying true to T1 & T2. Plenty of references to their shared movies. Honestly its the best RoboCop game since, well the old 16-bit and arcade days. There is some issues with it, which i will put at the bottom. - Story is fantastic, keeps the late 80's to early 90's era vibe. - Gameplay is about as spot on as it could be playing an essentially humanoid bi-pedal tank. RoboCop moves slow, so keep that in mind. - The weapons are more than useful, though most you probably wont use other than to try them out. The Auto-9 is your best weapon. - CSI & Puzzles are a core piece of the gameplay to drive your choices, which do affect the type of ending you get. Now for the trouble... ** 15fps bug you need to change in the NVidia Control Panel 3D Application settings for RoboCop Vertical VSync and setting that to "Use the 3D Application Setting" **White TV/Monitor screens. I have NVidia so I will need to go to the NVidia Control Panel under the Profile for Robocop.exe - Image Scaling = OFF - Anisotropic Filtering = Application Controlled (Not the Global Option) - Antialiasing Gamma Correction = ON (Not Global) - Antialiasing Transparency = OFF (Not global) - Texture Filtering - Anisotropic Sample Optimization = OFF - Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias = CLAMP - Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization = ON - Vertical Sync = Use the 3D Application Setting - Virtual Reality Pre-Rendered Frames = Use the 3D Application Setting (not sure why but likely has to do with Unreal 5 and DX12) **There is a terrible bug that causes the Head Camera to get stuck after opneing doors, crates and specific scenes. No known fix yet.
RTCW is an awesome game,that still holds up quite well kicking classic N@z1 butt! It WILL play on modern PC's and if you are experiencing the Black Screen and Crashes at start-up. Follow this. - Search for "Markshan Return to Castle Wolfenstein v1.42d" and download his patch. Its in a 1.57Mb zip file. This will address some known crashes and some bug fixes. Open the Zip and drop those in the base folder of where you installed the game. - go to the install director [Return to Castle Wolfenstein\Main\] and open wolfconfig.cfg in a text editor. - Change the following Lines for Widescreen support (change XXXX and YYYY to your prefered resolution i.e. 2560 and 1440) seta r_customaspect "1" seta r_customwidth "XXXX" seta r_customheight "YYYY" seta r_mode "-2" seta cg_fixedAspect "2" - Change your Frame Rate [Warning - playing at anything above 60fps on modern PC's will impact the Enemy A.I.'s ability to fight against you, blame the engine for actually utilizing the CPU. They will be more accurate and aimbot-like. It would be advised to keep the frame rate between 30 and 50 fps] IF you dont mind the challenge you can go up to 91 fps without needing support from a mod. seta com_maxfps "XX" Change this to prevent a Video glitch with the left corner of the screen taking over the entire screen. Set it to "1" seta r_glIgnoreWicked3D "1" Add this line to prevent Frame Drops in modern PC's seta r_primitives "2"
From my Steam Review - Painkiller as a game, has aged well, and with a few edits to the config file you can run it mostly well on modern systems. Many of the complaints about this game are the fact that its influenced in a semi-modern way with Quake with the Bunny Hopping and Rocket Jumping, to utilizing Physics in your benefit. Not all weapons are hitscan, they require aim and timing as they have air time, like the Stake Launcher. If you play on Windows 7, 10 or 11 - Disable Bloom in the Options. If you dont, youll likely gradually increase your chance of CTD's when you load a save game from the main menu. You can re-enable Bloom once your in game. You will also need to Limit your FPS to 60fps or 120fps as the Havok Engine bugs out a few critical objects that are important to level progression. This can be done via console, the config ini file and usually the Nvidia Control Panel frame limiter option can work to force the framerate. i.e. the Catacombs (Chapter 1 Level 2) Bridge will either completely disappear or if you walk over it... it will either instantly kill you or shoot you in the air and you die from fall damage. Gameplay is straight up fun, just kill stuff. Dont play on anything higher than Nightmare Difficulty if you want the real ending that goes into BOoH. If you play on Trauma, you get the alternate ending, the "Good Ending" thats actually the "Bad Ending" and you dont get Chapter 5 as playable, however you unlock 1 extra level to play in chapter 4. Now the Painkiller does suffer from some bugs. Highly suggest googling "PCGamingWiki Painkiller" for modern PC Adjustments like Resolution and Surround Sound fixes; and go to MODDB Link for "RandomGuy7s Painkiller Compliation". It will improve a lot more without altering any gameplay from Vanilla state.
I dont own this on GOG but i do on Steam. I am a Huge PCF (People Can Fly) and Painkiller fan and have played through all of them. To get to the point here is a Partial Quote of my Steam Review - "At the time of release it was good to have more Painkiller, another story, but it was so unrefined and all over the place. Modern systems that are now able to perform natively above 60fps, particularly anything over 120fps will break the game. I died close to about 30 times in the first 2 minutes of the 1st level because of the physics and the broken difficulty ramp of the enemies. Even on Daydream (easy) the enemies will 2-shot on a graze. The physics damage from Fire, Heat Waves from Lava will break and multiply their damage exponentially. The Weapons are very unbalanced and the damage they do is generally way too little, like the Bone Shotgun can take up to 5 shots to kill a basic entry level enemy. The best weapon in the game is the Blade Cube, spam r-click all day on Sub-Boss and Boss level enemies and just kill most in seconds. Story starts off well, falls off right when you finish the first Chapter, and the end is beyond underwhelming. Audio and Sounds, decent sound track, not awesome, just decent. Then you have the Voice bits, which are so repetitive cycling through 5 of the same voicelines constantly... 'mmm tastes like chicken' or 'Kiss my shiny Angel xxx'... etc. Level designs are Okay, a couple repeats from the previous Painkiller. Just some bad design choices where I was able to break out of the boundaries multiple times and explore the maps which have a bunch of unused and unpolished assets, but nothing notable. The enemies are recolored/textured and reused messes, some are resized. Very few are original to this version. The Final boss fight... picture Michael from the Office biting down on his lower lip in a painfully cringe manner. Its that bad. I would rate this 4/10"
Having played the original release 1.0-1.5 and beat it twice during that time, I had already thought Cyberpunk 2077 was amazing. At that time I was running it on Windows 7 i7-4790k, 16Gb RAM and a 980Ti. It did struggle, had a lot of frame rate issues and then GOG stopped support for Windows 7 which is understandable. Despite infrequent CTD's and an average of 45 fps, I was having a blast with the games design, story, lore and all of the easter egg / references to everything Cyberpunk-dystopian future pop culture. Fast forward, v1.6, Edge Runners Update and Phantom Liberty Expansion. A lot has changed, the game is significantly more stable; im also running a newer self built PC with Windows 10, i7-12000KF, 32Gb and a 4070Ti PC and this game runs real nice with everything on High and Ultra (75fps on low dips and 95+ fps average everywhere else). On my ASUS TUF A16 w/ Ryzen 9 and 4070 gpu, ive got it locked to medium-high and 60fps. so far stable, some light hitching here and there. I dont expect a Laptop to perform the same as a full gaming PC so im quite impresses with how its handling and still looking visually appealing. Loving the game still and looking forward to another playthrough. If you're new to the game or was looking to return after the rough launch; you are in for an experience thats night and day. Truly one of the best games released. Side Note - I have played this on the PS4 and PS4 Pro. Never beat it on there but it was definitely fun on there, but the performance at launch was concerning on the base model PS4. The Pro model played significantly better. Sadly, but a good decision to stop updating the PS4 and Xone versions of the game after 1.6 was made so they dont get to experience the Phantom Liberty update. On the PS5 this game plays very well and looks stunning.
Oh my... this is painful to even write a review. If it was possible to Give 0 of 5 stars, that would still be too much. Getting the game for free would still be too expensive. Only reason I have this game Soldier of Fortune Payback was because it was cheaper to buy the SOF Triple pack when it was on sale than the games individually. Im only playing it to say I did, regret playing it and shelve it permanently. The only things that this game has good going for it (for its particular time period of release) is the graphics and physics (Havok Engine - same used in many games like Fallout 3 & 4, Oblivion & Skyrim). Everything else is really really bad or way over the top. Story / Background - very dull. Your Radio Comms NPC and Players Voicing kills any depth or momentum it has right away. Gameplay - Its one of the worse in terms of controls and mechanics. - Basic movements up, down, strafe left, strafe right and mouse movement are the only thing normal, except no way to deactivate Mouse Acceleration In-Game. So you gotta remember to lower your Mouse DPI instead. - Keys cannot be rebound in-game and must be done at the config file, but that is limited to very few keys and Mouse1 & 2. - Ladders are not designed and scripted well, its like you just slide up and down, still holding your guns with 2 hands or ADS. - Sprinting is Tight and narrow, you cannot make any turns, just pretty much running in a straight line for about 5 seconds. - Enemies have scripted spawns that make them pop out of nowhere, this wouldnt be a problem in a pathed encounter, but when you clear an area or find an area that is 3 walls or no entry visible, leave and then start getting shot up from that area by 2-3 enemies that spawned in; thats a problem. Gunplay - Guns are a stiff mess... Ragdolls are Great, but decapitations over exaggerated like a Tarantino film. Avoid, dont even watch YT playthroughs. It brings nothing to the series, even its story.
I played this way back when it first released many many times. One of my favorite FPS games. Still have the original CD's but installing them is a pain on newer systems. Picked up all the SOF games when they hit GOG. You still have to apply some modern fixes if you play on Windows 10 or 11. Never had Win8/8.1 so i couldnt tell you there, but Windows 7 even needed a tweak here and there. Gameplay is pretty good and still holds up with a few issues that are a result of great coding on poor hardware that newer systems take advantage of. Raven's Engine coding seemed to be held back by the performance of older PC's. It is free of those limitation and shows a more challenging experience in both good & bad ways. Feels more claustrophic than the original SOF, using new models & textures on old designs. One of the few games that took advantage of "leaning" mechanics quite well for its time. Gun play is a 7/10 because the Ghoul Engine 2.0 masks or rather distracts some of the issues like Hit Registration. For example the mounted M60 Machine Gun used to just spray in a large cone, now it fires in a tighter circle almost all bullets on top of one another. On older PC's the hit registration was fairly poor and the recoil of guns was all over the place for anything automatic. The coding for Recoil and Hit Registration on newer PC's is actually better. Enemy pathing is a bit broke, not just being scripted, but in combat they tend to be overly accurate with on newer PC's. Often times breaking the limits of targeting, shooting and walls. Ive had an HE grenade kill me through a wall. As always Google "PCGamingWiki Soldier of Fortune II Double Helix" to see what they have for Modern System fixes to make sure you get the best optimum game play. One fix that is not mentioned in the PCGW SOF2 page is an audio skipping/stuttering issue that can be remedied with the same audio patching "Indirectsound" and "dsoal" that SOF1 uses. Drop both in the same folder as SOF2.exe.
A long time ago when I was just a Teen, I experienced this on my Uncles 21" PC CRT Monitor. It was the most amazing FPS at its time to grace PC's since pretty much the original Doom Games and Quake II & III. It actually uses a modified Quake II Engine. I just played this for Nostalgia purposes and record some gameplay. The Disc versions do not "work as well" on Windows 10/11, but the GOG version actually works very well on Windows 10. There is some light tweaking youll likely have to do to get it to run smoothly, I suggest doing a Google search of - pcgamingwiki Soldier of Fortune - to get an idea of a few necessary tweaks, especially on the audio side. There is some static scratching in the background of some scenes, Ive tried Stereo and 5.1 Surround Sound, with and without the audio patches. The patches fix Loss of Audio in some scenes where its gone completely or the dialogue audio is missing. Surprisingly enough, the Texture quality of this game is quite detailed for the time this game came out. The GHOUL engine still stands out in both good and comical ways. The Dismemberments from the GHOUL engine changed the genre. Gameplay is really well done and straight forward. It doesnt derail and shows the craftsmanship of the Developers & Game Artists. My only issue(s) is that there is some glitching due to the game needing to be at 60Hz/fps from your Desktop Screen Resolution or a couple areas of the game and the last boss fight will break. With that 1 issue I would still give this game 5/5 Stars.
