Here we go ladies and gentlemen, the game of the decade.
Mafia has definitely made an impression! Where the game really shines is the plot and characters. Visuals have aged fairly nicely in my estimation. It shows a bit of age with gun play, walking, driving etc. Music apparently has been butchered for this re-release but I can't tell first hand having never played Mafia before this. It's worth playing even today BUT be aware there's some bugs like sporadic crashes and invisible map markers. Not a huge deal but it means some backtracking because Mafia has this annoying checkpoint autosave. At worst points you would need to do a long boring drive just before a tricky shootout, a bit of a design flaw if you can't make your own saves. The game involves a lot of driving (and not seldom on the same routes keep in mind) so take that into consideration as well. It would have been a bit more interesting were it not for police on every street and street corner enforcing the speed limit. At points it gets ridiculous, example: two mobster vehicles engaged in a crazy shootout as they are blazing down the city street, the police join the fray with a speeding ticket...in short map traversal is a bit tedious but it's well worth looking past if you are in the mood for some epic crime drama! At points in which the game is not bogged down with tedious strolls around town or long winded tram rides it can actually be quite immersive and tense. If you can look past the flaws, definitely give it a go.
Very cool game, I'm not normally very excited about these kinds of games but this one is very nice and well worth the play (especially if you consider yourself a point and click puzzle game aficionado). The story is interesting and worldbuilding is very nuanced for a relatively short plot, the characters have their own particular mannerisms and slang they use etc. Music and voice acting is very good, puzzles are very interesting (most of them anyway, there was only one that I hated). It's very cool that you play as several characters and the gameplay intertwines at points and develops the story, there's quite a lot of dialogue - nice. As far as what I've played, this might be my favourite game in the genre. All things considered, five stars.
Interesting premise and story, interesting characters and sensible puzzles. I can't really fault the game besides being in a category that I, in a very subjective way, don't really care for that much. And the voice acting is sketchy at times, but that's a very minor nitpick. Not a very long game and has a few twists and turns, all in all quite good. If you love point and click, you'll be happy as a pig in mud.
Very disappointed in this game, the character never feels like they amount to much, at least not the one I was playing AND I had the guide constantly up for help and advice. Part of my disappointment is due to being so excited about discovering this game since some of my favorite games are BG, IWD, Torment, Fallout etc. but then it fell totally flat. The mechanics are never explained (to my satisfaction at least) and some of them I just could not understand like crit hit, don't have a clue what that does, at the end of the game I was over lvl 35 probably and was doing a bit over 30 dmg per hit with a two handed weapon, in my estimation I had quite a lot of crit hit chance (probably over 30 or 40) and I was hitting for more damage like once every 5 minutes. Worst of all probably is the 'knock prone' thingy that characters do (once again a mystery to me) and then it takes your little guy half an hour to pick himself up while the enemies are having their way. God forbid you actually try and fight a bunch of enemies in one go, you end up on the brink of death if you even survive unless you draw enemies out slowly, all in all a very tedious affair. Next we have insufferable corridors with archers positioned on the high ground peppering you with arrows while you have to run through the corridor to reach some bulls*** doo-dad. You actually have to hoard quite an assortment of weapons to be competitive in the slightest which I would have found one of the more fun aspects of the game were it not for the fact that you have to juggle other equipment around constantly for different tasks on top of that. The game actually looks quite charming and has an interesting premise and setting but alas, it is marred substantially by the things previously described. If only the game made you feel more powerful towards the end and combat didn't feel like such a slog I would have even been tempted to give this game 4 stars. As is, 2 stars is probably more than generous.
Very unique and interesting, I have only played through the game once but it hints at branching possibilities and endings which I have not investigated. Quite short and a little nitpick that I have is backtracking to your apartment/train stations. The detective work is quite cool, you really have to pay attention when drawing conclusions. The setting is also quite intriguing, not very elaborated in this short game but I wouldn't mind exploring more of it in future installments.
Fell in love with this little gem, every aspect of this game is very enjoyable - one particular thing I think is fenomenal is map traversal, the devs respect your time and let you insta-travel from place to place once you have discovered it. Look gorgeous and plays nicely, there is a mini game that kicks in for when you are hacking things (which is a significant part ofnthe game actually), slight nitpick I suppose is the gun play and normally it's my favourite way to go but melee is my recommendation for this one. It has everything you would want from a cyberpunk story: fancy implants, crazy AIs, hacking etc. I sincerely hope they make another installment!
Beautiful aesthetics and a tense, dark atmosphere was what made me want to play this game. As someone who's not a fan of point and click puzzle solving games, I'm happy to report that generally the puzzles are sensible and only very seldom would they be obtuse but when it did happen it was completely taking me out of the immersion - nothing kills immersion and tension faster than frustration of not being able to solve a silly puzzle. Luckily, those moments are few and far between. I love the fact that the devs respect your time and the character can move at a reasonable pace so the backtracking and puzzle solving isn't terribly burdensome. There is a fair bit of reading involved, it seems like everyone in the game had their own personal diary and at times the entries contain plain silly incriminating details that no one in their right mind would record, or details that are simply too transparently there just for the reader's benefit. It lays out the story which is quite interesting but it is also a bit long winded at times. The game is quite gory and disturbing (but not many jump scares, and they are fairly tame) so if you are a fan of the setting and point and click puzzles, you'll be as happy as a pig in mud. As for me, four stars.
...because of the horrendous movement and control. Also, I realised adventure puzzle games are not at all for me. And I got the game for free. That said, I don't want to duck a bunch of points only on personal preference, I'll give it three stars because it is a well loved game which indicates to me that the aficionados consider it worthy and because it seems lovingly made. But, I found puzzles to be very tedious with a few exceptions, those being the most alien puzzles, where you just have to be creative istead of spending ages to figure out which exact pixel to click. The game aesthetic I found very lovely. Sound and voice acting are quite good, haven't got any beef with that but the dialogue is a bit obtuse at points with some dialogue branches not taking into account things previously said and similar. The story was quite impressive and competently told. The absolute biggest gripe that I have with this game is the atrocious movement, that really drops it in my eyes in a big way because of all the exploration you have to do, even when you know what you are trying to accomplish, let alone when you are stumbling around. That made me give up on the puzzles after a point and I just kept checking the solutions to save myself the tedium of walking to and fro in search for clues. I can definitely recommend if you are a fan of puzzle adventure games, but if you, like me, think this is going to be like the other beloved 2D isometric games - alas, it's not. In that case maybe skip this one.
I absolutely loved the previous two Wasteland games, having only ever played each of the installments for one playthrough I'm going to say my favourite installment was the first one (Remastered). Number three is still a fun game to play but I wasn't as interested in the numerous different goings-on, the world travel was totally out of sync from the rest of the environment, it felt like you are briefly visiting a stormy, chaotic alien planet while you traverse the map, then you pop back in an area and boof! there's sunshine and bonanza, teleported back to planet Earth. The characters and quests were totally goofy, the game actually seriously expects players to engage with total lunatics, cannibals, slavers and degenerates of many sorts - the kind of clientele I typically like to shoot on sight. Everything is fairly streamlined, never did I feel like I was facing an unusual challenge, everything's on track, even on expert difficulty. The main personas of the game are total madness as well, there's this guy you are meant to collaborate with from the start of the game and he expects you to bring back his degenerate offspring alive (lol?) and what you'd much rather do is just shoot him in the face and call it a day. So in a sense the 'game' is actually a bunch of fluff to put around the tactical combat mechanics, character building and progression etc. But if you are able to look past that or don't care much for dialogue, story and different motivations of different characters then the tactical combat experience is quite nice and it's still a fun game in that way. I'm between three and four stars, here's four hoping the next installment is going to be nicer!
