Didn't get it on GOG but beat it very recently, so... W1 is the second game in what "classic RTS" genre (meaning that Herzog Zwei is not welcome, sad), after Dune 2 that I love, especially Genesis version. There is something about those simpler, non-esport RTS times. W1? Not so much. Campaign wasn't interesting. There are few missions where you just dungeon crawl but every encounter in them feels same. Literal crawl. Can select only 4 units at once. It was devs choice according to interviews to make it feel more like small-scale tactical. But it's way too small. Balance is a wreck. The best way to play is to rush wizards and then have them cast summoned creatures. They are timed... But in such way that when their time runs out you can immediately summon another. There is also a big difference in speed between battles and building/economics. You acquire recources very slowly, so you want to speed up. Yet you NEED to babysit your military at slow speed because your melee units by themselves only attack nearby units, they aren't going to approach any archers or anyone passing closeby. So I kept changing speed non-stop. You can't build any building for peasants to bring recources into, which sounds silly even when compared to Dune 2. So once nearby mines run out of gold, well, enjoy seeing your peasants forming a long line across half the map. Multiplayer maps aren't symmetrical. Though I have few things that I enjoy about W1. First, the style. Just humans and orcs in colorful yet dark fantasy style. Slow moving knights with maces and all. March music. I like how bridges and chokepoints are important points to take control of not because of some in-game mechanic that gives you bonuses, no, it just happens naturally. Until enemy brings catapults. Catapults shoot avoidable slow projectiles but their explosions devastate everything, not just some "+% against buildings", so it's another non-esporty thing that I like about this title. It does have an epic manual.
Uh, another one of those 90s games that fail to manage to handle balance properly. This is one of the four well-known Build games. Well, starting with Duke Nukem 3D. This one is about rednecks, UFOs, brown and pro-anarchy song of a silly man. Good fun dumb. Well, would be. If it was done good. But boy, look at this core gameplay. A bit of unbalance in weapons, who needs ripsaw. As usual, hitscan ruin everything. Mostly having to do wtih space vixen which either throw avoidable projectiles or decide to near instakill you with their machine gun bust. The music are mostly loud songs that don't care about what goes on in-game, even booming out when the ending is playing. And the worst of all, level design. Look, I really like odie FPS levels. Well, starting with Doom, Wolf3D ones are too simplistic for me, I wish for higher level architecture art. I like "mazes" that make you remember a bit and make you explore. But here, well, I get no satisfaction because they go stupid. Keys that are so tiny that you can barely see. Cracks in walls that you barely see. Buttons that are placed in illogical places and aren't fun to search for. For example, the one in the sewers where I had to get into small room thing, look back and look up HIGH to see it in order to shoot at it. Imagine working there. Usually good level designers use keys in order to help players understand where to go next, when you have to go somewhere far in a level. Here... well, a button can do anything, open a door in who knows where. At least expansions are better designed than this. I had to use walkthrough with original. For expansions, well, they are still oldschool and mazey and you may have to do something silly and search but at least I didn't have to use walkthrough, just my experience in this genre. But eh, it's still not that amazing or fun. Still quickscamming. Cute jackalopes tho. I used a launcher for it, off Internet. In Rides Again press F4 and activate music. The Ruins has glitched door too.
DD1 is a port of Double DD game from Apple II. Dangerous Dave was important for Apple II as it was the first proper platformer game for a system, they say, with John Romero figuring a fancy workaround to make collision detection work. But on PC it's a really basic platformer. Clumpsy. With only 10 levels but difficulty through the roof. You have to do a lot of one-tricking. Die in one hit and you can't even have more than 3 of lives at the same time. Trollish design, even got fake platforms. Yea, old 2D DOS platformers games sucked compared to consoles and this one ain't exception. Even if I had it in childhood. Now, DD2 is the real classic. Unique and really good. Dave now has a shotgun and infinite shells in his pocket, out to get ghouls. Think of it as a mix of Doom and Shinobi. From Doom it got gore, yess, shotgun action, ghouls to kill. just rocking. And from Shinobi it got pacing and tension, with one-hit death. Sometimes you are shooting baddies from safe spots diagonally while platforming. Dealing with enemies that can handle verticallity. And then you sometimes travel on the same planes, waiting for monster to pop out from the edge, such as slow zombie or fast werewolf that jumps above you but can screw you up due to level design, with you being all tense. And then taking small break as you reload your shotty by standing still. Also, small death scenes and best usage of PC Speaker I heard so far. Still, it's not perfect and dieing on tricky last parts of some levels sucks. Now, DD3 and 4 were made by different devs instead. Switch to Soundblaster! DD3 ended up amateur, seems like it's their first work. Sure, ammo is limited now but you won't care as you will get like 200 ammo, 50 lives and even get to keep keys even if you die. Tiling of the levels is bad. Combat lost most of vertical threat. Setting is silly. Trash. DD4 is simply lazy! Same bland setting for all bland levels. Bland everything. Infinite ammo, spam projectiles. Just. ROBLOX UGH NOISE!
2D catacombs, which are Catacomb and The Catacomb (different levels, mostly): Pretty neat for what they are. You know. Top-down Gauntlet-like action game. In glorious EGA without smooth scrolling. Run around, shoot monsters with either normal or charged shots that are nicely balanced, get keys for doors, get stuck on some levels because dev is a troll that doesn't mind dead ends if you use key on a wrong door, albeit it's somewhat fair as you can see for yourself which doors to open thanks to top-down view, related puzzles somewhat, shoot destructable walls which are marked on two directions and you have to blindly shoot everything if they are on other two directions. And so many potions that you just have to make sure to press heal button in time. Amazingly enough, they were the most fun games in the pack so kudos. Tho The Catacomb is a bit too long and spammy on tough enemies. 3D Catacomb: They took original Catacomb gameplay and put it in First Person View. While making it a disaster. Suddenly, charged shots barely do any more damage than normal. Suddenly, destructable walls aren't marked, making you spam shots. Suddenly, you can get easily stuck in walls while backpedalling. Suddenly, enemies are boring slow melee kind with many being bullet sponges. Not bulletsponges as in "wah, it didn't die from a single bullet into head", but rather "did I just smash CTRL 20 times to kill one guy?" I know better clickers than this. With monster girls. Just kidding, I hate all clickers. Overall, it's like they wanted to say "3D is a gimmick that will ruin gaming". Adventure series of Catacomb: Different devs actually made 3D Catacomb good. Almost. Some fine adventure with varied themes, you don't get stuck in walls, more varied enemies, secret walls are mostly marked. But make sure to play on Novice because Warrior enemies are bulletsponges. But then you get so many of powerups you will have no use on Novice. Sadly, despite creativity, it's too long and repetitive.
Ah, 90s. Adventure games. The age of moon logic. Do you know what is even better? Cartoon comedy moon logic. Okay okay, it's not nearly as bad as some of the non-cartoon offenders, but you know, few bad puzzles still spoil the overall fun because you would not be able to trust developers anymore with providing you with a good brain entertainment. So yea. Eh. And sadly, the game doesn't have much going as adventure either. The plot is thin, slow-paced, as slow as a pool of tar. The jokes are mostly miss. Interaction is not terribly interesting, albeit it's fun at the start of a game. It's like... comedy. All the random stuff. But it's only able to force a smile out of me for the most parts. Didn't enjoy exploring much either. Controls not terrible comfortable and locations were too lolrandom at times. I sure didn't feel like I was searching for clues, just usual random. Damn, I would want to write so much more and analyse this games, but I guess I am too old to even bother with 90s adventure games. I've lost my trust in them, so kinda hard to believe in them.
Well, this is what they call LucasArts style adventure game. As in, point-n-click adventure game from 90s where you have no dead ends and no deaths. Good. But I still hate them. Well, used to love for setting, but the more I grow up, the less I see reasons to tolerate BS puzzles in the oldies. Thankfully, this is a rare 90s game with good puzzles! Yea. Down to Earth ones. Perhaps some are too easy. There is no pixel-hunting either. So I should be happy. Some puzzles even make you think. So this makes it much better than Monkey Island 2, fite me. But then there are bad apples of puzzles such as the mosaic, where you have to figure out what you are even supposed to do. It's not like I can see the dust, yo. I had some silly times too. Such as forgetting that my vacuum cleaner had anything inside, mhm, when I played on the next day. It also includes somewhat interesting character and humor. Yea. Some fancy ones. Dem silly comic fans. But then the plot itself tried to be so cheesy it kinda falls into predictable boring way. So eh. Is good. But all these flaws make it a three star material. But 4 stars for 90s!
Oh, look, a Polish point-n-click adventure game. That is now free. Nice. This is a floppy version. No manual here. Not CD-ROM. I think that this is due to it having CD-ROM version only for Polish version, perhaps English one was never made. And not sure if there was English manual either. None the less, I thought that it's going to be not terribly interesting and slow but I was pleasantly surprised. The game is qutie fast-paced. Furthermore, somehow the setting feels cozy and the game is fast-paced. Simplistic sprite-work just added to a charm. And the music was amazing, being upbeat. Plus, I somehow dig Polish humor. Probably due to being post-Soviet country or such. Not sure. Just really like it. I had more enjoyment than playing any old LucasArts games so far. Sadly, it still has stupid puzzles. Such as having to open the lid to cellar, then close it so hero slams it, somehow making switch down there appear (dust getting off walls). And pixel hunting. At least no dead ends. And there are no deaths, not that I mind them. None the less, puzzles games with bad puzzles are bad games in my book. No exceptions. So two stars.
I didn't expect much but good lord. This is one awesome vertical shmups. Maybe one of the best. It's pretty good, got awesome graphics and amazing music. It got it all rocking. But on top of it all it got PC features, so to say. Story mode with saving. Said story mode also includes lore that you can grab during gameplay, most of which extremely amusing. And then you can upgrade your ships, while having to make sure to upgrade generators so you can have shields regenerating while shooting just fine. Trying out different builds is fun, you can 'sell' items for same price after all, so to say. The game is also fairly forgiving. It got a regenerating shield. So it's just like Call of Duty. HA! The original game had only three episodes, so it really feels this way. The next version of a game came with Episode 4, which is super long. It goes and goes and goes until devs give up on sanity and it gets ludicrous. Glorious. And latest 2000 version added short Episode 5, which is awkward and nothing much special. There are two flaws that take away from five stars rating. First, you upgrade too quickly. By Episode 3 I was running my favourite build with no incetive to change much. Second, it's too long for arcade mode, just doesn't pace too well to beat it this way, so console shmups are better this way. Oh, and keyboard controls. Why do I have to press button to use weak weapon? When I only have to hold button to fire main weapons continuously. Plus, you know, ghosting or something. But eh. Great. Super awesome for a free game!
So. It's a 90s adventure game. That already drops ratings to 2-3 stars. Because you know. Silly puzzles, dead ends. Seriously, I am not going to bother to play any of them without walkthrough if I know that they have dead ends. But then we add a fact that setting and story are so painfully generic, there is almost nothing catchy. And then we also add a faulty SCUMM emulation, which makes audio part completely horrifying, while it lacks in audio part to begin with. Then we add bugs and glitched. Then we add Virtual Theatre feature that instead of improving gameplay just hampers it. It uses for gimmick of "look, chars walk around to do their own things" but there are no good puzzles related to it, pretty much. Or maybe one. Instead it's combined with the most wrecked pathfinding I've ever seen. A disaster. I don't understand why some people say "ahead of the time" whenever they see a badly implented feature before it was done properly. Personally, if you implent features without having proper recources, not in right time and place, I call it a "mistake". And yea. I don't ever want to see this game ever again.
Hmmmm, a bit of cyperpunk that doesn't feel like generic cyperpunk. An old-school adventure games of point and clicking. And it's free as well, so thanks devs. But while I had high hopes and even enjoyed the beggining, despite absolutely lacking audio side of a game, such as weird voices and a lack of a lot of sounds or missing speech, it kind went downhill. I am a grown man by now, I can't handle flaws of these old adventure games anymore. Mostly because I read books now so I don't have to tolerate all the BS in order to get simplistic plots of them. Or bleh, I am still in disbelief over Monkeys Islands, Sierra Quests and so on, my soul is still in pain. This game has quick deaths, which are fun. No dead ends unless you forget to take an id card off a corpse. But it still has stuff such as being able to get 'key' before finding of 'door' existance. Good old pixelhunting, because who knew that doors suddenly have a separate 'lock' area. Getting stuck and then doing anti-social stuff because you are a bastard in a limbo. Such as cutting off an anchor off a statue without knowing what you want with it yet because the owner isn't in a room. This game even added such amazing thing as "you have to do this stupid thing in this area in order for unrelated event to pop up in some another room". That got old fast. Plot isn't hot either, all over a place. Too much forced comedy. Just feels like separate pieces. Music also got old. So while I thought that it's going to be an interesting 90s adventure game that might be better than others due to not being a comedy-focused primarly, well, eh... it's not different. Help!
