I brought this game expecting a game that would be overrated, deeply flawed and half-suck but would still half-deliver an unique experience of planning mixed with realistic-ish gameplay. For I wanted some Raven Shield but with smaller maps. But I didn't expect to get a dumpster fire. Especially for a GOG release. First, you have to use Voodoo something wrapper thingie in order to get the game running at all. Then you have to get game's CD or so to get Redbook audio as it wasn't included in. And then I think you need another software in order to have them loop properly. Alas, it's not the end yet, for some characters models are broken in GOG version thus the entities themselves don't load during game itself. Check the forum to find archive of fixed files. And even then during gameplay you will be endlessly pissed as game randomly decides to freeze during loading. Blah, and I used to think that GOG gives so much more care in getting old games run properly. None the less, here. Tactical shooter. One of the first. Be horrified at how 1998 game looks so much uglier than Quake 1 and 2. Enjoy some planning, while not being able to specify such things as "wait for two guards to come out by making a noise" and "enter the room by stacking against both sides". Enjoy being frustrated that game refuses to set far pathpoints, especially if you want to go back through the same path that you went it. Get pwned in-game until you turn auto-aim on because you get many heavy penalties while moving and turning while AI doesn't and can insta-aim between targets. And because high mouse sensetivity. Get angry because teammates tried to clear a room and ended up stucking in a chair. The only chair in a room because rooms are barebone otherwise. Can't lean around corners. You get it. It delivers on unique mix of planning and action but it's still fairly low on enjoyment level. And with technical issues, well, you better stick with Raven Shield, even though it's not butterflies either.
This is some Baaad Mojo that you got there, mon. And not only this Mojo is Bad, mon, but it's a whole Redux. Well, the original came out in 1996. Redux, unlike what I've believed at first, is not a modern remaster of a game. Well, it's a remaster, but it's from 2004, so it's old in it's own way. That one still helped with compitability with modern systems, seeing how early Windows games tend to be a roach to run, FMVs got improved. Albeit personally I had to launch the game two times in order to get FMVs working and even then there were minor glitches. And well, it's an adventure game that mixes CGI and FMV, mostly due to developers trying to do everything with pre-rendered 3D before figuring out that they can just reproduce rooms in order to record some FMVs. In this one you will control cockroach. As a student in Russia, I indeed approve the way that cockroach moves. Rather realistic. At least believable, especially when everything is prerendered. Kinda like this twitchy movement, as it tilts according to surfrace, while waving antenna. Yea, pretty interesting. Especially once I tap it with my slippers. And yea, you can't interact much, pretty much no recource management here, can only travel carefully and push. I think that game saves progress weirdly, where the state of things stays in some state, but I didn't get stuck. The story and exploration makes it super fancy, surprisingly. It opens up in a rather dark way but sweetens up slowly. Well, albeit with some unsettling moments. Atmospheric and tells a story. Puzzles felt down to earth. Albeit I still made use of video hints in game's folder, which sometimes had just right amount of hinting without revealing everything. Not ashamed of using them at times. I mean, who knew that you could ride a peanut butter with some Dank Mojo magic out of nowhere? Sadly, I don't think that cat made it in any endings. Or at least not shown what happened to her. :c P.S.: Check out bonus content in game's folder.
Well, actually it has more to it than sword, but I really doubt about reboot part. I mean, sure, Lo Wang and Zilla. But Lo Wang is not same awesome grandpa, he is just a comic book collector guy, not nearly as awesome. At least some humour is still there, the more tame one. But yea, it's like Painkiller. Going from arena to arena, some tiny encounters inbetween. Some secrets. Katana is your main weapon and has more depth than most melee weapons in older games. Some special moves like in fighting games, R R RMB, for example. So you can heal yourself for free. And there are few normal weapons, pretty useful sometimes too, albeit not nearly as many as you would expect in older FPS, for example. At least shotgun is really Wracking. You also collectin and find recources by opening shiny chests and boxes and wardropes, which may get really annoying on the second walkthrough. It also tries to give you a fight rating after each arena without telling you what rules does it use. Nothing like having awesome time and then getting 3 out of 5 shurikens. And it's all fun and games until you get so much game that... I mean, it's way too long. Waaay too long. Meaning that it feel artifically stretched out in the latter half of a game. There was some space where you didn't get any new weapons, don't think that any interesting enemies were introduced, not sure. Just kinda overstayed by few hours. I mean, I know that there are gamers who judge games by how long they are and only want the longest experience, but Wang em. Also, music sucks in comparison to original too. It also comes with Viscera Cleanup Detail game, non-serious janitor simulator. At this point I really think that it was the best not as stand-alone game but as a little one-level bonus for Shadow Warrior, just enjoy it here in coop with a friend. The full version doesn't hold anything much, who cares of all those tedious levels. 4 ninja stars. Too bad it's not Shadow Dancer, but that would be too awesome to handle.
Earth 2160. The last game in the series, sadly. Albeit maybe there is a good reason why it ended up being last, as it was released a year after Warhammer 40k Dawn of War. Let that sink in, as the game still used old Command and Conquer left mouse click for both selecting and ordering over the map. Yea. None the less, a lot of people only look at what it removes compared to 2150. Yea, it does remove some things. Terraforming is not there, albeit you got some physics rocks to shoot at, sometimes. Tunnels and underground map is not there but I am happy as I hated those. Construction units was improved, more options. It brings back infantry from 2140 that is still usable to capture buildings. And yea, can't construct infantry. And there is one more faction, aliens, albeit they sorta seem too one-dimensional. You either rush them and win or you wait and they steamroll everything. The factions are even more different than before, I love having everything connected through pipes in Euroasian Dynasty. So yea, this one is my fav so far. Plus, heroes you can hire. I think that they go on auction in multiplayer. Then again, maybe it does have some problems. Economic side is simplistic even for ED, no need for refinery, units just stay at recources, harvesting without end. Yea, there are now 3 types of recources but that doesn't make it more complex, you get them the same way and such, they are placed kinda samey. Maybe the counters are too hard. Hard counters, I mean. Gotta have rockets to siege the bases, otherwise you get pwned. No supply units, supply buildings jsut shoot rawkits out. Game's controls were heavily outdated for sure. Oh, and you have to activate game to play multiplayer. And I couldn't do it on GOG, seems like server is busy? Without activating it calls itself a "demo mode" but all single-player content works. But eh. In my casual opinion I like this RTS. I did watch "the making of" back in time, maybe that's what left such impression on me, kinda cozy.
You, as a gamer that doesn't shy away from old games and also a Steam user, I had so much Wang in my life that I don't feel like talking about all the Wangs that I have. It's kinda a Duke Nukem 3D like game, albeit with worse balanced but still rewarding. When you figure out that you should lob grenades around corner and use inventory-grenades for ambushes, that is. Otherwise, higher hitscan rate than true old-school shooter should have. Well, Doom era ones. But eh, here is a GOG Wang. It's a free Lo Wang, so it's a fine Wang. Shadow Warrior Classic Complete is indeed Complete as it comes with two free expansions packs already packed in. If you fiddle with settings you should have it up and running in comfortable modern controls way, albeit you have to tolerate lower mouse sensetivity for vertical than horizontal. And it's all good, but first, you have to manually use DOSBOX to setup.exe the controls for Shadow Warrior and Watson Destruction. Twin Dragon expansion uses it's own setup.exe that GOG actually has a link to it in "other" category, but not for others. Eh. Oh, and for some reason everytime in Twin Dragon you have to turn on music through in-game options. Wacky. Overall, you probably should go for Redux due to small differences but these differences are so small that actually maybe you should stick with this free deal instead. Plus, Redux has no multiplayer while it looks like this one does have it. Maybe sorta have it. Not sure if it works or if it's stable. But yea. Too much Lo Wang for me.
Hm, a sequel to 2140. RTS. It's a bit better this time around. This one comes with two stand-alone expansion packs: Moon Project, which adds units and harder campaign, and Lost Souls, which is just even harder mission pack. To make the game not freeze when you open an important construction window by pressing F1 I think you have to set game's resolution to 4:3 aspect ratio while having it run on OpenGL. Also, videos in expansions packs didn't play until I went to deep webz to install video codecs. Now I am still sad as those videos don't run smoothly. And what can I say. The developers once again tries to stay at the top of a game in gameplay, this time bringing innovation of being able to "create" your own units by choosing a chassis and 1-2 equipments. No infantry. Slow research but it's usually for whole campaign or maybe you have to create multiple research buildings. Very slow unit construction but that's why you must build multiple buildings. Interesting campaign in original which meshes main base with your mission bases, can use transport inbetween. There is one more faction, up to three, and they feel even more different, making it more interesting. Some very basic terraforming by building bridges or trenches or going underground. And once again they managed to make playing the game feel unappealing. This time mostly due to combination of slow pace and not being able to alt-tab, while somehow being slightly bland. Or uncomfortable. Not sure. Though it's mostly due to lack of balance in campaign. LC is actually easy mode, UCS is medium and ED is a hard mode in original game, despite it being in opposite order. Also, tutorial sucks, you need much more units to win it than it tells you, more buildings and research much earlier. I bet that more than enough players just quit due to how "hard" it was, haha. But eh. It's eh. But it's a better more innovate eh than eh 2140. I like my eh 2150 sometimes, especially with all the light at night in-game, it's pretty.
Earth 2140 is RTS which is best compared to Command And Conquer. It did came out in 1997. And this version comes with two missions packs too, albeit it doesn't matter as you aren't likely to beat the base game due to how repetitive samey and bland missions are. Pretty much no plot, yo. The version you run by default is Windows one, known for being worthless due to broked down AI, completely. DOS one comes as bonus. Which is a proper version, yes, so have fun pressing Y until it finally able to initiatize sound on startup, have slowdowns at times, but don't just increase cycles of DOSBOS as it wrecks audio. No Mission Packs OST in-game. And well, for it's time, it was a nice effort. Two factions, seemingly same, yet quite different. No unit is universal, they actually counter each other and not in just "this weapon does better on this armor type". Actually, I don't think it has that. Instead it's all based on ability to fire while moving, slow fire grenades being thrown, or something powerful yet glass cannon, vehicles being too fast for some weapons, such stuff. Yea, you will have to micro. Albeit game sadly fails to explain this. Or to explain a lot of mechanics. It also has Generals AI where you can set some units to either go on defence or offence over whole map. It's pretty good. It's useful, but more due to default AI of your units not bothering to fight back if some soldier nearby is getting shot at from far away. So it's nice that you can set some units on Offensive General while you directly control key units, such as soldiers to take over important buildings. Yea, it works out great. But eh, controls. Outdated interface. I ended game early on because I couldn't bother to manually fix pathfinding of all the sea transportation units that transport tanks onto land with enemy base that doesn't stop producing. I would rather Dune 2 on Sega Genesis. That one is the best anyway. Eh, unique but it fails to grab my attention and controls heavily put me away.
There we go, System Shock 2. This one was apparently mostly made by Irrational Games instead of Looking Glass Studios, as the latter was busy with Thief 2, I believe. And rereleased by Night Dive Studios, rather excellent. Mix of RPG and FPS. And I've heard sooooooooooo much praising to the heavens over this title... Frankly, from my experience, you should never trust anybody praising art as something more than art, for example. Like "this is not a game, it's a classic and experience" or something. Mostly because it means that they have lost the overall picture. But you get it. And right after playing Shock 1, in all honesty, I can sum it up as "dissapointing". Mostly due to crazy expectations, but I don't think it follows same ideology as Shock 1 at all. Shock 1 used RPG elements for immersion, Shock 2 uses them for some numbers and management crunching. For example, Shock 1 with HUD management tries to simulate the vision of a person with cyber-implants. And you get to do lame cyberspace stuff and even hacking as puzzles. In Shock 2 in meanwhile your character will have no idea how to use a freaking shotgun unless he has 3 Standard Weapons points and all the hacking is a semi-minigame RNG. The latter one was the most dissapointing thing. I wouldn't have minded it if it was done in a good way. Sadly, it's as unbalanced as it gets. There are very certain skills that are useful. And there are some upgrades and stats so useless, it's just UNGF. I am also still annoyed that hacking one turret when you've disabled the whole system suddenly activates them into infighting. I am sneeky haxXxman, stop RUINING it! And don't know. The levels aren't as open. Puzzles are more mundane. SHODAN, having the avatar of who equals to wearing fedora hat, is unthreatening here. Overall, it's still a nice fine FPS RPG crawley thing, albeit with combat more lame than Shock 1, mostly melee part. 7 out of 10. Let's go for 3 stars due to being a dissapointment compared to Shock 1.
Tropico 4. A simulator of dictator ruling over the island. Making sure that people stay happy... or rather, that you stay in power. It's based off T3 that was based off T1. T3 was much easier than T1 and added new features such as people actually being able to use cars on roads so you can diversify over an island. And Tropico 4 that came only few years later? Meh. It's T3 but with more. A bit more. Some more buildings. You can be given side quests that tell you to build or do something for a reward, even in sandbox. And you will miss that two radio heads from the T3. Yea, more of same, barely much new. But with much more DLC milking. Funny, I got base T4 through GOG Connect from Steam and for some reason I am able to access the big Expansion Pack that is Modern Times despite it supposedly being part of DLC bundle here. Oh well, I am taking that. I can however assure you that at least the game is indeed DRM free, it doesn't even have company's own launcher like on Steam. It also means that you can't use stuff such as submitting island to high score or downloading challenges, it just says that servers aren't online, but who cares, it was all just a fluff. Frankly, even base T4 has more to it than T3 Gold, so maybe you should go with this one anyway. Did I say that the game is a simulator of dictator ruling over the island? Ha! It's actually much easier to be just a good guy City Builder. Just build what people want, be a happy joy joy president, not scary Le Presidente. The game is also too easy, cue why you don't have to use dictatorship power that make this series unique, as you will be busy trying to escape the money flood. What a shame, as game has interesting political system build into it and has some micro/macro balance, the game simulates each Tropician's life. But eh, repetitive, easy and slow. Never bothered to play past the first few campaign missions, not after all the time I put into T3. 4 stars because 7/10 is not valid and I find this game cute.
