Good game, despite not being my favourite format, it's a bit of a grind and the narrative will never win any literary awards, but it has that sort of addictive quality that keeps you coming back. Sometimes the members of your army will do hilarious things which appear to be beyond your control, until you discover that you accidentally pressed some key which elicits said behaviour because of the time honoured tradition of never RTFM. The point and click mechanic seems trouble free, the graphics are colourful and bold, and the dialogue is comically awful but the music is great. I suspect the only real problem with this game is the 32Bit implementation that will likely require some kind of simulator to work on a modern PC. I run a dual operating system with Fedora Linux as the primary and Win7 as a standby and always try the games on Linux first, and that provides the ideal environment in the shape of WINE for games like this. The GOG modified installer works almost perfectly with WINE and so does Kings Bounty the Legend. As an aside for all the poor souls who only have Windows; I believe you can acquire a version of WINE for Windows, which may allow you to play this and many other games from the 32Bit era that you may have bought and discarded. WINE is open source software and won't cost you a penny; so you have nothing to lose by trying.
I run dual operating systems with Fedora Linux being my primary and in consequence I always try to run my games with WINE on Linux first and I have had a great deal of success so far. If I can't make the game behave properly I fall back to Windows 7 and run it there. I had already played FEAR 1 and 2 and enjoyed them both immensely so when FEAR 3 came on sale I purchased it right away and loaded it up with WINE everything went well until I began to play then I ran into an instability problem with the mouse. After trying for a considerable time to correct the problem I decided to fall back to Windows and see what it was like there, everything went perfectly with the installation and I began to play for a while to get the drift of it, but even before I reached the first checkpoint my eyes had glazed over and I was almost catatonic with boredom. FEAR 3 isn't a patch on any of the others in the series, it looks good on the outside but doesn't have any substance. I had planned to move back to Linux after my test and continue troubleshooting it, but it's just not worth the trouble. So sad an end to a good series.
As with SR1 this sequel was also a shockingly bad console port which was likely just thrown over to the PC to make extra $$ with minimal consideration of the architecture. It has been moderately patched to play on modern machines but still contains the basic control flaws of SR1 which is such a shame for so unique a game. I wont go over the positive aspects of the game because plenty of other reviewers have stated them elegantly enough before me but I would like to address some of the technical aspects. First of all some folks but not others, seem to have problems with the video and Audio and I strongly believe this is down to idiosyncrasies of their GPU’s, Operating Systems, Device Drivers and other hardware, because all of the people downloading this game receive the same software but they don’t all have trouble. PC’s are individual unlike consoles which are all just clones of each other. I have dual operating systems and I downloaded SR2 into Fedora Linux with WINE installed, then ran the game normally from the desktop link and it ran first try without any trouble with the one exception of the intro cut scene with Raziel and Kain running in a lower resolution which when finished changed to my full screen high resolution for the next cut scene with Raziel and Mobeus. The Mouse setting offered doesn’t work as usual with Soul Reaver and your best bet is to use the solitary keyboard setup and map it to your own preferences. All of my video settings were highest available and I had no need to touch the Gamma correct at all. I still have the original T.L.O.K. series on disks from when they first came out erm… a few years ago and I really enjoyed playing them through again on modern equipment. For the price this series is being offered at by GOG what else could you buy that could give you so much value even if you just keep them as collectors items to lord it over your kids or grandkids with your keyboard skills. :) 5 of 5 from me.
The Technomancer events continue from where Mars War Logs ended but as you might imagine is much bigger and more sophisticated. I had very few technical problems with the game except for a few minor bugs which can easily be rectified if you run into them, by doing an Internet search for the particular problem. The character progress interface is a little convoluted and you need a bit of patience with it at the beginning. The narrative is excellent and leaves plenty of room for further instalments from the game developers (I hope) :) . The graphics are more than adequate if a bit monochromatic with red shades as you may expect on Mars, however this just draws you into the world and makes you wistful for the green of Earth. The game-play quests do involve a lot of back tracking and this can become a bit of a grind especially near the latter parts of the game. Combat is fairly well balanced with the difficulty becoming greater as you progress. I am a very old game-player so perhaps I am not so critical of more modern games and tend to think most of them are simply amazing for what you pay, this one is definitely re-playable and as I can’t give it nine out of ten I will give it the full five stars.
I acquired this game for a few Euro in a GOG weekly sale, and for the price I was in no way disappointed. I have dual operating systems, (Win 7 & Fedora Linux) and although many of the games are classed as Windows only, I like to give them a shot on Linux with WINE first out of curiosity; more often than not they run nicely. MWL wasn't an exception it worked great with the one drawback that all of the subs and interface were in Spanish :)) There were no installation problems with either OS. The Game itself was as others have said, a bit repetitive and there is a lot of backtracking which might annoy seasoned players but may actually be comfortable for newbies as would the decent tutorial, mapping and auto-saves. The dialogue wasn't too bad and the narrative whilst cliched was mostly passable. All in all, it's never going to be a GOTY but would not be a disgrace as a nice little stocking filler well worth buying when on special offer.
