It's not a terrible game, but it's also pretty unremarkable and by-the-numbers. The gameplay is fairly dull and the combat slow, the plot is predictable and doesn't have any emotional stakes or character development, and the game feels a bit low budget, with dated graphics, a handful of lines that should be voiced but aren't, a few minor bugs, and some typos. It's also just not very atmospheric or scary- Eternal Darkness did a much better job of being Lovecraftian, disturbing and fun, and that game came out over 20 years ago. As for positive points, for fans of the board game this is based on, it's kind of neat to see the familiar characters come to life as voiced 3D models. The voice acting is decent (especially Professor Tillinghast), the gameplay is just good enough to make a single playthrough feel worthwhile, and it's kind of nice to see a Lovecraft game without a single reference to Cthulhu or the Necronomicon for a change. If you're a Lovecraft fan, it might be worth getting when it's on sale, just don't expect any replay value or a terrifying experience that will stick with you. Honestly, they probably would have been better off making a digital adaptation of the actual Arkham Horror board game than this. It could be a lot worse, but there are much better and more interesting horror and even specifically Lovecraft games out there to choose from.
Cute game. You click on a cat. It turns blue. It gives you an achievement for, I kid you not, EACH cat, which tells you their name. Also you can click on birds. About 75% of the way through, it gets hard. Then you realize you can scroll down to a part of the screen that wasn't visible before. Then it gets hard again looking for the last three or so. Then when you finally find all of them, the game rewards you by... locking up and making a horrible grinding noise. Hooray!
A short escape room game with some fun puzzles and a vaguely profound atmosphere. It's a nice way to spend an hour or so. I have no idea about any of the lore or connections to other games, but it was enjoyable.
This game is essentially a 3D version of a "spot the difference" game like you'd see in a children's magazine. You go through each room once, memorizing everything, then when you see something different on the next run through you report it by hitting a key. These differences can range from subtle, like an object being a different color, to obvious, like the room being filled with smoke. What the game doesn't tell you is that sometimes the environment hasn't changed and there's nothing to report, which led to a lot of wasted time searching for differences that didn't exist before I caught on. Once you get five correct observations you move on to the next room, of which there are three total. Supposedly this is a horror game but the environments aren't especially creepy and the scares are mostly pretty lame, when they exist at all. Sometimes a creepy Medusa-like creature shows up that's good for at least one effective jump scare, but the game just isn't menacing or immersive enough to be frightening- mostly it's repetitive and tedious. There's also no plot to speak of, and the prize for finding all 66 anomalies is a quick, nonsensical, unrewarding ending. It might be worth playing if you get it for free during a giveaway, but otherwise steer clear.
Scorn is almost entirely about the atmosphere, and it does it incredibly well- based on the haunting art of Giger and Zdzislaw, with a dash of Cronenberg and Lovecraft, it delivers a consistently disturbing, gory, bleak atmosphere where flesh and machine meld and your senses, conscience and body are repeatedly violated. The nightmarish world and your character within it are presented without explanation or narration, and it's up to you to draw your own conclusions- is it an alien planet, Earth in a distant future, a bad dream? Though answers are lacking, the game world is extremely well put together and provides more than enough clues to provoke thought- everything feels like it has a distinct function and history, even if it's so bizarre and alien that the player may not be able to fully understand it. The complex artistry and symbolism of the environs and mechanisms you interact with give the game surprising depth for its short (6-8 hour) play time. Though the short length isn't a problem, the clunky shooting mechanics can be frustrating. Ammo and health are extremely limited, reloading is slow, and it's almost impossible to take out enemies before they can get in a few hits. You could say this all adds to the mood by taking away the conveniences we've come to take for granted in an FPS game, but in truth it feels unfair and poorly implemented rather than atmospheric. However, this isn't an FPS-focused game by any means, and the shooting feels incidental, almost like another puzzle stretched out across the middle portion just to add some danger and keep you on your toes, being entirely absent at the game's beginning and end. It may ruin the game for some, but I found it tolerable. The puzzles are just about right- not insultingly easy, but not so hard that you're likely to get stuck. They're mostly an excuse to learn about the horrific world as you struggle towards an unknown goal. The journey is scarring and gruesome but definitely memorable and worthwhile.
While the game lacks a little of the charm of New Vegas, it's a great, fun experience with a decent plot and a wide-open world to explore, tons of equipment and enemies, and dozens upon dozens of quests. A weeks-long adventure with lots to do and see, enhanced even further by the ability to build up and customize your home base and other towns- though it's all optional if you'd prefer to just get on with the main story. The Nuka World expansion is particularly fun, letting you explore a post-apocalyptic amusement park. I originally got and played the game on Steam and did it without any mods, but after Fallout: London came out I decided to get it on GOG too so that I wouldn't have to deal with that or any other mods breaking every time Steam forces an update. Thank you to GOG for realizing that many gamers, especially of Bethesda games, are very mod-intensive and may not want every single official update that comes along. Steam treats us like we don't even own the games we bought.
Don't pay full price for this. I got the whole trilogy for free and currently it's on sale for about a dollar, but the normal price of $10 is way too much. It's a pretty basic, generic game where you run around shooting aliens and flipping switches, but I've played other similar low-budget games like Shadowgrounds and this one at least does this basic concept fairly well, enough to where, while I can't recommend buying it, I don't regret spending time playing it and will probably play the other two installments eventually. The aliens are pretty generic brown-colored bugs without much to distinguish them, and pretty much just pop out of the ground to ambush you over and over, but are fast enough and attack in large enough groups to pose a danger. The gameplay is mostly running around a ship which is continually exploding, beep-booping computer screens to try to reactivate ship systems, only to discover that some secondary system that the first system needs is also down and you need to go beep-boop THAT screen first. It gets old quick but the game is only a few levels long and the levels themselves have some cool-looking sci-fi equipment that the creators definitely had fun designing, like the magnetic floor panels that assemble themselves or the part where you have to briefly spacewalk through an exposed and collapsing section of the ship. The story is told through cutscenes with voiced comic-book style panels, which is a nice stylistic touch that helps set the game apart. The weapons are nothing spectacular but satisfying to use, and while sometimes they seem to miss an alien that you're aiming right at, ammo and health are plentiful enough that this doesn't become a problem, while not so plentiful that you can breeze through without paying close attention to them. It's a game that obviously had limitations, but the creators put some work and passion in rather than taking the easiest, laziest path. It's not spectacular or memorable but it's also not a waste.
Not a whole lot has been done to the game- this is a remaster in the true sense of the word, not a remake, so the graphics, while much less blocky, are still primitive and pixelated, items and bodies are still 2D sprites that turn so they're always facing you, textures are still applied in such a way that a wall full of computer monitors looks more like computer monitor-themed wallpaper that might cut off in the middle of a screen if that's where a wall happens to end, etc. The music hasn't changed and the only extras to speak of are a few pieces of concept art and one playable prototype level that's largely made of components from the first actual level arranged slightly differently. The main improvements are that the graphics don't fade into blurry clumps over distance and the controls have been modernized a bit. And that's huge. Being able to clearly see more than 10 feet in front of you makes a big difference in how enjoyable the game is, and having a standard WASD/mouse wheel control scheme makes it much more comfortable to play. It renders the old version of the game completely obsolete, since you're getting almost the exact same experience without anything altered unnecessarily. There is one other big improvement, which is the cutscenes- the ships all look gorgeous while being true to the original, and while the painted-style characters look a little blurry and offputting, they're no worse than the original versions. The music was great from the start, so keeping it the same is no loss. My only complaint is the price, which seems too high for a bare-bones remaster of such an old title. I appreciate the effort put in, but for that price (well, probably slightly more) I'd expect something closer to a full-on remake more along the lines of the System Shock game from the same company. This is a well-done remaster worth buying, but it's still a fairly short, simple game without a ton of content. Buy it when it's on sale.
For a short, free game, it's fine, but the story raises a lot of questions without providing answers or conclusion in any satisfying way. I'm not expecting the game to explain everything to me, but instead of this being an intriguing mystery with a hidden meaning you can gradually uncover through clues, it looks more like a random creepy premise that's disturbing for the sake of being disturbing, without any meaning or answers behind it at all. It ends up feeling a bit empty and hollow, and no matter what ending you get it, it feels directionless and unfinished.
I got this for free during a giveaway, and while it might have been fine back in 1989, it doesn't have much to offer in the modern gaming era. The background music is just bleep-bloops, though I didn't find it as insufferable as other reviewers, and the entire game is just a series of mini-games, which you have to play in order with only one or two chances at each. After each event, judges will award you a cash prize based on your performance and if you make $10,000 by the end, the circus is saved. If not, it gets paved and up goes a cold, joyless apartment building. Unfortunately, the controls for these games are not great, nor do you get enough time to learn them before some weird unexpected factor comes into play. For example, on the first event, the high dive, you just have to aim for the water basin below, but then a clown comes in with a magnet and pulls you off course. How do you resist it? Beats me. Later, you swing on the flying trapeze, and it takes perfect timing to make it to the next one without falling. Nail the timing, and some kind of barrier appears between trapezes. How do you get past it? I don't know, and the game certainly won't tell me. I had to check other reviews just to discover that the game expects you to use the INSERT key to select your number of players on the main menu, as opposed to, say, the space key, or the enter key, or... I don't know, any key that a human being might guess? Eventually you can probably experiment and figure out how to master these games, but they're not really much fun and not worth the effort when there are literally thousands of better games available. On the plus side, the graphics hold up extremely well. Everything is detailed and colorful and has a great lively circus feel. But put this game low on your priorities if you got it for free, and definitely don't pay more than a dollar for it without knowing exactly what you're getting.
