The easiest way to describe this game is as a more action-oriented sci-fi version of Myst, with less emphasis on puzzles and more on plot and danger. As agent Blackwood, an apparent lazy slacker who somehow has the most important job in the universe, you must stop a xenophobic terrorist from altering history to prevent humanity from joining an intergalactic alliance with a peaceful alien race. The stakes are refreshingly idealistic and the futuristic environment is fun to explore and has a lot of fun Star Trek-ish devices to show you what a utopia the human race has achieved and provide some basic backstory. There are a lot of ways to die in this game, but most of them require you to ignore an obvious warning or be blundering around while not paying attention, and there's an option to continue right before you made your mistake. The exception would be the driving action sequences, where you have to quickly choose left or right and it's often pure luck whether your guess was correct, because there's not always any indication. Luckily, there's no way to get actually stuck, as all the deaths are reversible and the energy timer that counts down throughout the game refills whenever you jump to a different era. The controls are certainly clunky and slow by modern standards but better than most similar games of that time, and with a couple exceptions the puzzles are fair and not impossible to figure out on your own, as well as not requiring any pixel-hunting. All of the characters have personality and give the game a fun, lively atmosphere. The acting is amateur but charming- a lot of the characters, especially the scientists, are super cheesy and exaggerated, but in a way that's enjoyable without crossing over into a full-on parody, and the villains play it completely straight, preserving the sense of menace. I haven't tried the original version to compare, but Pegasus Prime was definitely worth playing. Grab it when it's on sale sometime!
The first Shadowgrounds was underwhelming, but serviceable. This one is much the same, with similar controls. The voice acting is much better, you play as three different characters now and they have a little more personality (though not as much as pretty much any mainstream video game character), and everything looks low-budget, but slightly less so than the original. The game is less derivative than the first one, without as many things that are obviously directly lifted from Robocop and Aliens, but everything has a generic, uninteresting flavor. We never see more than three or four types of enemies, we never find out anything interesting about them, there's exactly ONE boss fight near the beginning, and the gameplay is bland and without any of the strategy the first game allowed for. They managed to make it prettier, but even more shallow than the first one. If you buy it, expect an experience similar to what you'd get from a mobile phone game. Even if you liked the first one you'll probably be a little disappointed with this sequel.
As much as I love viciously killing Nazis by chopping them into pieces or tearing out their throats with my teeth, this game was a bit of a slog to get through. The levels are large and repetitive, the combat is either too easy or too hard depending on the enemy, there are few checkpoints, and the controls are a little clunky. Probably the worst part is that the characters and plot are bare-bones. There are a lot of colorful characters that could have been filled out a bit more, but instead pretty much all we learn is that Rayne is a vampire working for a government agency of some kind, she has another vampire who is a mentor, and Nazis are bad and need to be stopped. It's just not that interesting and the combat gets stale fairly quickly. Rayne does have a few quips as she kills the baddies that give her a hint of personality, but the game seems more interested in jiggle physics (which make the characters' breasts wildly wobble and sway when they're first placed into a scene, even if they're standing still!) than lending any depth to the game.
The combat gameplay is a bit like XCOM but slightly simpler. However, there are enough options and abilities to keep things interesting and to build a specialized character that will be very different depending on the abilities you give them. The game seems a bit low budget, with a few typos (but good writing) and a slightly clunky interface that seems to lack polish- for example, the items you can pick up or interact with have icons that seem to show up unreliably, it's very difficult to move to a space that's directly behind another character because the spot to select it is virtually unclickable, and at high resolutions the map and text are tiny and a bit hard to read, even with the option to offset this clicked in settings. There were also some annoying things, like being unable to use a decker in your party to unlock doors because the game only cares what the player character's skills are in most instances. The graphics are a little old fashioned but do the job well, and the story is fun and lets the player be expressive with their choices without being stereotypically pure good or evil. The world is lightly atmospheric, hinting at more but being a bit limited in how much some aspects are explored. It was definitely fun and distinctive to be able to jack into cyberspace and infiltrate the classic 80s sci-fi concept of a VR world. The characters are likeable, though it's a bit of a shame to have to hire mostly random mercs for runs rather than having a consistent party to develop and explore. The different classes and choices add a bit of replay value, and the difficulty seemed about right- I chose an Adept, apparently considered one of the worst classes, and was able to get through the entire game intact, though there were a few close calls. While not an amazing gem, the game was decent and worth playing if you'd like a couple days of cyberpunk escapism.
I've never played Dark Souls, so I can't make the obvious comparisons, but this is definitely a sadistic and challenging game where you will die a LOT, and not always fairly. Enemies will ambush you or have attacks that can instantly kill you, and a fall from any of the many, many platforming sections is certain death 95% of the time (it's possible to just take damage, but this almost never happens). Death carries real consequences too, as you'll be sent back to the last checkpoint and lose all of your unspent experience- which can be regained if you manage to pick it up from where you lost it, but if you die on the way it's gone for good, and the enemies respawn. Difficulty aside, the game definitely has issues- the jumping is nowhere NEAR as responsive as it should be, nor is the heal button, sounds or music will often cut out and leave awkward silence, the plot is extremely sparse with almost no characters to speak of, and there were some questionable choices made, such as having lots of items that are mostly cosmetic in a game where equipment stats are critical, adjusting difficulty levels via consumable items, or, infuriatingly, not having a pause function. I can understand wanting to keep the player on their toes, but forcing them to die if they have to pick up a phone call or something is just stupid. If this all makes the game sound terrible... surprisingly, it's not! The levels are gloriously complicated, fun to explore and packed with secrets, the monsters are unique and frightening (especially the Thespians, which I can only describe as vile walking tumors with built-in Shakespearean ruffles), the weapons are varied and have powers to unlock, and the challenge gradually becomes less brutally impossible as you gather levels and items and develop a combat style. The satisfaction of exploration, strategy and hard-fought victory outweigh the frustration. I got this one as a free giveaway, but I'd honestly say it's worth picking up on sale, at the least!
While Star Trek and first person shooter seem like an odd mix, this game pulls it off quite well, keeping the general feel of Starfleet trying to be upstanding, moral and diplomatic while still plausibly putting you in situations where vaporizing dozens of foes is the only reasonable solution. Your appreciation of the game will probably be a lot higher if you're a Star Trek fan, but you don't necessarily need to be into Voyager specifically- I've only seen a couple episodes of that show and it didn't hurt my experience at all. The graphics are dated but not jarringly so, looking mostly very good with the exception of characters' faces, which are a bit blocky and change expression by instantly shifting textures. The variety of weapons is a lot of fun, and ammo is plentiful enough that you can use even the heavy weapons on a regular basis. The plot is simple but the game tries its best to feel like an actual episode of the show, complete with opening credits and authentic voice acting from all of the main cast (even Jeri Ryan as 7 of 9, as the expansion pack is included). Each level is very distinct and has a unique layout, giving the game a lot of variety, with the highlight being the scavenger base that's a bunch of starships welded together and has four distinct sections for four different factions sharing a tenuous alliance. The attention to detail in this section is amazing and it's a blast to play. The final level, unfortunately, is rather drab and repetitive, and feels rushed. The base also features an attempt at stealth mechanics, but it's a bit wonky and difficult to do when crouching requires constantly holding down a key- and even if you succeed, at a certain point the enemies are magically aware of you now and the stealth objective goes away. The expansion pack lets you explore Voyager searching for hidden items, reading lore text and playing on the holodeck, and is a fun diversion for a couple hours. Not perfect, but a very solid, recommended game!
I wasn't sure what to expect from this game, but what I got was a hybrid text adventure/machinery-clicking puzzle game with a mildly spooky atmosphere. Nothing in the game is really that scary, at best giving a sort of creepy feeling during a couple parts, but neither showing enough to frighten or achieving a deep enough atmosphere to cause fear of the unknown. The puzzles are fairly easy and simple, often involving just following instructions and doing the most obvious actions possible during the text adventure portions. This would be acceptable if the game told a really compelling story, but once you find out what's really going on, it's a fairly simple tale of the sort that's been done many times before. The graphics are fine, but the environments are extremely limited (sometimes just a single room) and a bit cheap-looking. The voice acting is great and I have no complaints there, and the writing is good too... it had several typos in some parts, but some of them were obviously deliberate and others might also have been. All in all, it's slightly enjoyable but never really satisfies, and it's very short- going through the whole game very thoroughly and carefully, taking my time, it still clocked in at under three hours. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a bad experience, but it was one that can be safely skipped without missing much.
This is the first Telltale game I've played that wasn't a point-and-click adventure like their Sam and Max or Monkey Island titles, and I'd heard bad things about these later projects, assuming they were lazy cash-ins to make a few quick dollars. This game has really turned that idea around. The gameplay may be simple, consisting of just dialog choices and quicktime events, but it does the absolute most it can within that framework, delivering a strong, well-written story, detailed environments and excellent voice acting. Gone is the janky, often glitchy cheap look of the earlier Telltale games- this one looks immersive and impressive despite what are a few obvious flat backdrops, and the characters are expressive and almost never bugged. The choices you make have about as much impact as they realistically can in a game, ranging from minor dialog changes or different actions in combat to affecting the way characters interact with you, or even opening up alternate gameplay routes in the final two chapters. Best of all is the well-crafted take on the Batman universe, where Bruce Wayne plays an active part and is just as important, if not moreso, than Batman. This duality is reflected in the Batmobile, which, for the first time I'm aware of, is one and the same as Bruce Wayne's personal sports car, and in several areas where you choose whether to face a problem with Batman's fists or Bruce's diplomacy. This isn't the almost superhuman figure from the Arkham games, but a much more vulnerable and fallible Batman, early in his crimefighting career, in a more realistic (but still satisfyingly comic bookish) universe. My one complaint would be that this version of the Joker isn't nearly as disturbing or frightening as the game seems to think he is, relying on our familiarity with the character to give him menace rather than his actions- but hopefully this will be fixed in the sequel, where it seems he plays a more active role.
This is a great game for fans of the series, and contains the same style of humor, weirdness and retro nostalgia that they would expect from the website. For people who aren't fans of the series, I imagine some of it will seem rather strange and confusing, but still amusing enough to encourage them to check out the source material. The graphics and environments are limited, but just good enough to immerse you in the Homestar Runner universe and make it feel like you're playing an episode of the cartoon. This is from back in the days when Telltale games contained actual gameplay and puzzles, so you can expect an experience similar to their Sam and Max or Monkey Island titles. The puzzles aren't very difficult, but achieving 100% completion (as opposed to just finishing the game) can be- some of the things the game expects you to figure out are pretty insane, like using random items on random things, using the snapshot feature, normally only used to take screenshots, to find items, using cheat codes or tricks to get the high score on video games, etc., and a lot of it can only be done at certain times, forcing you to completely restart the game if you missed it and want 100%. The very worst one was a line of dialogue that Strong Bad has to deliver via the hint system 75% of the way through episode 3, which is difficult to trigger even if you're specifically looking for it. Punishing the player for NOT using the hint system is just abysmal game design and the game loses a star purely for that. The episodic nature of the series allows for some variety and gives each chapter a strong theme, while maintaining a slight continuity. Each chapter also features a playable video game, some better than others, that offers additional challenge and replay value. While a bit dated, this game is a must for fans of the series, and a strong recommendation for point-and-click fans in general.
I've never played any of the other Anno games, and got this one as a free gift. I enjoyed it for the first few levels, until combat became more of a factor and it began to feel like a bit of a burden. It's fun building up your cities, creating supply routes and making sure your resources are getting where they need to. I found it challenging but not frustrating. If you make a mistake, there's usually a chance to correct things before it gets out of hand, and the large, open maps mean you can spend time exploring if you're waiting for a process to complete or more resources to be harvested. It gets rapidly more complicated with each level, but does a decent job of walking you through the additions so you understand how everything works without needing to consult a manual. The plot isn't super deep but it keeps things moving, and the art style is detailed and appealing- the deliberately goofy and exaggerated smiles of absolute bliss on your happy citizens repeatedly cracked me up, too. I eventually lost interest and didn't finish the game because every level took many, many, many hours. The game has been described as addictive but I think it would be more accurate to say that it's just built in such a way that it demands large amounts of time to make progress. There are just so many factors to balance, problems to solve and resources to pursue that you get lost in the details and when you look up, 8 hours have passed as if by magic. If you have enough free time to devote weeks of your life to playing Anno 1404, this is fine and possibly even desirable, but I found it increasingly hard to justify this monopolization of my limited time when I could be playing and finishing multiple other, faster-paced games from my backlog. Still, it's a fun and decent game if you have the time for it and I recommend it, especially for people who are already fans of the series.
