This is a solid game for the low price (plus it's often on sale), but it's only good for a few runs before it gets a little stale. The gameplay and art style just aren't appealing enough to sustain it for more than a few hours, and certainly not the hundreds of hours all the unlockable characters and achievements would seem to indicate. The game is a fusion of first person shooter and roguelike, with randomized rooms, items and enemies. It's a genre that you don't see very often (Hypergun is another title that mixed these two, though Ziggurat does it better), and the fantasy theme rather than sci-fi or action makes it all the more unusual. Unfortunately, the art style is a bit bulky and cartoony, bringing to mind the exaggerated blockiness of World of Warcraft, and while there's a decent variety of enemies and items, there's not a ton of motivation to replay it once you've managed to beat it once. Recommended for a fun diversion, but if you like games with an involving plot, beautiful environments or a sense of steady progress, it's probably not something you'll come back to very often.
This game did an extremely good job of capturing the gloomy, post-apocalyptic feel of the future scenes in the first two Terminator movies and perfectly balancing stealth, combat, story and skills/item management. It's a lot of fun exploring every level, avoiding murderous machine patrols and scavenging for items and experience, and despite being fairly easy even on the higher difficulty settings, you never lose the feeling of having to be vigilant in the face of overwhelming odds. The game world really does feel like it's been utterly conquered by the enemy, and you and all your allies constantly feel vulnerable. The Terminators themselves lose a bit of their menace once you get weapons capable of dealing with them, and the simplistic AI could definitely have been made more effective and frightening, but it stays immersive and exciting right through the climax, which makes very effective use of the iconic film score. There are a few flaws- the plot twist is predictable, there are a few too many reused assets (every ruin seems to be either a convenience store, shoe store or retro burger bistro and apparently the only food the survivors eat are endless boxes of maraschino cherries- the game even pokes fun at this at one point), the characters are a little stiff, and there aren't really any traces of the year 1997, when Judgment Day supposedly happened, leaving everything either a bit generic and timeless or a little too modern-feeling (for example, a video rental store has shelves with what appear to be rental games in DVD-style cases, rather than the Playstation 1-era CD jewel cases that would have been popular at the time... then again, the very existence of a video rental store is retro, I suppose). None of it ruins the gameplay experience. The Infiltrator Mode, which allows you to play as a Terminator, is short but a lot of fun and feels very faithful to the films- I'd love to see a similar expansion that lets you travel back in time! Highly recommended.
I'm not seeing much to like here. The animation is hideous (not because of the age, just the style), the puzzles are moon logic, there's almost no dialogue, and essentially no plot. Random stuff just happens, resulting in a kind-of puzzle for you to solve, mostly through trial and error. I got stuck on a puzzle and found that the hint didn't help, so I turned to the video solution that outright shows you what to do. Before it even got to the part of the puzzle I was stuck on, the brothers in the video just stopped solving the puzzle and stood there for about three solid minutes, doing nothing, as though the person who was recording the video had forgotten about it and decided to go take a shower or something. Either that or the solution was so obtuse that the developers themselves couldn't remember what to do. If the game were more engaging or appealing I might spend a little more time trying to figure it out, but it hardly seems worth the effort.
I had, for some reason, bought this game with the impression that it was a Lovecraftian horror title. It turned out not to be a cosmic horror game, but an absolutely fantastic sci-fi title with some very creepy moments. Like the best sci-fi, it uses its futuristic setting to explore deep questions about humanity and existence, and I think this might just be the most masterful accomplishment I've ever seen of that purpose in a video game. The storytelling is so immersive that you almost forget you're playing a game- it felt like I was simply living the experience. The characters are absolutely believable and well-acted, the plot is interesting and has unexpected depth, the stealth sequences are genuinely scary but not frustratingly difficult, and there are seldom easy answers to the choices the game throws at you. I would normally write much more when reviewing a game, but I don't want to give anything away- just get this and play it, you won't be sorry. It's an unforgettable experience.
Hypergun is almost eerily devoid of fans or discussion- there are no guides, no cheat codes, almost no forums, even here on GOG the number of people who have left a review of Hypergun can be counted on one hand (and that's including the review I'm writing right now). It's like the game was released and nobody noticed. Hypergun is an FPS roguelike, with the premise that you're an intern at a gun company using computer simulations to invent the perfect gun to fight off an alien invasion. These guns are made by slapping together random and wacky attachments onto a basic gun frame and seeing if the combinations work. There's a little bit of strategy involved (you can swap out gun parts if you find a new one for the same slot), but for the most part it's complete luck whether you get a decent gun or not. The levels are simple but have a consistent neon-rainbow-chrome look to them, the music is energizing, and the enemies, while there are only a handful of different types, each present a unique challenge. Unfortunately, the game is extremely difficult and unbalanced. There are numerous bugs (a particularly annoying one makes your gun invisible), the game is almost unwinnable (I played it over 100 times and only got to the final level once, where I immediately died in the first room because I got stuck on the terrain in a corner), and the enemy drops of "bits" (which you can use to buy items) and health packs are too stingy. Enemies can also drop "hypercoins" which you can use to buy attachments or character classes and abilities outside the sim, but even after you've bought everything they still drop, now completely useless- couldn't they reward you for all that effort by making them bits instead? There's also a gallery that shows all the attachments you've found, but completing it would take far more time than anyone would ever invest in a game this basic. The game is briefly fun, but without more content and a fair chance of actually finishing it, it feels hollow.
I never played these sorts of games back in their heyday (didn't have the computer for it), but I loved this grid-based dungeon crawl. The atmosphere of isolation and mystery is thick from the first moment, and the environment, items and characters feel like something from an old school Dungeons and Dragons session. The combat and puzzles are hard- but usually in a good way. This isn't a game that underestimates your intelligence and dumbs things down. It rewards exploration, diligence and analysis, and there are secrets hidden upon secrets everywhere you look. It's a lot of fun going from literally naked and empty-handed to armed to the teeth and in possession of powerful magic items, knowing that your own ingenuity made it possible. There's also an option to turn the automap off and make your own map with graph paper, if you want the game to be even harder. The difficulty can be a drawback sometimes, though- a few of the puzzles require you to be constantly moving, yet the solutions involve switches that are off to your sides, essentially invisible while you're frantically trying to avoid falling down a pit or getting teleported away. A couple don't give you any clues and seem virtually impossible without a walkthrough (one required me to take things off shelves in three places throughout the level- I found the items, but I couldn't use one so naturally I put it back on the shelf. How was I supposed to figure that one out?) It's also easy to accidentally make a party that just plains sucks by choosing the wrong skills or attributes, and while it may be obvious to veterans of these games, I didn't realize that I was supposed to dance around enemies until almost halfway into the game. A single hint about such an essential maneuver would have been nice. And lastly, the final boss... let's be honest, it's rather an anticlimax. Despite these flaws I enjoyed the game immensely, and I'm excited to try the sequel. Highly recommended!
As others have pointed out, this is in no way a simulator game. You'll learn about as much about SCUBA diving playing this as you would about flying a space shuttle from playing X-Wing. This is a game where you swim around pretty environments collecting seashells and treasure, your oxygen supply serves as a combined timer and health meter, and you have a weird ray gun to scare away sharks and dissolve fishing nets. About the only educational parts are the factoids on the loading screens and a few comments about Egypt and the Old West in the DLC (which I do recommend getting if you like the base game). Once you've gotten past the misleading title and know what you're actually getting, it's a fairly fun game. There's an impressive variety of environments, from a lush lagoon to pirate wrecks, polluted reefs where you pick up litter instead of treasure, an icy arctic level, underwater ruins, and more. This helps alleviate the frustration you may feel from trying to find every last bit of treasure in each level- the radar you use to help locate items has a very short range, and it can be tedious trying to track down the one item you're missing for 100% completion. Of course, finding everything isn't mandatory- you can easily move forward and even get all the upgrades to your equipment early on, and after that finding treasure only helps with getting achievements. I think English wasn't the first language of the game's creators, as some of the dialogue sounds like it was generated by an internet chatbot- this gives Professor Adams, your business partner, a vaguely sinister, inhuman quality that I actually found a bit endearing. The ending of the base game is disappointing, but the ending of the DLC is a fun homage that more than makes up for it. If you're looking for a realistic sim game as the title would imply, avoid this. If you're looking for an epic underwater adventure game, get Subnautica. But for something more casual with some pretty scenery, this fits the bill.
I'm glad I finally got to play this after so many years, but it was definitely a flawed entry in the series. First and worst is the game-crashing bug that's triggered by, of all things, having wireless headphones connected. This is just bizarre and it took a lot of internet searching to find out what was going on. I had to play the whole game using earbuds, and even then it crashed once for no apparent reason. The puzzles are really mixed- some are what you'd expect from a Myst game, are fun to figure out and give you a real sense of accomplishment when you complete them. Others are just tedious and frustrating, like the monkey-shuffling one or the final two, and still others verge on pixel-hunting, forcing you to find tiny switches, hidden notes or chunks of rock that are hard to make out even if you're looking right at them. I had to use a guide a few times, and I never regretted it because the puzzles I was struggling with were genuinely not fun and solving them felt like a colossal waste of time. The control scheme, where you have to jerk around the mouse to do things like opening doors or flipping pages, is also a bit awkward. The ability to take photos and see flashbacks was useful, however. The story is fine for the most part, but the acting is rather forced, and the entire world of Serenia seems... off, somehow. The puzzles there are of lower quality, and while interacting with the people there brings a bit more life to the usually solitary, silent Myst experience, the presence of a group of mystical nuns and having to go on dream quests felt like a weird fit, as though it had been grafted on from a completely different game. The culmination of this is an out-of-nowhere new age music video sequence that, while certainly surprising and different, doesn't really feel like part of a Myst game. It's probably worth playing for fans of the series, but be prepared for a different experience and don't expect a masterpiece this time around.
Warcraft II is an indisputable classic. Later games would build upon it, adding more in-game dialog, factions, upgrade systems, unit abilities and variety in gameplay, but unlike the first Warcraft, Tides of Darkness was already a compelling and enjoyable game and every Blizzard RTS afterwards preserved its best traits as their core. It fixes the serious flaws of the first game (terrible controls, bad art, very limited units and structures, lack of variety) in one fell swoop and even goes a step further by adding additional enhancements like naval combat, air units, amusing character voices, a more compelling story, and a variety of terrain and weather. The result is a game that's easy to learn, fun to play, challenging to master, and satisfying for both single player or multiplayer. The only con I can think of is that a lot of the story is still in the manual rather than the game, but unlike the first one, everything still holds together reasonably well with what you're given, even if some of the names involved might require a bit of research, and it's a terribly minor flaw in a gem of a game. If you have any interest in RTS games at all, this is the perfect place to start.
Pros: The Halloween atmosphere is the best thing about this game- wandering a neighborhood, knocking on doors for candy, bobbing for apples, assembling costumes out of cardboard boxes, tin foil and bits of spare clothing, while the fall leaves blow past and jack-o-lanterns shed their warm glow- it captures some of the fun of the holiday, and definitely feels appropriately festive. Collecting the Garbage Pail Kids-esque creepy candy cards is also fun and thematically perfect for a game featuring kids and Halloween. My favorite is the transformation that happens during battles- your character is just a child wearing an adorably cheap thrown-together costume, but as soon as combat begins they become the idealized, perfect version of the character that costume represents, and look appropriately badass and scary as a result. It's an awesome depiction of a kid's imagination at work. The game's short length makes up for a few of its flaws, and enhances the feeling that everything is happening in one Halloween night. The DLC wears out its welcome a little, but it's worth playing to see the new costumes. Cons: The simplistic combat involves very little strategy other than your choice of battle stamps beforehand- these stamps give you extra abilities or bonuses, one per character, and there are a lot to choose from, but some are clearly superior to others and if you explore thoroughly, combat is fairly simple anyway. The quests and plot are simple and repetitive- essentially the same ones are repeated in every area with slight variation, if any. All that changes is the setting and enemies. There's not a lot to actually do in this game, other than some exploring, and the DLC is just more of the same. The graphics are cute but sometimes glitchy, with things flickering or characters' arms phasing through their costumes.
