Well, it's hard to give anything less than a 5 star review considering the original game is right there, included, and it hardly needs any introduction or justification. One of the best adventure games, an all time classic, great puzzles, great characters, great humor. It's worth buying even if you just immediately hit F10 to switch to the old game and never go back. Reviewing it as a remake, however... well, there are some flaws. First off, the art style is just awful. While you can see they tried to keep things pretty close to the original for the most part, they went in a more cartoonish direction so it would look more similar to the later games in the series, and it doesn't work very well. It's a matter of personal taste, of course, but I found that it sucked a lot of charm out of the game, and some of the effects, like the rippling water or the heat haze under Monkey Island, just looked cheap and unnecessary. On the other hand, you'll want to play through the newer version at least once because the voice acting they added is pretty wonderful. For me, this is the real highlight of the remake. Everyone's voices are on par with any of the later games in the series, and they fit the characters perfectly, from the crotchety old shopkeeper to the timid pirate ghost with the loose skull. Unfortunately, there's no option to use the new voices with the old art- I can understand that maybe it would have been a little incongruous, but the option would have been nice. There are also a few bugs- though I didn't run into any my first time, on the second a squawking parrot got caught in a loop, and the game crashed seemingly at random beneath Monkey Island. Luckily, the remake has added an autosave, so I didn't lose much progress either time. One good feature is the way the game seamlessly transitions from new to old at the touch of a button- this is very convenient, plus it just looks cool, and I'm glad it's become a standard feature in other LucasArts remakes.
Bastion is a fairly simple game made on a budget, but it never feels cheap or half-hearted. The stand-out feature of the game is the way the story is told- though you control The Kid, the mute hero of the game, everything that happens is through the lens of a narrator, telling a story to an (at first) unknown listener. Every time you accomplish a goal, explore an area, find an item or do anything else of note, the narrator comments on it, and bit by bit you gain more information on the world, characters, technology and lore of Bastion. The rough, husky voice is a little over-the-top at first, but soon becomes a familiar companion on your journey, and rewards you for your efforts with new clues, sometimes even foreshadowing events that have yet to occur. It's a novel approach, and the game is worth playing for that experience alone. The rest of the game is pretty solid too. There's a wide variety of upgradeable weapons and passive bonuses you can use in any combination you wish, special moves, and a variety of modifiers you can use to add more challenge to the game- which is quite easy without them, but fairly hard with all of them activated. Almost every area introduces a new weapon, enemy or game mechanic, keeping things fresh all the way to the end. The story is decent if not spectacular, and the New Game Plus mode is a fun way to add some replay value. The soundtrack and narration are both great, and really help immerse you in the game. There are lots of extra things to do, but never so many that it feels like filler or busywork, and most of them give you useful items as a reward. The only downsides are that some of the weapons are just better than others, regardless of upgrades, and the SD-style characters look a little too cartoonish and cute for the grim, post-apocalyptic feel of the story. Many of the enemies are also very similar to each other. But overall, this game does almost everything right and is a joy to play. Highly recommended.
As a huge fan of Adams' books, this game seemed to promise a witty, funny, lively experience onboard an exotic starship filled with colorful characters. While the characters are certainly interesting and they do have several witty, funny lines, the overall experience is stark and kind of depressing- wandering around a desolate, sterile, empty ship, only occasionally chatting with someone and quickly exhausting the 10 or 12 lines of dialogue they have to offer, after which they seem like exactly what they are- hollow, malfunctioning robots. Even the parrot, simultaneously the most obnoxious and funniest character, gets stale pretty quickly. The ship itself is rather ugly and sparse and not very much fun to explore. As for the puzzles, they're a mix- some are fair or even easy, others are virtually impossible without a walkthrough. There are almost no hints given anywhere in the game, few indications of what to do or where to go, and the controls are so bad that for several puzzles I had trouble solving them even while following a guide- for example, there's a part where you have to knock something from a tree with a stick. Any other game, you'd just drag the stick over the tree, and indeed most of THIS game works like that. But for this one puzzle you have to drag the stick and wiggle it around for several seconds, with no indication that anything is happening. Anyone playing the game fairly would assume the stick wasn't the solution and never be able to progress. Another puzzle seemed to glitch out when I provided the solution the first time, forcing me to load an earlier save and do things in a slightly different order, which shouldn't have made a difference. And a puzzle involving a light bulb is so obtuse you wouldn't know it even IS a puzzle right up until you solve it. Some of this, particularly the visual design, is forgivable considering the era the game was released, but the gameplay is atrocious. It's worth a play, but keep a guide handy- you'll need it.
I actually enjoyed this game quite a bit. Yes, it's a so-called walking simulator, yes, there aren't really puzzles, yes, it's mostly wandering around experiencing things. The game's strengths are its deep, creepy atmosphere and its ability to surprise you with a surprisingly wide variety of scares. It's fairly short and some parts fall a bit flat, but for anyone who is able to immerse themselves without distraction and who likes to pick up clues to piece together a story, it's well worth playing. Normally, I'd give it four stars. Unfortunately, the game has a huge flaw: if you get the "loop" ending the first time you beat it, you will be unable to get either of the other two endings- EVER- by continuing from that save file. You need to start a new game, despite very misleading wording that makes it look like you can and should continue. The game does not make this clear, and I spent hours on forums trying to find out why I got the same ending a dozen times over- the developers of the game themselves dropped all kinds of hints as to how to get the endings (which work fine- on a NEW GAME), while neglecting to mention this absolutely vital piece of knowledge. A game centered around the same scares in the same rooms every time with only a few branching paths does not hold up well to a dozen playthroughs, and even three is kind of pushing it. That said, the first playthrough was surprisingly effective, not just in terms of being scary, but in creating a very specific mood and emotion. I see a lot of criticism here, but I can't think of any other recent game that was this effective at getting across subtleties- most of it feels very personal to you as the character, rather than being random spooky stuff. The Inheritance DLC is even better at this, and is essentially the game Among the Sleep, but done better. Both the main game and DLC have a few weak or tedious sequences, but taken as a whole, they're done very well and give an experience you can't get anywhere else.
A game where you play Vader's secret Sith apprentice, hunting down Jedi, using your god-like powers to throw people around like toys and carve them up with dozens of different lightsaber combos? With an interesting plot and characters, customizable lightsaber and upgrade system that rewards you for slaying your foes in as many different ways as possible? It sounds great, but in practice... not so much. A lot of the game really is fun, but the problems become impossible to ignore pretty quickly. The combat system is a bit TOO complex, with too many combos to remember and awkward controls that are tricky to pull off on a keyboard. You'll use maybe half of the possible combos because they're the only ones you can remember and consistently pull off. It doesn't help that the game sometimes straight-up ignores your input, refusing to do what you tell it or attacking to the side of an enemy. The best is when it fails to register your double jump and sends you falling to your death. Also, many enemies knock you over, and you take ages to get up, leaving you vulnerable to hit after hit as they gang up on you, only to knock you down again the second you recover. The boss fights, which should be a fun test of your techniques, are cheap and unfair chores where you'll struggle to land a single hit while battling the camera, which works completely differently for boss fights and only boss fights. Then there are the infamous quick-time events. They're easy, but repetitive and boring. There are maybe 8 rancors in the game, yet every single one has the exact same QTE and death animation. It looks cool the first time, cheap and lazy every time after. The Star Destroyer is the worst, a tedious slog with misleading directions and unresponsive controls that makes you wonder what they could possibly have been thinking. And there are plenty more flaws, from the unskippable cutscenes in a game released in 2008 (seriously?!) to the long loading times to the Emperor's horrible voice acting.
This game is somewhere between Half Life and Duke Nukem, without the charm of either. You play as John Blade, a hulking, dreadlock-festooned, google-wearing, lantern-jawed futurecop who looks like he was designed by Rob Liefeld. Backed up by a stereotypical computer nerd, J.C., as support, you battle against CEO Elexis Sinclaire, a mad scientist dominatrix and probably one of the earliest implementations of jiggle physics. While I have to give the game credit for including such an unusual antagonist, essentially a competent and seductive female Bond villain who eludes and outsmarts the oafish Blade at every turn, it's somewhat ruined by the way she's objectified and treated as a teenager's wet dream, from the scantily-clad posters of her everywhere to the way she fondles herself while watching Blade through a window to the viewscreen where you can spy on her taking a bath. It's possible to have a busty female villain who uses sex appeal as a weapon, but in this case she's more fan service than character. The entire game has this immature, dated attitude. Every bulletin board is filled with lame jokes or references to Army of Darkness, pieces of equipment say "90210 SUX" on them, and everything in general represents the worst side of 90s nerd culture. Duke Nukem got away with a lot of silly stuff because it was over-the-top satire, but one gets the impression that this game really thinks this is all edgy and cool. For the time, the level of interactivity was probably impressive- there are multiple exits to levels, things you do in one can affect another later on, there's an ATV you can ride, and switches and levers galore. It hasn't aged well, however, and most of this feels boring and pointless, not helped by a bug which forces you to use a no-clipping cheat just to continue the game. The combat is fine but the enemies are generic and boring, the plot is shallow, objectives are sometimes confusing, and most importantly, it's just not fun, immersive or interesting.
It's Star Wars, it's RTS, and it's fairly decent! Cons: The ground battles are a bit clumsy and hard to control- walkers get stuck, your guys attack things you don't want them to, and trying to manage everyone's special abilities at once is a nightmare. The story modes for the original Rebel and Empire missions are a bit lackluster (especially for the Rebels), and end sooner than you'd expect. There's a game-breaking bug in Forces of Corruption that makes it impossible to start a mission. I had to start over completely and didn't get it the second time, luckily. The original game is incredibly laggy. I managed to fix it with compatibility settings, but then the sound stuttered. The expansion has no such problems. Pros: The story mode for the expansion makes up for the originals, and is a lot more interesting. It's great fun to blow up planets with the Death Star and cool to see the story diverge from the movies when you play as the Empire. You can auto-complete battles, so the ground combat is optional (if costly), and the space combat is actually fun. The game throws pretty much everything from the Star Wars Expanded Universe in- from the prequels, to Timothy Zahn's Admiral Thrawn, to the Eclipse from the Dark Empire comics, to Dark Force's Dark Troopers and even the TIE Phantoms from Rebel Assault 2, it's pretty much all here, and even a casual fan will find tons of references to games, books and other media outside the main movies. It makes the game world feel much more complex and alive. Overall, it would be maybe a three star game with the bugs and other shortcomings taken into account, but the expansion makes up for a lot of that. Definitely worth a look!
Okay, the title is just a MST3K in-joke (I couldn't help it), but Sang-Froid really is a pretty interesting game, a mixture of creativity and missed potential. The main goal is to survive each night by preparing traps around the game map during the daytime, then scrambling to defend your buildings when night falls by activating those traps, luring the enemies into them, or, failing all that, rushing into combat and dealing with them personally. To be successful you have to think ahead and make a plan, then be sure to keep track of where you need to be and what you need to do once that plan is set in motion, along with some quick thinking in case anything goes wrong. Luckily, the game gives you abundant tools to work with- ziplines for quick travel, a dozen varieties of traps, upgrades to your weapons, booze power-ups for when you need quick healing or a boost to your speed, and the power to change the direction of the wind in order to lure enemies to you or sneak past them. Considering the short length of the game, it's surprising how many different factors and potential strategies they packed in, and a real testament to their skill that it never feels overwhelming or too frustrating. The gameplay and the uniqueness of the 1800s Canadian setting are the strong points, and it's worth buying for those alone, but it does fall flat in a few areas. The voice acting is pretty awful, the graphics are passable but not great, the combat can be repetitive, and the plot is kind of silly and the characters shallow. There were hints of a different game in here, a game about the beauty of nature, the isolation and danger of winter in a remote town, the strength of family and cultural connections, and some interesting Canadian history, but instead it ends up being a cheesy game full of underdeveloped characters and goofy stereotypes. It would have been nice if they went for more atmosphere and depth, but it's still a decent indie title and definitely worth playing at least once.
Amnesia, while fairly recent, has become a classic in the eyes of many, and its popularity is well deserved. The story gradually unfolds through flashbacks and scattered notes, requiring a bit of effort to piece together but never feeling confusing or frustrating, and both the story and atmosphere of the game lightly invoke H.P. Lovecraft while still coming up with something unique and original rather than directly relying on anything from the Cthulhu mythos. While the game does have supernatural elements, it's more about the horror of being alone, confused, helpless and afraid in the dark, as well as the terrible revelations you discover as you piece together your lost memories. You will feel vulnerable, horrified, maybe even exhausted at points, and it's all written and voice-acted in a compelling manner, complemented by the setting of a dank, crumbling old castle under assault by a dark force. The enemies deserve special note, as the game involves no combat- if you get too close to an enemy, they'll tear you apart, and every time you round the corner to see one shambling across the corridor in front of you, your heart is likely to skip a beat as you frantically search for a place to hide. The more you look at the shambling horrors of the castle, the faster your sanity drains and the easier they can find you, so even by the end, you'll only have a vague, terrifying impression of what they even are. IMO, the scariest enemy of all is the one that's fully invisible, and detectable only by splashing footfalls chasing you through the water. The only downside is that the horror diminishes quite a bit in the final act- during the last few revelations, you encounter a disconcertingly friendly character who helps you out, and the final encounter doesn't feel threatening at all- if anything, you feel empowered as you near your revenge with little to stand in your way. This flaw does little to diminish the experience, however, and this one is definitely worth your time.
I hated Hotline Miami at first- I just didn't quite get the gameplay, and was trying to strategically sneak around corners, retreat when spotted, creep up behind people... eventually everything just sort of clicked and I realized the best strategy is to run completely on instinct- rush in there in a blind panic, kill those two guys before they have a chance to fight back, throw your weapon at the third guy, rearm yourself before the next guy gets through the doorway, blast through into the next room before they can react... once I got into the flow of it, I suddenly went from sucking at Hotline Miami to being very, very good at it. I can't think of any other game that rewards this frantic, instinctual style of gameplay where every decision is split-second and every level feels like you're in constant danger and surviving by a combination of luck and reflexes. You'll still die a lot, just on pure chance, but you can try again so quickly that it doesn't become frustrating. It also fits the atmosphere of the game really well- you're almost certainly in some kind of drug-induced hallucinatory haze, and the gritty, bloody, nightmarishly gory rampages you engage in feel like the coked-up frenzy of a scared, violent, vulnerable lunatic rather than the cold, clean, precise work of a professional hitman. I can't think of any major complaints with the game. The gameplay and story complement each other perfectly, it's fun but creepy and disturbing at the same time, and the simple graphics and garish neon colors evoke the steamy 1980s Miami atmosphere very well. Highly recommended.
