While the original Blood was a fairly well polished action romp, packed with fun weapons like the napalm launcher, sawed-off shotgun, dynamite bundle and tesla cannon, this unworthy sequel manages to either cut out or completely ruin the satisfaction value of pretty much all of the above. And what is a shooter without fun guns? A lot like a game of tag with two bad legs per contestant, I imagine. The delightfully fun knockback effects seem to be gone, the corpses fall in weird places like mid-air or half-embedded in concrete, the blood is uglier and if anything less plentiful, the enemies are inadvertently hideous (at this point, anyone who feels that any 3D graphics beat any 2D graphics by default, may wish to stop reading) and so are the levels, besides which they exhibit considerably less ingenuity and industriousness than the original's. Little room details are polished to look good in a screenshot while cavernous spaces of numerous levels are left as empty, poorly shaded cubes. That not enough? Well, you know how in the first game, Caleb would comment on things, swear or taunt as he killed enemies, quote MacBeth and Evil Dead, sing Frank Sinatra tunes under his breath if you left him idle for a bit? Well, he seems to do that stuff a lot less now, if at all... his lines have gotten both fewer and weaker. Finally, last but not least, the game is still hard, but this time it's hard in a stupid way, rather than challenging and occasionally cruel... in the "shoot each guy eight times with the new and worse napalm launcher, run out of ammo and spend even longer trying to kill the rest of them with weaker weapons" way. And that's not even mentioning the bosses. Do yourself a favor and save your money; if you haven't played the first game, try it instead, and if you like it, play it again, perhaps at a higher difficulty setting.
I would very much like to see a game where you create, breed and interact with intelligent living beings in a computer game. Sadly, Creatures does not appear to be that game; a being that is as likely to go drown itself as it is to wander in a rightwards direction is not what I would call intelligent. Or how about starving to death because you haven't dragged the attention-deficit little cuties to a computer, found the concept for "eat" or "pull" and hammered the tiny little "repeat" button about ten times to make sure they've understood how to feed themselves? Perhaps dying of exhaustion because they can't tear themselves away from the excitement of wasting time with one or more other creature, ignoring all needs, urges and input from you? Or learning to call a lift "dada" like they did when they were a baby, because that's what their baby calls it? Perhaps learning to call a cloud "lift" because they looked away a second after you told them to look at the lift so you could teach them its proper name, again. Then there's my personal favorite, where you call their name to have them come to you, and they decide you must mean the cactus they're vacantly staring at! Then, next time you call them, they can't seem to process why you're telling them "cactus"... Even if the issue of intelligence could be sorted, there are other flaws. The first game has a ridiculously small world without much of interest in it, while the second overcompensates with a very large world that few will have the patience to drag their knuckle-dragging fluffballs through; and just when you thought you'd found the path to that neuroscience kit you were aching to try out, you realize it's in the background and your creature is in the foreground. This lack of clear distinguishment between layers of traversible space is a flaw especially prevalent in the second instalment. Even if you did find the neuroscience kit, would you know what to do with it? Judging by the regular science kit, I would say no; the information is all extremely technical and unless you are in fact a scientist (odds are slim I imagine), you probably won't get much more than a confused "henh?" out of most of the analytical tools at your disposal. The game manages to fail at many, many simple things while at the same time trying to incorporate concepts so complex that few players will find them useful. It seems that when you shoot for the moon and miss, you sometimes land in the compost pile rather than the stars... So, in conclusion, the developers' claims that "these are real living beings!" and their insistence that this game allows you to create "artificial life" are found tragically lacking when it comes to real, functional gameplay, AI and general believability. The fact that this game was made is definitely a good thing, as the concept is well worth exploring; it's just a shame that it wasn't made better!
I was suspicious of this title after noting that it was not, in fact, developed by the makers of the original game. My suspicions proved true, as it is not so much an expansion pack as an inordinately amateurish mod of the original game... its story claims to take place after the events of JA2, yet the scenes and dialogue are almost exactly the same, with a few characters inexplocably moved to new locations and deprived of the lines in which they hint at what you actually want to know! The enemies appear to behave much the same, except they now wear blue shirts instead of red ones -many harmless civilians do too, which is needlessly confusing to say the least! Some of the weapon sprites and armor names have been altered to emulate the real world rather than the Jagged Alliance canon, for no apparent reason other than the developers' personal preferences... A few things have been changed, and even if it's been years since you played JA2, or if you haven't played it at all, you will know which they are right away -mercs moved to the AIM alumni section with very poor-quality explanations, the top two mercs suddenly being two german gentlemen with unusually boring backgrounds, rebel leader Miguel's voice actor having been swapped out for a substantially less talented one so that his lines might be modified in just a few places to fit the "new" plot, and left the same as they were in the original game out of sheer laziness in other places, despite the fact that this mod claims to take place after JA2 rather than in some strange parallell universe as one might assume- the list goes on. If you like Jagged Alliance or X-Com, do NOT buy this. Buy JA2, Unfinished Business, JA1 or Deadly Games -Sirtech, at least, know what they're doing!
Original. How many games can claim to be that, these days? But Robinson's Requiem pulls it off... though its peculiar, voxel-like terrain may take some getting used to, along with its complex simulation of your body's health and ailments, I dare say that those who persevere, who take the time to read the manual and the white booklet from the extras section, and who are willing to learn by trial & error how to survive in the game's challenging environments, will find out just how satisfying it can be. On a slightly less praiseworthy note, a walkthrough may be advisable for the game's later sections, which I found rather far-fetched at times. Saving frequently and in different slots is essential as it is easy to die or (sadly) get stuck. Despite these shortcomings, this is an experience unlike others, in an overall very good way. I had some trouble starting the game on my 64-bit Vista, but retrying a few times, or rebooting, will fix this issue. One important character's speech was crackly and unintelligible, but you can restart the game, turn the movies off and read his dialogue in text instead. As for Deus, the game's story seemed strangely disjointed from its gameplay. Its predecessor had quite an appropriate plot, with twists and intricacies as well as a solid basis for the events of the game; Deus on the other hand, sets the stage for some pulse-pounding action and infiltration, but what does it give you instead? Well, for the first half, the game is sort of a Robinson's Requiem Light with many of the more satisfying elements removed; add to this some even more illogical puzzles for which you will almost certainly need a walkthrough to avoid wasting hours and hours of your life running around in circles, wondering what to do. Following this is an excessively protracted underground section wherein the game does pick up some speed and deliver more of what it promised to begin with, but is still marred by confusing and far-fetched gameplay. Many of the weapons are interesting and fun to use, but most of the enemies seem more appropriate to fantasy than sci-fi (dwarves with laserproof platemail, anyone?), and seldom have anything to do with the antagonists mentioned in the story. I experienced a number of bugs and glitches as well, such as polygons being rendered as solid blocks of color instead of with the proper textures, trees and sheds turning invisible, or your campfires teleporting in front of you when you load a game with one still lit. These naturally hurt the immersion one was so privileged to feast on in the first game... All in all, the original game alone is well worth six dollars to anyone who feels intrigued by the prospect of a Robinson Crusoe-inspired game of adaptation and survival. If you end up enjoying Deus as well, then that's an added bonus.
