Din's Curse feels like a game made in 1999 - a real string to it's bow. Soldak's ARPG offering possesses a charm or more explicitly a quaintness that is sorely lacking from many modern PC games and I'm including a good number of Indies in that comment. The presentation is adequate, graphically the game certainly won't win any awards and the palette is a litte garish in places but this speaks more to the "hand-made" nature of the title rather than the soulless, corporatised slop the AAA industry all too frequently serves up. It'll definitely be an acquired taste but I find the UI to be fairly clean and intuitive, the sound design is occasionally pleasant on the ears (the Dev used the perfect "Quest Completed" sound) but what really impresses (and at times bewilders) are the unique mechanics. This isn't an ARPG in the style of Grim Dawn/POE/Diablo/Last Epoch etc, there are several ancillary mechanics (which give a sense of scope few videogames have conveyed) which all of the aforementioned titles lack that really make DC stand out. Full review when I've spent more time with the game but thus far, yeah it's pretty damn good.
A lot of people moaning about DD's graphics, the Devs were hindered by the console infrastructure of the time, DD arrived late in the console life-cycle and to say the hardware was straining under the game's weight is an understatement. Given that the Developers are Japanese the Console market is far larger than the PC in that particular territory so it's understandable why it was developed with mass appeal in mind. Regardless, we got a clunky (control-wise) PC port with few upgrades. You don't buy DD for it's graphics or even it's story necessarily, it's more for the experience. This isn't a game designed to be convenient (see the fast travel method for example) but to my mind that's one of the game's great strengths. The combat, vocation system and environmental traversal are all sublime IMO. I personally love the gear system too. The intricacies of the merchants and some of the more obtuse dialogue delivered by the NPCs (not in the bland, meandering Dark Souls manner but more through implication) is genuinely interesting. It's just a shame the story is so underdeveloped. This is a Japanese interpretation of Western fantasy and that's what makes it fascinating, some of the little quirks are just hilariously baffling (aught aught aught aught). The Pawn system is just brilliant (it's broken ATM, online issues) but there are offline Pawns which can be used which essentially provide the gist of the Developer's intention. I just hope that the forthcoming sequel is worthy of the name, it certainly looks promising. On a side note, I suspect those who dislike the game are either Skyrim/Souls-fanboys or those who want a shiny otherwise hollow game. DD is a flawed masterpiece and is deserving of it's revered status.
Exhumed! Exhumed! AKA Powerslave. I once acquired the big box US release for a measly pound but by that time I'd moved on to the Dreamcast and wasn't interested. I gave said box away years ago and this game had disappeared into my memory hole of unplayed games. Fast forward to 2020 and all those memories of desperately wanting this on the Sega Saturn came flooding back! Having read a few reviews and downloading a source port (Build GDX), I can only report that I love this game! It's little more than in a Doom-Clone using the Build Engine but the aesthetic and soundtrack carry this game a long way. 7hrs in and I'm deeply in love.
If,like me, you're an avid fan of HK action cinema (specifically during it's golden era, 1966 - 1994) then you will certainly hold Mr Woo in extremely high regard. Hand of Death, Last Hurrah for Chivalry, Heroes Shed No Tears, A Better Tomorrow 1 & 2, Just Heroes, The Killer, Bullet In The Head and of course, Hard Boiled are films I've enjoyed immensely. I'd particularly recommend the first two flicks as they're pretty obscure albeit they're not the gun-fu epics with which John will forever be associated. So here we have Stranglehold, a so called "sequel" to Hard Boiled. This is a sequel in the true HK tradition, one which is only very loosely connected to the bullet filled classic - namely in the shape of central protagonist Tequila - played by the truly great, Chow Yun Fat. What makes John Woo films so remarkable is his superb balancing of melodrama, character development and intense, beautifully choreographed, shot and edited action sequences. Well, Stranglehold is definitely a mixed bag - the plot is hardly worth mentioning, the characters bland in the extreme save for the presence of the aforementioned Chow Ynn Fat. Chow is unfortunately encumbered by dull, predictable PG-13 rated dialogue, not to mention the fact that the game's dialogue is in English - excluding some Cantonese cries in the background. The game's saving grace is it's action and it is this aspect which will see you through to the end. Repetitive in the extreme, it is the frenetically paced destruction which truly delights. Having influenced Remedy's bullet filled neo-noir Max Payne, it's here we come full circle - bullet time has come home, in the form of Tequila Time. Mechnically the game does not innovate, structurally the game does not impress but your enjoyment greatly exceeds the sum of the title's constituent parts. All in all Stranglehold is a solid weekend's entertainment.
A short but oh-so-sweet journey of global dismemberment. This is politics 'murican style.
