If you can get it work without stuttering or flickering textures, it looks beautiful (for 2004). Unfortunately, movement is irritating. I got repeatedly caught on stairs and ladders, and vehicles handle atrociously, which you will be driving often. The gun boats are a constant annoyance, as is enemy placement in general. Far Cry, sadly, is at its best when it is a linear, boring corridor shooter. The map's unscalable cliffs and attack helis near water force you to repeatedly U-turn to reach objectives, sapping the whole point of an open world: exploration and freedom. Action isn't better. Unless you obsessively tag every enemy, you will never see anyone outdoors until they are in spitting distance. Forcing you to stare at the blips on your minimap in combat, which destroys the whole idea of immersion. I never used it in Far Cry 3, but Far Cry 1 is unplayable otherwise. It's a fact of life, that jungle sections in games always suck.
The 1.3 update fixes the technical flaws, so I'll bump it up to 5/10. It's tolerable as long as you adjust the AI settings and unlimited saves. Operating as intended, Daikatana is still lame. Hitscan enemies nail you with 100% accuracy the millisecond you open a door, and the early weapons and enemies were poorly designed for the environment. It's not "the worst game ever," at least the PC version isn't. Whoever says that hasn't played many games. A depressing number of games then lacked manual saves. The sadistic level design is way more forgiving and intuitive than Hexen. Unreal, C&C Renegade, Red Faction, and Halo had levels just as inept and frustrating as Daikatana's jungle sequence. Hell, Daikatana can't even claim the title of most atrocious jungle mission in the year 2000, that goes to Hitman.
The QTEs are stupid and movement is awful, but it doesn't have regenerating health or excessive cutscenes. However, the electricity grenades don't work in water and proximity grenades also rarely work, so the extra tools are worthless. There's only one major flaw: it's ridiculously easy (on medium at least) because the AI was downgraded. Their only gimmick is spamming grenades at you or ambushes from teleporting enemies, which they do for last quarter of this game. There's not even any point wasting your time going into bullet-time most of this game. In 90% of encounters, enemies park behind cover, or bunch up running toward you in a line in cramped linear levels, creating convenient chokepoints. A reminder why the original FEAR remains the gold standard of FPS games.
Flatout is better than most racing titles, but demands a lot of grinding. There's some unique side content, no rubber-banding (sorry, Need for Speed & Burnout fans), and the graphics hold up for an ancient AA game. Destruction, soft-body/axle damage, and physics are stellar, even by modern standards. Hell, Forza Horizon 5 and Grid 2 play like Brazilian asset flips in comparison. On the downside, it has a lot of conflicting mechanics and irritating AI tendencies. The nitro system requires you to swap paint with rivals. That's an awful idea as other racers will crash themselves trying to drive you off the road or do a PIT maneuver anytime you are near, so you should always avoid them. You'll need to restart half the races as you will be spun out or T-boned on the first turn almost every single time. Combine the lunatic AI with with cars that oversteer, spin out, or flip no matter your tires when it touches a pebble, and you will become well-acquainted with the "retry race" button. The reset feature places you so far back, takes so long to activate, and often in the direct path of oncoming cars, that it is completely worthless. The optimum strategy is to grind to get the fastest car in your current level as soon as possible and skip all the middling cars that get shoved around like go-karts with bald tires.
Before you downvote this post in a rage, I have to point out I love Xatrix (Gray Matter), United Offensive and Return to Castle Wolfenstein probably two of my favorite games. But while I can beat RtCW on hard difficulty in my sleep, Kingpin is bafflingly difficult, and not in a good way. This is a classic example of a boomer-nostalgia game that is better left in the past. Based on the repugnant recent remaster, we're never going to get the Definitive Edition this game badly needs. Even on easy, enemies eat eight bullets to the face which is a huge problem as you have no ammo or money early game. The level design doesn't help, as it tends to send you backtracking, encouraging you to kill everybody just to be safe and because you always need health packs. No matter how much you sneak, one shot triggers every enemy to converge upon your position in a five-man army, even the ones you walked past earlier. Death sends you back to an auto save, which saps the fun out of the game pretty quickly since it forces you to play in such a boringly-conservative strategy, cheesing enemies around corners. This is no Half Life or Soldier of Fortune. As cool as the open world and interactions with NPCs are, it's squandered. The AI is amazing even now, and makes contemporary games like Deus Ex and Splinter Cell look like garbage, but Kingpin is let down by questionable decisions not limited to game balancing, lack of manual saves, and a redundant song that will even make a Cypress Hill fan mute the audio. RIP, Gray Matter.
It's impressive from a mechanics perspective, and it was way ahead of it's time in many ways, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone but the hardcore FPS junkies. The low-level enemies are absurdly spongey even on medium difficulty and kill you in seconds. There is severe balancing issues, and it doesn't matter what framerate you run it at. For some reason the armored enemies are less tanky than the dudes without helmets I shoot directly in the face. In certain segments you will be hit by enemies you cannot even see. Enemies never miss a shot. As much as I love the attention to small details like the damage modeling and enemies reacting to being hit, the combat is not very fun. The movement also pales in comparison to the GOATs like Half Life, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, or Soldier of Fortune. Here you always seem to be getting caught on the geometry. Night Dive needs to remaster or remake this, because it deserves polishing.
The movement and environmental destruction deserve praise. These core mechanics are by far the best parts of the game. However, once you've played thirty minutes, you've seen literally everything. They repeat the same standoff mini-game a dozen times, and include the cliched bullet-sponge boss fight and turret section you've seen a million times in other games. For a game about insane action, it's surprisingly boring.
Parallel Lines has a unique vibe, but is plagued by crashes, and clumsy in-vehicle aiming & car camera. Enemy AI are challenging, and the environment is littered with destructible objects, which makes chases intense. The handling and damage modeling is admirable. Driving is good, but combat is awful, and later missions are poorly-designed. Though impressive, the soundtrack loops the same couple songs over and over, so you'll get sick of them in a short time, which is a shame. It deserves credit for not being just another San Andreas knock off like Saints Row 2, but the final product is disappointing.
It's just another roguelike. You either like the genre or you don't. Personally, I felt it was a gimmick. You play until you die, then wander back to the place you just were, with no clue where to go. Had they made this a regular, linear game with manual saves, they could made the game way less annoying. But it runs okay, and the mechanics are otherwise smooth.
This crashes constantly, the airborne controls are broken, missions glitch, and audio is badly compressed. That said, even when working as intended, Saint's Row 2 is still astoundingly shoddy. This was outdated and generic by 2008 standards. Don't believe the nostalgia. Textures are low-res. Turn around and traffic disappears. NPCs and debris clip into cars. Fast travel is hidden. Ladders don't work. Vehicles have no weight. Sound effects sound like they came from a free stock library. Vehicle damage modeling is amateurish. The open world is dull and devoid of traffic. The radio is full of public domain songs, cheap lounge music, and polka. Saint's Row 2 feels like a San Andreas fan mod, going so far as to recycle songs from Vice City and San Andreas. Rather than differentiate the series from GTA, the devs doubled down and copy-pasted San Andreas's graffiti collectibles, side missions, and obnoxious turf wars. Saints Row's attempt to replicate GTA's humor and satirical radio stations is especially embarrassing. The real problem is that the main gimmick--the gang-simulation mechanic--is shallow and adds little to gameplay. Character customization isn't enough to carry a game. Driving is arcadey, AI is dumb, and combat is mediocre. There's no feature here that hasn't been done better elsewhere. Play GTA IV, Saint Row 3, Mafia: Definitive Edition, or Sleeping Dogs instead if you want a polished open-world crime game.
