You can play this game. Your children can play this game. Your granny can play this game. You can ALL play this game, together in co-op, and make your own adventure, make your own choices and build your perfect farm. As close to a perfect casual game as you can get - but with far more depth and replayability than 99% of all other casual games. So much content to work through. And it simply just works. Well over 5 years of playing Stardew and not a single crash.
Sure, its not an iD game. But Raven proved once more they know how to make an FPS game. Quake 4 is more action oriented, more of a classical run and gun FPS of the era, than the slower horror focused Doom 3. The wepaons are satisfying to use, the enemies come at you relentlessly and the game is straightforward and fast paced. It's an oldschool FPS there are no immersion breaking cutscenes, there is no love story, theres just you, your weapon, and about ten thousand Strogg in your way. Simples
Difficulty is a factor, sure. They don't make them like they used to. The game is unforgiving and, much like Rites Of War (the turn based 40K game), it doesn't just help to keep your units alive - it's pretty much essential. Reinforcement isn't easy on the road. The game offered something new and fresh, and was very well polished. Truly dark, forboding and gritty environments and settings to fight in. Excellent character models and animations. I really enjoyed it back in the day, despite it's very demanding requirements for the time. Today you can experience it at max settings and probably be close to a 4 figure framerate. What's not to like? Sure it's difficult. But so are all great single player games! I wouldn't have it any other way. If you need help, check Youtube.
MachineGames .... formerlly Starbreeze Studios (Chronicles Of Riddick - Escape From Butcher Bay), are Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake fans. They grew up playing those games. They loved those games. And they show it in the quality they added to the Wolfenstein reboot series. The highpoint of which is Old Blood. It keeps the pacing, the over the top characterisations and humour, and the visceral gunplay of the originals - paying particular homage to Return To Castle Wolfenstein, while adding top tier level/map design and animation. The engine is the true hero here also, Machine get the best out of the silky smooth iD Tech, as they did when they "saved" Doom 2016 from Bethesda. Old Blood, like New Order before it, doesn't do anything new or amazing. It just does it REALLY well, and I'm sure the original iD guys are proud of this reboot. It's not a 20 hour epic, you can finish the entire game in just 5-6 hours. But it doesn't cost the world either.
Like discovering an album from a band you never heard of, which turns out to be one of your favourites of all time. Or picking up a random book and finishing it, amazed at how great it was and keeping it in your collection forever. That is what feeling I got when I found and played Wizards and Warriors. Bought it as a third game in a "3 games for £20" deal at PC World one time, because it looked the most interesting out of a bad sounding bunch, having already secured Deus Ex and Temple of Elemental Evil. So I never played it for years. Then one rainy day when I was sick, I found it still sealed and gave it a try. Turned out to be an absolute quirky gem, with great humour, unique atmosphere and world that made no sense. Relatively difficult, required a few restarts to feel confident I wasn't messing it up .... like one time I kept meaning to return to the villiage to rest and heal, but something always made me press on. Some new looking area, following a trail, etc. I ended up in some swamp with tree houses in an area filled with lizard type mermen who one shot me and there was no escape. Obviously, I'd gone too far. I was poisoned. Out of potions and mana. Nowhere to rest. What an amazing game!
...this game had voice acting. If by some miracle this game had voice acting with talents who could convey the humour, it would be a total masterpiece. As it stands, it's just 90% of a masterpiece. Great game.
I played this amazing game with my daughter when it was first released, although she was far too young to control Ori she constantly asked to see more of the game. Such is the attachment she had with the game, it's story and it's characters. The gameplay is superb. I understand lots of people complained about the difficulty but if a game isn't challenging then it's at risk of being boring and repetitive, who Ori is definitely not. One of our favourite games, with one of the best sound tracks of any game ever. Currently working through it's sequel.
Although completely lacking in the single player department, you can at least play vs AI to practice your skills and learn the map layouts. Best enjoyed in multiplayer, although Quake Live will have far more players as it officially replaced Quake III Arena a long time ago. If you're looking for the hardest, most brutal and highest skillcap FPS deathmatch of all time you have found it.
