I was expecting much and wasn't disappointed. It's definitely a really well made game. The graphics are beautiful and completely fluid on my ancient system, the gameplay is excellent, the voiceovers are perfect and the references to other indie pearls (and the NES Ducktales!) are well placed. I've found everything ingame, but although I did find the two places where you are supposed to wait to get to the secret area and it was obvious that you are supposed to wait, nothing happened and I simply didn't get that you have to wait crouching/bowing down... this I had to look up. The game actually has a replay value, which is something you don't encounter in any game those days. What I didn't like about the game is, that it's so ovbiously an XBox-port, that it hurts. It doesn't have any button mapping and you have to use an XPad emulator again for using other USB gamepads, then it works well, but the button symbols ingame are all from the XBox of course. The second thing I really disliked was the absence of a language selection. If your system is set to German for example, you get English audio and German subs. I hate having two languages I comprehend thrown at me at the same time, it's confusing and distracting as hell, so I renamed the folder with the German translation to something else and did get the English subs automatically. At least this easy trick did work. I'd given it 5 stars without a thought if it would support normal USB gamepads, if there'd be a language option so you wouldn't have to tinker with the files if you want something different than is thrown at you and if it would have a proper Linux port here on GoG. The Linux port from the Humble Bundle didn't work too well on my system.
This game seems to have been made for Oculus Rift, although it didn't exist back then. Definitely something to play again with VR equipment. The design is nice although a bit too repetitive, the setting is something between steampunk, aztec south amerika and sci-fi, the physics puzzles are nicely made, controlling your only tool and weapon indirectly with a remote/hammer is quite a change. The only downsides for me are too many invisible walls and the secrets are hidden a bit too well, I didn't find most of them but surprisingly all 3 in the last level. The fights without any real weapon but your remote controlled "indie trap" are unique and the giant zombie gorilla managed to scare me and was plain awesome. It's rather short (about 4 hours if you take it slow?) so not really worth 10bucks, but I got it from a promo long ago. I had to lower the resolution to 1600x900 in my old machine but then it ran very well with highest details. The survival mode crashed on my system but didn't interest me very much anyway. It's worth the price but not more.
I'm not sure which genre I'd put it into if I had to. It's a puzzly 3D platformer where most of the world can be reshaped by cutting and replacing parts of it in order to give you enough ground and ramps to get wherever you want to (lots of hidden stuff of course). It's a game that uses the 3D environment as a sandbox for cutting pieces out of it to form your own puzzle. There is lots of stuff to find, multiple ways to shape your surroundings in order to get everywhere, nice and not so hardware demanding graphics, overall a very nice game which is worth too much to shove it into every third bundle, although this is what happens.
First I was pissed because I always thought it's one of those generic FPSs and was so hard in comparison, then I realized, that it's a stealth game and began to like it. After a while playing on "normal", I realized, that it would get really hard later on and started again on easy. I actually enjoyed it and the only bad things are a) that you get noticed in the bushes too fast in "normal" and have to lay down on the floor and rob all the time and pray not to get noticed, in easy it was ok b) the end is disappointing. In the fight with Krieger you are locked in a tight room with him, lots of his minions and no real cover at all, which makes most stuff you learned in the game useless and for some reason, ignoring the others and shooting a few rounds in his leg did the trick for whatever reason while grenades to the head didn't do much. oO In the final fight, the humans have a reaction time of about 0.01 seconds, which means, that they fire their rockets around the corner at you the moment they walked past it so you have reload and blindly throw grenades all over the place without any visual contact. The final confrontation afterwards was so short, that I barely noticed it. I tried the Far Cry addon mod and it seemed nice, but crashed all the time on me, maybe it's more stable in Win7, I used WinXP.
I finished the Linux port of this nice little game and had a blast. Sure the whole insta-death thing is frustrating at times, but the fast action loaded gameplay with those ridiculously gory and oldschool visuals got me hooked. I'm still collecting the last masks and letters. The final boss was mean but the moment you realize how to beat him/them he is done really fast and the bonus missions were quite nice. I wished there would be a bigger variety of missions like the ones after the final boss, but I haven't found any mods. The only downside for me is the annoying music, I wished they'd implemented some nice 8 bit chiptunes or metal/hard rock instead of this techno stuff, but whatever. This game gives many nods to one of my favourite games from this era "Dreamweb", I highly recommend this one, although it's way darker/depressing and less action packed. The one thing that it lacks is a level editor (and therefore enabling community support) like the second part has, because although the original missions are great and have a replay value indeed, they aren't that many.
A childhood friend of mine recommended this game to me about 18 years ago (he was Polish and had all the stuff from his cousin) and it was just now that I finally had it and a system to play it. I played through the Linux package from GoG, just changed the controls to WSAD and horizontal mouselook without movement. I usually play those old Doom style games with game engine recreations in HD with HQ-Texture packs, but since the one for this game is still in alpha state, I went the retro route. The low resolution wasn't much of a problem since it still looks good enough in motion. The mission design as well as the weapon balancing is surprisingly good and although just like most games from this time quite hard, it is possible to beat it even if you're not the best gamer. A well designed FPS overall, it just lacks vertical mouselook and the possibility to deactivate auto-aim. Hopefully, someone will finish the game engine recreation someday, so I can play this again in HD widescreen and with proper aiming. I may have to add, that this was the first game ever that gave me motion sickness, maybe because of the combination of low resolution, set of colors and fov. I had to take rests. It hasn't aged too well and isn't for everyone but it's really not bad.
I played the Linux port from GoG which did not support my gamepad for some reason (XBox pad only for a retro game?) but it worked well via QJoypad. This was the first time I played this game so there is no nostalgia involved. Although I often stumble upon very old games that were new to me but great nonetheless, this was not one of such games. The gameplay is very flawed and consists of "leap of faiths" most of the time. If you are just walking you die, then you repeat the whole area again, do something different, go a few steps more and die... rinse and repeat until you know exactly what you have to do every second in the game in order to not have to play the area again. This whole game forces you to either use a walkthrough or create your own walkthrough by dying over and over again. I had no real fun and was glad that is was so short. I prefer Prince of Persia 1 and Blackthorne by far.
For me this is one of the best platformers (maybe the best) and metroidvanias I've ever played. Replacing constant brawl with puzzles is working extremely well here and gives the few boss fights additional tension which is well underlined by the music. It's challenging and I wanted to bite the furniture a lot at some points but because you have unlimited lives you do not only level up your character but also yourself and get more skilled all the time and appreciating the challenges instead of just cursing them. The design is flatout the perfect mix of 2D and 3D tech, it's pretty much flawless, very polished and beautiful. The 2D elements are artfully drawn and the 3D elements look completely like they are part of it, the animations are just like in old animation movies, very lovely made. The Russian / East European setting fits perfectly to this animation style since this kind of animation movies more or less originated there (and not in Japan like most people think). I had to get some help for finding a few scrolls in order to see the extended ending but managed to get most of it myself. I highly recommend this gem, it does not have to be hidden behind Braid or other more popular titles at all and plays in the highest league of indie games imho. I can't imagine playing this game with a keyboard though, you have to be able to use six specific buttons very fast and my Saitek p2600 gamepad did the job really well.
I was glad to see that the Linux port arrived here and picked it up again immediately after having paused it for a while due to not booting up WinXP. I played the lower (normal) difficulty setting but will definitely play the higher one at some point. This is exactly what I want from a remake of an old game, the gameplay is mostly the same with some optional improvements, graphics are HD and beautiful but with a retro option too, music is awesome and the best point for such an old game was, that they added a lower difficulty setting, how I wished that for many games from that era. It was a wonderful experience and will be replayed. :) I'm looking forward to the next episode in 2016.
