On the GOG community forums, you will hear a lot about this game. And how addictive and brilliant it is. Happy to say, it's pretty much true! The Guild is a strategy game, where you start a buisness in the 1400s based on your family ancestry of choosing. There is a decent number of business types to experiment with, many have their own qwirks and uniqueness as well. At first, you can only trade and make small cheap goods, over time, more expensive products can be made, until your business is doing well enough and has become complicated enough for you to automate (at the hands of a 'master', which will do so under set parameters). As your cash builds, you can build more buildings, venture into new types of businesses and slowly own much of the town. Each year, you receive a few action points, these can be put to use for the other part of the game. Aside from the business aspect, you can also rise in rank with in the town, taking on various political offices, with various benefits. Sabotage competitors, engage in blackmail, train your own abilities and more. To ensure that your legacy lives on, you'll need a wife/husband & have children who will inherit and eventually take over everything. While their stats are low, and need retraining, and they don't gain your political spot, they do carry your reputation and title, and all resources/buildings. After several generations, they may even own their own castle outside the town. It's all kind of a mixed simulation, with a good level of depth and planning involved. So much more than can be given in a simple review. But the game is highly addictive, free play or mission based, it sucks up free hours, but rarely, if ever, gets dull.
I was quite surprised at this game. It gave me more than I was expecting, and turned out to be surprisingly addictive. Rather than two or three sides, There is a huge number of races and classes to play, the combination of which can have a great effect on how you play the game. It is mostly a single campaign, but instead of having missions assigned to you, you can choose where to go and what to do on a main map. The overall main quest is the same, but you can build up your charact before you head off on the next main mission. The game initially is more of a pure RTS game. Build your base, seek out an item and so on. As hinted by the RPGness your main hero has stats, a skill set, inventory, spells and so on. After each mission, you can choose a selection of troops to take with you, these also get stronger the longer they survive. Because of all the race&class combinations: Your hero can be a mighty warrior, a magic user, focused on construction or defense, a support unit for strong troop units or a jack of all trades. Depending on where you focus your skill and attribute points, the early game can be either hard or easy. Base building, works on a tier level. Some buildings must be constructed after others. Nearly all of them can be upgraded in some way. Only buildings of the same race as the player can be captured, with a couple of exceptions. Both the hero and worker units can build them, but repairing is limited to the building itself, and there IS a delay after each build before you can do so again, so make the choice carefully. You don't want to be hit while the repair option is on a timedelay disable. There is a big variety though, most races have unique buildings, and building types/methods of some form. Along with the various skills, you can grab weapons, armour and items throughout missions. Either at the death of enemy heroes, or purchased at various shops; both in missions and from the main map. There's even set kits as well, and bonus items from special quests that give some increased ability. What becomes interesting is, the stronger the hero gets, the less the game is a RTS. Things become more strategic, as new opportunity and skills open up. Eventually, at high levels, it changes again into a more hack&slash title. Graphically, it's decent. Some units look a little muddy and low detailed, but remain easily identifiable. Thankfully, it's not too distracting. There is some reusing of buildings for a few races as well. Audio wise, again, passable. Music is not bad, but nothing special, and all units call out when clicked. Aside from the main game, and multiplayer. A skirmish mode is available. Also, you have a level creator built in. It's a little clunky, but you can create hard challenges for your high level hero. (Yes, your hero can be ported across game modes and back at any time). Overall, I'm very happy with the entertainment I got out of this title. There is a fair amount of depth I was not expecting (more than I covered here), but never has it been hard to manage it all.
The idea of a Noir styled detective story for an adventure game sounds great, unfortunately Jack Orlando fails to deliver. Puzzle wise, you are going to pick up a lot of rubbish. Both in odd junk to solve puzzles, and actual trash. The trash appears to have no use other than to fill up your inventory. What is even worse, is that on a few occasions, Jack will complain about picking up stuff. So, that odd gadget is no good, but rotten fruit is okay??? Some puzzles can also only be activated if you speak to someone in a certain order. It's hard to get stuck, but unless Jack is told of a location, what he needs will not be there. Half the time, you can even go there before you are told about it. There is also lots of empty scenes. Now, while I'm not against these to fill out the world a little, it just feels too much here. Especially when there is no interaction in them, even just for commentary. Audio - is pretty much average. I didn't find the voice work too bad (though dialogue is another issue), but the music was fairy nice & atmospheric at times. Graphically, it's a little unimpressive, and sometimes requires too much pixel hunting. The short cutsceens are decent, and they did try something new with using them overlayed into a scene to highlight a few things of importance. Also you can die. Sometimes, it's unexpected when you reach a scene where this can happen. So it's best to save every so often, as there is no retry option. Overall summery: Unless you are really into adventure games, and are willing to be more than a little forgiving: Avoid this one.
I used to play the demo of ROTT over and over when I first got it. It had that slightly different feel to other FPS games of the time. Overall level design is rather dull and boring, however, the game throws out some interesting stuff to change it from a simple shooter. Various traps of spinning blades, and fire balls & Weapons, that create an enormous amount of gibs and damage. Enemies that play dead, and plead for their life. Other new things were DOG mode. In single player at least, getting the dog power up, would shrink you down into a little dog. You could still attack, but there were extra hidden areas only normally accessable while changed. The GOD power up would have you making long considering "Hmmmnnn" noises, while launching an attack that would seek out and vaporise all it touched. Shrooms, would make the game slightly psychedelic and uncontrollable. Jump Pads: There's no real way to describe these to those who have been jumping in games since year dot, but when ROTT was released, running high speed around a level onto these things and bouncing over the place was unusually fun. In multiplayer, it changed game tactics, as targets became more or less difficult to hit , depending on if you were in the air or not. Also, there is a slight old style platformer feel, where you have to collect glyph-credit/coin-things. Grab 100, get an extra life. While it is a load of fun, a lot of it is probably the nostalgia aspect for me. It might not hold up for others, unless you are really into the older FPS genre.
1NSANE, is one of those racing games I find hard to review. There is nothing stand out about it, nor is there anything really bad. It simply is average. Multiplayer is where the game shines, the game's fun level increases. Unfortunately for Single Player, it turns out to be quite frustrating: Enemy cars constantly have the edge on targets, and ram into you every chance they get, even in the first few seconds from starting. Though the do occasionally stall, or loose the idea of path finding. The best option appears to be to either quickly build up your own ability with the game, or force your way in front and remember each target before it appears. There are a number of game modes, from simple racing, to capture the flag and open environment checkpoint races. There's a variety of cars (and other vehicles), with some limited customisation skin wise as well. For their time, the open environments would of been fairly impressive, but the game is from that odd era where games don't always age too gracefully. A few years earlier or later, and there would be no complaint. Music is not memorable, but nether is it in your way. Though I did find the sound of the cars to be a little flat. Pick it up for the multiplayer aspect, if you are considering it.
