When I see the dreaded "Unreal" logo I already know the game will run like mud and indeed it does. The game doesn't even look that amazing - graphics feel 5-10 years old yet system demands rival those of STALKER 2 (also poorly optimised but at least open world). Amazing. Then when I started to play the game it felt sluggish in aiming, cumbersome and slow to move around. Understandable with such a suit but it's clear they did this to increase tension in a cheap way since it makes combat more difficult. But oh dear, I just absolutely can't stand cheap horror tropes and this game uses them all. Your light has a mind of its own and turns off for cheap suspense during combat, the game spawns enemies when you pick up key items, the game adds random sounds to spook you at scripted intervals, etc. etc. etc. Every trope there is, it uses it and it feels very amateurish. Also, ammo scarcity combined with useless melee damage just put me off the game completely. It's definitely inspired by Resident Evil and I didn't like it there either. We're 2025, we're beyond cheap mechanics such as giving you only a few bullets and if you miss a few shots, game over. Except the devs of this game thought this wasn't so ... I wish it would have been more Dead Space which it also borrows from but except for the setting the rest just disappoints.
I enjoyed Toonstruck's demo in 1996 but never bought the full game. I never saw it in any local store & the game had the worst timing: Broken Sword was released 2 weeks earlier & is a better game in almost every way While both games had big budgets, excellent animation & were really well made with high production values, Broken Sword is just a better game. It had a deeper more evolving story, better atmosphere, better music, more variety in locations & more general appeal. Toonstruck kind of didn't know who to focus at - the childish cartoons in most of the game didn't appeal to teenagers & I'm not sure adults liked the sometimes crude comedy. But ... we're almost 30 years later now and this weekend I decided to finally give it a proper go, completed it and had a fun time. The puzzles were mostly very well thought out (besides some typical logical puzzles which felt cheap), the dialogue was excellent with a great cast of (voice) actors, plenty of great gags, beautiful graphics, excellent animations & I have to rate it 8/10. You can tell they spared no expense making this game & it's obvious the studio was certain there would be a sequel because the ending is ... well ... it's a "to be continued". And that's why it's not a perfect game - it felt too short with a rather poor ending. Broken Sword had a lot of variety with Spain, Ireland, Scotland, France and Syria but Toonstruck feels too small in comparison. It also doesn't help that the bulk of locations only have one puzzle or "problem" with almost nothing else to do or talk to whereas Broken Sword did the opposite: some locations have no puzzles, others have several. It's not a game I'd really replay but it is recommended for sure - it's a forgotten gem that sadly enough had too much competition & not the right target audience.
It's probably been 10 years since I last played this game to the end. I remember trying this Director's Cut to see what it improved and I wasn't too impressed by the silly Myst-like logic puzzles. This time I wanted to play it through completely & since it works on a modern Windows out of the box it seemed the best choice. Let me start by saying that the original game is in my top 5 favorite adventure games along with Beneath A Steel Sky, Monkey Island 1 & 2 and Sam & Max Hit the Road. The music, the atmosphere, the story, the characters - they were all brilliantly realised and even though my PC at the time was too weak, I gladly played it despite the very choppy cut scenes. Particularly the Hotel Ubu music was a favorite - I used that music as a Windows start song for a loooooong time. But let's move onto what the Director's Cut is about. It adds a handful of new locations, fleshes out the story a little bit (not much), adds a few new cut scenes, shows drawn up close faces during dialogue and gives Nicole her own backstory. Does it work? Kind of. The new locations are well made, the new characters are interesting enough and the new puzzles are in line with what you can expect for the rest of the game except self-contained. HOWEVER, they also added a bunch of crappy logic puzzles the like you had in 7th Guest & Myst. These add NOTHING to the game and actually make the game feel worse. What also feels at odds is the mix of old & new dialogue - the old dialogue is warmer whereas the new dialogue is crisper. George sounds about the same but Nicole sounds much older in the new dialogue and it kind of jars. On top of this they changed the music around. The fabulous piano music in Hotel Ubu's upstairs rooms has been replaced by the downstairs music which annoyed me a great deal. The tone of the game on the whole has been changed as well this way - music was added where there was none & visa versa. All in all, it's still a great game but I prefer the original.
I bought this game shortly after release while at university. I loved the real time lightning effect and the game felt so easy & fun to control but for some reason I never played it beyond the first hour ... until this week. I decided I'd finally give it a proper go and so I did. The first hour was very enjoyable but after that, the cracks started to show. Weapons degrade fast and mana is sometimes very limited so combat is balancing not destroying your only weapon and not running out mana (which replenishes INCREDIBLY slowly!). It feels as if the game doesn't want you to have fun! Yes you can repair your weapon & gear but either it's a long trek back to the town (no teleportation points) or you're cut off from shopkeepers completely and if your weapon breaks it disappears for good. Very few new weapons drop and those that do drop are usually for the fighter. While there's lots of cool spells and combat is quite fun as long as there's mana recharge areas you can get quite creative. It's just a shame that it feels as if the game was rushed because there's quite a few unbalanced areas and some very odd design choices on the whole. For example you only have 5 active spells and you're supposed to rotate through spell bars but this doesn't quite work. Why not allow 10 spells? The game would have been a lot more fun if it had a bit more polish & the annoyances were ironed out. All in all I'd give it a 7 out of 10 but I'll round up to 4 stars. Be aware it's a very short game though - you can complete it in 5-6 hours. It's definitely still worth playing as long as you keep in mind the negatives.
I've played tons of classic FPS games. While Doom & Duke Nukem 3D dominated, there were plenty of others who often used their engine. Strife for example is an underrated classic which uses the Doom engine. Rise of the Triad however isn't quite so lucky ... . Let's start from the start. I loved Wolfenstein 3D back in 1993. I had a blast completing shareware version but when I got hold of the full version, I never really played it that much. Why? Because it was just too much of the same. Every wall was 90°, every room looked the same, only a limited amount of enemies & weapons, no real tactics to use and worst of all: the maps were a maze. RoTT uses a modified Wolfenstein 3D engine and suffers from many of the same problems: flat, samey levels, limited weapons, limited enemies, poor AI. They did try to add some spice to the game though with moving platforms, jump pads, improved graphics, special powerups, traps, etc. but is it enough? No, it wasn't. Remember: this game was released two months after Doom II and a full year after the first Doom! While the different rocket launchers are fun and the powerups are very amusing, the game is just ... repetitive. It does get a little better later on but it's identical area after identical area with identical enemies - open door, shoot enemies, jump on pads to collect coins, next room, ... . The game makes levels less maze-like but this also makes them more boring in a way because there's little else remaining. I've always been surprised by how many enjoy this game because, while it's above average, it was hopelessly outdated at the time of release and even other Wolfenstein 3D "clones" such as Blake Stone were more fun for me. I think part of it is the long big open areas where you shoot at enemies from afar. While this was relatively novel at the time, it's dull. There's no tactics in rounding a corner and just killing 4 enemies across the hallway with no cover. As a port it's very competent. As a game ... it's OK.
There aren't many RPGs I play from start to finish from the moment I buy them - I usually give them a short whirl of a few hours and then go back to them a few months or years later to give them a proper go. Wasteland 3 I did complete on my first go and I did have a blast but with some caveats. First of all, here's the good bits: - there are a lot of stats - there are interesting new combat mechanics that make combat a lot more fun - there's a whole new setting to explore - the good old choice-making and story-branching is back Basically this is Wasteland 2 with extra bells and whistles but there's also some less than stellar stuff and I want to point those out: First of all, this game is filled with little bugs. I'm sure many of them will get ironed out but I'm baffled how certain bugs slipped past testing since they're all over the place. From small ones like containers you can't loot unless you reload a save game to massive game breaking bugs because the devs didn't take into account certain combinations of choices. Those last ones are being patched but the tip is: make plenty of solid saves! Don't rely on quicksaves only Second of all, the game feels odd in scope at times. While the game is the perfect length for an RPG (around 50-60 hours with all side quests done on easy) I did feel as if there was room for more proper side quests. The majority of side quests involved driving somewhere, shooting the enemies and there, done. Some were entertaining like the Santa one but it feels as if content was cut short. The map had room for way more locations - I hope they won't add them as DLC. Thirdly, just like in Wasteland 2, the balance is all over the place. Unless you know the right order to do things in, you're likely to have a very hard time. I advise you to start on easy and on replays you can ramp up the difficulty once you know where to find the better guns and which skills work out best.
I really wanted to like this game. On paper it has a LOT going for it but once you start to play it for a while, something starts to become rather familiar. It feels like an MMO ... the combat, the quests, the lands, ... it's all rather generic and typical MMO fare. It got so bad that, back in the day, I googled the development of this game and ... surprise surprise, this WAS originally supposed to be an MMO. Sadly, this means it has all the trappings of an MMO without the fun of enjoying it with friends: too much repetitive grindy combat, a lack of a quality story, forgettable NPCs, ... . It's still a decent RPG, especially today when there's a massive shortage of good fantasy RPGs, but don't let that change the fact that this game is far from a proper single player RPG.
I like Wadjet Eye games. I've played them for many many years and always found some charm in them even with their older Blackwell games where Dave was clearly still finding a good balance. This game is another very typical Wadjet Eye game but why only 3/5 then you might wonder? Because after 12 years, it's time they stopped making the same amateur mistakes. The others reviews will tell you about the good things: nice pixel art backdrops, well fleshed out characters, lots of dialogue, etc. etc. It's the same with all Wadjet Eye games and you'll find it here as well. But I wanted to focus on the negatives (yes boo hiss me) because I find it sad to see so little true progress in their games. For a start, the voice acting, again, is all over the place. The actors sound so disinterested and bored that it bleeds into the game. Some voices are excellent but just as many kill the scene. In the end, I turn them off because then at least I can imagine the voices the way the dialogue reflects instead of sounding like most of them are half asleep. The backdrops. This is a personal annoyance many might not share. Over the years, Wadjet Eye games received increasingly better quality backdrops but even though the quality is very high, the execution lets me down. Clearly the artist has talent but he never manages to bring the most out of the backdrops. Nearly every scene feels as if it's scaled wrong. The perspective on the first screen in front of the bar is off, the bar inside feels all wrong, rooms & areas feel cramped, ... I never really get drawn inside the world because of this and it's a damn shame considering the quality. The animation. It's still the same style as 12 years ago and it's janky as hell. People walk stiffly which keeps reminding you you're playing an indie adventure game. So yes, it's a good game as usual from Wadjet Eye - but I wish I saw more improvements over the years. Seeing them keep making the same mistakes saddens me.
I liked this game back when it was released. It had a sharp look and was different enough to stand out. Sadly, it hasn't aged too well and the game's trial & error parts, where you died through no fault of your own, becomes unbearable since the graphics are no longer that bonus to push you through.
I loved the idea of running a restaurant when I read the review in PC Gamer in 1994. The game looked colourful, the graphics well detailed and the idea of designing your own pizza was very unique. Sadly, the game fell into obscurity the next few games after what I assume were mediocre sales. When I found a budget re-release for the equivalent of €5 in 1998, I couldn't help but snap it up ... and spent weeks playing it, completely addicted. What makes this game so fun, is the huge range of options. You can make your own adverts, design your own pizzas, furnish your own restaurants, become part of the mob, bomb competitors, join pizza competitions, trade in illegal goods, etc. etc. The game never slows down and a pizza which works in one location, may fail in another due to different demographics and tastes. Ingredients go in and out of fashion so you're constantly changing menus, buying better ingredients as your funds allow for and you're in a constant battle to have the best selling pizzas in the city. Once you conquer a city, there's many more to chose from. Designing pizzas is also a lot of fun - you got hundreds of ingredients and every ingredient can be diced several times- the options for decorating are endless! Taking into account what area of the city your restaurant is in (different areas, different people - you got blue collar, old, young, etc.) and which ingredients are "hot" and which not makes even making pizzas quite tactical! Does the game have weaknesses? Yes it does. The managers are quite incompetent and handling your restaurants, often running out of stock or ordering too much so you end up doing the ordering yourself which is quite time consuming. Because of the many options, it can also be daunting to keep an eye on everything. I personally liked the HUD but some may find it dated. Also, it may be tricky to get your first restaurant running - pick the wrong furniture, and no-one will visit so a guide is a good thing to use for new players.
