I loved this game back in the day. Today though...It's far to janky. When i found myself slamming on the "STAND UP" command and getting absolutely nothing because John Cooper had accidentally crawled into a wall and locked up, that was it for me. It's only barely playable by today's standards.
I want to really love this game, but too many things pull it down. I enjoy the time travel concept, and it adds an interesting wrinkle to the tactical rpg mold, but... -Not enough player choices. -Not enough customization choices for your mechs. -Only three mechs on the field at any time. -Repetitive missions. -Repetitive objectives. -Repetitive music. But worst of all, too punishing of failure. If you lose all your pilots, or take too much damage to your buildings, all the work you've put in building your mechs and crew up is completely wasted. It would've been nice to be able to keep your crew and start at the beginning, I would have felt some sort of getting stronger through effort and patience. But NOPE. You're sent back to the start with ONE of your pilots. I had some fun with it. But it's far too flawed to recommend.
The joke runs very thin, very fast. Leaving the player with a janky, poorly laid out, ugly looking game with annoying sound and music.
I found it interesting. I like the idea of a Jewish Noir Detective Mystery. The voice acting is kinda stiff, but I got used to it after a while. Mostly liked the story. It got a bit obtuse about what you should do next and that was frustrating. Like the Monkey Island word battles.
I want the day I spent playiing this back. A very poorly thought management system takes the wind out of a pretty deep and mostly enjoyable combat system. At first I was amused by the "X has happened, what do you want to do?" thing. Then it just kept happening, and happening, and it didn't seem to matter what choices I made, I quickly found myself losing my most valuable characters to BS offscreen hazards like a wagon going off a cliff. It's like Oregon Trail with Orcs...with Shining Force battles sprinkled about. Eventually I found myself in an unwinnable situation that I did not feel was my fault. But instead of feeling frustrated, or motivated to try again...I just felt tired and dejected, like I just wasted a day of my life for what? I uninstalled it. I'll never play it again. No plans to try the sequels after this experience.
This game runs off of an official emulator....that barely works. Slow, glitchy, and without any ability to rebind for a controller make for an embarassingly bad port that shouldn't be sold for money. Use MAME instead, it actually runs at more than 3fps.
I had a pretty good time with it. Story was pretty good. Gameplay was a bit easy, but had it's frustrting moments. Glad I played it. But I probably won't ever return to it.
Bad sense of momentum and inertia make for a frustrating experience.
I never got the hype for this. The gameplay is far more frustrating than scary...or fun. Maybe it speaks to my personal nature, that if I'm in a life or death situation and there's no way out, I'd prefer to die fighting rather than die sniveling in a locker no matter how scared I may be. In Clock Tower 3, you can set traps. In Haunting Ground you can hide and sick your dog on enemies in the hopes of escaping. This game has nothing like that. You hide...and you wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, then while you're waiting, you wonder how waiting amounts to real gameplay. Then you get really PISSED OFF that the psycho caught you because you made a single footstep within a hundred yards of him and the clunky controls get you killed. I do not have the patience to hang around waiting for this game to get good. It's no wonder I bought this game in 2013, got bored and angry with it, quit playing halfway through, then tried it again today, and had the exact same feelings about. It's also why when this game came out, people were hailing it as the new classic and the future of horror. Now nobody even talks about it anymore. I didn't even know (or care) there was a sequel out until I stumbled accross it at Vintage Stock. It's crap, it's garbage, it's not scary, and it's not worth your time or money. Big skip on this.
A lot of wasted potential. -Screwy, sometimes unresponsive controls make platforming annoying. -Padded difficulty requiring hours of grinding to level up in order to handle tougher enemies. -Reptitive level design, enemies, and music give me a sense like I'm not really seeing anything new. -Frustrating level design that requires pixel perfect button presses in order to traverse certain death pits. Really, the only thing this game has going for it is a beautful aesthetic and a cute idea. The execution is below par on just about every level. This game almost feels like the devs didn't take enough time to really think it out from a player's perspective. I was really excited about this game, that's why it sucks to tell you it's not worth your money.
