A must have for any tower defense fan, it got me hooked for hours on the first play, i basically lost track of time. You want to get them 5/5 rating on every mission so there is a lot of planning and perfection needed to get that! You have offensive towers and defense towers and the big ones also require power so you need to think before you place them because your ship has limited space. Some towers are really handy and even necessary for completion. You can't really tell in advance what enemies you will face so it's a bit of trail and error to figure out what is the most optimal build! Ups: - Lot's of variety, one time you need to haul cargo the next time nuclear material. - Great twitst on tower defence, you have limited space and the faster you go the more credits you bring in. - Nice amount of enemies, from asteroids to space pirates to drones. - Not too hard not too easy Downs: All of them are minor - No checkpoints, so if you made a slight mistake its all the way back to the beginning. - No fast forward, if you need to restart from the beginning again it gets dull to wait for the mission to start. - Micro managing, to get the best out of your ship some micro managing will be needed and everything is so chaotic its hard to keep up. - Upgrade system, its too grindy, sometimes you need to do the same mission you perfected over and over to get the passive upgrades so you can progress again.
Painkiller is a good game but lacks true atmosphere. First of all the goal in painkiller is too destroy everything in your path much like Serious Sam but not quite as entertaining. While it is fun it gets repetitive and boring after the first play through. Basically you get dropped into a level which has 2 or 3 different enemies and a couple of waypoints, so it is linear as it can be. There are no keys, no levers or objectives... just follow the arrow on the top of the screen and you are good to go. The levels: Its has some of the nicest level design I've seen a while in a game but also some of the most bland ones. The a look at the Asylum, the first thing that catches your eye is the beautiful sky and silhouette of the building. While a bit cramped its a very good level overall. Then it has levels like the snowy bridge, bland.. boring and dull. With dead-ends everywhere in the container area. This is the ultimate corridor shooter type level. While levels like the opera house has huge indoor area. It ranger from bad to good with some being excellent. Then there are some of the so called secret areas, really some of these aren't even close too secrets. In the train station tunnels you have this chest staring in your face lying just next to the path you need to take and thats a secrets area? Come on. Half of the secret and just areas which you usually don't visit because they are of the killing path. But with a little extra exploring to see some of the nice level design you can find most of these. Then the enemies placement, well it goes basically like this. Enter an area, enemies gets spawned, kill em move to next waypoint, repeat. While Painkiller offer quite a bit of different enemies only 2-3 and sometimes 4 are used in one single level. So this add to the blandness. However the boss fights are cool but also mostly easy once you figure out how to kill them. Graphics: Not much to complain about the graphics it has great textures, physics, atmosphere but sometimes the level design could be better. Sound: Also good, with great music to back up the action. Gameplay: Well for me this is a mixed bag. While I like shooter a lot this one just doesn't give me the epic feeling of satisfaction Serious Sam, Quake and others gave me. There is nothing to do but to keep the firing button pressed. No keys, artifacts, levers, buttons, objectives of any kind. And you walk in a straight linear path all the time. Okay most other games also a linear in some way but this one doesn't do anything to hide it so to speak. And mostly you visit areas in levels only once. Also the game looks dark and evil with gruesome enemies but it doesn't give me that scary feeling at all. Overall its a good game, all the mechanics work in harmony, controls feel good so does the weapons but its not fun enough to do more than once. I recently did a second run but I really had to force myself to finish it. Especially since it has no co-op.
The biggest issue with the game is the somewhat confusing level-design, I mean sometimes I don't know where to go at all and happen to find the right way by luck. Sometimes its a grey key on a grey floor, damn. The sewer and underground levels are probably the hardest. On the other side you have trailers park coupled with tornadoes and even a bowling alley or a outdoor movie theater, no lack of location to visit so I have to commend them on that. Next up is the difficulty, Blood has the same issue, there are these "hit-scan" enemies that can direct hit you from any distance with god-like reflexes and your health drains at an insane pace and this is with a modern control scheme.. holy moly! But then again it not easy walk in the park like Doom which did become very easy with WASD and strafing, but you have good difficulty and bad difficulty as in unfair. I mean you have these women in latex suits that have machine guns on their... breasts. And whenever you see those better have some explosives or one-shot weaponry around. There are plenty of more of these enemies so be warned. All in all it's not top-line good as Duke Nukem 3D that you can play over and over again but memorable enough to play through once in a while for shits and giggles. I would rate it 3.5/5 but gave it a 4/5 because of all the content in this gog.com version.
One Unit Whole Blood might be one of the most overlooked games from the 90'. It was released when real-3d engines started to take over with titles like Quake and Unreal. It was left in the shadows but it certainly hold up to this day. One thing that stands out from the rest right away when you play this game are the weapons. Instead of a pistol you get a flare gun! Yes a flare gun that is very effective dealing with both single enemies and tightly packed groups. This is because the game has a secondary fire option which makes it double as awesome. With the first attack you obviously shoot a single flare but with the second attack you fire 5 flares at once that explode on impact! Now it doesn't end there because you got the good o'l boomstick, tommygun, TNT bundles with various toys, napalm launcher, testla gun and even a damn voodoo DOLL, in the weapon department there is little to be left desired. These weapons can be used the massive amounts of levels this pack comes with, the orginal game has 5 episodes with 9 levels each and another expansion pack, you will enjoy this game for quite some time. Now if you want to go exploring there are many secrets to be found. Each episode also has a secret level. The theme of the levels blend in very well with the game, from funeral homes to haunted houses, this game has it all. Then there are the enemies, ranging from pesky cultist that scream in a weird language to flying gargoyles and ghosts! Each difficulty setting adds more enemies and make them harder to kill so on the challenge side there is enough levels to make even the most hardcore game sweat. The hitscan enemies are a tid bit overpowered but still nothing a well placed TNT stick can't handle! Now what are you waiting for buy and/or play this game and feel yourself surrounded by one of the best FPS games in history. I am currently in the process of recording the entire game on 1080p60fps @ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPJkurpFORZEw-qaaVim-ISamtm-noZ38
