Third version of Land of the Lounge Lizards, after the 1991 VGA, probably done after the success of Double Fine Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle Remaster. The fist feeling on first launch is that Al Lowe had a clear image of what the game will be: a simple remake of the original first Larry (with some small new addons). Probably is not well curated like Double Fine Remasters, or Love for Sail, but i got a feeling that Lowe was clear to adopt a simple style with simple animation to keep the cartoon wackyness of first Leisure Suite games. The only modern concession to the game is that Larry couldn't be stuck at some point of his adventure if he miss an importat object (the older Larry players will remember that the first games comes out with a manual that give you some hints and too many reloading previous saves). Puzzles are not illogical, just sometimes hard to solve, and newcomers could feel stuck in some points and desist to continue to play it (wich happened to me too, since too many decades has passed since i play the VGA version).
The biggest issue in this game (for neophytes) is that clues and hotspots are occasionally indistinguishable from mere beatiful background art. This leads to unfortunate pixel hunting because games gives you few hints and focus more on exploration and trial and error, wich lead to some scratching head points were you don't know what it's missing. Shame cause most of the time, Dedealic has done a great job to create a good solving clue for most of the puzzles. Graphically it's a deteailed, colorful, exaggerated, and wonderfully nuanced world in a great hand-drawn style and animation. The animated cutscenes are less impressive, but well executed. Great OST, wich set the right mood for every moment of this adventure, assisted by great ambient noise. The voice acting is less consistent in quality, expecially with Sadwick, wich anyway grows with the game: the more he advance in the story, is personality comes out loud and clear giving him a more unique one. His darker moments manage to be both hilarious and tragicomical. But let's be honest, it's pretty difficolt write well a fatalistic cynical child in such a realistic way. All other voices are well done and defined, wich serves most of the time as a functional puzzle solving veichle or characteristic gags. Overall dialogues are entertaining enough. The use of Spot as co-protagonist is simply brillant (expecially in one long puzzle), a beautiful active sidekick wich is integrant part of the adventure. His shapeform abilities are essential to solve many puzzles. Each transformation has his unique hilarious animated sequence. Story writing is really amusing, mixing comedy, tragic and seriousness. And i love how the ending is not a superficial cliché. Can't tell more or it became a spoiler. PS. last advice, better watch ending credits too, they'll add an additional point of view for many charatchers.
I'm baffled around this game. Aesthetically caught with great details the 40k grim universe, its architectures, spacing from narrow corridors to bigger rooms. In the really few moments of respite, you can notice tons of details. It's a true love labours. Even in 2024 is graphically impressive game. From a gameplay point of view, even at lower difficoulties the game can kick very hard into the grim 40k reality. It's more focused on multiplayer than singleplayer, were, like for X-com The Bureau, you need to constantly babysitting AI, not proper an easy task during a tyranid swarm. From a multiplayer point of view, there's more fun, but you need 4 companions and a balanced team roles. New player are advised to give a look to a guide. Even at easy level, missions will be tough with tons and tons of enemies ready to put you on a dead end. Sprint won't help much, since the run is limited. The feel of sponginess of some enemies is caused beacause some of them have a good armour and at beginning only few classes have weapons that could damage them. Powerfist is another resource, but parry system is not so intuitive. Main problem with this game is farming expericence to unlock better weapons, perks, upgrades, weapon upgrades with could help players to enjoy better the game. Unless you know were all relics are, leveling up will be slow and tedious, along with really high prices for the upgrades. Basically if you want to max all the classes in a decent amount of time, good luck, it'll take ages... Expecially since rising up difficolty won't give much more XP. Another minor bug is that sometimes netcode lag can teleport you a bit far away. It's not a bad game, but it's more focus on certain hardcore player audience that will endure the intial suffer to enojy the game than others that, like in Vermintide or Deep Rock Galatic, want to start easy to better understand gameplay and gradually advance with difficolty levels.
A nice (free) and very ironic homage to the old-style graphic adventures of Lucas Art, following the graphic style, the animations, the light-hearted humor and the eccentric writing. With the exception of a few pixel-hunting areas and a few try-with-everything-style puzzles I'll manage to come up with, some false leads (which still lead to hilarious results) and some well-hidden achievements that are not easy to unlock, it was a very pleasant gaming experience. The final credit screens are real hilarious gems. Frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing what this team would be capable of doing with a more substantial and longer adventure (editor's note: they would probably spend too much time cleaning bugs :P)
An isometric shooter with a good variety of mech and vehicles, excellent soundtrack and total destructibility of the environments. The story is non-existent and just serves as an intro for each mission, which is always search and destroy with pre builded mechs. But there's only one problem: the controls... You have to press "W+D" (or "W+A") to go straight, which makes controlling the mechs tedious and leads to mission failure (we are not indestructible terminators, we could have terminal failures or finish ammo). And this makes the gameplay extremely tedious... I mean, I understand putting the isometric view at 3/4, but to simply move the mech forward all you should had only to press the "W" key alone
I'm sorry that I never finished the game, but I'm near the end at a point where, while you may have a great/good selection of cards, weapons, and upgrades in your hand, it all depends on luck. Something I had already experienced in previous fights, but I had managed to overcome the obstacle in an acceptable number of attempts. When I reached the fiftieth stone wall in front of me, I said to myself, no thanks, I had enough of this RNG crap. The graphic novel style is particular, but clashes with the repetitiveness of environments, enemies and animations. Another big limitation is having only 3 characters available and no reserves, which leads to spending half the budget on the infirmary. It's a shame because the 5 class system present is interesting and well defined. The economic management is very sparing towards the player, on the other hand we are cannon fodder to be sent here and there into easily replaceable space. It's a shame that shops and upgrades cost an arm and a leg. UI cumbersome and not very intuitive at first.
From the point of view of the plot (slow but well written), dialogues, acting, crudeness of some scenes, quite well done and well-placed QTEs, a well-made deduction system that requires you to use your head, the game is very good . It would also have a certain replayability for completionists, which however clashes with the impossibility of skipping the dialogues for a second run. On the other hand, the camera management is terrible and limited. I imagine it was a question of budget, but I would have preferred a completely free camera, as to interact with the clues and collectibles you often need to have the precision of a sniper at the right angle. Among other things, some collectibles wouldn't let me take them even if I started the scene again. On the graphics side, I would have preferred greater optimization of Unity, but these days optimizing a game is something that everyone skips over. There are still some bugs, such as the protagonist being stuck at certain points or when reloading a mission, our big cat just kept going, not caring about walls and other objects, ending up off the map. HDR is terrible and the depth of field can only be partially excluded. Some locations are not well optimized and the framerate drops. In short, with a little more care for camera management, bug cleaning (note, I played 1.05), skippable dialogues, it would have been a better product.
Nice drift racing game with nice and clean minimalistic graphics Pro: Challenging Everything is focus on gameplay nice soundtrack once learned, due huge learning curve, it's rewarding well optimized game made with unity Cons: no key/buttons remapping too short not for casuals: handling is intentionally challenging
I like the fact they have enhanched the game with some parts excludeded on original version and made it playable on modern system. Anyway i feel that Nico new parts has opened some open question never explained later in game. The big con for me, it's censorship. No more death scenes (hotel, museum, underground, desert, well, train), cutted blood from cutscenes and some were shortened with no reason... Another con, it's inconsistency in some animation. It happens quite a lot that you can see a huge difference between old and new sprites. And the font used for subtitles are so small than probabily the original ones will be more readable still today. I mean, i'm greateful i can play it on modern system, but i would like to have a great quality dc/remake like has been done with Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle. It's a shame that a so great mature game released in 1994 can't be played with a proper version that will bring justice to the original work.
A remaster done as it should be, 100% faithful to the original.
