Yeah, this game is your worst nightmare! I've never ever experienced anything this frightening - actually I chickened out towards the end and watched the ending on youtube cause it just got too intense for me! I'm not even ashamed of it - I mean, who wants to die from a heartattack ;) Extremely athmospheric and a sound-design that beats most other games. Lots of quiet sneaking, finding parts and crafting stuff, trying to survive. All while being hunted by this AI-driven Xenomorph that hunts you based on sound and smell and maybe other senses too - not much scripted at all, unlike cheaper horror-games nowadays, so in this game you'll feel hunted for real! Only thing missing is more/better realtime shadows/lighting, and more physics, but the game is a bit old now so I guess you can't ask too much from it... I also might have wanted more Xenomorph and less androids/humans. Please, please, someone, anyone, give us a sequel with the same quality, but with updated graphics! That will be on my own internal wishlist for years to come! I think the game didn't sell as well as they had hoped, and that might be a reason we haven't seen any sequel yet, but let's hope it sells well in here now on GOG :)
Someone wrote "glitchy" in a review below, and I really have to agree! It happened loads of times during my playthrough that the GUI stopped working so I couldn't choose between look/talk. Also some other less serious glitches regarding GUI that were a bit frustrating. But most frustrating is the gameplay itself - it often is slow and tedious, and requires you to click to focus on something, then click to go back, focus on something else, and so on, and all of those transitions take it's time... I really think they could have made a smoother interface for this game. Also the mindmap is often very frustrating, where you are putting clues together. Sometimes it's so simple that you don't even have to think, but you still need to drag-and-drop the evidence, but often it's the other way round and you struggel to grasp what the game actually wants from you. I generally like slowpaced adventures, but this was more frustrating than anything else for me. Story and voiceacting and graphics are ok - gameplay and GUI not so much, for me anyway. I bought it on a really heavy sale, and for that price it was decent anyway...
...but not this one! I actually uninstalled it near the end of episode 1. I didn't like the puzzles at all - they really weren't interresting! Not at all like Call of the Sea for example, or Lost Horizon. They had puzzles that was exciting - this game though has the kind of puzzles where you feel they are there just to bother you, and prolong the game. At one place, at an interrogation, you instantly need to go get something (which takes loads of time walking and travelling between locations), and when you finally are back, thinking "now I'm getting somewhere", then you need to go to another location to get something else (again taking loads of boring time), back again, but it's still not enough, you need to go to yet another place to fix something else....urgh... There is so much idle time between all those actions and it takes so long time! Everytime you've talked to someone and exit the dialogue, you'll get a 5 second break where you can't do anything, so each time you start a dialogue with anyone, just to see if some new options has appeared to make you progress when you are stuck, you'll have to endure those 5 seconds of idle animation when nothing happens. It gets very annoying... The greetings and good byes with each character, which are cool maybe the first time, are also very annoying to hear again and again and again, always the same ones...it all feels very stiff, not alive/realistic at all. Animations and pretty much everything feels cheap and low budget. No idéa if the story is good in the end, I've heard it's not the best and they mess it up towards the end, and then I'm glad I stopped already at episode 1, cause there's not much I like in this game so far...
I don't like the controls/feeling of the cars, it's like they just float in the air, or drive on ice all the time. No friction at all against the ground, just sliding and drifting everywhere. And if it starts to slide, it almost won't stop until you hit a tree/rock, since...yeah, no friction! Still being updated so I hope they'll try to improve the physics and not just add extra tracks, so we get some friction agains the road (with sounds matching it too for extra feedback to the player) and some feeling of weight to the cars. It could be some fun anyway, even with lack of physics/friction/feeling, trying to beat your own scores (while cursing a lot lol), but in this game I can't see my previous times! Not while racing (like +/- seconds compared to my best), and sadly not after finish either! If I beat a new record, it doesn't mention if it was by 0,5s or by 10s - I only see one time on the leaderboard, and that is my current best and nothing else. Probably won't play this any more, but I'll keep an eye out for future updates, and see if they ever tweak the physics/handling of the cars!
Slow, calming, beautiful, and also very complex. But if you're not going for new world records, you don't have to play it as competetive - you might as well just relax and have a good time. Always exciting to see what cards you get in the beginning, and decide what strategieis you'll aim for. The tutorial is long, and slow, but maybe not enough if you are totally new to this like I am. I watched a tutorial/guide on youtube, and also a guide for the physical game, which was probably what made all pieces come together. It can be a little hard to grasp the idéa behind these small action-cubes that you constantly move around, but watching the physical game being played it gets more clear. When you've learned the game, it doesn't feel very complex, but the strategies/options when playing are very deep! I've only played 3 games so far, and play slightly better than easy AI, so will probably ramp up to medium soon. Each game takes like 40 minutes or so.
Very deep, slow, mature, and underrated! Deals with inequality/poverty, war/terror, super-AI, robotic future, VR, relationship problems, and so on. There's no humour in this game, it's all pretty dark. A fantasticly crafted vision of the future, very detailed, and much larger and more polished than I had expected. Sounds and music really help to immerse you into the story! I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of choices that impact the story, but I don't know for sure. You can't play this in a hurry, or if you expect action, or collecting stars/coins or anything like that. This is a very slow and detailed game, you need to be in the mood for some sci-fi relaxing and just sink into the world - something that is pretty easy since it's all so beautiful and well made. There are a couple of puzzles that are pretty annoying though...really annoying actually. Most puzzles are very easy, but still a bit fun/relaxing, but the annoying ones all have to do with labyrinths sort of, and they are not fun at all. Just watch a walkthrough if you get stuck though, no big deal. Also I didn't like the story much towards the last third or so, it just got a bit too much for my taste, pretty complex and just overdone - I liked the first part best, when everything was bilding up and was more of a mystery. If the game crashes towards the end, which it did for me and quite a few others, what seems to help is setting everything to lowest and try again! That old bug apparently ain't fixed yet, cause I got it 2022 with newest game version, newest drivers and all Windows updates etc! Anyway, really good game, specially at 90% sale which is what I got it for!
This game still looks great, in 2022! (Except textures that are very low resolution at some places, which is a bit odd.) Sneaking around in the dense djungles is amazing, and the physics in this game is way better than most newer games - very cool! You can even demolish/level the smaller houses, knocking down walls and pillars and having it all come down with individual physics on all parts! Game is great and tense at its best moments, but mostly it's just over the top action and not much story. As others in here I also had some crashes, maybe 5-10 during my playthrough. Worst place I had to replay 5 minutes or so... Still a cool game though, buy it on 75% sale or so, definitely worth it!
I tried, I really tried. Looking at the stats - attack, defense, adding/subtracting, but I never found ANY logic in how the combat worked or why the damage inflicted was as it was. No tutorial either, and no guide to find anywhere. Without knowing the rules for fighting, I found it pointless to continue so uninstall for me. If you're into these kind of games (I've never tried one before) it might all be logical and follow 30 year old rules, but for a newbie I don't know how to learn this. In real RPG:s you have a combat-log showing you what happens, but nothing here :/ Also no mouse support, you control everything with keyboard, which might be ok in a game like this I suppose but can be good to know before buying. And movement speed is annoyingly fast - you need to be really quick on the buttons to position your character to go through a narrow door etc, or you'll end up one square on the side and need to back up again.
The game might have been modern at release, but some features haven't aged well. You can NOT edit scrolling speed, and it is very slow! The maps are huge, and scrolling takes ages. Even the modders don't seem to have a fix for this. You can click the minimap though, but that gets cumbersome for me. Also the GUI isn't very optimized for higher resolutions, like 2560x1440 or above. Most of the fonts can be changed though if you dig around in the files, except city names! So when you look at the map a bit zoomed out, its very hard to read the city names, as well as what they are building and how many turns left and so on. They get a bit larger at lower resolutions of course, so if you watch a 1080p let's play on yt it might look good, but if you have a large highres monitor, GUI and text just gets blurry and looks real bad when you lower your resolution. I know I won't be able to enjoy it like this, so asking for my first refund in here. The game just shows it's age in many places, which is understandable, but something I wasn't expecting! If you don't mind stuff like this, the game probably is great so just buy it! I'm waiting for Old World instead...
Like a dumb popcorn-movie, but very entertaining! Stupid consoleish gameplay, full of QTE button mashing, and totally on-rails scripted AI/fights. But it's all very triple-A - great graphics, great voice acting, very movielike experience with loads of crazy (and brutal) action. The "exploration" feels pretty cool, like when you jump from one ledge to another, or climb the mountain sides with your axe. When you die (and you will) there is almost always a autosave like 20 seconds back, so you won't get too frustrated here. Also no backtracking required, unless you're going for 100% completion. The optional tombs are pretty nice too, with its relaxed puzzle solving, and a nice change from the hectic action you'll encounter everywhere else. I'm too old for hectic QTE-games like this, but playing it on easy was just right for me. For the price on sale it's very much worth it, for a entertaining experience that lasts maybe 15h or so. Sometimes it feels like the game is playing you rather than the other way around, but I guess some like it that way...
