I nearly had a heart attack when I looked at my RSS feeder and saw that GOG had released Arcanum! I've been hoping for this to be released more than any other game I can think of, as it's one of my fondest memories of years gone by. Sadly, being no longer in possession of the original disc version, I've been unable to experience the wonderful universe of Arcanum for some time. Arcanum was somewhat heavily criticised by reviewers at the time for petty things like its graphics, which were, on my PC, very nicely designed. Arcanum has a lot of style flowing through it, and the steampunk elements are visually still great to look at. There are so many choices in Arcanum, that it would be almost impossible to ever see all that the game has to offer. There are so many different ways to advance your character that the character creation screen is at first quite mind-boggling - magic, technology, stats, all sorts of goodies! There are tpms pf different locations to explore, people to meet, companions to drag around, and even a brothel! I would honestly recommend this game above all others on the site, as it is truly a Good Old Game. The only thing that would top this is System Shock 1 and 2. Do it, GOG!
Having never been able to find a copy of BGE on PS2, when I saw this game for download here, I jumped at the chance, and this is the best purchase I've made this year, by far. The game is so individual and unique, unlike all of the other games released at the time, and it's entirely worth your time to explore the story.
I can't profess to be the biggest point and click adventure fan, but by any standard this is bad. The story is bizarre, the graphics make me puke, the sound is just irritating, the speech is hard to read, and I got stuck on the first playable area. For half an hour. Epic fail, in every way.
There's so much secret stuff to find in this game, and it is a lot of fun. I didn't rate it five simply because it couldn't hold my attention for too long - I've been playing it one level at a time with breaks in between.
I'll start off by quoting 'Yahtzee' Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame, who said that the Prince of Persia trilogy was the best series of the last generation of consoles. While I wouldn't go as far as that, I can't deny that this game is phenomenal, and I can't wait for the two sequels to be GOG'ed. The gameplay mechanic of playing with time is incredible - it makes you wonder how the developers of Timeshift can moan about the problems of implementing time reversal when this game did it several years before. It never gets old seeing yourself epic-leap up a cliff, get unstabbed and backflip over an enemy whilst going back in time - getting killed becomes a 5 second entertainment, in a way. Of course, when you run out of sand tanks so you can no longer rewind, getting sent back to earlier in the game seems irritating, but this is only notable in how little it happens so long as you pay attention to the environments. There are a few moments that make players want to shed both their tears and hair, but these are very few. The most notable is when you are locked in a chamber with a proverbial ton of enemies, and after battling all these you must defeat your father. This can take about half an hour to an hour, but for the player that perseveres, the game becomes gradually more rewarding from this point onwards. The style of the game is excellent - from the crazy black and white visions to the enemy sand monsters to the giant aviary level, the design is consistently outstanding. The soundtrack is nothing too memorable, but it's enjoyable to listen to, and I can say, having played both the PS2 and PC versions of this game, this version visually rips its console brethren apart. To conclude - you should prioritise this over almost anything else on GOG, with the possible exception of Beyond Good and Evil.
When you start playing this game, it's immediately obvious that it's by the same people who made the Broken Sword games - it works in a very similar way, which is by no means a bad thing, as they were excellent adventure games, and In Cold Blood has built on them by adding more action into the mix, with crouching, running, 3D movement, guns and the like, but it still falls into the trap that all adventure games eventually do - they make you think in the same bizzarre way that the developers did. I would never have thought to push the test rig for the particle accellerator out of the way, but the Internet showed me what I had to do, for which I am grateful. It's fun if you have a good walkthrough for when you're feeling stuck.
