It seems strange because everything about this chess game says it should be better than Battle Chess, yet, imho, it`s worse. I think it`s because Battlechess kept it simple, while Combat chess got too overworked. They shouldn`t have so overdone the unit graphics which made it hard to tell one from another quickly. All they needed to do was add more varied animations for each taken piece (Battle Chess were way too few) and improve the Chess Player AI, maybe add a couple of extra table types and the ability to change unit colours from Red and Blue to say black and white. Then it might`ve been a winner. maybe one day, someone will make a Battle Chess 2011.
Got this free when I joined GOG (great site by the way). This is a scrolling, flying shooter. You have some kind of planespaceship flying thing and whatever weapons. You shoot mindlessly at a zillion `things` that sometimes attack and sometimes just try to commit suicide with you for no discernable reason. every now and then a big machine thing tries to destroy your planeshipflying thing. Rinse, repeat. I played this game a lot when I was 10. I`m afraid I`m a lot older now and while I still like my games, I defintely don`t do this! I give a halfway avergae score to be fair. 3 stars.
Y`know I though this game might be as good as the Dream pinball one, but it isn`t. For a start, the music I find really ordinary. A pinball game MUST have good thematic music to get the `ball` rolling. For instance, the WW2 table just doesn`t come across as a War table. there`s no real marching, fighting music, just a boring, pleasant soundtrack like I`m drinking in a light pub. Sound effects are too functional. I could`ve thought of a hundred sound effects to give that `war` feel- a boom there, a `ratatat` there, the zooming engine of a P51 flyby, some soldier shouting `INCOMING!`, but no... The graphics are very good though which makes everything that fails stand out even more. the sexy girls on the cover don`t even feature on the table. I got bored really fast and went back to the Dream Pinball. It`s not a terrible game- It just doesn`t have that pinball magic, pizazz, kick that I get with the good ones.
Enjoy the thrills of wandering around a landscape devoid of all Human life. Spend hours walking back and forth trying to make that blue thingdoorswitchportal work and nothing happening at all. Get more and more annoyed at the weird worlds and the weird plot and why everything is just so strange and difficult and often... boring. Then go back for some more punishment. Let`s not beat about the bush; this game can be frustratingly annoying. At first it`s not too bad. You`re curious. What`s this place? what does this do? what`s all this writing in books about? You want to find out... But then the puzzles start to tax the gray matter, and the walking starts to grate as you stomp back and forth failing to figure out what to do next or how to make something work. But you persist, you want to know as hours eat slowly by... Yea, found my first new world! A boring ship, rock place... great... Here we go again... I first played this game about 15 years ago on the Apple Mac with my now x-wife. It was tough then, certainly no 3D movement, all slide show pictures, but there wasn`t really much else on the market and I grew to like it. But never finished it, didn`t even get halfway. This game is the same except now you can move about properly in 1st person like the 3D games which really does add a lot to the game IF you played the original. Graphics are good, if functional. For the first time you really appreciate where you are and your surroundings and this makes thing easier... or rather SEEM easier. Because this game still taxes me like it did then and I often switch off the game in frustration just to try again the next couple of days. Myst has a very strange almost addictive quality to it that just keeps me coming back, determined to one day solve the puzzle (probabaly when I`m 84). I suppose I could cheat, find a walkthru somewhere and finally solve it. But i`m from the old school that says "Cheating only cheats yourself." And what the heck, I started on it 16 years ago, I can keep trying for another 16. It`s like trying to conquer a mountain, taking a helicopter to the top would just blow the whole point. So I`ll keep climbing, the hard way. It`s a good puzzle game and a classic, but takes a certain taste. I know my daughter (who was around 3 when I first got this game and is now 19) wouldn`t touch this game with a barge pole. But for anyone who remembers the old game and wants to complete it in proper realistic 3D or anyone else who truly wants a strange but logical puzzler this is a true classic and a walk into yesteryear.
