Visually it's still very pleasing to the eye, mechanically it's identical to the original Crysis, and Psycho is just a more interesting character than Nomad ever was. Warhead also offers a campaign that's a bit more action packed and fast paced. Of course, the sandboxy nature of the levels is still retained, with the degree of freedom that you seldom see in non-open world first person shooters, but it's clear that the developers were going for something that encourages the player to keep the momentum and move from one action set piece into the next. Overall it's good fun, provided that you can keep it running stable, which is my only gripe with the game. DirectX 10 mode is a clear culprit here so if you're fine with sacrificing some graphical fidelity, just stick to the regular executable where the game could run at a much more stable DX9. Otherwise you'll have to deal with frequent crashing, third party fixes for the refresh rate issue (if you play in 4k, for instance), and some graphical glitches. It's too bad that this standalone expansion wasn't included in the remastered trilogy because it could really benefit from improved stability, better graphics API, and modernized controller support.
A lot of this game seems strangely crummy compared to the first Red Faction, and the developers of this sequel completely gave up on the most interesting gimmicks of the first game, like the geo mod. It's not a bad shooter on its own - it can be quite fun too. But compared to the first game it seems a lot less polished, the shooting feels floaty and feedback from hitting the enemies is very minimal. Pretty much the only enemies that are fun to shoot are those zombies that look like out of a Time Splitters game, because their heads fall apart if you score a headshot. The story is also this generic yarn about disgruntled military super soldiers overthrowing a dictator, and then turning coat and betraying the player, and bla bla bla bla... It's completely dull and forgettable, which is disappointing because, again, the original's story and setting was actually one of the standouts of that game (for the time, at least). Even having some good actors for voice talents doesn't help to salvage it. It feels like a quickly slapped together sequel, made by a B studio on a lower budget and shorter deadline, and it just ended up being this black sheep of the series (that is, until Red Faction Armageddon came out).
Unfortunately, this release is so borked that it exceeded my threshold for technical BS, and I can't be bothered to keep bashing my head against the wall with it. The only positive thing I can say is that it launches and, technically, it’s playable because you can load into the game and start a level. Unfortunately, that’s where its functionality ends: 1. Widescreen fixes don’t work at all. You’re stuck playing in a 4:3 aspect ratio unless you enjoy playing your games stretched horizontally. 2. If you have a dual monitor setup, you're screwed, unless you disconnect the second monitor. You’ll constantly drag your cursor to the other screen and minimize the game whenever you try to click to fire. There is no way to run this game in exclusive fullscreen as far as I'm aware. 3. The audio is so deep fried you'll start craving some Kentucky friend chicken. I’m not sure if this was intentional or if it's the fact that it's an old DirectX 6 game that doesn’t play nice with modern hardware. The DirectSound hardware patch didn’t seem to help either. 4. Mouse input is somehow both jittery and unresponsive at the same time. It all depends on the direction you're trying to aim. The direct input fix didn’t resolve the issue for me either. So overall, I couldn’t get this game into a playable state, which is a shame because I’ve always wanted to try it. Buyer beware. For reference, all the fixes I attempted came from the PCGamingWiki.
Sin is a pretty solid FPS from the late 90s that definitely stands out as one of the classics of the genre, and it offers pretty much everything that you'd expect out of a game from that era. An arsenal of big guns, wide variety of baddies to shoot, plenty of neatly designed levels with fun set pieces and gimmicks, objective based progression with some key hunting. The works. It's all good time, and the game is also pretty long for a shooter, with main campaign that can easily take about 10-12 hours to complete, with an additional story expansion called Wages of Sin thrown into this release for good measure. It's also a game that's very comfortable being stuck in the late 90s with its story and vibe. It's all very juvenile and silly, and it wears its comic book inspirations on its sleeve. It's a game that you will especially dig if you've been the enjoyer of the recent resurgence of boomer shooters. Sin is one of the games that all these modern shooters pay homage to and it was practically a blueprint for what these games are today. So, if there ever was a good time to rediscover this game, it's right now. Especially since this release works great out of the box and there's no need to fiddle around with any fixes, patches, or workarounds. You can just install and play in whatever widescreen resolution you see fit, and the game works great with zero issues from start to finish. Well, aside from the fact that the menu is tiny in higher resolutions, but that's not such a big deal.
Full disclosure: after initially struggling with the DOSBox version of Wing Commander 1 offered by GoG, I relented and downloaded The Kilrathi Saga version, patched with a fan update. This is currently the most comfortable way to play the game in its original form, as the GoG release suffers from such poor performance that framerates can dip into single digits during combat with more than 2-3 ships. Unfortunately, this makes the game nearly unplayable, and I wouldn't recommend playing it that way. Despite this, I'm very much enjoying Wing Commander so far. Being such a legendary franchise, I wanted to finally scratch it off my bucket list, and this was actually my first time playing this game. Initially, the transition from modern 3D space sims like Elite Dangerous to Wing Commander's 2D sprite-based space took some getting used to. It may sound funny, but during my first mission, I spent nearly 20 minutes just figuring out where the front of the Tiger Claw was to land and finish the mission. And then it took me another few minutes of fiddling with random keys to initiate the landing sequence, as I initially ended up rubbing against an unidentifiable blob of pixels, wondering why nothing's happening. Once my imagination kicked in and my eyes adjusted to the dated visuals, though, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the game. Blasting enemy ships is a ton of fun, and the little cinematic cutscenes and interactions with my squadmates is really immersive and engaging. The movie-like presentation and the ability to mess up some objectives, leading to different story outcomes or missing squad interactions, add significant replay value and genuinely raise the stakes of the campaign. I appreciate the game's ambition, and I can see how it made such a strong impression back in the day.
Red Faction is one of the standout classics among early 2000s first-person shooters. The campaign offers a solid 6 hours of blasting through hostile guards, mercenary soldiers, mutant creatures, vehicles... oh yes, and also walls. One of the main selling points for this title back in the day was its unique technology that allowed you to blast holes through walls, making it possible to deform the level geometry and bypass certain obstacles that would be impassable in other shooters. At least, that was the theory. Before Havok physics came into play, this sort of physical destruction engine was a neat feature to play around with. However, in practice, it doesn’t have much practical use. There's one moment early on where you can shoot the bridge out from underneath an enemy APC, and I can recall one, maybe two other instances where I had to blast through a wall to bypass a closed door. But beyond that, it's mainly cosmetic and doesn’t provide any tactical advantage to the otherwise straightforward run-and-gun gameplay. So, what else makes this game such a gem? Well, everything else, to be honest. The game's story and atmosphere were definite standouts. The campaign is structured much like a Half-Life game, with seamless level transitions and a narrative that rarely breaks your point of view. The story of oppressed workers on Mars' mining colony launching a rebellion against their corporate overlords is reminiscent of many classic science fiction tales from movies and literature. It's good stuff. The campaign itself is also mostly well-made, with plenty of variety in the form of vehicle and stealth sections, as well as scripted set pieces sprinkled throughout to keep things from getting monotonous. The only notable difficulty spike worth complaining about comes from rail gun-wielding soldiers toward the end of the game, who can essentially one-hit kill you, sometimes without warning. It’s incredibly annoying but not too hard to manage either.
I remember a friend of mine talking about Chasm when we were in grammar school and even though I never had a chance to play it before, this gave me an idea that the game may have some cult following. Seeing it re-released for a modern hardware, I guess I wasn't too far off. Overall the shooting is pretty fun and the game has a charming retro aesthetic mixed with some cool music and Quake-like atmosphere. The ability to dismember enemies before they go down is also a nice touch and can even give you some tactical advantage, especially when dealing with hit-scan enemies. However, what frustrates me a lot about this game, is just how cryptic it can get when it comes to level design. It's one thing to make the levels a maze-like puzzle that you just need to figure out, but Chasm often does things that just seemingly happen for no reason or are so obtuse that you can only figure them out by accident or with a guide. Like when I would enter a room with a locked gate that blocks the obvious way to progress, I'd run off to explore the surroundings and try to figure out what to do next, but once I stumble back around to the gate, it's suddenly opened, even though I didn't flip any switches or found any items. Or how about a level where the only way to open a door to progress further, is to destroy a snake statue that looked like just another decorative element of the level? It makes zero sense and the only reason I figured that out is because I was at a point where I started shooting at random things, mostly out of pure boredom and frustration. To put it another way, when you are forced to fall back on the "right-hand/left-hand rule" to try and find your way out of a maze, and it's only a fourth level in the game, then that should tell you as a developer that you've gone too far.
There are few things that I remember from my childhood more fondly than reading AvP comics and my overall obsession with movie franchises that inspired this game. Naturally, because of this, I never missed an opportunity to play any Alien or Predator games that I could find, although the 1999 AvP somehow always slipped my grasp. Sadly however, despite being really excited to finally give this a shot, a brutal reality check hit me in the face faster than a leaping facehugger. The first major strike against the game for me, is that everything is just too damn dark. Clearly the developers were aiming to replicate the mood of the films, but in this case I feel like they went into such an extreme that it actively hinders player's progress rather than being a mere mood-setter. The night vision mode is supposed to be a solution to this but even that is hampered by even the faintest light source, which immediately flares up the entire screen and blocks your vision anyway. The only balanced option available are the light flares, however, the area that they can illuminate is limited and you can only pop about 5 of them before having to wait for a cooldown. The second problem is the level design. I tried each of the three available campaigns, and the furthest that I ever got was the third mission of the Marine campaign, because it was the only one where I was able to figure out where to go before I lost my patience. Being lost so often sapped any enjoyment out of the game for me pretty rapidly, and the problem was further exacerbated by constantly respawning enemies that drained my resources until I could either figure out how to progress or die. It pains me because normally I'm very open minded about old games, and dated visuals or mechanics rarely ever bother me to the point where I would stop playing. But I feel like AvP is simply not a very well designed game, and it was definitely a huge disappointment to me, after so many years of hearing good things about it.
While Legend was a fun game, it was probably not something that a fan of the classic Tomb Raider would fully approve of, since it was all movie-like, bombastic, verbose, and action oriented. In a lot of ways it felt like a precursor to what the series would eventually turn into with the 2013 iteration. Underworld, however, feels much closer in spirit to the original games by dialing back the in-game dialogue, scaling back the cinematic action scenes (no more QTEs, thankfully), and putting the focus back on exploration, tricky platforming, and puzzle solving in largely abandoned and isolated locations. The atmosphere and gameplay are pretty great for the most part. You may encounter an occasionally unresponsive camera or a glitch, but overall it's nothing that would seriously drag the game down. My only issue was with the story, which feels rather unremarkable due to stiff dialogue and rather downbeat tone. The aforementioned scaling back of the overly verbose dialogue works good for immersing you during gameplay but as a result the game seems to be lacking a lot of the humor, energy and charm that made Legend stand out so much.
Shadowgrounds is a top-down shooter with a linear story campaign where you fight hordes of alien monsters on some alien planet. Overall, it's a pretty bog-standard sci-fi premise that only serves as an excuse to put you in a situation where the goal of winning a game is to kill everything in your path and perhaps accomplish a few basic objectives along the way. It may not be overly ambitious or deep, and the story, characters, and voice acting mostly serve as a wallpaper for all the action. But it's a decent game and I had a lot of fun playing through the campaign. Another notable thing is that the game didn't give me too much trouble on a technical front, as it was running flawlessly straight out of the box. The default control scheme plays like a fairly standard third-person shooter, with horizontal aiming strictly following your mouse movements, except for the camera being positioned in an overhead view instead of following your character from behind. An alternate control scheme is available, and it turns the game into more of a twin-stick shooter, but that somehow felt a bit clunky for me and I preferred to play it with the default aiming scheme. Perhaps this works better if you want to play on a controller, which is also possible. Visuals were also a highlight for me. Of course, being a game from almost 20 years ago, some aspects may feel dated, however, the effective use of frame effects and dynamic shadows that are cast everywhere from the beam of your ever-present flashlight creates a very moody atmosphere. I often found myself jumping at literal shadows. It's a good example of how a game that makes good use of the technology of the time, can still look aesthetically pleasing decades later. Personally, I prefer sharp and crisp graphics like these over any game that overuses post-processing effects to cover the imperfections of the modeling or textures.
