An Adult Game shouldnt have ended up as one of my favourite games of all time, but it has.
A very good game, with well fleshed out mechanics and a visual style that still looks good. The story could have done with being fleshed out more, but otherwise, easily recommended.
Once you hit the start game button you have to ask yourself 2 simple things: 1) Do I care about story? 2) Am I ready to quick save a lot? Kingpin's story is paper thin, throwng you into its dark gritty world with one premise, Revenge!. Imagine Shenmue if Rio just got on with it and shot people, instead of wasting time with that Fork Lift driving job. Kingpin does however excel at being a fantastic old school shooter, where you will die in seconds if you havnt got your wits about you. Standing in the open isnt going to cut it here, and you had better be strafing in and out of cover if you dont want to be turned to mince meat before you can blink (I found myself save scumming constantly). The game does however throw you a lifeline in terms of the excellent hiring system. Kingpin makes it clear from the start that your no super human, and that your just about as durable as the enemes your trying to kill. With that in mind you can hire thugs to come along on your tale of revenge and give you some much needed extra firepower. This is accomplished via quite a nice money system, which you can use to hire goons, buy weapons, health, armour and ammo (plus a few upgrades). Another point of note should be the rather excellent A.I, not just of your enemies, but of your fellow guns for hire. Enemies will mostly run if shot, regroup, and very rarely stand still long enough for you to headshot them. Your allies wont just follow you, but will climb ladders, jump from box to box, and even crawl through air vents. Kingpin is by no means perfect, but I found it very enjoyable and played it through to completion. Recommended
Crusader is both infuriating and satisifying at the same time. Running around and creativly killing everything that moves never seems to get old, and the missions/levels are nicely varied in both challenge and pace. Considering the wall to wall violence, the story isnt half bad either, and the little FMV cutscenes both in mission and at the hub world add a nice bit of atmosphere. Visually, the game suprisingly holds up really well, and the Pagan engine (whilst dated) does the job excedingly well. There are however a few negatives, firstly the controls. The game can be played with keyboard, or a keyboard/mouse combo, and I feel both are clunky and make things a lot more difficult than they need to be. I would recommend using a program that binds the keys to a joypad, doing this may the whole thing far easier to control. Secondly, jumping puzzles. Whilst few and far between the jumping mechanics (just like in Ultima 8) can end up in some stupid deaths. Overall, a solid game that I would easily recommend.
The first game in the X series (and also my first experience with it) is an interesting, but flawed beast. The initial first hours of play are painfully slow, as you trade small goods between stations in a attempt to build up funds. Eventually, after a lot of grinding you can start to build your own factories and the money starts to flow freely.You can start enjoying the game now right? Well, sort of. Upgrades to your ship cost a hell of a lot, and I found myself just flying to each of my factories (spread out over the whole galaxy), picking up my profits and eventually having the funds to buy an upgrade. Rinse, Repeat If the story was a bit more substantial, then perhaps X would have been able to hold my interest, but currently the unfortunately dull nature of the game lessons my enjoyment. If your interested in the X series, its probably best skipping to "X-2 The Theat" and just reading a plot summary of this one
