Red Faction, the game with destructible environments! It's still as fun as I remember it when it released. Runs good, too! Unfortunately, this port's launcher doesn't offer higher resolutions. In fact, you can only select three 4:3 resolutions. Highly recommend playing this via Dash Faction, which will also apply community patches and enable borderless windowed mode, among other features this port should have had from the beginning. Still worth getting though!
..of the original Heretic and Hexen game (the 1st parts each, only) including the expansions and some new content as well. I started replaying Hexen first and consider the updates and additions a welcome improvement. It appears that the game was also rebalanced in places: Enemies hit harder (at least to my memory), the controls are way more fluid, and the weapons (at the very least the ice spell) were buffed. In addition, spell books are available in each level, allowing the player to change to another character can continue playing from there! The soundtrack was remastered by Andrew Hulshult, the same person who excellently remastered the soundtrack for Doom + Doom II. I can easily recommend this gem of a remaster.
Solid 8/10 for me. Characters are for the most part well modeled and voiced. Sherlock Holmes' & Dr. John Watson's personalities are held very close to the original material by Sir Doyle. Ripperologists will find in delight, that the locations and murder cases contain a very high amount of detail - some of the locations were recreated exactly as they were. The Whitechapel area was a bit consolidated to be a bit more compact for gaming purposes as no one would enjoy backtracking through a third of London. I personally also like the fact that the victims' cases were treated with respect. Regarding gameplay, this is essentially a point and click adventure but it may come as a surprise that it can be entirely enjoyed in first person perspective as well. More often than not, the player will be tasked with some "fetch quests" before being able to proceed with the story. Many puzzles have to be solved, and fortunately, none were repeated within this game. But be warned that some puzzles may be entirely void of logic and require trial and error (or a look in a walkthrough) to be solved. Due to this, I deduct one point out of ten. From the technical point of view, the game will run out of the box, but the graphic settings might not. I had to install an older version of the d3d9.dll that can be found on the Nexus (google "d3d9 fix for Fallout"). Also, saving the game did not work in three out of four cases - I set the compatibility mode for this game's exe file to "win xp". In addition, I had to install a patch that made this game's exe large address aware (google "techpowerup large address aware" for an easy to use executable). Unfortunately, this doesn't solve the slight but noticable performance problems. I deduct one point out of ten due to the technical issues.
I didn't even know this remake existed. Having played the original extensively, I had high expectations and was not disappointed. The graphics are very nice, many details have been added to the world and the gameplay is very close to the original (it is quite a bit easier with mouse and keyboard than with a d-pad). My only critique is that the default volume level when starting the game is set to ear blasting. I finished this remake once on normal mode, so I am not sure but the full boss fight should be available on hard mode and after finishing that, episode 0 should be available in the pandora's box. I'll edit my review once I get to finish the game again. PLEASE remake Panzer Dragoon Zwei, too!
Wolfenstein New Order plays very much like RTCW with the only minus being the much smaller and thus more linear levels. Graphics are great (for the time of release) but there are some technical "hiccups" like the way the engine draws objects as they come into sight. Luckily, this doesn't take away from the gameplay. Just like in RTCW, there're many treasures and other collectibles scattered around the levels which rewards the little exploring you can do. Story wise, this game is (mostly) set in a what-if future of the 1960's in which the Nazis won the war. You join the resistence on their fight against the now global regime and uncover their atrocities while fighting their hellish Wunderwaffen. Also, for those wondering, the German release is entirely uncensored so have fun killing some damned Nazis.
