So I loved Arcanum and thus Troika and I read some critics in the game magazins when it was released and I thought - wow that game will be pure awesomeness... But I got disappointed very early in the game. There is nearly nothing to explore. Yes the atmosphrere is great, it's dark and shabby but the levels are really restricted in every aspect. And there aren't many people to talk to and I think there weren't enough sidequests to gain experience from, so I had always a lack of abilities. The dialogue choices made no difference most of the time. Sometimes only a little. I had the feeling the different answers only existed to read them and they often lead to the same thing - quitting the dialogue, a simple goodbye would have done suffice. And the overall feeling of being a much feared mighty vampire, or at least a weak vampire struggling with his/her fate was completely missing. You felt like you had no identity and there was no identity to develop in the game. Then there were those levels... The ghost haunted hotel was really brilliant, I have to admit. It was spooky and exciting, I felt like trapped in a horror movie, Nightmare on Elm Street like running through narrow boiler rooms. (They should have made more levels like that in the game) The Brotherhood of the 9th Circle was pretty cool, too. But there also were the sewers and China Town.... and those last levels really ruined it for me. And the 'visit' at the Giovanni Family was very frustrating if you haven't gathered every single skillpoint you could and have failed in one or the other quest. I wonder how it is to play a Nosferatu, being mainly confined to the sewers must be a real fun killer since it is the worst part of it (like in most of the games I've played before). That to say, the stealth mechanism in this game is really a strange thing. If you have few skillpoints they will most likely directly see you no matter how much you try to hide and if you have some more they won't even see you when you are right in front of them, there wasn't really something between that. I can't really understand why so much people are raving about this game, it has so many flaws, the nice design of the very small levels won't justify all the anger you will experience if you are once more killed or once more running through ugly sewers or warehouses. Maybe the game would have been better if they hadn't made it 3D source engine based. Well tastes are different....I will keep playing Arcanum instead and being sad about the demise of Troika games, maybe they could have released another more polished game if they had the time. And : I think the price is to steep considering that you get a boxed version for about 4 euros...
Finally it's here on gog, with the CD-version I needed 4 hours to get it running in DOS, I wished I could have bought it here before that long troublesome DOS-box operation, but hey it's so good, I think I will just buy it here again :) So about the game: Albion is very immersive and entertaining but it's also incredibly unforgiving (at least in my opinion, maybe I did something wrong at some point in the game). The traps + the enemies in the dungeons form a murderous duo and if you go there without the right equipment and without enough patience it will get really nasty. In this regard it resembles the The Dark Eye - Realms of Arkania series, only a bit easier and with better graphics. Okay, I'm not the best gamer under the sun and the setting is so fascinating just like the perspective switching from first person to isometric depending on the context, that I can just give this game a 5 star rating which it really deserves for being unique: The game does a lot of things right, not only story-telling wise but also with the interactive environment. You can interact with a lot of things in the landscape and the houses - a bit like in games like Oblivion - and you also get a discription for nearly everything around you(which meant a lot to me). And the group members you can have during the game are very well thought-out and diverse just like the dialogue options and the skills/spells. One can clearly see that the developers put a lot of effort into this game. If the popular movie 'Avatar' had a spiritual gaming predecessor, this would be it. The story about the exploitation of the planet/the nature and the cat-like natives being threatened by the greed of the 'intruders' reminded me a lot of it. All in all I can recommend this game to everyone, of course especially to role-playing fantasy/science-fiction fans.
Cosmo's Cosmic Adventures is similar to other Apogee games but that's nice. If you like old Apogee jump n run games you will also like this one. It's a colorful funny experience. The graphics look cheerful and the leveldesign is cute and fairly diversified. Climbing on walls is fun and it gives you the chills when you look down...:D and that's another nice feature, looking up and down, and sometimes this means gathering stars when being at the right place to look up...and so you can reach bonus levels which are quite interesting. Furthermore picking up special items can increase your health bar, that's a good incentive to explore levels thoroughly. And I don't know whether I'm the only one, but being swallowed and catapulted by a plant feels enormously exciting to me^^ I really think the price isn't high regarding what you get for it. Today you often pay more for games not having as much features as this game. I can highly recommend this game, spent hours on it, and not only back in the days, so I'm not idealizing it :)