I loved my time with this game. I bought it at release. In the first month, I played through the main quest and Panam side quest, opting to take her and the Aldecaldos into the final battle. It was a very emotional ride, and I grew very attached to some of the characters. I think it took me about 95 hours to see the credits rolling. After getting the Aldecaldos ending, I put the game down a bit, and returned around the time of patch 1.2 to play the standard endings and a few more side activities, putting in another 10 hours. Then I returned again after patch 1.5, which I found to make the game a whole lot more fun. Performance on lower-spec hardware was improved a lot, without making it look butt ugly. I played on a Radeon RX 570, locked at 30fps with RivaTuner, using a controller. It was a fairly good experience, although higher frame rates without severe graphical compromises would've been better. I have now finished most of the side quests and fixer gigs, and I've clocked 170 hours. I feel like this is probably a good place to leave the game for now, until I have better hardware and there's more story DLC. I found the main quest to be at odds with the open world design of the game. There's a constant urgency that detracts from just experiencing the world on your own time. However, there were plenty of wonderful highlights, with the Japantown carnival being one of my favourites. But it's in the side quests that the game really shines. The stories told are incredible and deeply engrossing, and sometimes also very chilling, not too dissimilar to an episode of Black Mirror. I'd say that the game is definitely worth playing, and highly enjoyable, especially after patch 1.5. Just ignore the hype and the broken promises from before the launch, and go in with zero expectations. It's mediocre as an RPG, but damn, the stories make up for it. If you've been on the fence, just buy it on sale for 50% off. You'll enjoy it twice as much for half the price.
Yup, as per the title, this is just a key to unlock the premium version of the map made by Piggyback, and it sells for a bit cheaper than on the Piggyback website. Benefits over the free version include, most importantly, the ability track completed tasks or found items, although this doesn't included main or side quests. You also get access to a high-res version of the map. But most importantly, it unlocks the locations of "hidden gems", high-value items hidden in chests or on bodies, often with an accompanying log to tell a story of how that item or dead person came to be there. While this is a great map, and I have no regrets about upgrading to the premium version, there are a few drawbacks: - Firstly, you have to manually tick off everything. It would've been so much less hassle if there was an API to let the map access game data directly, like with a number if third-party tools for Destiny 2. - Secondly, the map icons haven't been updated to the new style rolled out with patch 1.5. - Thirdly, V's new apartments and associated fast travel stations are absent. - Lastly, it would've been nice if there was a toggle to switch from the satellite view to the style present in the game, just to make it easier to correlate locations. Those gripes aside, it's $5 well spent just for the hidden gem locations, which I haven't seen in any other free maps.
I played Full Throttle once years ago. It didn't make much of an impact on me. It didn't come close to dethroning Day of the Tentacle as my favourite LucasArts adventure game. Then I bought the Remastered version (mere weeks before it was given away for free), and what I found was a game full of flaws. Full Throttle is, in a word, crap. The art fantastic. The voice acting is mostly good. The puzzles are not great. The more interactive sequences, like the scrapyard crane puzzle, the motorbike sections, and the stadium, are awful. What this Full Throttle Remastered managed was to polish up a very rough gem in such a way that the flaws became much more apparent. To be fair, I felt the same about Day of the Tentacle Remastered. What could be forgiven as a game of its time, flaws and all, becomes jarringly anachronistic when it's clad in a more modern guise. In short, Full Throttle is a bad game. Full Throttle Remastered is a very pretty, lovingly-restored version of a very bad game. My nostalgia goggles were not strong enough to make the experience enjoyable.
This game brings back fond memories. I was but a young teenage boy at the beginning of high school when this game came out. It was probably during a period where we saw the most technical advances in games ever, all due to CD-ROM. Virtual Reality was all the rage, as was streaming full motion video. This game combined both. Hailing from the time before graphics accelerator cards took games to yet another level, this game really pushed the envelope. On the down side, this probably makes the graphics look a lot more dated than what might have been the case if they had opted for hand drawn graphics. But since Access attempted to create an "interactive movie", only real actors would do. To anyone who experiences involuntary convulsions upon the mentioning of "interactive movie", rest assured, UAKM is a proper adventure game, and despite the age of the graphics, it's thoroughly immersive. Having finally played this game some 15 or so years after I first saw it at a friend's house (I couldn't play it at the time due to not having a working CD-ROM drive), all I can say is: WOW!!! Once you get past the ancient graphics, you'll discover a well told detective story, filled with absolutely the right atmosphere. Some of the acting is very bad, but it all seems to fit perfectly in this spoof-like detective noir tale. The thing I found most bothersome about this game is the control system, more specifically, the "virtual reality" travel mode. I didn't mind playing the game from a first person perspective, and felt that it helped the overall experience, but it would've been better if it handled more like a first person shooter. I was glad to discover that movement between locations became less painful if you use the "Travel" button on the control panel. I would've noticed it if I had bothered to read the manual properly, and I suggest that other players also give it a read first. I conclusion, I would say that this game is definitely far superior than the some of its parts, and a lot of fun to play, in spite of the control system. I would highly recommend it, and I would go as far as to say that this is one of few adventure games I can see myself replaying at a future date.
