Blade Warrior is a port of an Amiga title that got a score of positive reviews back in the day. The PC version was pretty obscure and plays slightly different, but has a charm of it's own. The game combines several types of game-genres and uses several ‘systems’ to accomplish this. Three genres stand out: - A side-scrolling brawler, where you roam the land and fight enemies with sword & spells. - An adventure game, where you search for items, needed to obtain fragments of a tablet. - A SHMUP, where you ride a dragon between wizard’s towers, shooting at incoming enemies. While the combined genres provide for an entertaining and engaging game, the implementation of the individual parts feels a bit rudimentary at times. The hack-and-slash part is pretty nice: the game has a good selection of enemies and sword-strokes to vanquish them. The adventure-part consist of item-based puzzles: you roam the lands collecting things and trading them for others. Wizards provide artifacts, spells and clues. To visit them, you'll need to access different roads through archways. Some of these are closed and require keys that can be found on other roads. The SHMUP-part is mainly used travel quickly from A to B. Compared to the Amiga version, the PC-port has a more sedate pace. Since it can be quite hard to hit enemies when you're not facing them strategically *and* the random encounters allow you to get mobbed from different directions, the Amiga-version is more challenging and (to me) less fun. *TLDR* I like the game and think the combination of different genres works well, even though they're not extremely impressive when looked at individually. My summary: Pro's: - Moody graphics that communicate a lot of detail even in silhouette - Interface is quite intuitive - Collecting stuff, trading with wizards etc. takes time but is fun Cons: - Sound is almost non-existent - It can be quite hard to hit enemies at times - Noticeable slow-downs when parallax scrolling portals animate
I bought Anachronox a long time ago, in a whim. At first, I couldn't get really into it. I played it for a few hours, then got distracted by whatever interested me those days (probably pr0n). After discovering that a few extraordinary patches were made, I installed the game once more. This time, something 'clicked'. I honestly can't think of a game that had me laughing this hard for years, yet at other moments moving me quite profoundly. (No really, I had savegames with which I could show 'key-moments' to friends - they all were as amazed as I was! ...even though there was alcohol involved). Anyway, since then I've been checking regularly what Tom Hall is doing. Sadly, no other game like this has sprung from the man's undoubtedly brilliant mind. Tonight, I shall grab this version from GOG, shudder while the intro-music plays and lift my glass in salute. Tom, Ion Storm-guys: thanks for everything. (And hint: go the Kickstarter way like Brian Fargo did!)
