Phenomenal. A more real-than-reality look at the culture of late '90s internet, dominated by Geocities, webrings, MySpace and the like. The utter earnestness of the characters is delightful and the satirical jabs at this period of 'net fan culture are spot-on. Great for those who like your-player-character-is-sitting-in-front-of-a-computer-and-solving-puzzles-by-sifting-through-data games like Spycraft or Her Story. It does go off on a bit of a wild tangent in the final act.
This is just fantastic. I can't believe I never heard about it back when it first came out. A fantastic FMV investigation game that you'll love if you like the works of Sam Barlow (Her Story, Telling Lies...). My one major complaint is that it features far too many one-and-done game mechanics and it can be frustrating to learn something that you then never use again. Otherwise: just excellent stuff.
I'm honestly stunned that I missed this gem back in the day during the wave of Activision Star Trek games like Elite Force and Armada circa 2000. A forerunner to the more recent Bridge Crew, this sees you take the captain's chair in a first person game and manage your ship that way as opposed to the more usual outside-the-ship, top-down view. As a result, it's a mix of starship combat and the on-the-bridge drama with you both having to navigate both the spaceship combat and the difficult choices your bridge crew (and superiors) present to you. This makes it a far more authentic Star Trek: The Next Generation experience than pure tactics games like Starfleet Command. This is easily my favourite Star Trek game I've ever played and apparently improves even more with the hefty number of mods and updates out there (that I'm too tech-illiterate to try). Minor complaints include the fact that some levels begin with unskippable cutscenes, making failing & restarting those levels somewhat tedious; but again, there are mods out there... Difficult moral choices, a star-studded cast and spaceship combat that really feels like you're in the captain's chair and not at a great remove, all this adds up to a fab, fab game that I'm glad I was able to discover, albeit two decades after its original release.
Dracula 1 is a fine, relatively short playthrough with a great, gothic atmosphere. That said, it's absolutely loaded with adventure game idiosyncracies from the era it was made that make it incredibly frustrating in a time where adventure games have had decades' worth of quality-of-life improvements. Be prepared to pixel-hunt for the sweet spot on the screen that allows you to actually progress! For the life of me I can't get 2 and 3 to start, even with fixes listed in the forums here. I got this on sale for 69p and that feels about right for what I actually got from it.
