This is one of the greatest games of all time and needs to be in every gamers collection. 1999, the Earth is beset by an alien foe sowing terror by attacking population centres and killing or abducting the civilians. X-Com is put together as a global multi-national task force to try and defeat this menace. The game begins with globe and tasked with setting up your HQ. Where to put your base is important - funds are limited as is your radar range. This done, the game proper begins. It is split into 2 portions, a global map/management screen. When the time comes to take the fight to the invaders, it switches to a battle mode. The Total War franchise would do similar to great effect in later years. At first, you will have a few soldiers, and a handful of support staff such as scientists, as well as a pair of fighter jets and a transport plane. The weapons and gear is the best available to humanity but not a patch on what the aliens are toting. It is up to you to manage the base, buy in supplies, direct the research and production and of course control the soldiers. The basic flow of the game is in picking up invading craft on radar and intercepting them. Upon downing them, you then equip a team to scour the crash site to capture or kill any aliens and gather up artifacts for research. Research leads to better weapons and gear so you can fight the ever deadlier species of alien being sent against Earth. The game goes on in this fashion until one side wins. With enough research you will be able to cut off the alien threat at source. If the aliens are too successful in terror attacks on cities, you lose funding and some nations may even pull out altogether, leading to losing the war and the enslavement of Earth. The combat portion is a squad/platoon level isometric affair on random maps. Each soldier has stats including Time Units. You move your guys, then the aliens do. The fog of war and lethality of weapons make for tense battles. A must play for strategy gamers.
I adored this game on ST in my childhood and was delighted to see it on GOG. DOTC is a Cinemaware game so as you might imagine it is more a selection of bespoke minigames held together by a cinematic narrative than an out and out "game", with each having different mechanics depending on exactly what it is that you are doing. The goal of the game is to choose one of 4 Saxon lords (each with their own strengths and flaws) and try to kick out the tyrannical Normans and restore justice and a rightful Saxon king the land! Needless to say this is not a historical sim! No this is the medieval period as seen in Errol Flynn films - a world of almost story-book pageantry beautiful damsels, moustache twirling villains and all the knights in shining armour you can shake a stick (or sword) at! The graphics do a great job at conveying this 1930's/40's style of swashbuckling, heroic action film. You start with a single castle in your home province and take turns on a map screen. As well as marshalling and moving your campaign army, fighting pitched battles and sieges and so on, you can do an action on your turn. This includes things like building a castle in a province you own that doesn't have one, a daring nighttime raid on a rival lords castle, or arranging a Tourney. The outcomes of these revolve around the minigames, ad you may need to duel with a few castle guards, choose battle tactics, set the elevation for the catapults and of course aim your lance to unseat a rival and win the tourney! It's all fairly simple and good fun. So why 3 stars if it's a classic and a beloved nostalgia trip? Well in the cold light of day it is limited. You can easily beat it in 20 - 30 minutes. The pitched battles generally come down to raw numbers - I have rarely seen tactics make much difference. There is not much replayability either So in short it is a fun, thematic game, but don't go expecting a strategy epic! Also I have NEVER won at jousting in my entire life!
This game is in the class of game that made me join GOG in the first place (or would have been had it been available when I joined). Short version: It's a classic - play it! At it's core, Pirates! Gold is making 3 choices starting with an era (most choices being 20-30 year chunks from the late 16th to early 18th centuries) one of four nationalities (Dutch, English, Spanish or French - though Dutch is not available in the earliest scenario). Finally you round out your "character" with a skill (swashbuckling swordsmen, competent navigator, etc). From these choices the game then gives you a background-suitable ship and plonks you into the Caribbean within a day or so's sail of a port owned by the same nation your character hails from (again in the very early era's when Spain owns basically everything this may not be the case). However it's now completely up to you. You can sail into the port, immediately go looking for a ship to attack or set off into the blue - basically whatever you like. It was one of the first games I can remember that gave me that Elder-scrolls like feeling of "well, you're on your own kiddo!". It is almost sand-box like in that while the "goal" is to retire with as much gold, loot and land as you can get your grubby little hands on, the fun is in how you choose to get there. You can be a Bloodthirsty scourge upon all shipping, or on the other hand you could even try and simply try your hand at legitimate trade. You can align with all or none of the nations, or play them off turning your coat and purchasing pardons as it suits. Each area of the game is essentially a minigame from duels to land and sea battles searching for treasure. There is a risk/reward mechanic in that the easiest paths to gold are also usually the most likely to endanger the longevity of your pirate, so you must constantly weigh up the price of failure. It is a fun blend of sim, strategy, management and light rpg. Now, play it or walk the plank, Sah!
Set well before any of the films in the era of the Old Republic, this is a game that is able to feel familiar yet fresh. It's Star Wars so you know where you are with the setting, yet at the same time being unrelated directly to the films in any real way, they have room to breathe and no restraints or expectations to fulfill. It's a solid RPG with a pausable realtime type of system that works really well. You can queue up orders for your party and there are enough characters you can recruit on your adventure that you can have several party builds. Being a pretty old game there are potentially some issues running on modern hardware. I got it running fine on Windows 10 after not having played it since about 2004 or 05 or so and while it ran just fine right away I did have to do a bit of searching about and looking on the games forum on GoG to work out how to get it to run fullscreen and not postage stamp-o-vision, and add in cut content. Despite the potential to have to do a little bit of legwork, it's worth every penny to be able to revisit this classic though.
