Raven Software + old school Quake engine = will get me every time. I am just an average fan of Star Trek, but I love Quake II/III engine games, and every game Raven has ever made, before they joined Activision. Soldier of Fortune and Jedi Outcast come to mind. If you like those, you'll like this. It's a fun story-based romp with a lot of old school FPS corridor shooting, good characters and charming cut scenes, both in-game and out. I appreciate the graphics for what they are, the environments are really well done, and the character models are funny, mpaped Quake models that were cutting-edge at the time. The level puzzles are all very intuitive and just clever enough to not be frustrating. Some of the story elements can be puzzling, but I don't care, the arch is fine. Must-play game (as well as the sequel) for classic era FPS fans.
I've never seen or experienced a game world like this, and that is what this game is all about. It's not "Witcher 3," it's a sandbox game in an incredibly detailed, immersive, dark city with lots of tight quarters, scary characters and a dangerous edge you can't shake. Everything is dirty, shady, criminal, and indicative of a society hanging on by a string after corporations take over government and essentially enslave people in order to further their own interests. It's important to understand this - if you're looking to be "swept-up" by the story, you may be disappointed. It seems to be more about finding your own way in the city and building-up your character from a nobody with nothing in your pocket, to a powerful, self-reliant cyberGod in a city of sleaze. The graphics and city are downright amazing, nothing like I've seen before in a game, tons of gritty detail and an immserive quality unlike anything I've ever experienced. It gives me Deus Ex vibes as the game seem to do everything fairly well...shooting, stealth, hacking, melee, driving etc.., The voice-acting is amazing and the writing is great, the game is a fully immersive RPG that is a bit shallow on attributes/perks, but does have a lot of other facets in the way of customizing your cyber implants and deck, weapons etc..., I experienced the widely-reported visual glitches and slow-downs, mostly as in-game quest scripts kicked-off, and the driving with mouse/keyboard was ridiculously bad/touchy, something I'm sure they'll address eventually, but in the mean time I may have to tweak mouse acceleration settings to handle. Using an RTX 2060 card and quad-core at 3.9ghz, the game runs pretty great at high settings, and looks fantastic. This game is a slow burn, it starts out slowly, as it should, so you need to prepare for that. Read the lore, take it in, and wait for patches! Glorious game. Takes me back to the early 2000's when games were original and full of effort.
My review is influenced by the fact that I don't have a lot of time for gaming anymore, yearn for some atmosphere, a good varied storyline and action, and some good old fashion Wolfenstein shoot-em-up castle fun. I have yet to play ANY of the new Wolfenstein games after RTCW, which I loved, mostly because they got such mediocre-to-bad reviews, except for New Order and Old Blood. I finally jumped into Old Blood and was hooked. The cinematic cut scenes aren't too bad at all, don't take you out of the game's atmosphere, and the story stays focused on mission-based objectives that are more than just run-and-gun repetition (escaping from prison, semi-challenging rail gun sequences, duck-and-cover fights and plenty of weapons and loot). There's some basic stealth, which is satisfying and in short bits, and you can pretty much choose which weapons you want to go with depending on the situation. Just taking out the Super Soldiers alone was a blast and full of tension, just a nice, basic set-up for the player to make his way into the castle prison to find his friend. Loved it. I picked the game up on a $5 sale and it's exactly what I was looking for. If you're a shooter-only guy maybe this is old hat by now, but I come and go through genres, and revisiting shooters happens as I see fit. I'm in my early 50's now so have played PC games for many years, and these fun single player cinematic shooters in the style of the old Raven games never gets old. I'm fine with it being on the shorter side as well, and look forward to playing New Order next.
These games have really grown on me, after playing through the first in the series, The Legend, I had a lot of fun with it, up until the end-game when the game's balance went way out of whack and the "underworld" was almost impossible to even approach. This could be due to my inexperience with the game and building a party, so I will probably return to that with a different protagonist class after I finish Crossworlds. Crossworld's has noticeable additions and little improvements, including what seems like some balance improvements (i.e. less time going back to mercenary vendors after every...single...battle). The graphics seem a bit upgraded and the familiar gameplay lets you jump right in. I find the game relaxing and casual, but the combat and RPG elements require just enough thought and strategy to keep it compelling and fun. The fast-travel option when sailing is a HUGE benefit, requiring much less time to travel from island to island, there are more varied environments and smaller islands that make it easier to navigate and complete. I haven't finished it quite yet, so my opinion may change, but so far if I had to recommend one in the series, it's definitely Crossworlds - more variety, more inventory aids, your pets are more powerful, and there's quite a bit more mercenary types you can hire that give you more flexibility. It's always on sale for $3-$4 and it's a game that you can spend hours and hours with, great value in 2019.
Just what was needed for this game, which was really hard to play in its previous format, on modern PC's. Now, textures are much clearer, widescreen support, smooth movement and aiming, alt-tab or hit the Windows key to switch to the desktop, many more options for gameplay and display/game options, etc.., I'm currently playing through the various campaigns/levels and ramping-up the difficulty as I get better and more familiar with the levels and weapons again, and this version allow me to do that perfectly. Smooth gameplay, no bugs, I can finally enjoy the game properly. It's just nice to jump back in time and experience a classic 90's FPS action game the way it was meant to be enjoyed on modern systems, without the hassle of installing mods and mucking-up my PC with files/exe's and launchers etc.., (looking at you, original DOOM series). So yeah, this kind of thing is great, I'd happily pay $5-$10 or so for games to be updated and re-packaged this way. Let's hope the 90's Doom games follow suit at some point.
Other than some in-game oddities here and there (nothing close to game-breaking), this version plays perfectly on Windows 10, easy to alt-tab out whenever I want, higher resolutions and graphic card/DX enhancements, make it very playable and it scales nicely on today's widescreens. The gameplay is untouched, as is the rest of the game, so it's like going back in time. And the game's still worth playing solo if you don't feel like messing with online configurations,
I tried, I really did, and I spent quite a bit of time with the game, but its flaws and drawbacks immediately become apparent after the first battle or two. On the plus side the graphics are nice, the UI is fine for me, the humor is a nice touch, the story is fairly minimalistic and generic, the game seems to be all about the turn-based battles and quests. The real problem here is the randomnly placed enemies that range from "weak" to "impossible" scattered throughout the map, and the constant need to buy new units after even the "easiest" of battles at times, leaving you with barely enough coin to purchase what you need, ad nauseum. I felt little sense of progression, nor did I understand how or why I was increasing in strength beyond simply purchasing better army units (i.e. bears, pirates etc..,) and there's little-to-no information on what units are stronger than others, enemy info is sorely lacking, the whole game just feels like a mobile game port, or one of those free-to-play games you see advertised online somewhere. It's incredibly generic and lacking a lot of detail where it's needed. I gave it three stars because it has its moments, is endearing in the sense that the world and effort put into it is noticeable at times, and is relatively fun to play around with. But as a true turn-based RPG experience, it's hardly worth my time any longer, although I may try to start over and find a way to really progress and figure things out. The problem is you almost have to do Google searches to figure stuff out, because the game does such a poor job of explaining literally anything to you.
