As someone who has played the original Blood over and over since the late 90s I can say that it's difficult to go back to build engine games. I only recently realized why this may be, and it really has mostly to do with controls. The old build engine games don't actually look up and down (I mean, you could, but it deforms the image because the engine was not built to do that properly) and so actually you shouldn't really even play them with a mouse. This update to Blood really shows how you remaster these games and make them enjoyable today. The mouselook is true mouselook, so when you look up and down it doesn't appear to deform the entire world. Since the NPCs are sprites, though, they remain flat images. This means you have to accept that the mouse look does not change the 1 dimensional nature of the sprites (they'll always be flat). Even still, and this was true of several build engine games, these games used voxel so there were rudimentary 3d objects in the world (such as pick ups, and certain objects like lamps and what not). It makes for what would now be considered a fairly interesting look. If the game was actually designed to look this way today it could be considered a weird throw back aesthetic choice that mostly works. The game play still holds up, despite it's simplicity. Blood was always my favorite of the 4 build engine classics (everyone always forgets Redneck Rampage). It has a wonderfully sinister and creepy atmosphere (especially if you play with the CD music) and I just always liked the over the top gore and cult aesthetic the game leans on. It's one of a kind, even still, and the cheeky nature of the quips that all build engine games utilize is in no short supply here either. Overall, even if this isn't the original Blood, it updates it in ways that makes it feel like it's the Blood you remember. It modernizes the controls so you can just play this awesome classic without the more dated aspects. Overall I highly recommend this remaster.
I still have this, and the expansion hellfire, on CD. It's not the best Diablo (even in comparison to Diablo 3) when you consider that run at the exact same speed as the enemies so when the archers run away you will have to chase after them forever. This is a pain, among many other things that are greatly improved in Diablo II. That being said, though, this is still a fantastic game and the first in the action RPG. I remember it making waves at the time it came out. Complaints of it being too difficult because you had to actively play it were common, and people often said it wasn't as good as other CRPGs, like Baldur's gate, because of it. These people are crazy, and they still exist today. This game is historic. That being said, it's hard to recommend. You can still get Diablo II from Blizzard, as well as the expansion to that. That is a better game overall than this one. But, if you want to see where all the references in World of Warcraft or Diablo 2 or 3 come from this is one of the games they reference constantly. Or if you want to play the first Diablo. You could check it out for that too.
Look these are not the "best video games", but when they came out they were cool as hell. They had this huge ass arcade machine, and more importantly they cost a dollar per play! In the 80s! Don Bluth movies were big at the time and seeing this animation in an arcade machine that suggested it was a video game was a cool concept. I'd even go so far as to say Dragon's Lair 2 (for some reason it's the one least talked about), goes completely insane and is a must see from start to finish. I still have all three of these on a DVD they put out on windows in the 90s (that doesn't work right on modern computers), but I also buy these whenever they show up on various platforms. It's worth it even to just see the videos. The first Dragon's Lair is pretty standard, but again Space Ace and Dragon's Lair 2 are completely insane. Always worth full price in my opinion.
I got this for free many years ago when they gave it away on one of the first digital distribution web stores (outside Steam) Direct2Drive. Apparently they could not sell it so they tried giving it away. That was the rumor anyway. It's pretty bad. The controls are awful, and the game has always flaunted the way it wants you to drive the speed limit or else. Well, this was the first one and it's brutal in how it attempts that. You also die extremely easily and the game doesn't seem built around having fun as much as it is built around accuracy. I have never been a fan of games that go for reality over fun, and history has shown these games never get mainstream acceptance. Look at GTA. That game is huge and has tons of crazy physics bugs (some of which get added by mods) and people eat that shit up. No one wants GTA to be 100% reality. You often have to have car chases in this game that involve firing at someone outside the car (or shooting up a building for example), and you have to fire from the car, but it's awful. You can never hit anything. This is probably historically accurate (Tommy guns are notoriously terrible weapons), but this doesn't make for a fun game. It is also much more tedious to drive than it is fun. Not only do you have to drive cars from the era (which are bad cars because at the time they were relatively new so control, power steering, and much more conveniant things did not existy). For some reason this game felt it necessary to accurate depict how awful that was to drive. And there is a lot of dull, lifeless world, driving in this game. I say check it out on a deep deep sale if you really want, but I'd wager you will not play for more than an hour or two before giving up due to the horrendously bad implementation of mechanics in this game. This is not the first time this game has been sold digitally. It may have disappeared due to non interest, but it's been around for a very long time. Buyer be warned.
