Impressive redo, with mostly good voicing, original camera views, good music, 90's style funky storytelling (split screens, angled perspectives). I bought the original and was impressed, but lost so much time trying to get past the Quick-Time Events that the media languished in a box somewhere. Then I stumbled on the remaster, and really enjoyed it again. IIRC, it had the same audio, but uprezzed visuals and the model textures and bump mapping, but I think the polygons were the same LOD. I haven't tried the GOG version, but the one I had was based on downloadable extras that you replace after an original media install (which I still had), and it was completely solid and I began falling in love with it again. Biggest problem was that after all those years, even with trainers, you still couldn't skip the QTEs altogether. I got to the same part (like psilocybin bugs in a soulless office) and just gave up, again missing 50% of the game. If you can find something to skip the QTEs, it is worth it for some fresh gaming design and an engaging story, even though the uprezzed textures are definitely not enough to avoid looking really dated nowadays.
Have had the Steam version for a few years, and love the game, and it always screamed "VR" to me. I have tried every step-by-step web post unsuccessfully to get it to work. Hellblade (1) VR on GOG works flawlessly for me, whereas other Steam VR games are more loaded with points of failure and glitches and just bogged down with unecessary layers overall, so I will rebuy this on GOG if it works OOB. It's dated visually, but still well done for atmosphere. Hopefully that commitment also says something about the game.
Have been waiting and following news, and was all set to buy on day 1, but the required hardware requirements suddenly shot up. Does anyone know If the demo matches the released game performance, so I have an idea of how well it will run? I'm very slightly below requirements (6GB 1060, i7-6th gen).
While I don't think the PC version supports linked VR, I was deciding whether to buy here or online console oculus version. A sale popped up, and I thought it would be convenient to not have to run it with the laptop as well, so I bought the Oculus native port. Bad move. From the PC trailers I'd watched, I expected the Oculus port to be the same, but it's like comparing unreal 2004 to unreal 2, so a big step down. Worse, for the first time in my life, I finally understood how some people complain about nausea. I've done VR since I made VRML environments in the 1990's, and never felt nauseous until this title. And it's not scene specific. The voice acting and stylization is nice, and the score works, but I think it needs the accompanying visuals to really make the wonder of it all work. The VR port is lacking that (and is even slower), plus the nausea really let me down. The Oculus version is nothing like the PC version.
Loved the Elite series to death, and nothing came close to it until X: BTF, and then the earlier X2 games. It got a little tiring being the same thing, with only tiny incremental improvements, and you needed to follow the fora to figure them all out, but that incremental nature also helped in that regard, as you only needed to learn a little per game. This revision promised the things many users asked for. Unfortunately, the implementation of those extra bits was very rudimentary, wooden and unpolished. Worst of all, it is horribly documented, and even varying docs per update, with tiny piecemeal explanations that don't take account how things fit together in the greater game. If I was 13 and had all the time in the world, I'd surely figure it out but this is deductive punishment if you can't commit tons of steady and frequent hours. Sad, as it was once wonderful. Not going to invest in the franchise again. YMMV.
Doing this from memory: Story: Enjoyable mystery unfolding, immersive, imaginative, with significant milestones. Characters as good as in a good book: you'll grow attached. Art direction kept pace with a good imagination. Voice acting stellar for its time, like its predecessor. Graphics dated, but work with chosen stylization. Music was powerful, epic to moody, relevant, and suiting what's transpiring. Controls had glitches, but only a few times would you curse them out loud. Gameplay had some unintuitive parts, and an annoying bunch of grinding. Sometimes you'll scream with the overly lengthy dialogues, so just put subtitles on and when it gets too annoying, hit space bar to speed through the dialogues as fast as you can read them, or you may lose important content. I did need to look up a cheat one or two times when I got stuck. The 'your choices will have consequences' reminders seemed ominous, but I don't know if they did. Parts of when I'd get stuck would have me puzzling over it in the real world until I could get back and try something else: most of the time that worked (testament to the design). Combat: combat was some of the worst ever encountered, like there was no rhyme or reason, just insane button mashing. I did find certain patterns, but at most they might work 60% of the time, and forget combos. I tried with controllers & keyboard/mouse, default & custom mappings. Overall: If you enjoyed The Longest Journey (predecessor), you'll enjoy revisiting some of the places here in 3D, and continuing with the characters/story. I definitely suggest continuing with the sequel to this one too (Dreamfall Chapters). For a few months afterwards, I kept final savegames and revisited some locales again. Anytime a game leaves you with such long-term memories and feelings, as with a book, it's worthwhile. I still haven't sold my copy.
More of the same kind of thing as in the earlier episodes, but less combat and stealth. TONS of dialog (still). The story-forking decisions play an expanded role in this episode. Still a fair bit of errand churning. If you've played the earlier ones, you know what to expect, but if not, please read a lot more reviews, or you might end up really unhappy, or, you could be pleasantly surprised with a new franchise. The storytelling leaves you with characters you will never forget, like your favourite books. If you don't have a favourite book, you'll probably hate this within 5 minutes, and be tearing your hair out and cursing new combinations of words to try to exorcise the pain. But if you do enjoy sweeping stories that take root in your mind, then this might be just the trick. During the episodic release cycles, the dev team updated the game engine from a strained Unity 4 engine to the Unity 5 engine, and it really looks amazing. I replayed the almost two chapters, and while the general story remains unchanged, the activities and visuals are often really different with the engine changes, and less glitches too. The previous games always looked beautiful (not always the most cutting edge, but gorgeous nonetheless) for their respective release periods, and similarly so here. It's not Witcher 3 realistic, but completely immersive, and I'll often stop and look around, appreciating the sounds and sights, or appreciating the same rye humour embedded throughout, like the others. The story developments and characters evolve and attach to your feelings, and it's a big environment too (though it has a few invisible barriers, but it's plenty big enough). I haven't finished the end yet, but I already feel completely justified in my purchase. My only question is about the 'Final Cut' package. As the different chapters and fixes were released, some bits of content were added too. Is my 'standard version' with all the cumulative updates the same as the Final Cut version (excluding the DLC content), or has there been all new actual sections added? In the video, I see a crow flying through the Arcadia park in Chapter 2, and I don't believe I saw that in either the Unity engines 4 or 5: maybe there are new cut scenes? That should be clarified in the description, because you can't always count on what everyone says in the forums, and you can't always count on the marketing people to be clear either. Someone needs to spell out once and for all if there is new content is in this version that isn't in the most up-to-date, patched 'normal version', and if so, is it all new scenes, or just some brief transitory cutscenes that might be beautiful, but don't alter any information in any way...
