There is just something about this game... I saved for half a year to buy a new graphics card for our Pentium 300 just to play this game, learned to program at age 11 to mod it, and finally released my mods on my 18th birthday. You still have a live community at the Massassi Temple (https://www.massassi.net/) where you can have it all, including the Jedi Knight Enhanced mod, and HUNDREDS of mods for this game. And again, still alive! Other than Doom and perhaps a few others, no other game has THIS kind of community. Also: this is the only game in my LIFE that has ever induced vertigo. I'm not kidding. And the levels will take you an hour or more to get through. EACH. There are multiple paths, two endings, and you get Force Points for discovering secrets. TIP: The first tiers are blue, "neutral" powers. Then there are green (Light Force) and red (Dark Force) powers. If you pick ONLY GREEN or ONLY RED powers, then a fifth "secret" power of Master Jedi or Master Sith will be unlocked. Whether it's worth it is debatable, though. Light is "Force Protection", which grants temporary invulnerability to everything except falling or being thrown into objects. Dark is "Deadly Sight" which continuously damages everything in your line of sight. You can also mix-and-match, which is the beauty of JKDF2. The protagonist, Kyle Katarn, isn't a preachy old dude - he feels "real". The Force to him is just a tool, for good or evil, like a really powerful matchstick. If you love Stars Wars, but hate the drivel of "midichlorians" and feeling as powerless to determine destiny as dumb ol' Anakin, go old school and find the goodness of JKDF2! P.S. No Gungans in this game. And you beat Boba Fett in the LAST game, Dark Forces, so... "This is the way"! P.P.S. There are old school cheat codes. Type T, the code, then Enter. Jediwannabe 1 - invulnerable except to fast impact/falling Red5 - All weapons Raccoonking - All powers yodajammies - Mana deeznuts - Level skip
What is really interesting to me is that this is one of those games where you think you found everything, and yet 2 years afterwards STILL find stuff you didn't notice before. You DO NEED THE DLC, there is a ton of stuff that really enhances the game! Hidden areas, unique items you may have overlooked (when killing the great undead leaders in the City of the Dead, one drops a green item that actually has an intrinsic secondary that lets you instantly teleport to enemies and do massive damage, for example!), and things that are mindblowing, like hidden campaigns and quests that encompass the entire game world (beat the game first) and provide additional hours and new loot! Finding the hidden Crate Boss or finding the totems of the Witch Gods are just TWO examples of hidden content. And I DO MEAN HIDDEN, I played for something like 700 hours and was looking up Youtube videos for builds when I found "How to find X hidden quest" videos. Mind was blown. Now, that being said, this game is VERY DARK AND GORY, even if it is isometric. I play co-op with my sisters on Diablo 3 (wish GOG had Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction), but that didn't phase them. This game, though... "Grim" indeed. Parents should also be aware that you can play as a cultist (reformed?) The cultists play a MAJOR role in the game and DLCs, and they... ain't nice folks, so to say. There are no heroes in this game, just varying levels of "bad choice, REALLY bad choice, totally evil choice". If you are someone who gets really affected by stories, you may want to look through the gameplay videos first. Otherwise, it's definitely one of the top 3 Iso action RPGs ever on my list! P.S. I love minions/pets. Necro for the win! P.P.S. Does anyone else imagine what life as an RPG necromancer in real life would be like? Snap your fingers and raise skeletons to do housework, make sure the zombie gardener doesn't rot on the driveway in summer or freeze in winter, etc.? XD
Look, I've not played Bloodborne, but I've beaten Dark Souls 1, 2 + Scholar of the First Sin (even the dragon, only exception that bloody white king boss in the DLC fight where things are summoned ad nauseam 4 at a time), DS3, Elden Ring, even Steelrising. I have no idea why anyone likes this game. It's just one of those games I WANT to like. But the combat isn't rewarding for 2 simple reasons. FIRST: Unresponsive! Basically if you don't hit dodge about 2-3 seconds BEFORE you actually NEED to dodge then you can't dodge. You just have to watch your character take a hit. This is INSANELY annoying to not be able to dodge IN A DODGING GAME WHEN I BLOODY WELL NEED TO DODGE!!! Attacks don't work when commanded, either. You must wait for the animation to finish, no breaking. SECOND: NO warning when an enemy is about to hit you. Consider that 1/3 of weapons have blocks or parries, it renders them either a turtle strategy (hold your shield until you hear the enemy hit, then strike and turtle again), and completely ruins parrying. Do NOT expect any nice icons like Steelrising, which I get is an "easy" Soulslike. But here's the REAL problem: there's not any telegraphing, either! I'm not kidding: the TRAINING enemies you fight for about 30 minutes to an hour before you level up enough to fight the proto-boss and even get to the intro logo (yes, really!) don't telegraph, AND THEY ARE SHORTER THAN YOUR CHARACTER! What this means is that the enemy is COMPLETELY BLOCKED FROM VIEW by the player model! So you're guess is as good as anybody's when that hit is coming... The boss fights are actually easier than normal enemies, truthfully. You can see them, and they telegraph. Duh! And magic enemies... they are hard simply because the dodging issue, as mentioned. So you see a glowing red aura beneath your feet, start pounding the dodge button, and then the ground explodes after you have pressed THREE TIMES TO DODGE. Painful to play, needs responsive controls!!
Like the other reviewer said, too expensive! My dad got us an Atari combo pack back in 1994 that had Missile Command, Centipede, Battlezone, Asteroids, a bunch of others, and a game editor to boot! Infinite lives, more/less ammo, enemies, level generation parameters, etc. $10. Now we have neon graphics, and that is supposedly worth 6 times the price? Very indicative of modern gaming: "but, but, the graphics!" Sorry, that fad died out around 15 years ago when they finally perfected deformable polygons. Last "new" thing in graphics I remember was facial modelling in Half Life 2... and last impressive thing was in 2002's massive texture compression in .kkrieger (why don't more games use this??) And Atari: what EXACTLY have you made that is new AND GOOD in the last 30 years? Or are re-releases with flashier graphics and price gouging all you have? For goodness' sake, do you know how easy it is to find FREE clones of most or all of these games??? The only one I haven't heard or played is Black Widow, but why would I play such a basic twin-stick shooter when much better are available? If I am going to play a game for nostalgia, graphics are the last thing on my mind. Yeah, there are a few from the early 90s that have graphics that are either non-functional on modern hardware or truly painful, but that's a huge exception.
Despite the hype, initial appearance, and straight ripping of gameplay style and mechanics from the several-times-mentioned H games (not THAT, you!), the game is solid. Gripes are that the weapons really only have 2 to 4 that matter, and other than the blue mana homing wand and Crystal Mace (with F.E.A.R. Penetrator/Half Life 2 crossbow nail-em-to-the-wall functionality) there really isn't much that is memorable, aside from how many times you must use the basic axe and how annoyed you get self-harming from the Meteor Staff clone. Secondary fire also uses my LEAST favorite mechanic from Hexen II: the Tome of Power. It isn't really called that in this game, but suffice to say that you CANNOT use your cool room-clearing secondary fire any time you wish. It is an irritating case of "HEY I CAN USE IT NOw darn it it's over. And now I can't use it again because I have no ammo left and must wait another hour of gameplay or so to scrounge ammo AND the secondary fire ability resource currency again". On the plus side: you have cheats! Yes, if you get the Warrior Edition, you have cheat codes you can type in and become a Conan-Godlike-Warrior-Who-Cares-I've-Got-Unlimited-Mana-Ubermensch. And then either the game is over way sooner than it should be and you feel powerful or cheated... heh... Beyond that, this game is not as good as Dusk, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, or Graven. The world and levels are very empty, there is almost no interaction with levels, not "oh my gawd that is pretty!" scenery or skin-creeping atmosphere. The game company did a lot with volumetric fog and skimped on the level detailing, whereas in the other games you have little extras that really boost immersion. Be honest: how many times did YOU use the toilet in Duke Nukem 3D, flush, and then blow it (and all the fire hydrants) up out of spite? Level interaction and "little" details MATTER! So the game is good, in a Wolfenstein 3D "do this and nothing else" way. But it's not Doom... or a Hexen 2.
This game is excellent, and one of my favorite shooters, though not on par with Doom, Build Engine games, or the Borderlands series. I love roguelite shooters but there are very few worth anything, and the detail and rooms are a TON better in Immortal Rednack than Ziggurat 2, for example. There is also more humor, but sadly they missed an opportunity for a wider audience since even though there is no blood, the language is not "child appropriate". Of course most first graders know and liberally use the F word nowadays, so that might be kinda pointless to worry about... The game is kind of like Serious Sam 1 with the Alien Tech Ancient Egypt vibe (minus bosses the size of planetoids) but you can't memorize where all the enemies are. This is big for replayability, for me at least: I tend to memorize shooters easily to the point of just chucking grenades and killing enemies before I even see them. It gets boring, and the roguelite aspects solves it beautifully. You can pick multiple classes with time-cool-down skills: Neferteri (can't remember the name) is the best in my opinion, as you get a ghost hawk which basically acts as a one-hit-kill homing missile with perfect accuracy that will seek out enemies THROUGH walls. And you get a sniper rifle and burst machine gun in your starting equipment! Unlock and use Hathor first, though, as her bonus is extra gold. There are unlockable buffs requiring points that permanently level up ALL characters, as well as new characters hidden in the tree, and you will need a lot of gold for it (or a memory editor). Enemy type and placement is also randomized out of area pools as well as maps, and there are three "worlds" (pyramids - past, present, future-tech) to explore. The selection of weapons is also huge and quite varied, everything from mind control to BFG-10k pistols, explosive crossbows, poison gas, grappling hook (as Hathor's skill), throwing knives, beam weapons, etc. Better than the Ziggurat series!
Got this for the Xbox 360 and played a loooong time. Poor box has died twice and doesn't have much left, and you can't get new controllers anymore. This is a VERY welcome surprise! Now for more teleporting execution murder chains across Mordor! >:) And Legolas: my bow is cooler than yours. HA HA HA!
$4 for 10 minutes? Right, THAT's happening... last time I spent that much was to beat the final boss at an arcade in the early 90s! Then I grew up, figured out how hard money can be to get, and inflation hit. Should be free. Worth maybe $1 to the "must have ALL DLC" and diehard Lovecraft crowd, but you could also YouTube it. I also feel compelled to mention that the teaser video above is 31 seconds long, meaning that by watching it you just completed 5% of the game!
First, I REALLY appreciate GOG getting the Shadow Warrior franchise here! The devs, though... what the heck? This is essentially a tech demo, it is NOT like the other Shadow Warrior games but has gone full Serious Sam then turned it up to 11. Maybe Ziggurat 2 would be a better example, because you will go from single-room arena to single room arena. I bought this thinking it would be like Shadow Warrior 2, infinite replayability, huge levels and psuedo-open-world or even actual open world. You will be gut-punched, someone-stole-your-girl/boy-friend-and-shot-your-pet disappointed with this mess. In addition to COMPLETELY changing core gameplay to an arena shooter, the game itself is only about 5 hours long. No, I'm not kidding. 800 hours in like 5 years on Shadow Warrior 2, and 5 hours on this. No achievements I can tell, no New Game Plus, you lose everything and start a new game from scratch. Worse, the only reason to replay is to choose a different weapon to upgrade. You have like 9 or 10, I can't remember, but they are forgetable. There are an additional 5 or so, but you have to perform fatalities on specific enemies and you get the special weapons for about 20 seconds. If you can't brutalize them or the enemies simply aren't there, tough luck. Upgrade system is weeaak. Search for secrets to find one point at a time, then spend your currency to upgrade your weapons and skills. I think you can respec, but you only have a finite amount of points (since there are a finite amount of secrets) AND YOU LOSE POINTS TO RESPEC. I really can't recommend any part of this game. Even to see the story is worthless: *SPOILER ALERT* It picks up from exactly where the last game ended. The girl from the last game turned into a dragon, right? Unfortunately she is dead, the dragon who was resurrected is Armageddon incarnate, and only you and Zilla survived along with hordes of monsters. EVERYONE ELSE IS DEAD. Kill the Dragon. Sleep with your katana. The end.
Nice visuals, any animal lovers will probably like this. Gets you more than the absolute minimum score. It would be nice to have something other than "poor animals and eco-terrorists are good and everyone else in humanity is evil", though. Nature worship has been tiresome since the Neolithic period, and life has a bit more nuance then that. I would LOVE to see someone *try* to make a game like this about, say, hyenas. There was one rather infamous video I remember about a pack eating a baby elephant who was still alive for the first 5 hours of the meal... minus some of its internal organs, stomach, and nose. The baby elephant did stop calling for its mommy after about half an hour, though. And what about: Ordovician-silurian Extinction: 440 million years ago. Devonian Extinction: 365 million years ago. Permian-triassic Extinction: 250 million years ago. Triassic-jurassic Extinction: 210 million years ago. Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction: 65 Million Years Ago. Is the point that humans must take the blame for everything? Animal life simulators are pretty fun in general, especially things like birds, sharks, and dinosaurs, but this? Tired propaganda with cutesy animals. Try petting a scared fox for real. It's okay, I'll wait. In short, go preach somewhere else.
