Though its technologically inferior to OBC even and terribly outdated when it was released, i still find it one of Capstones better games along with Witchaven. That is, the few only good games they made. Plays fluid enough, its basically just a creepier version of Wolfenstein 3D. I dont have it in my heart to bash it too much, it along with Doom, Rott and Warcraft being one of those games i grew up with. Don't expect more than Wolf3D gun running and you'll be fine. It's far from perfect but hardly the worst game ever made, but severely outdated, it couldve been so much better with a different game engine and more features. While hardly being expensive, but pick it up on sale if you want to save some cash.
Cyclones is an interesting game. Raven certainly experimented alot. It has a rudimentary "free mouselook". Its not like the true mouselook defined by Quake or even the mouse-turning of Dos Doom, Wolf, instead it means you can freely move your gun's crosshair across the screen but you still turn with the keyboard. (Or by moving the mouse cursor to the edges of the screen). Cyclones i always felt could be better. It starts off pretty good looking, starts with a nice moody night outdoor scene, then you get inside a compound, its pretty much very same:y looking, constantly indoor levels from there. Lots of grey walls. I would liked see alot more variation between indoor and outdoor levels, it does make a big difference and the engine could handle it! As far as i read Raven spent much of their budget on the FMV's to use that as a selling point for the game and i think the overall game suffered from that. Anyway, they pushed their engine to the limits, an ID derived Post-Wolf3d-Pre Doom engine that was used in Shadowcaster but now heavily upgraded, which is interesting to see. Pros: Music is good! Bestiary is cool. Weapons aren't numerous but satisfying to use. The acting in cutscenes is hilariously bad! :) Cons: "Mouselook" system is clonky, sometimes the fire button can get stuck randomly. Keybindings are a mess, use Dosbox remapper to set them to your liking, while looking at the manual. Ending could be a bit better. PS: Ive yet to try the GOG release. Maybe the keybinds are better from the get-go, my experience is from having played Cyclones earlier this year, and years before, before its official digital release.
Take No Prisoners i liked from the get-go when i first played it ca 2000. You get alot for your buck, a long campaign, an awesome CD soundtrack and a pretty varied, interesting bestiary with alot of weapons to boot! What i always found extra cool with TNP is the key bindings. TNP might be the first topdown game where you can use the mouse for turning, shooting and keyboard for the rest of the binds. WASD from the get go! The controls are wonderful and responsive which isn't usually the case for Ravens experimental titles. Pros: Long, fulfilling campaign. Cool, varied enemies. The soundtrack. The graphics have a nice balance between retro-crisp and good looking. (I love the Quake looking real-world environments). Its fun! Cons: The only one i can personally think of is you can get stuck wondering where to go, the hub system between levels: boats, subway trains, teleporters can get a bit messy. There is no central area from where you can travel elsewhere,but you memorize how to move around eventually.
I dont compare titles in genres much, like in this case comparing C&C, Red Alert with Starcraft, Warcraft and Total Annihiliation with eachother. They all have different things that differentiate them from eachother but what they have in common is a easy to use interface, they're easy to get into and its damn fun! Anyway, Total Annihilation is one of the best RTS games you could ever play. I played it growing up in the late 90s, i play it today and have a great time, the game is a timeless masterpiece. Pros: Great graphics, first 3D RTS. Lovely sound effects, i personally love the aircraft. Splendid soundtrack by Jeremy Soule. Cons: I cant think of anything bad about TotalA, honestly! Hard difficulty can be HARD when you get swarmed by aircraft and tons of K-Bots, but thats to be expected. Its a classic, its a MUST play, its a MUST buy!
I haven't played any Mech game whatsoever but i am big fan of Looking Glass Studios. Terra Nova to me felt like a mix of Delta Force (with its outdoors) and Battlezone 1-2 in terms of its shooting mechanics. I got into it pretty fast. To get a comfortable experience i used GlovePIE and found a script to map the turn keys and look up/down to the mouse. Once done it played pretty damn well. Easy as pie to set up. I rebound S as W (forward key) ingame with Dosbox's remapper so i could use SZXC instead of WASD because A-D were mapped to the mouse. Z, C are strafe keys and X is move back hence SZXC was a viable option. The game's FMV's took alot of the games budget as i read so i played it well aware that it might have it's shortcomings. Pros: Impressively large outdoor environments. Decent story, acting. Gameplay is basic but fun. Sound effects & music are decent. High quality cutscenes for its time. Cons: Clunky controls. I wish it had proper mouselook instead of "mouselook on-screen" hence i used Glovepie. Escort missions can be really hard until you learn more game mechanics. Max res of 320x400 is poor for being 1996 (Alot of games by 1996 had atleast 640x480 res) But there are budget reasons for that. All in all, a solid game, not perfect but certainly not terrible.
Im not a Tomb Raider fan at all. Heard of the games throughout my childhood but i never got into them. This review is not in comparison with older games, its just about this game alone. There are some great visuals, for me mostly in the average forest scenery because i dont care so much for big set pieces, it could still pass as a relatively newly released game. Not that i consider this title old yet. Controls were fluid so was performance. What i really didn't like were quite a few things that kinda started to drag the game down for me. So many over-used scenarios i've seen too many times from games around this exact era. The mission with a bunch of guys with flashlights looking for you. Its short but im noting it anyway. The place that catches on fire everywhere. A place full of unrealistic amounts of unusually fresh human flesh. The escape setpieces, where you have to cinematically escape an area, they bore me to no end, lack of interraction just takes me out of the game and i feel no excitement. Thats my personal opinion ofcourse. The dumb and very generic main enemies and their boring side chatter, the hordes of basically hobos thrown at you in a few places bored me (how do they survive? Where do they get all that ammo? ) there were generic fights i've had in several other games before, Bulletstorm and Rage perhaps, their magical awareness of where Lara is, both plotwise and in terms of gameplay was also stupid. "She is up there" they say in a room full of strong wind and high noise. Lack of facial animations is another thing ive grown tired of, the in-game cutscenes varying from looking good to stiff and very "videogamey". Half Life 2 could pull of better animations at times than this. To this day, lifeless facial animations are still common. Pros: Visuals. Controls and their fluidity. Cons: Story wasn't that interesting. Cliché main villains. Boring hordes of dumb AI thrown at you. (An army of hobos with how much ammo on that island? )
I recall seeing my brother play this back in 1993 on SNES. I was too young to play anything at the time and now i finally decided to try it. This remaster could've easily been alot better. Pros: Adequate choice of graphics options. Fluid game performance. Only thing missing could be a list hardware scalers: Hq2x, advame, Scalenx, etc, found in many emulators but its no big deal. Cons: No remappable keybindings. This is disastrous. Utterly disastrous, a common theme i noticed when some non-brand company makes game remasters. I had issues doing just the simplest of maneuvers because of the horrid controls forced on me. Moving up to and shooting an enemy for example, i could trudge on and get used to it but for now im not sure if i want to, the game is clonky as it is, the keybinds eliminates all fun.
Only get this if you're really bored and want to play every underdog FPS there is. The Good: Game engine is good, reminds me alot of Build. Gameplay is quite stable and you can remap every key basically. I liked the first map as Dan Blaze, human base with barracks and hangar. The Bad: Level design is just flat out dull. Nothing memorable, just alot of corridors, grey textures and often quite dark. Its just a single sci-fi techbase theme, hardly any variation. The 320x200 resolution doesnt help. Weapons that act the same as other FPS except visually they are completely unappealing. The OST consists of the Menu theme and 1 ambient track, only. Just 1 track plays throughout the WHOLE game. Took me 7 hours to beat this and i was glad it was that short. Final verdict: With no nostalgia related to this title and speaking objectively. If you expect quality 90s FPS like Duke Nukem/Hexen, forget it. This is not a "90s classic". Its 90s dull trash im afraid.
