Very reminicent of old school dungeon crawlers, with enough innovation to make it worthwhile. If you're a fan of the genre, I'd give Grimrock a try without hesitation. If you new, however, it might be a harder sell. Most of the mechanics are solid, but some of the big ones are pretty egregiously flawed. Chief complaint: the combat, at it's highest efficiency, comes down to singling out opponents and square dancing with them to the death. I remember I thought this game was so hard when I played it the first time because I figured using the real-time combat to avoid damage was an exploit. After your first ogre, you figure out pretty quick that the game is designed around this. Many of the puzzles also require some speedy reflexes. This wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't use a tile system with an arcane control scheme. I've got no problem with pixel-precise, twitch gameplay, but for God's sake at least use WASD if you want me to do this. If you can get past these (and some seriously annoying puzzles on the later floors,) the game is fresh and exciting. The magic system is simple, but surprisingly hectic during combat. The enemies are varied and the level design is excellent at catching you flatfooted. The alchemy system encourages experimentation. Character races/skills/abilities are all varied and are much deeper than they appear. It's not what I'd call balanced, but it's a singleplayer RPG so who cares? There are LOADS of secrets too, and there's usually something pretty useful. Although it's counter-intuitive, you'll want to jump down every hole you see. The puzzles are mostly pretty logical and don't require a lot of backtracking (except THAT one). The atmosphere is great, the tilesets are beautiful, the fire effects are stunning and the game runs well both in Windows and Linux! For such a budget price, it's hard not to recommend Grimrock. For veterans and curious newcomers who want a challenge, this is an easy recommendation.
Two Worlds looks and plays like an asset flip, but the sad thing is this game came out way before that was in vogue. The people look like toad-mutants, the music is uninspired, the gameplay is spammy, the bloom effects have to be turned off if you don't want to go blind, the enemies are generic, the setting is bog standard, the difficulty is all over the place, the AI is lobotomized, the voice acting is legendarily cringey, the story is non-existant until the final boss, and then after the final boss you wish it went back to not existing. In short: the game sucks. So why the three stars? 1. If you find two of the same weapon, you can duct tape (I assume) them together to make the same weapon, only stronger. This can be done an unlimited amount of times. Even on the rusty longswords you find in the beginning of the game. Kill the final boss with a +100,000 butterknife! 2. You can stack as many (of the same) enchants on these weapons. Now your +100,000 butterknife is a +100,000 butterknife that also does 300,000 fire damage! 3. Enemies don't respawn (except the ghosts at night). Literally go across the entire map committing genocide on every wolf, orc, bear, and human you come across! Remember to kill whole families so you don't leave any orphans! Nothing is more satisfying than showing up to a town to find everything dead, then laughing to yourself because you forgot you had no more need for non-butterknife-related objects in the town a few days ago and you assimilated them. So here's how to have a decent amount of fun in this game: kill and steal everything so you can find more butterknives and fire enchants in order to kill and steal everything. Is this a must-play game? No: it's not even a decent game, to be frank. Can you have fun in it anyway? Absolutely!
This is an old game, but it's not a very good one by today's standards. Two positive things stick out: the terrain destruction is still pretty impressive and who doesn't want to lead a workers' revolution on Mars? Sadly, the list of gripes is much longer. The gunplay is horrible for two reasons. First, the spread is randomized which makes any medium-to-long-distance shooting play out more like a game of darts than an action movie. And the spread isn't small to begin with. Secondly, the guns are just uninspired. Why are there THREE automatic rifles? These problems are exacerbated by the AI. That randomized spread doesn't seem to affect them in the slightest. Later in the game, every group gets a railgun which is a GUARANTEED one-hit kill and can SHOOT THROUGH WALLS. Bind quicksave to left-click and quickload to right-click, because the only other thing you can do is pray that the aimbot misses. Other than that, the AI isn't even very good. They'll run right into your gun 90% of the time, and then run away if you don't kill them fast enough. Occasionally the AI will just stop on quickload. The game spawns enemies behind you instead of giving them actual tactics. The enemies feel like reskins. Aside from the vehicles and mutants, they're all just dudes in suits. Imagine FEAR without the AI. Level design is middling. The seamless transitions between levels does a lot to make it feel like one big journey. In reality, there are usually just two paths to get to your destination. What a waste of the terrain destruction mechanic. But it is great going from an underground base, to a sub bay, to an underwater section, and then ending up at an underwater facility a half-hour later. I can't emphasize how generic the story is. And with such a great premise too! The dialogue is just as bad. I can't remember a single line from the game except "Parker." For FPS historians only. You might get some fun out of the first couple of hours.
Let me get this out of the way: this was my first and last enhanced edition from Beamdog. Although easier to set up and slightly more stable, there are a lot more bugs compared to the originals -- including one where THE WHOLE SCREEN FLASHES RANDOMLY. The fact that a native Linux port runs about the same as the original in WINE is a joke. On to the game itself. It's strange trying to explain IWD. It really is just an Infinity Engine dungeon crawl, but that seems too simple. Imagine the level-by-level exploration and the low-level game mechanics of BG1 alongside BG2's linear story. And you get to make your whole party, so there's no banter or character quests. It's... Strange, and it honestly doesn't really work. The game lacks a clear identity, both in terms of narrative and gameplay, from the get-go. The result is a strange hodgepodge of gorgeous level design, brutal combat, and bone-chilling atmosphere. Winds howl as you hurl flaming pots at ice trolls on snowy precipices. Flames crackle as you plod around the secret underground Yuan-Ti temple. All for... Some gem or something. "God, how many fetch quests can they give me?" you'll ask yourself. A lot. About 60 hours worth, it turns out. So who is this game for? Not newbies: the combat is far too difficult for a new player. Not people who love good stories: there barely is one -- and it's all exposition. Not people who love exploration: the game is linear. But this is Infinity Engine. How bad could it really be? It's the classic DnD character creation, the classic spellcasting system, the classic multi-classing system, and who could ever forget Our Lord and Savior Saint THAC0? The game is worth buying and worth playing through -- after the Baldur's Gate series and Planescape. It's an interesting experiment that will test your knowledge of the ruleset for veterans.
Let me get this out of the way: is OS2 worth the retail price? Absolutely, if only for the first two acts. However, even this comes with a slew of caveats. Basically, all of the major problems from OS1 are still here. The story is forgettable high fantasy garbage. It's just a knock-off Baldur's Gate. I can't understand how anyone was motivated by any of the characters. Perhaps it was the VO work (which is actually phenomenal)? The plot is non-existent until the exposition dump at the final boss. It's frankly not worth the ~ 70-hour journey. The combat is hard and as untactical as possible. Ambush! -> enemy goes first -> throws oil on party -> lights it on fire -> curses it. Your party is almost dead, so what do you do? Quickload -> reposition your characters for the "ambush" -> continue to metagame for 69 hours. It's the most riveting game of Simon Says I've ever played. Whoever designed the environments is a genius, but whoever did the levels for each enemy is a madman. It's nonlinear, but if you don't go on 'the path' you're underleveled and the game becomes ludicrous. The game just generally loses steam after the first 20 hours. There's no more tricks in combat, so they force you into cheap scenarios. There's no more story developments. The environments get smaller and more linear. Make a 30 hour RPG and make it good -- don't give me 100 hours where I was counting down the seconds for half my playtime.
Youngins won't be kind to the Postal series -- least of all this first one. It's a basic, isometric/top-down shooter. Your goal? Kill all the police and civilians you can. The story? You're an average guy who has gone postal and is slipping deeper and deeper into your demented fantasy world. Yeah, it sounds bad if you're a 21st century American. But is it any good? Kinda. The controls are totally broken -- the devs even included a guide to "fix" the controls on a file. The game's a little easy too. And short. There's only a dozen lines of dialogue everyone has. The weapons are very standard. If you wanted to silence your M60 with a cat, there's only one game where you can do that. But there is a primal satisfaction you get from lighting a lady on fire and having her run into a cop. It's the GTA effect: it's just fun to pretend to be bad. And you don't get much badder than Postal. If you're interested in the series, give it a try. Otherwise, you can safely pass on this one.
Great game with many flaws. The combat is essentially Mount and Blade on hard mode with a stamina bar. It's visceral and exciting the whole game; which ended up being around 80 hours for me. The skill system is exactly like Oblivion, only instead of magic, there are era-appropriate skills like horseriding. The story is middling. Some people really like it, and honestly, it is very cinematic. Not in a marketing buzzword way either: the cutscenes have tight framing, use the rule of thirds frequently, and had eye-catching mise en scene a few times too. It's a shame then that the writing prides itself on political intrigue and villains that aren't even developed. Tack on a plot twist from a very famous blockbuster trilogy and by the end you'll be let down. By the way, nothing after Skalitz has any consequence on the story. You could watch the ending cutscene and you would miss nothing in the main plot. Then you have the cherrypicked historical accuracy. The story gives Henry more upward mobility than retail workers in 21st century America. Nevermind the piles and piles of wealth he single-handedly got in a matter of WEEKS. The outfits are very good, especially compared to other video games, but they're far from perfect. The combat is fun, but if you think people circle-strafed until they could pull off a wombo-combo perfect parry, you should read a combat manual. Peasants can hack away at you with dinky shortswords while you're wearing full plate. Yeah, no. That didn't happen. Last, and worst of all, the save system is just plain bad. It's not immersive, it's not difficult it just a waste of time. I had 10-20 save potions the whole game and at least 10 hours of my playtime was doing shit over. Why? Because I always wanted to save them for a tough fight -- one that never came. Mod it out. It's worthless. The bugs were bad, but only one or two were serious. Most were graphical. If you have a low tolerance for bugs, be warned: they're everywhere.
Serpent in the Staglands gets many of the hard things right: the setting is one-of-a-kind, the art is stellar, the casting system is fresh, and the music is moody, character creation is complex and yet intuitive. But every time the game tries to go in bold new directions, it seems to forget how to do the basics. There are bugs EVERYWHERE. Entire UI elements were broken my whole game. Combat is spammy and thoughtless. Although you get wrecked by a lone fox in the beginning, after the first few hours you'll only die if you nod off at your keyboard. Everything can be killed via tank and spank. The story has the best premise I've ever heard and they do absolutely NOTHING with it. The characters are 2D. The ending of the game is a total railroad for an expansion pack that may never see the light of day. It ends on a cliffhanger. If you've played all of the great cRPGs, this is the next one to play. If you haven't yet sunk the requisite 1,000 hours into the Infinity Engine games, your time and money are better spent elsewhere.
Let me start by saying this is barely a puzzle game. The solutions are almost always obvious (I solved what should have been a difficult puzzle by accident) so if you're in it for the brain-melting gameplay you'll be disappointed. The story is interesting, if minimal. The ending is kind of crap. Without any spoilers: it reeks of wannabe Bioware signature moral choice. So why the four stars? It's hard to explain--if that intrigues you then you really ought to give it a shot. The art is charming, the tone is both dark and light-hearted, the characters are expressive and the mansion is both beautiful and terrifying. It all comes together. That's the real magic in this game. It ought not to (the flaws are glaring), but it still just works. If you just want an off-beat adventure to take up an afternoon, there aren't much better games than this.
