It's basically Mark of the Ninja meets Kill Bill vol 1. Although it feels a lot cheaper than Mark of the Ninja, it's still super fun to play. It's a 2D platform turn based slice'em all : during your turn, you see where enemies are about to shoot, your goal is to end up else where (there's no hit point : you die on first hit), and if possible slicing or punching an enemy on the way, the enemies shoot, then it's your turn again. It's not that easy and needs planning a few steps ahead. The planning is especially important because when you are in the air, the only method to change direction is to use the grapple. You can also try to use some stealth and silently slice a few enemies before the big shootout. There's quite a bit of humour too. To avoid the bullets, you can (the last 2 are bonuses to unlock) : jump, walk on walls and ceilings, smash through windows, use grappling, teleport, use a decoy. You're only weapon in a blade, though you will unlock some bonuses (blade throwing, silent hanging) Several flaws, though : - controls are a bit messy, and lacks of precision. That feels very "cheap", compared to Mark of the Ninja - It's rather short : expect no more than 5/6 hours to finish it - very few enemy types : basic guards with a pistol, "super" guards with an automatic rifle, and ninjas with a sword. that's about it. - Scenario could have been more detailed (it's a revenge, but against whom and why, we dont really know) - CPU intensive : for some reason, playing that game leads to my (oldish) computer shutting down due to overheat after about an hour. I'd love to see a sequel/reboot with these flaws corrected. Recommendation : buy it when discounted!
Note : I've never played any previous Shadowrun titles. Very nice isometric view Strategy RPG : discuss with people to get your next mission, setup your team & equipment, go on mission. You play real time until an enemy is within reach, it then switches to turn base strategy until the area is cleared up. Each characters have an amount of Action Points. The game gives you some amount of freedom and decision through the discussions : though not as much as a real RPG, it still sufficient to give you the will to restart the game a second time & try out other outcomes. Some choices will have some requirement (e.g. : minimum intelligence, etc.) The story is quite well played (but short : most of the missions are actually optional side quests) and characters are very well defined. If you play most of the optional missions, I think the game is about 20 hours long or so (and replay-able) On the down side : - A.I. is very flawed : enemies can be literally suicidal : you can force them to sit next to you, waiting to be shot. - Due to the above, the game isn't very challenging : on my first play, I finished the game in hard mode without much of a challenge (except the very last shootout : I failed the first time). - A tutorial would have been welcome. It's only half way through the game that I started to master it. And I still have no idea whether it is possible to exchanges inventories among the team. - No voice over (though music and sound effects are well done). - I didn't find a way to exchange inventories among the team ? Seriously ? you can't hand a grenade to your mate ? what the ... ?
Loved it! not really the deep/serious RPG thing. It's just an action/RPG (linear, no subquest : just walk, kill and choose which kill to improve), but it's really pleasant and lovely to play. The songs and the voice of the story teller are just absolutely sublime.
I have hesitated quite a lot between 2 and 3 stars. Good : beautiful environment and cinematic (quite stylish), interesting scenario and story telling : you play 2 characters with a radically different point of view and theory. Play time is quite good compared to other similar games. Voices are about OK : interesting panel of English accents, but lack of emotion some times. Bad : the gameplay is really badly designed. Making the game quite a bit boring to play. And this is discounting the 'magic tricks' which are just plain ridiculous. Note : can work with Wine on Linux, but it's a bit tricky. Luckily, there's a play-on-linux script that makes it easy. The game was however very slow on my old-ish, intel card.
Don't bother reading the reviews : -> You dont know about the series, check out the blackwell bundle first -> You did not like the series : this is quite unlikely. But if that's true, you wont like this one either -> You like the series ? you ll love that one, and the final is rather epic. As usual : well done, well written, well acted, good puzzles (not too easy, but nothing nonsense), and it's rather short (under 10 hours)
First : I played it on Linux via Wine. you have to manage your own Wine installation, but everything worked without any quirk : install wine, double click on the blackwell bundle installer. The only issue I faced is that upon exit, I had to resize my screen back to decent resolution manually. The title says it : if you like its other adventure games from Wadjet Eye, you wont be disappointed All the usual things are there : * Really good story that will prevent you from exiting the game until the ending credits * characters well defined * very well acted (including the recognizable voice of Abe Goldfarb) * not too hard as a point and click (no cheating needed : everything is somehow logical if you think about it carefully) * very light and pleasant interface Each episode is sufficiently different from the other that you have some new experience on each one. The graphics are good old VGA style, quite well done (except that I did not like much the animation in the last episode) Each episode is relatively short (~5 hours), but the bundle itself has an overall fairly decent life. The only big minus is that the bundle does not include the 5th episode... which is a lot of mental suffering once the bundle is finished :D Note : There's apparently a Linux port for the game engine (AGS), I did not try it yet.
