This is the first racing game to feature "rewind" (single-player only), so when you accidentally demolish your car or even just take a bad turn, the fun doesn't stop. You get up to 5 rewinds per challenge depending on the difficulty setting you choose, with none at the hardest level. It's also the kind of racer you can win by mercilessly smashing your way to 1st place. Obviously the rewind helps with that. But the AI is pretty good and sometimes you'll use up all your mulligans on the first lap, so you can't be too reckless. You can't customize the cars but you do get to pick a teammate and sponsors who reward various levels of performance. The best parts of the game are the "feel" (halfway from sim to arcade), the damage and replays, the variety of events (drifting is particularly fun), and some of the car sets (muscle, GT1, and supercars stand out). The worst parts feel undeveloped or tedious: There's only one demolition car and location, the touring cars feel very slow, some of the open-wheel cars feel very fragile, the 24 hours of Le Mans at the end of every season is just awful and repetitive (luckily it's optional).
Man does Rune start off slow. The other folks are correct that you'll slog though dark caves full of gnolls and sewers full of zombies. And those zombies of Hel are very tedious because they can only be killed by decapitation. You'll spend a half-dozen long levels whacking the same baddies over and over hoping for clean headshots. It's a surprisingly linear game too, but unusual: the hidden crevices and hard-to-spot ropes that might lead to a secret area in another game are actually the *main path* here. You'll spend plenty of time getting lost and backtracking. Fortunately, some of the levels are quite beautiful, and the game really starts feeling like the adventure you'd expect once you finally emerge from the caves/underworld. The real fun builds as you explore snow-covered villages and fortresses taking down axe-wielding berzerkers, then trek through dwarven mountain citadels and start collecting some seriously huge weapons. The sense of power and tension keeps building through to the end, and you finally feel like some of your patience through the early levels has paid off. The game takes some interesting turns toward the end too. So even though long stretches near the beginning can suck, the scope and scale of the journey ends up being pretty impressive. If you have the fortitude for a grand viking melee adventure, this is it.
Torchlight is yet another loot-driven isometric dungeon-crawler clickfest. While the visuals are fairly good and the basic mechanics are clearly inherited from its better predecessors, there's an abnormally large amount of features (whether omitted or artificially added) which frustrate the experience. Fortunately most of them can be fixed via fan-made mods, leaving a shallow but decent time-sink. STORY: The magical MacGuffin is called "Ember" and you have to go retrieve samples from the mines and dungeons under the city of Torchlight. The Ember corrupted an evil wizard and you have to go stop him. It's sparse and uninspired. DESIGN: It's single-player only, though you get a pet which can fight alongside you, carry some loot, and make sales runs back to town as you journey. You'll mow down lots of the same baddies over and over, and nab tons of vendor trash in your search for decent equipment (often you'll just buy better gear). Each piece of loot takes one inventory slot, so management is fairly easy, although plenty of items look the same despite different stats. Levels are linear with very few meaningful secret areas, and environments are empty aside from the occasional door, teleport pad, or exploding barrel. There are some challenge levels, but they just repopulate sections from the game you've already beaten with more enemies. There's a hardcore mode for those who want a "die once and your character is gone" challenge. CHARACTERS: Your choice of destroyer (melee focus), vanquisher (ranged focus), or alchemist (some of both), and either a canine or felid pet. All have zero personality, and customization is limited to the loot your hero equips and skills you pick at level-up. There's a lot of overlap in skills, which is nice for sticking to your favorite playstyle, but it makes the character choice feel empty. NPCs are almost exclusively found in town and do very little (most are simple merchants). GAMEPLAY: You know the drill: Click to walk, click to attack, click to grab loot. It's too easy to run smack into danger when you meant to make a ranged attack, though you can at least hold the shift key to stand in place. You get basic WoW-style assignable hotkeys for spells and potions. The right mouse button gets two special attacks, which are toggled with the TAB key (why the hell, I'll never know). Skills vary widely, and include the almost-mandatory Barter and Treasure Hunter (for better loot & prices), special attacks, buffs, and surprisingly fun & useful turrets you can drop. Magic spells are boring heals, buffs, & summons. You'll want Haste for less tedious backtracking. Enemy AI is pretty weak. PRESENTATION: Considering the small budget, the 3D graphics are quite nice, and the art design is surprisingly colorful and varied. The menus look great too. Items you equip actually appear on your character, which is always welcome. Audio is fine, though the dialogue & voice acting are awfully cheesy. ANNOYANCES: Torchlight is just chocked full of little bits that add up in tedium and frustration, so here's a quick & dirty rundown in no particular order: 1. "Identify scrolls" are needed to see the stats on MANY items, which is a ridiculous waste of time. 2. Scrolls and potions only stack to twenty, though most can be made obsolete with spells. 3. There are loading screens between levels. 4. Too much vendor trash (a problem with the whole genre). 5. Some keybindings are weird and you can't customize them! Gamepad support would be really nice, or at least WASD for walking. 6. You can't re-spec or reassign skills once you've picked them. RECOMMENDED MODS: "Items Always ID" to get rid of those awful identify scrolls. "More Stash" for extra loot chests in town. "Potion Stack Size" so you can stack 200 instead of just 20. "Merchant Pack" for extra vendors in town. "Better Balanced Sale Prices" so you're not totally screwed when you sell your favorite gear. "Easy Respecs" so you can reassign skills. TL;DR - Torchlight is pretty, but shallow and thoroughly mediocre. Go play the original 2002 Dungeon Siege for a better game that pioneered ideas that got copied here (mules -> pets) or even omitted (no loading screens, combat parties, multiplayer).
In 1993, Myst was a compelling mystery game. It reached a wide audience and sold well, and was one of the easiest titles to find for Windows95 on store shelves. The game itself had (for the time) beautiful prerendered images and what seemed like futuristic animations. But once realtime 3D rendering caught on (beyond clever hacks like Wolfenstein, Doom, and Duke3D which still relied on sprites)... Myst was no longer a big deal. Its static screens, cheesy/slow transitions, and clickable inset animation blocks started to seem lifeless. The story is sparse; you're alone on a series of small islands and must assemble clues in the right order to figure out the mystery. Most of the puzzles are interesting, but at least one will make you get a pencil and paper and another was (for me as a teenager) a total stumper that unfortunately made me turn to the internet for a solution. Unfortunately there's almost zero replay value, because if you know the solution to a few key puzzles, you can go from beginning to end in about 5 minutes. But if you're interested in this enigmatic universe, Myst is good to play as a lead-up to its far bigger and more varied sequel, Riven. Can't decide? Flip through the screenshots -- except for the animations, it's almost the same thing as playing. If that's not enough action for you, then you won't like Myst.
Story and Characters: Witty, lovable, and at times genuinely funny. Totally unmatched in recent memory. Level Design: All based on psychological concepts and cliches. A few can be underwhelming but that's because the majority are truly innovative and clever! Gameplay: Like any platformer, it can be a bit frustrating if you're knocked off a ledge and die a few times. Some enemies are overpowered and others underpowered. Item collection can slow down the pace a bit. But the psychic powers ("magic") you eventually gain mostly make up for it. I played with no problem using a mouse and keyboard. Replay Value: Mostly if you want to re-experience the story, but it might also warrant a second playthrough if you want to be a perfectionist and collect every last hidden item. Overall: Totally worthwhile. The story, characters, and level design make it worth all the praise. I'm frothing for a sequel!
