OK. 30 years after initial release I finally had the opportunity to play the game through. It is one of both the best point and click adventures I've played but also contains some of the elements that make those game so frustrating at times. So the game itself is great but not without some flaws. The goods: - Great writing. The plot while based on some fictious assumptions makes sense as a whole and is fairly consistent from the beginning till the end. - Nice graphics and animation (for its time) - Relatively good mechanics and controls. - Only one point that I know of that makes the game unfinishable if you do something wrongly (and it's very late in the game). The bads: - A lot of pixel hunting. - Some riddles are so far-fetched it hurts. (no spoilers here but I had to look for hints 3 or 4 times throughout the game; I can't imagine finishing the game back in the day when there was no easy internet connectivity). - Timed sequences. Overall experience was very good but if I was aiming for finishing the game without any external help, I'd be hugely disappointed. But most of the game did make sense and was really logically connected and very satisfying to play.
The program as such does load and "runs" on win10 means it shows the menu. But none of the options work - can't continue game, can't start a new game, can't host a game... I'm simply clicking with no effect.
For reference - I'm almost 50 and I've already played quite a lot of platformers. Back in the 80s and 90s. If this game was released back in the 90s for Amiga... maybe it'd have its place. Now... it feels like playing on nostalgia by doing pseudo-8-bit tunes and low-res graphics (like most of those "indie" titles do). As generic as it can be. Maybe it has some appeal to younger people who want to "try some classic platforming but without all the hassle with actually playing classic platformers". Maybe. For me it was interesting for the first 10-15 screens. Just to see what is gonna happen next. Nothing much happened next. So that's that.
The story was OK. The resolution might have been a little predictable but not ruining the game completely. The graphics fit the mood (even though I usually don't like the "pseudo-retro" style). The music is great and again - fits the game. Great work on that. Overall experience was very positive and I completed the whole game without looking for hints but not finding the game overly easy. On the bad side: 1. The movement is a bit clunky. Especially in that one frustrating timed section. 2. There are some minigames which are not really needed there. Don't add anything important to the game but make it a bit frustrating experience. 3. Timed sequences. 4. Shooting. It's simply annoying. I wanted a point and click game, not some shmup. Luckily the shooting wasn't _that_ bad (I suppose if I set a higher difficulty, could have been more frustrating). And the timed sequences just needed a few tries and save-restore cycles. On the plus side - there don't seem to be points of no return so you can't get irreversibly stuck. Overally - if you like point and click adventures - a nice game to go for.
At first glance the game seems fun - fast paced, nice looking shooter. Then comes the realization that the beginning of the game is actually all there is. True, the enemies are getting harder to kill but it all boils down to repeating the same rooms in a more or less random order and grinding for money to buy skills upgrades. And that's it. Fun for an hour. Then gets boring. It's the modern "replacement" for game design - make it random and call it rogue-lite.
OK. For me there are too many different angles crammed into a single game effectively making the game a chore. Maybe if it didn't have this walking simulator inside the ship whenever you wanted to do something it would be a more interesting game. But with this chore it quickly lost my attention.
You start playing, you get some tutorial... and then you can't figure out how to make your dwarves eat. Even though there is a lot of food lying around they won't eat. There is no room which handles food, there is no action you can do with all this meat and cabbages... They just starve.
The game looks decent for its age and has a nice soundtrack (although after a few repetitions it becomes quite obvious why those bands didn't get to make a world-wide career). It is a racing game but it's nowhere near a decent one. True, the environment has many destructible objects (no, it's not that the whole world is destructible) but the tracks are made so that you inevitably do destroy those objects - because it's so natural that there are trucks, concrete silos and other objects scattered all over racing tracks - don't you watch rallies and F1? The "physics" model is even worse than in Grid so it's telling something. The "AI" cars will happily crash into you and spin you out or push you into obstacles. You won't really be able to do the same to them. There is a huge amount of rubberbanding. And don't even get me started on "return to track". You lose so much ground and positions with this. It might be fun for an hour or two but then quickly just gets frustrating and annoying.
While it can be me that I simply don't get the "card" games, this one is really overly simple. You play two, three, maybe four missions and that's about it. True, you can get some experience and gain some levels for your characters but it doesn't change much gamewise. Just that you can tackle a bit stronger opponents. But the game itself is just boringly repetitive.
