One of the great games that defined the point-and-click genre. One of the greats from the Lucasarts - the giant of the adventures of its time. A nice game in itself, following the movie plot enough to be interesting, straying from it when needed to create riddles. Not as much tongue-in-cheek as Monkey Island series, yet humorous enough. Of course the visuals are dated so you must be a fan of the classics to fully enjoy it (luckily, those games don't age as badly as early 3d games). There are some issues though with the game: 1) There are some irreversible choices that can haunt you later in game. 2) The "what is" command which you use for the most part of your time in game could have been ommited completely in favour of automatic object highlighting (as in Monkey Island) 3) The biggest "sin" - the atrocious boxing mini-game. It actually made me stop playing in the castle and I think it was my last ever attempt at this game (I played it first when it came out on Amiga and several times after that already). So, be warned (especially about the boxing), but it's worth playing as one of the milestones in adventure games evolution.
After the first Still Life which I quite liked except for the anti-climactic ending, I hoped for more. Much more. And I quite liked the beginning. Then it quickly ended. The puzzles started getting more and more forced, there was so many running between locations. And the horror of adventure games - pixel hunting. Much more of it than in previous part. The menu is clunky, the inventory system is hopelessly annoying (especially that you can't just drop something - you have to find a proper container). I really wanted to love this game. Or like at last. I couldn't. I'm somewhere around half in the game and I'm having very strong doubts if I'll be able to complete it. Even with my compulsion to finish the games I start. Here it's getting annoying even with a walkthrough.
OK, I approached this game after finishing the first Still Life. Knowing that it's a prequel to that game I really wanted to like this one. But the game failed me miserably. Firstly, no dialogue skipping - a big, big no no for an adventure. Secontly, plot holes right from the beginning of the game - you tell the lady you're not interested in the case, then you go and meet her and suddenly you know it's the murder of her sister? How's that possible? Oh, and what would have happened if you hadn't called? Nothing. You supposedly have a choice whether to take the case but in reality you don't. Bad writing. Thirdly, and that annoyed me from the very start of the actual gameplay - the movement/controls pseudo-360 degrees thingy. It's awful and very frustrating. It has all the disadvantages from FPP and TPP but has none of their advantages - worst of both worlds. Fourthly, as I decided I don't like the game as such very much but I'd try to just complete the story with a walkthrough for the sake of the story itself... The game crashes every time I alt-tab out of it. So thank you, no.
Well, the gameplay feels somewhat similar to Blade Runner. The locations by themselves aren't very big and there's quite a lot of traveling between them. Luckily, you usually don't have to walk through many screens and fast travel work quite reasonably. The graphics aged a bit. Especially the characters. The backgrounds are very nice however and set a proper mood. The writing is quite good. I haven't finished the game yet, I think I'm in some 60-70% of the game and unless they really ruin the ending, the story is gonna still be a very good police thriller in two separate timelines. Nice idea. The weakest part is the actual game itself. Most of the game doesn't require much thinking - just use what's at hand, sometimes retrace your steps a bit. A relatively easy, if not too easy experience. But the minigames - man, they are completely different breed. Annoyingly hard. Sometimes because of their out-of-the game knowledge that you must have (the gingerbread recipee), sometimes because they're simply very out-of-place (the safe lock riddle compared to the code on the keycard). Worth playing for the story value.
Tried to play it but couldn't. The game decides that my steering wheel which I use for simracing and which is plugged in always to the PC is a suitable controller for this game. And there's no way of telling the game otherwise. I didn't find it worth bothering with.
Well, it's good that I got it as a freebie because otherwise I'd be annoyed. It doesn't even run. When I click Play in my GOG client, it first tries to launch something with elevated privileges, then crashes immediately. W10 x86_64
Well, there are two games in this pack. The first wing commander might have been a big revolution back in its days but now it's virtually unplayable. It's tied to the CPU speed and is either too slow (if you have too many things going on on the screen) or too fast. There is also no way to adjust detail settings and the like. The second one is much better programmed and is quite playable but both of them suffer from the same thing - the crafts are represented as sprites which have only finite pre-rendered view angles. This makes it often hard to notice which way enemy craft is facing. And makes the movement and rotation of big spaceships (destroyers, carriers) jerky. The writing though is good and lets you get gently into the lore of all WC saga.
I loved both of those games back when they came out. I got slightly bored with the first one so I stopped playing slightly past half of the game. I played through the second one however and only got stuck somewhere near the end (and those were the times when you wouldn't have gamehack or similar tools easily available). I loved both of those games, contrary to the "original" Ultimas which somehow didn't resonate with me that well. But unfortunately, age shows with older 3D games. Not even because the graphics "suck" compared to today standards. It's that during the years of early 3D games you wouldn't have a "standard" interface habits, you wouldn't expect anything particular from the game behaviour so you'd accept anything the devs come up with. It doesn't work that way with today's games - you expect the game to let you redefine controls, you expect to have mouse-look and few other typical UI mechanisms. And if the game has a different approach to user interaction it gets quickly annoying. That's the same reason I couldn't bear MDK or Daggerfall. It's simply too "weird" in terms of controls. Too bad, because the games themselves are still fairly well written, quite decent graphicaly for its time and could give you much fun... if you can bear the weirdness of the controls.
I know it's an old game and all... But the game wants to use my wheel and pedals as a joystick. And the only way to make it playable is to keep the brake pedal half-depressed. Sorry, but no.
