If you're a fan of point-and-click adventures, Resonance is definitely a game to try. It's nice has a decent story, it's not too much "pixelhunty" and generally plays quite well. The only thing that I didn't like much as I remember were two or three "action" sequences. But worry not, they are not hard or complicated. It's just that they were a bit unexpected.
I can understand why people like it. The game is nice looking and dynamic. To a certain point it reminded me of good old PP Hammer from the Amiga. It also has the exploration feeling, fast pace, nice sound and graphics. But what to many people is a great asset of this game - it's "rougelikeness" for me strips it of any fun. I don't feel the challenge to complete the levels because I know they are random. There's no fun in beating the generator and there's nothing to compare yourself to others by. It just feels as if the creators went the easy path (although I'm aware that programming a decent level generator is not an easy task) and instead of designing good and challenging levels just thought "hey, let's just call it rogue-like and we can skip this part". So again - I understand the game's appeal. But it's just not for me.
The original Flashback used to be one of my favourites games back on the Amiga. This one I bought mostly for sentimental reasons. After the game waited its time in the queue I decided to give it a go to see how well or hwo bad it aged. And it seems that it didn't age that well. Firtly, as many people already pointed out - the "new" graphics is plain ugly. I don't understand the point of drawing big square pixels and then making their edges a bit rounded. Completely pointless feature. Secondly, the control scheme is annoying. Period. Thirdly - the gameplay used to be typical for platform-puzzle-shooter of an era so it wasn't that annoying back then. And the graphics/music and general feel of the game used to be very good (again - for that time). If you play it now... well, the gfx is not that great anymore and you're getting annoyed at the gameplay much easier. And the gameplay tends to be annoying at times. Especially on harder dificulty levels. On the one hand - you have the rewind feature which to some extend helps a bit with harder points in the game but on the other hand the feature itself can be a great PITA because your character restarts with holstered weapon or standing in the wrong direction and so on. So, the game that used to be a 5/5 or even a 6/5 back in its days is now unfortunately only a mediocre retro-styled puzzle-platformer. Good thing it works natively on windows however I can understand that people would love to see the original version to be able to play it under DosBox on any supported system. With this one it won't work.
I'm still in the middle of the game having played for over 80 hours. I'm cleaning all the side missions so it takes some time. The game does feel a bit like a mongrel of Witcher 3 and GTA but you can get used to it. I love the city. It's huge, it's crowded, it has its distinct moods in different parts. It has big outskirts. On the downside - of course apart from all the already famous bugs and glitches (I had an evening when the game would crash on me almost every hour but then again I had several days crash-free), the "gigs" (small side missions) are a bit boring and repetitive. The bigger side missions are interesting and well written though. The main story is very strong. I'd love some more openness in terms of your actions gaving more impact on the story apart from predefined single points (karma and Fallout 2 in general - where art thou?). The game really does need a decent rig (I have a 1060 and I"m playing in 960x540 to have decent detail level. Did I mention that I love the city? Some of the bugs are hilarious yet annoying - I once fell down from the map because I was driving fast and the game had to download the objects and textures for the parking entrance I wanted to turn into but didn't make it. Some are annoying and not hilarious (physics of "falling down" from a park bench or similarily high object and getting killed). The visual style reminds me of SF magazines from the eighties which can be good or bad depending on your taste. Car driving physics is frustrating (at least using the keyboard; haven't played with the controller). Oh, and the computer is cheating - even if you disable the turrets on the exit gate, you'll still get shot if you go behind the gates. I wouldn't mind if the character development wasn't that complicated (and was more intuitive). I hope there'll be some DLC's but I understand that for now the devs have to fix the console ports and maybe fix some bugs in pc version. Oh, and I love the city. EDIT: OK. My original review was based on the original release. Now, a few years later, after several patches and updates it's a completely different game. It got a complete overhaul of the character progression system (to be fully honest, I no longer remembe how the original one worked). I got it to the end on the hardest difficulty level with pretty much every character build so it tells you something about my appreciation for the game. I played the game for about 800 hours and got all achievements... There are still some bugs and glitches but not nearly as many as there used to be. The game runs much better than it used to (I still haven't upgraded from my 1060 but I'm able to play it in 1920x1080). A great feature is the modability - there's a ton of interesting addons for the game - from additional stories to visual overhauls to game balance changes. You can add more weapons, clothes, cars, unlock new locations. A ton of fun to be had. There's also the DLC which... is interesting but has its cons, not gonna lie to you. It expands the game greatly but if you want to complete its part of the story you might get frustrated. Overall - while I'm a bit underwhelmed by the fact that there was only a single DLC (and there won't be any more), I'm positively surprised by the amount of constant support this game still gets from the devs years after initial release.
The whole game just feels like a cheap, underworked Fallout 2 clone minus storytelling. It's buggy, it doesn't give you anything to keep you interested for more than first two missions. Overally - I wouldn't recommend it unless bought on a very deep discount. I could give a small plus for the linux version but it's way to huge and clunky for such game. And has its own issues.
As a fan of the XIII comic series I really wanted to enjoy this game. But couldn't. Level design, progress and overall feeling is at most mediocre. But the finall killer was the save system. I understand checkpoint-based save system. I can even to some point understand annoyingly rare checkpoints implemented in this game. But giving a player a "save" option which regardless of when and where you "saved" pushes you back to last checkpoint is really disappointing. Up to the point of "uninstall and forget". Shame really, because the visuals are quite ok. Maybe too polygony for modern standards but still quite good. Cel-shading makes the game not age that badly. But the gameplay just doesn't deliver.
I played the game way back when it first came out and missed a better half of the fun. Mostly because in Poland we relied mostly on pirated copies without any manual and so on. So I used the game as a simple "fly and shoot" type of sim. And this game is so much more. If you dig into the manual you'll learn about the AWG-9 radar operation, you'll learn of the importance of leader-wingman cooperation and will use the game as it was meant to be - a pretty realistic, for it's time, simulator of a interceptor pair - a weapon platform. True, the graphics can look a bit dated and the flight mechanics are not up to speed with modern Flight Simulator or even good old Sturmovik but remember that this game is over 25 years old. But it's still enjoyable for simulator fans and it's worth to give it a try. Especially if you have a chance to get it with a healthy discount ;-)
Firstly, I don't remember how I got this game. Probably on some deep discount or even as a freebie. Secondly, I didn't have opportunity to play this Mass Effect others are referring to. For me the gameplay reminds me of SpecOps: The Line that I played not long ago (which is not surprising as it's the same engine and the same publisher I believe. But this game is much worse. Not only it has the annoying "consolesque" mechanics which means that it's suited for pad control and not very good to play using mouse and keyboard, but it has much worse AI (especially friendly AI) and way worse level design. The story is not that bad even if for some it doesn't fit into whole X-COM series in terms of continuity but it's very linear. And the missions consist of way too much running through empty spaces. The games quickly turns into a mindless grind with not much new to the game itself so you just push to get to the end of the story but it's more of a chore than fun from the game itself. Definitely wouldn't buy it for a full price. Oh, and having to google that I have to disable PhysX to make game not crash is unforgivable.