I came fresh from Quake 2 remaster and I remembered why I have never finished Q4 back in it's day. Too slow, too tactic, too squad based, too dark. Anyway the graphics are still great and it is a fan game, just not for anyone who come fresh from the insanly fast and crazy Quake 2 or Doom 2016 or anyway from games that go way faster than this slow pased game. Fingers crossed for a Doom 2016 remake for Quake!
I had this game for ages in my backlog and eventually I gave it a try 4 years ago, I spent a lot of hours but I was still learning so didn't went far enough (I didn't even fought another master back then) I liked it a lot but I was playing Witcher 1 and 2 along side it back then and they stole all my game time, so I left Eador behind. Last month I wanted something old school to spent my little gaming time and I decided to give it a shot again. Now that I know how to play I had a better time and I'm not afraid to take on red battles that I can win with deploying tactics that I didn't had the experience to do in the past. This is where it won me. In my first run I was trying to go stronger and stronger on each shard because I was believing the game messages that I couldn't win that and that battle, so eventually I was farming a lot and got bored before see the best parts of the game. Anyway, long story short, the game is interesting and I love how it plays. I cut a star because of a couple of problems, for example I have to close my antivirus for the game to run! Something that only apply in gog version, as I have the same game on steam that works ok. Also I did had a ton of crash to desktop at first, I had to go in the games exe and add to run as admin and all those memory exception errors went away. Also added it to play in compatibility for w7 just in case. Another weird problem I did had was that the game had terrible performance in my 5500XT GPU while in another system with an ancient Radeon 7790 it was flying. This somehow got fixed after a driver update from AMD, although nothing in the release notes hinted that they fixes something that may have an impact in that old game. Anyway, if you like HoM, you will like this too. I like them both equally and this one is a more modern version of that game system.
This is a really nice old school RTS that really sent me back in the 90s but with much better graphics. There are some limitations and QoL improvements that we are used now in 2022 but the game is very enjoyable if you turn a blind eye on a couple of archaic mechanics here and there. Also hey guys it is the Gold version, in GoG Galaxy just go to the extras button next to play and find the additional executables. If you have the dowloaded version my guess is you can find it at the extra 1 folder, the trick is that it is also named Settlers 6. My folder for example is D:\GOG Galaxy\Games\The Settlers 6\extra1\bin and there is the .exe I hope newer Settlers will eventually drop the uplay requirement and land in GoG sometime in the future.
Honestly I still play Carmageddon 1 on my phone and enjoy it, TDR 2000 was horrible even back in the day and we abandoned it after a couple of hours. Somehow I have this in my gog library and I decided to give it another try, maybe it was not meant for the 15 years old me back in the day (unlikely, I loved the first 2 entries). Nuh the games is terrible in every aspect and it is not about how it aged, it was terrible, it still is terrible, nothing to see here. Go play the first 2 if you are in for the nostalgia ride.
Honestly I have no words for this game. The graphics are great, the sound is extraordinary, the story is great. Also great is what the creators try to do with that game and bring forth more awareness for mental disorders. All in all I was expecting more of walking storytelling but the game have serioys action juice in there that keep you enough not to get bored but also doesn't interupt the story.
I really loved the first game (of 2013 not the very very first) but this one while it looks better it really feel like a bit watered down. Especially the boss encounters are just "hit it with all you have", unlike the first game where you had to find the tactic for each boss. I also miss the storytelling with the comic slides :( Also I got a bit overhelmed from all those weapons, keep it simple guys :) I'm here to rip and tear not to study weapons. :) All in all is not a bad game, it could just be better.
(I finished the game and wrote the review a couple of hours before the patch 1.1, since I have finished the game I don't plan on playing again, I read around that there are improvements in performance and this makes sense as this is what happend with every game after it gets the first patches. Anyway I already have 5/5 so... nothing to see here for me.) The game was great. It really calls home to a younger me that enjoyed the old adventure point and click adventure games, like Syberia for example. But with fewer puzzles, which I don't find bad as I prefer it this way. The story was interesting, sure enough I don't recall anything like that in games that I have played. The atmosphere was really cinematic, the fixed camera added to that, you focus on what the game want you to focus and this adds a ton. Now on the graphics settings side, well... I can only forgive how heavy the game is because they are a smaller studio. To simulate both worlds at the same time was like rendering 4K and show only 1080p wasn't really good resource management, my system Ryzen 5 2600, 16GB RAM, 5500XT 4GB, Crucial MX500 SSD) was playing nice at 1080p and all high, till the first time I got both worlds up and running, I'm sure I dropped as low as 10-15fps at some point (stupid xbox app in windows doesn't have fps counter and prevent gog galaxy overlay) and I had to drastically cut down on settings. In the end I managed to play nicely at 720p with fidelityFX 150% and render settings at medium (low settings is so crap that are not playable). There have to be a workaround for this problem, but probably require a proprietary game engine and more money than the studio could invest. If I was getting that game from some big publisher that could find a solution to that problem I could cut stars. But for now it's a 5/5 for me, if you can run it, that's it.
I don't remember how I got this game honestly, my backlog is chaotic and I skipped it so far because I though a space game that is retained withing a 2D plane sounded sad. Anyway I unearthed my sidewinder joystick and wanted to check out games that could make use of it so I installed Rebel Galaxy to give it a shot. While the joystick was of no use because of the 2D plane of the game (honestly I don't recall if it worked at all, I tried a lot of games that day), the game itself won me in an instant! Somehow I got a feeling that I play Freelancer as the crew of Cowboy Bebop, the music helped a ton here and the gameplay is extremely like Freelancer just limited to the 2D plane. You have a main story and you are free to do as you please, explore, bounty hunting, trading, even mining (barely worth it honestly but sometimes you get something nice like diamonds or salt), escort missions, deliveries. Fighting is a bit dumped down but keep in mind the ships available to the player are not some small space ship ideal for dogfighting but larger classes so it makes sense to have a fighting style like that. The interesting part is you can just go pirate if you want to, while this may interfere with the main story as you will be turned hostile to stations that you need to visit, it is still an interesting aspect and there are neutral and outlaw stations that you can use to trade, repair and buy ships or upgrades. For ships there are some options, not as much as I could like but considering the small studio I can say they are enough and have a lot of customization options (although not visually but engines, shields, guns etc) also nice to be able to upgrade computer systems like better scanners, repair bots etc. Extra bonus for the Cowboy Bebop fans, the starting ship's type is named Hummerhead ;) You can make alliances with guilds, that provide some bonus missions with better rewards and upgrade parts that are not available elsewhere. I like it a lot, so I say go get it!
Ok listen now, it is not a completely new game, yes. But it really have to offer much more than 3. After playing tropico 4 I realized that tropico 3 lost a lot of value, not visa versa. If you own 3 it worth buying 4, it really feels like that they run out of money with 3 and 4 is what they really wanted to do. The only thing that I really hate is that Panultimo... give me back my Huanito :P The graphics are not better than 3, but they are still nice for this short of game, I don't see why this is a reason to don't like this game. The only reason I can see not to like this game, is that I paid for 3 before getting 4...
