I mean the originals were already good. And pixely as hell. And upscaled pixely is still pixely, which is fine i guess. And no point can i say i feel like the graphics have been "modernised". Remix soundtrack is nice as well; just 1:1 recreation of original songs, in more than 8-bit. The main problems are mods require you to sign into Bethesda, because Microsoft. And also I cannot for the life of me join a multiplayer lobby. And given how few there are I imagine most people have this issue. You join and immediately get disconnected with an icon that seems to indicate no connection; on servers that show less than 50ms latency. New chapters are ok? I mean they're not exactly ground breaking. tedious at times due to how few powerups there are around; and in Hexen in particular damage is almost guaranteed with Fighter or Cleric. I would have liked to play this multiplayer but it doesn't work. I would have liked to browse the mods but it requires i sign into Bethesda (which i won't). So overall mediocre effort.
Finally finished the game, on normal, after 100+ hours of gameplay and honestly i want to start it again. It's a great, fun game, that took me about a month of casual gaming to finish and that felt very rewarding in the minute-to-minute gameplay category (combat, exploration, loot etc.). To start I experienced very few defects, only 2 crashes and only 2 defects that required a reload to progress (UI did not reappear after a cutscene). I got the game in March, so after a few massive patches filled with fixes, and ran it on a 3060 Ti with mostly everything on medium without issues; the game had a few stutters only in closed environments that were a bit too cluttered for my old rig. Other than that there are a few things that I was not crazy about: the stealth is pretty bad; enemies can easily spot you from (literally) miles away through bushes while you're sitting crouched in the dark with no flashlight on. I was a bit annoyed by the lack of english localization for signs or grafitti, which is sometimes needed for hints during exploration. Also the main protagonist's motivation is... I mean i guess we just need a reason for it, but it keeps popping up through cutscenes and makes me roll my eyes a little. But like i said the exploration is great and the game always offers a reasonable challenge on medium difficulty, throughout the entire experience (barring the boss fights which are kind of meh). You really take into account every encounter and wheter it is worth it or not, and not once did i just runaway from a fight thinking that it's either not worth it or that i won't make it. Solid 8/10 game. Anyone who enjoyed the old stalker games and has the rig to run this at least on medium will enjoy this.
Finally finished the game, on normal, after 100+ hours of gameplay and honestly i want to start it again. It's a great, fun game, that took me about a month of casual gaming to finish and that felt very rewarding in the minute-to-minute gameplay category (combat, exploration, loot etc.). To start I experienced very few defects, only 2 crashes and only 2 defects that required a reload to progress (UI did not reappear after a cutscene). I got the game in March, so after a few massive patches filled with fixes, and ran it on a 3060 Ti with mostly everything on medium without issues; the game had a few stutters only in closed environments that were a bit too cluttered for my old rig. Other than that there are a few things that I was not crazy about: the stealth is pretty bad; enemies can easily spot you from (literally) miles away through bushes while you're sitting crouched in the dark with no flashlight on. I was a bit annoyed by the lack of english localization for signs or grafitti, which is sometimes needed for hints during exploration. Also the main protagonist's motivation is... I mean i guess we just need a reason for it, but it keeps popping up through cutscenes and makes me roll my eyes a little. But like i said the exploration is great and the game always offers a reasonable challenge on medium difficulty, throughout the entire experience (barring the boss fights which are kind of meh). You really take into account every encounter and wheter it is worth it or not, and not once did i just runaway from a fight thinking that it's either not worth it or that i won't make it. Solid 8/10 game. Anyone who enjoyed the old stalker games and has the rig to run this at least on medium will enjoy this.
Warbreeds was hard to love even back in the day. The game released to mediocre reviews. It's unique setting and unit customisation along with 4 factions could not save it from horrible pathfinding, subpar AI and abysmal interface. That last one is the worst offender. The game doesn't have an interface to speak of. No minimap either. This means that to figure out how much energy you have in a spot or how you are on research resources (more on that later) you have to manually select every building. And the pathfinding really is horrible. It was coded with the age-old mistake of back units will try to move as soon as the order was given, not waiting for front units to move first. this makes your groups just scatter in all directions as each unit tries to individually figure out how to get to the destination. And to release in this manner 3 years after Warcraft 2, 2 years after Red Alert and in the SAME year as Starcraft and Total Annihilation, there is little excuse. But honestly, i would forgive it's flaws and stay with the game for 4-5 missions if it didn't keep crashing on my Windows 10. The game is alien in a certain beautiful kind of way, with nothing looking familiar, from buildings to units to resource management and even research. To do research you have to send your workers to pick up the genes from fallen enemies. This in turn unlocks new technologies for your own faction. Cool in theory, but because you cannot automate workers to pick up this research resource, it becomes a chore as you have to manually walk one worker behind every battlefield to pick genes. It kills the game flow. If you are a die-hard 90s RTS fan i recommend it, just for it's bizarre nature. Keep in mind though that you will need to read 5-10 pages in the manual to figure out how to play the game, and that it might crash on you too.
Even back in 1997, Chasm was average. Sure, back then we didn't have internet and the ocean of games we have today, so if you picked this up by accident after only playing Doom, it was probably the bee's knees. But the same year also gave us Turok, Dark Forces 2 and Quake 2; and that's just naming the 3D shooters. Competition was stiff and when compared with other similar games of the time, Chasm falls short. But it's not a bad game. If you like old school shooters then it's worth a try. Not at this price, though. It's clear the new publisher paid a pretty penny for the license and wants their investment back. Good luck with that. Quake 1 Remastered is half the price. Maybe get it on sale. That's what I might do.
Fire Warrior is by no means a good game; but it's not a horrible game either. While it supports higher resolutions on modern machines (playing in 1080), it crashes often if you are playing on a refresh rate different from your monitor's. So make sure you set that up properly. Besides that, the control are pretty bad, to the point where you should not play this without auto-aim. Even then, you will probably have to tweak the scrolling speed... By going in and out of the game to change the settings. Yes, even though it came out in 2003, long after we were used to the comforts of changing options in-game, Fire Warrior is one of THOSE games that makes you change everything (and I mean everything) outside of the game. Once you actually get to play the game, it's not that bad. The setting of war(hammer) in the first few missions and a few others is very nice. And playing as a Tau is a novel idea. At times you are even acompanied by fellow soldiers who, unless the plot demands it, are about as weak as paper. But they add a nice little layer of atmosphere, and drop ammo for your beloved Pulse Rifle; so every bit helps. Not that you need help anyway, since the enemy is pretty dumb and poorly scripted; a very standard early-2000s FPS trope. You will never not stop hearing a soldier saying "It's quiet" while you are exchanging shots with another one 30 feet in front of him. Unfortunately the levels can get a bit repetitive, and some of them are heavily devoid of rifle ammo, making you have to use the inferior humanoid weapons (ew). If you haven't guessed it by now, Fire Warrior is the kind of game you have to make fun in your head. There's not much else to do other than that, besides pass through bland corridors shooting everything in sight. But if you ever wanted to play a Tau soldier in a large battle against the Empire, you will probably like it.
