Well Larry is back (again) and this time he goes to that all-time adventure-designer favorite, an exotic island, in search for Faith, the love of his life. On the way he'll have lots of sex. And I do mean lots. Whereas in other games Larry would score maybe once or twice and fail hilariously every other time, here he's literally suffocated from all the p*$$y he's getting. I mean, here's a spoiler (read next paragraph to avoid): the first woman he meets in the game literally asks him to have sex, literally like a cheesy porno. That plus the modern art design is enough to make any hardcore Larry fan turn around and leave, and I get that. But the game's actually kind of funny at times. There are a lot of good gags and jokes. The story around the stand-up comedian is great (a satire regarding Louis CK; i wonder if he was involved). And it's sort of hidden and to me that's good game design; there are a lot of hidden gags around. The game also seems more competently made this time around, with a lot less bugs. At the same time, I question the budget this was made on. There are so few animations. Remember how in old adventure games the main character would do a cool or funny animation when you told him to 'use X on Y'? None of that here. I understood the first game, gave them a break as new developers. But in the sequel too? And when you already re-use so many assets to begin with. However I will cut them slack ONE MORE TIME, if only because they managed to get it honestly funny this time. But the next one better be an orgy for eyes! I wanna see animations up the whazoo. Also they didn't add any more gay stuff in this one. I imagine they decided to be less riskay. While i was a bit iffy of the one in the first game, initially, it kind of grew on me and i thought it was made in good taste. So if that was holding you back the first time around, fear not. Your heterosexuality is perfectly safe in this one.
If you played Larry in the past and looked at any of the trailers for this latest installment, you probably downed combat gear already. "It's ugly!" "it's modern" "it's lost it's identity". Well put those torches and pitchforks away, because WDDD is ACTUALLY not bad. It takes a while to get going and some of the jokes land flat, but the game is good for the olympian task it had to acomplish: bringin Larry in the 21st century. Yes, there are gays in the game. And tranies. And there was a brief moment initially when i thought to myself "ugh, don't". Thankfully, they didn't. And after a few hours I had no problem seeing Larry in a world where gender preference doesn't matter. It's all good. What's not so good however is the minor bugs littered around that ruined my flow. Really easy stuff to fix as well, like a dialogue line triggering the wrong voice line. Makes me wonder how much effort was put into actually testing the English version. Some of the jokes also fell as flat as a pancake; but that's to be expected on any adventure game without strong writters backing it up. Humer is subjective, after all. Perhaps it would've been better with more jokes and perhaps less reliance on referencial or pun humour. But in my oppinon the biggest problem the game has is the lack of animations. You can really see this was done on a budget (at one point, Larry has to climb something and he just 'teleports' on top of it). Situations where you'd expect more animations seem stiff and lifeless. Overall a decent reboot of LSL for the 21st century. I would say it merits something of a 7/10. Will get the next one in the series at full price, just to support the devs. But I really hope the writters stepped up their game.
Nostalgia is a a tricky mistress. It can make a bad game or break a good one. Case in point, Star Control Origins; a fun game bent on exploration and story telling with excellent writing, hindered by the fact that old people were angry it wasn't like the original series from 1993-1996. Seriously. That's the issue. If you look at the reviews breakdown you will see that the overall rating is 2.9, but verified owners rating is 4/5. But I digress. A short description would be to say this game is Sunless Skies low-stakes. In the game you play as Earth's exclusive exploring ship commander, Terrans being the new kids in the universe. You will meet many interesting species and interact with them in all sorts of ways. To give away too much would be to spoil the pleasures of discovering things yourself. And there are quite a few things to discover, with most events and conversations beautifully dialogued. I will say this, absolutely get this game if you enjoy good writing and humorous games. At times, i feel like i'm playing a game written by Terry Pratchett. Honestly I don't remember when was the last time that a modern game made dialogue feel like such a reward. Being low-stakes i also urge players to pick exactly what dialogue option they want. The gameplay itself is a bit bland; you can be mistaken for looking at the ship battle system and saying 'not for me, thanks' but it can grow on you; and also fights can be auto resolved with upgrades. Honestly it's a small price to pay to get to the good parts. Another minor problem is that when you get later into the game, it puts more importance into fleet battles. I recommend playing it on Easy so you don't have to faff around too much with it. Also I wish the ship officers had a bit more importance to them. Some are useful and provide passive buffs to you, but others are there just to give flavour text, which can be hit or miss. Looking at you, Mu'Kay. Overall i highly recommend this game if you enjoy good writing.
A lightweight, yet very enjoyable TBS. Mostly aged very well, with a few caveats. Think of how playing the latest Civ games is kind of like a zen, chill experience, and you get an idea. Very easy to get into even by modern standards; has a tutorial as well that explains most game mechanics. A bit more heavy on the reading side but absolutely superb artwork. Like really, I wish i had the images in high resolution.
I love my polish neighbours but not everything that comes from Poland is good. Case in point, KnightShift; an unimpressive game even at the time. The graphics were ugly, the story was generic and the gameplay was a bland mix of RTS or RPG. The best thing the game had to offer was the option of playing it purely as RTS or RPG (avoiding the other mechanic altogether); and when your strongest feature is being able to ignore half the gameplay... that's no good. To give you an idea, here is a list of other strategy games released in 2002-2003, about the same time with this game: Age of Mythology. Rise of Nations, Praetorians, C&C Generals, Medieval: Total War, Battle Realms, Warrior Kings, Warcraft 3, Homeworld 2, Impossible Creatures and that is only naming A FEW. But is the game bad? No, i guess not. Just very generic, and for the asking price you can't really fault it for that.
A great classic strategy game marred by some very outdated controls. Some of the design choices also show their age, like the need to connect buildings via roads and no option to create new town halls, or lumber mills not acting as a drop-off point for wood. All these things make the game much harder than it needs to be, as you have to plan ahead in everything, from unit and building placement to scouting and pincer spots. Depending on your tastes (and level of masochism) this can be fun as rewarding. It adds a layer of unexpected difficulty, one could even call it natural; as you struggle with the game to make it do what you want; feeling like a boss when your strategy pays off. Basically, it’s for Linux users. Remember how, in any Blizzard strategy game, once you have your armies set, losing units is next to impossible? Having the artillery in the back to aggro the enemy and then a nice wall of soldiers backed by range units. Well, you can do that here too, but only defensively. When the offensive starts, all hell breaks loose as you wrestle the controls and try to command your troops. Yes it’s a particular type of challenge, not for everyone, but i really like it. I feel sometimes that RTS games have too easy controls whereas a great challenge in coordinating armies (especially in fantasy/medieval settings) is communicating orders throughout the battle. The command system is also not that hard to master, especially to someone used to micromanagement at a competitive level. What I say is the bigger challenge is not having unit group keys. That's the real kicker. So yeah, Warcraft 1 has aged peculiarly. I like it, but I can see why some people might not. Stick with it though and you will enjoy some nail-bitting intense fights as you advance your army thinking you crushed the enemy, only to realise they were hiding units in his base and now your main force has been decimated by arrows and catapult fire. Bring in the reserves, hold the line!
The DLC is a whole new campaign through the eyes of a regular survivor who progressively gets more mixed up in the intrigues of the world that surrounds him. Personally I like the gameplay in this one more than the base game. Melee is stronger, ammo is less of an issue and overall the combat feels more fun with the only major drawback being the fact that you only get to use the handgun; no shotgun/rifle. The maps are also a lot larger, even though they are fewer than in vanilla. A great step up is getting rid of the hassle of keeping survivors alive with food/medkits, although the fact that that you can only have one other person with you at a time means the conversations in transit are less interesting (even though in this one your character speaks). The story is good, however it raises more minor questions and ends up answering the major plot poins, to the point where playing the base game plus this will give you a pretty good understanding of what's going on. Overall I liked this campaign.
I really liked TFS; it has quite a few flaws, but the core gameplay is good and the story, while a bit all over the place, entertaining. It's a five hour-long game; six if you're generous, but I do not feel it overstayed it's welcome. What I did not like is all the faffing about in the actual train, with the survivors. I liked it at first, but it got tedious due to the speed at which people got hungry/wounded. Ammunition can also become really scarce, which I guess is trying to be part of the game's charm, but it's not really survival nor roguelike so a little more ammo around would've only made it more fun. It's not survival, however, which I liked. If you die your autoload puts you a few rooms back so you can experiment around with clearing an area. I said the story is good and it is; sort of. Aliens have invaded again; OR HAVE THEY?! It can feel like there's twists every hour and a lot of things remain unexplained, even when exploring the world for bits of paper to read. What I like is that it raises questions, but in a conspiracy-kind of way. If you're gonna get it i suggest getting the DLC as well, which addresses a lot of of bad design choices and overall feels like a step up.
The DF series was never a huge commercial success, but it was a series of good games and loyal players that did okay for itself. Unfortunately, after DF5 Novalogic didn't really seem to know where to go with the series. Or they did and were wrong. This was a post-HL2 world and the standard was pretty high. It also didn't help that it released in the same year as Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2, Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Swat 4 to name only a few titles. Technically, DF6 is not a bad game. It's mostly polished (after a few patches), with solid gameplay elements and all that, but it was the giant empty world of 4km snipping all over again and, after the intense DF5, very few people were actually having it. I picked this up a year or two after it's launched and got bored after the first 3 hours. Yes it's a remake of DF1, but DF1 was fun in 1998 and we forgave the big empty world because it was unheard of in games. Imagine if, after GTA Vice City, Rockstar would've released GTA4 as a remake of GTA1. Again, not a bad game, but often times mediocre. If you're a hardcore DF fan or want to play the first game without the outdated graphics get it, on sale maybe.
