Ok so if you want to play this on PC, you should check out the force engine first. What you don't get with the Force Engine is the redone cutscenes, upscaled and redrawn sprites. What you do get with the Force Engine is the ability to turn off the now pointless aim assist, and the untouched game which was already perfect the way it was. Not to mention buying a copy of the original on sale is dirt cheap compared to 30 bucks for the remaster. This game really is too expensive for what it offers on PC. However it is far and away the best console port given that the only other console port that this game ever received was the PS1 version which was not very good. I personally don't like the look of the new cutscenes and like I said, this game was perfect the way it was with no visual upgrades. Setting up the Force Engine is ridiculously easy and has so many options to make the game look exactly the way you want it to. It really is the best option for PC users. This game was really made to benefit console gamers and I'm glad it exists. However on PC I personally think 30 or even 20 bucks is a hard sell. I think Night Dive's efforts on Doom 64, Turok 1 and 2, and Forsaken were way better. Not to mention way more appropriately priced!
This game is not what it seems to be on the surface. On the surface it seems to be a Ridge Racer arcade type game, but in reality it's a nice looking game with very bad controls much like Burning Road for the PS1 looked like a Daytona USA clone on the surface, but it turned out to be a game that looked like Daytona USA where every vehicle controlled like it was on ice! The problem is not that this game has keyboard only controls that you can easily map with your controller mapping software. The problem with this game is that your car will fishtail out of control if you push the brake button for more than a split second even if you're driving straight. To avoid this you have to repeatedly push the brake button rapidly and downshift in order to slow down without spinning out. After you figure that out the game is pretty easy until you get to the Pro league where the biggest problem is the AI ramming you and causing you to wreck. Mix that with the unintuitive controls and it becomes massively frustrating to be in front and lose because of a D move by the jerk behind you. I'm sure with more practice I could beat the pro league but it's just not any fun to have to manage the terrible breaking mechanic and deal with steering around every bend and car. To add insult to injury the game loves to lock up randomly so bad that I can't CTRL ALT DEL or ALT TAB to close DOSBox. I have to sign out to get it to close. You've been warned.
First things first. If you haven't played the original Game Boy Color installment you may think Risky's Revenge is an OK or even good game. I played the first game before playing this one and was very dissappointed with all of the changes that were made. The Gameboy Color original was a pretty tough game. Not impossible by any stretch but there are many places that you simply cannot run and whip your way through without getting killed. Instead you have to be mindful of every enemie's attack patterns and deal with them accordingly which at times can be tiresome. Risky's Revenge aimed to fix that but turned the difficulty dial all the way down to zero. Enemies no longer pose any kind of substantial threat and there is no fear of dying. On top of that the level and labrynth layouts are deplorable and not a whole lot of fun to traverse. With the exception of the Squid Baron which is the first boss, the other bosses including Risky Boots are a complete joke with super weak patterns. Most of them are won by whipping until the boss jumps, then repeat. There isn't even a boss in the second labrynth, and it's not even a labrynth! It's a tower with 10 levels! The music isn't even close to as good but that's a minor nitpick. Overall sound quality is below par because it's a port of a DS game. Overall gameplay is boring because Shantae is so over powered even at the beginning and the enemies are all dumbed down. You no longer have to perform dance moves to the rythum to change form which is probably good for most people. That being said this installment introduces you to characters and story that greatly enhances the next game (the Pirate's Curse) if you know it going in. For that alone it is worth playing. I couldn't wait for the game to end but I'm glad I played it because the Pirate's Curse is excellent much like the first installment and I'm glad that I am familiar with the story and characters introduced in this game. So suffer though this one then enjoy the next one.
Having played Bit.Trip Runner and Runner 2 in their entirety I believe I can give an extremely fair review of this first installment. Bit.Trip Runner is a rhythm based platformer in which you do not control your movement horizontally. Those mobile games that are called "runners" got their inspiration from this game but have fallen short because they lack the depth of this game. Your main objective is to avoid objects by sliding under, jumping over, blocking, and even kicking them out of your way all to the most sublime 8-bit chip tunes ever to grace a video game. Along the way you collect bars of gold for level completion and multipliers that increase your score. If you collect all of the gold bars in a level you are free to go to the old school bonus challenge after that stage which kicks you back into Atari 2600 age graphics and sound heavily inspired by the game Pitfall which are much more challenging than the regular levels. Collect all the gold bars in the bonus stage and you have officially completed that level. To some this game can be punishing. I will be the first to admit that I hate games that are made to kill you with cheap deaths. I am a fan of hard games that are hard but fair like Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV, and Trackmania. Bit.Trip Runner is one of those games. It has the great level design, music, and gameplay to keep you charmed and coming back for more. If you can't handle sucking at a game at first only to get better with practice, this game is NOT for you. In certain levels you are supposed to suck until you get the pattern down. The sequel Runner 2 is much more forgiving, has more up to date visuals, and is not as good. I liked Runner 2 and it should be played, but IMO this game is the pinnacle of the series. It's less forgiving but much more rewarding. Bit.Trip Runner was the reason I had to play Runner 2. So if you're frustrated, it's ok. You're supposed to suck at first. That's why it feels so good when you no longer suck and win!
I still have the original Nintendo 64 cart and thought the game was pretty good until I got to the 3rd level where the difficulty really ramps up in this game. Until playing this version I had no idea how badly hampered the Nintendo 64 original was with its massively limited sight distance due to the infamous wall of fog and the extremely closed in field of view. It's much easier navigating around the terrain and being able to recognize where you are and where you've been since you don't have the wall of fog making it difficult to identify areas. While the frame rate on the Nintendo 64 was actually not that bad, the game is much faster paced and easier to control screaming at 60 frames per second. Platforming sections don't feel like a gamble every time with the sluggish controls on the Nintendo 64. A very welcomed added bonus are the extra graphical features that have been added to just touch the game up a bit like bloom, light scatter, water reflections and refraction, and 16x AF which all help this early 3D game age a little better. What I also thought was cool is that you have the ability to select the original PC soundtrack or the N64 soundtrack which is set to N64 by default. I'm glad they chose to keep the N64 soundtrack because I still like it better than the PC mix, and the N64 music sounds clearer than ever since it's no longer compressed to fit on a cartridge. Sorry to have made such a big comparison between the PC and the N64 version, but I believe most of us who played Turok back in the day played in on the Nintendo 64. If you are on the fence like I was on getting this release because you already own the N64 version or you've been emulating the N64 version on PC, or even own the original PC version of this game; DO IT! This is a first class remaster of a great game. Is it worth $20? Not for me so much, but I got it on sale for $5, and at that price it's a complete no brainer.
I had a real love/hate relationship with this game back when it was released on the Nintendo 64. I loved the speed and the graphics, but I hated the framerate which was passable until you got to the 3rd tier of racing where the game turned almost into a slideshow and the controls got ultra sluggish. You could get some of those frames back by lowering the resolution, but then you had another problem. You couldn't see! Then along came the Dreamcast version which had sharp visuals and a steady 30 frames per second. By that time I had already moved on to other games and had no interest in owning a Dreamcast anyway. Fast forward to 2018 and here I see the PC version has just been released on GOG. Highest resolution coupled with 60 frames per second. Yeah, I no longer have a love/hate relationship with this game. Just love. It runs super butter smooth and plays wonderfully with my XBOX One controller.
I will start off by saying that I still own my physical copy from back in the day that plays very well inside of DOSBox. I bought this remaster for it's improved sound quality, graphics, and commentary by developers. Well I'm a bit disappointed. To start I noticed that there are some sound glitches in some scene transitions where the sound should bleed over into the next scene but instead is chopped off. It's nothing major, but it makes the game feel unpolished especially when DOSBox can do the job right. Second there is the remastered graphics. They just don't belong. The characters look incredibly refined while everything else just gets a resolution boost and looks really drab. Also any scene that had any animation to it like rolling clouds is now gone. Everything is lifeless and static. The road scenes and levels run at about 15 frames per second like the old video footage in the original used to and the landscape which is now fully rendered looks terrible. The remastered music and sounds are nowhere near as good as the original. The remastered voices are excellent as they are nice and clean. The commentary by the developer is very low quality in both sound and content. The good news is that you can pick and chose which features of the remaster you want on. I chose the original graphics, music and sounds, and remastered voices. The bad is if you already own the game like I do, there really isn't anything here for you. The other bad thing is that you don't get the original CD version of the game so you can play it in either DOSBox or SCUMMVM if you want to. This should have been included especially since DOSBox and SCUMMVM do a much better job at running the original which didn't even need remastering in the first place. The bottom line is if you own this game already, don't buy it. If you've never played this game before, definitely buy it.
WARNING: There is a bug in this game that effects this game's amazing music soundtrack that GOG knows about and has not fixed. The problem is you will lose the music if you enter the configuration menu during gameplay, and it does not come back once you've exited the menu. The only way you can get it back is to restart the level. So if you want to save your game in the middle of the level, you will be playing the rest of the level without music. GOG DOES NOT CONSIDER THIS GAME BREAKING AND WILL NOT ISSUE REFUNDS FOR THIS ISSUE! They will simply tell you that they are aware of the issue and that there is no know fix for it. It's nice to know that GOG has your back, right? Well don't be fooled by their "30 day money back guarantee" because they will not honor this guarantee unless your game either does not start up or crashes constantly. Anything else like major graphical or sound glitches, or unplayable framerates are not considered game breaking to GOG which is unacceptable! Luckily I found a sensible workaround to this issue with no thanks to GOG support. If you need to go to the pause menu for any reason, save the game where you stand, and then load the game from there and the music will come back. It's a few steps, but not too bad. Also you cannot rename your save states once they're created which is an annoying bug, but is NOT actually game breaking. Anyway, on to the game if you still decide to buy it. The low rating is 100% for GOG's support because this game is easily a 5 star old school FPS. One of the best in fact. If you're the kind who likes to storm out from behind cover with guns blazing you will die very quickly and often in this game. The enemy as extremely good eyes and good aim which is what makes this game so great. One good shot can remove over half of your life so you must sweep the levels carefully. Saving at least halfway through the level is ideal as the missions are long. The sounds of the guns and music is absolutely out of this world.
