Like a lot of people, I bought the hype of the original Dungeons, one of the last (if not the last) pre-orders I ever made. That was such a hugely immensely disappointing game I put it away after half an hour never to go back. Dungeons 2 makes up for its predecessor and then some. It is quite a lovely game to play, although the way it constantly steals jokes and lines from other games (Lord of the Rings, Warcraft, etc. etc.) is really _really_ annoying. Gameplay wise, it's very similar to Dungeon Keeper 2. There are two playable factions, although you'll spend most of the game playing one. I think I actually prefer Dungeons 2 over War for the Overworld as the former lets me play the way I wish (slowly) whilst WftO was a race against time always and I didn't like it. Plus, it plays exceptionally smoothly and WftO was extremely slow and janky (note I haven't played it since shortly after it was released, it may be better now - it's next on the list!) All in all, a really surprising game compared to its utterly rubbish predecessor.
This is the second time I have played this game through to completion (first was in 2013 on Steam), and I really enjoyed the game. Graphically (perhaps due to it's console heritage?) the game doesn't look great, everything feels washed out. While the audio is generally great (and the licensed soundtracks haven't been removed as seems to be the norm these days) some of the voice work seems to compressed, particular noticable when Shaundi speaks. Although the game has a lot of tounge in cheek activities (such as spraying the town with human waste), the story itself is fairly dark compared to latter SR games. But was great fun to play through. As well as the main story line, there are also plenty of option activities. Each activity has 6 levels and you generally get bonuses after the third and sixth level. I haven't tried beating the game without doing any activities, but they do add some nice perks, such as better sprinting, better weapons, unlimited ammo, etc. I found the game played just fine on my system. If I can remember that far back, I think I played the Steam version as "vanilla" without too much issue. For this GoG playthrough I installed "Gentleman of the Row". Aside from the occasinal crash , it was a stable and pleasent experiance.
This is quite a charming game. Visually, it's really nicely presented and the audio is top notch too. Voice acting is pretty amazing. The conversation system is nice, but I found that all too often the choices disappeared before I had time to actually choose anything. Given as how the choices you make (or don't make) affect how the other characters react to you, this was a bit of an irritant. The radio turning was an interesting idea that I haven't really come across in other games, it was well done and wasn't over used. Apart from that, and some other "tuning" type puzzles, there's not a lot of gameplay - walk around the island (very slowly), pick up letters, decode broadcasts, backtrack. Not a lot to do at all when you think about it. But it still made for a really nice game. The story was interesting and I was knocked for six by the ending. Really well done.
I don't normally enjoy horror or zombie games, but this one was interesting. Graphically, it's well presented and the levels are interesting and varied. I did start to get sick of almost QTE type sequences towards the end though. Speaking of the ending, this game is _short_. I hit the ending (with just over 2 and half hours of play through) without even realising it was the ending at first. Plus, the ending was rubbish. Overall, it was an average game which I will quickly forget - it has zero replay value.
I tried the Dex demo and really enjoyed, so grabbed the entire game. There's a lot of charm to be found. Visually, the game was quite appealing, music and sounds effects are great. Void acting is superb, although I did find some voices to hard to hear. This game reminded me oddly of a lot of good Wadget Eye games. It also reminded me of Shadowrun Hong Kong the way it switched between the physical and virtual words. The difference being I didn't get annihilated in Dex the way I do in Shadowrun. The quests were varied, and I liked the fact that for the most part I could go all stealthy and sneak around taking out enemies and exploring without being seen. I think I used a firearm only two or three times in the whole game. Skill trees are fairly interesting. I maxed out Charisma, Lockpicking and Hacking. I got pretty much to the end of the game before I spend the rest of the points, and I don't think they had the sligest impact on how I chose to play the game. You can also augment yourself in permant ways, again I went for those that let me mitigate enivronmental damange and that was pretty much it. I'm not entirely sure on the replay value - I think I found and completed all quests, and given I usually like the stealthy approach I don't often go back to a game and try it another way. But it certainly was a lot of fun and I hope Dreadlocks will revist this universe they have created in future.
I haven’t really gone for platformers since leaving behind my trusty Master System II many many years ago. However, I generally enjoy stealth games and games that provide choice between killing anything that moves and being extremely tricksy and killing nothing, and so I picked MotN up on a whim. I found it to be very enjoyable game, graphics and audio are really nice, gameplay mechanics are fun and the story is great. Apart from the few odd bits, I didn’t find the game too difficult either (I’m not a twitch gamer and QTE’s are my bane). As the game progresses you unlock additional modes (via suits) and equipment, all of which let you play the game in a variety of different ways and with different challenges. I wasn’t able to complete the game with clean hands, but that’ll be something to try in a new play through. The one aspect of the game I really didn’t like was the ending, which was abysmal. I’d go so far as to say it was utter rubbish in fact. Still, that shouldn’t stop me from picking up the expansion at some point, and replaying the main game with a different set of skills / equipment.
Interesting game. Graphically, it's really poor with a horrible mixture of low and hi rez textures. Gameplay wise, it starts off awful, and has the worst driving phyiscs of any game I have ever played. And the crashes, god the crashes. This game crashes, crashes and then crashes some more. I have never had a peice of software ever crash so much as this. And yet... something oddly compelling about it, I would just grit my teeth, restart, and continue. Finished the game and the ending was just as odd as the beginning. Still, it was worth playing, at least once - I doubt I'll ever install and play it again though.
I started off enjoying this game. The game world seemed interesting and the initial story promising. As the game progressed, I was less impressed with the technicalities of the game - the audio didn't really gel with the character animations. There was a lot of backtracking which an incredibly slow protagonist. Lots of sealed locations that seemly are just present to make it feel bigger than it is. Some puzzles didn't really make sense, although that was probably just me being dense and also not really used to adventure games reusing the same item gimmick. The way backstory and important information was provided by the PDA's was a nice touch, although aside from some passwords, there wasn't really any clues as to some critically important information contained within these. And as there's no log, it meant more running back and forth re-reading the PDA's looking for lost info. It also becomes really obvious what is going on long before the end of the game, and generally you're kept in the dark for some time when playing these type of adventure games. There is at least once place you can die, and it's pretty obvious too that it will happen. Fortunately, there's no extended drama or forcing you to load a previous save, it just rewinds to before that point. However, ultimately, the charm this game had built with me evaporated with the ending as it rendered the whole thing pretty much irrelavent. Now in something like Farcry 2 which also has a fairly drastic ending, there is both choice, and many many hours of story to get to that point. Whereas with this game, given it's short length and the actions you perform (plus the distinct lack of choice), it's just pointless. Despite liking the lore and being curious about the full Stasis game, it's highly unlikely I would contemplate buying it now.
