Archaic shooter based on the Build engine, with none of the charm or strong design of Duke Nukem 3D. Essentially a one-joke wonder that grows old really, really quickly. I gave it an extra star simply for the inclusion of a great punkabilly sound track.
BaSS was a big deal back the Amiga days -- it was a huge graphic adventure influenced by Dave Gibbons, the 2000AD/Watchmen artist. Fair to say, it's a good game and the graphics stand up well in the genre. However, the design shows its age. The humor juxtaposed over the "1984" style world just doesn't mesh. A lot of nostaligists also forget the frustrations of the graphic adventure, such as "pixel hunting" puzzles, that show up in BaSS. Nothing as bad as a cat-hair mustache, fortunately, but there are some head-shakers here. In the end, there's really nothing here to enthrall modern gamers, but the old-timers who still think SCUMM games are the epitome of gaming goodness should have fun.
Epic/Digital Extremes went the wrong way with UT2K3 -- it was nowhere near the game its predecessor was. Fortunately, they corrected their errors in UT2K4, a polished, hi-speed shooter, stuffed with content, that scales well (looks OK on an ancient Presario laptop) yet runs nicely and looks gorgeous on a dual-core crossfire running Windows 7 (!) Although it is an old-school, run-and-gun twitch shooter, there are plenty of gametypes to keep the more strategically-minded busy. I don't see how Epic/DE could have screwed things up so badly with UT3 after creating the wonderful UT2K4.
