The game has nice graphics, sounds and an impressive orchestral soundtrack. The whole game consists of diversified action with a big arsenal of weapons and explosions. If you are familiar with ego shooters, you can play straight on and don't need to deliberate on puzzles or something else. You have a compass on top of the screen which shows exactly where to go with no needs to orientate on goony map systems. You don't need to run around endlessly, because the cineastic levels are only designed like corridors. The voice actors are professional. You will find a beautiful vegetation in the jungle with palms, bushes, sand, grass and rocks. The well implemented jungle setting was underlaid with authentic bird sounds, which is absolutely atmospheric. The overall good atmosphere of the game was totally destroyed by stupid arcade action missions. I didn't like the pearl harbour mission inside a ship and the really bad arcade flak shootings on planes which should add some variety. I had to cheat several times to the next map to be able to play through. I couldn't differ frantic american and japanese planes you have to shot down only in a few! seconds to defend an airfield. I wasn't able to steer a plane with a mouse to attack ground targets. Sometimes you will be overrun by endless waves of japanese soldiers which remind me of games like Moorhuhn. Sometimes you have to fire a lot of bullets only to kill a single soldier. Sometimes you can fire through walls. Sometimes bullets were caught from invisible obstacles. Sometimes you get entengled in obstacles or friendly soldiers. The effect of grenades are a bad joke and often the fire range of weapons, too. Why not integrate endless vids to pretend artistical value? It is a disgrace to publish again such a nerving unpolished game. The bad points beclouded the whole gameplay experience. Overall it was a bad shooter I would never come back to. Save your money and better buy allied assault instead.
Played this game on normal difficulty until mission 5 with a lot of rage attacks. In the first awful tank mission I gave up and started again on easy difficulty with fewer rage attacks. The tank mission remains awful, too. The atmosphere of the game is awesome. Graphics and sound system are very nice. The game has cool weather effects like rain, well done vegetation or ruined cities environment. It really feels like fighting in a war as an infanteryman. I know, it is hard to survive, but what the hell is the target group of this difficulty level? People who only play one game in life? The problem is the bad ai of friendly soldiers in the game, which is dull. On the one hand side you have to babysit them each meter and on the other hand side you have to overrun hundreds of german forces. Often they ignore orders and run directly into enemy fire and then the whole mission success is gone and you have to repeat the same mission. You can't save when you want and the savepoints are very seldom and set unfair. At last the game was hard on easy, but I couldn't stop playing to the end titles. I wouldn't try it on harder difficulty. I found the battle overview map horrible without being able to have an overview. Excellent game with an amazing atmosphere, dull a.i., gore difficulty and bad savepoints.
Got it to run badly under windows 10 with additional patch sneaky upgrade not with the gog version alone, but I already had few crashes and strange behaviour. pros: - nice atmosphere with good graphics and cool shadow effects - good music and sound system - Garret and guards without woodstock in the ass like in the first two thief games - sneaking in the dark works sometimes cons: - hooking controls which were especially fun followed by silly zombies in tight corridors. Sometimes unable to pass due to restraining objects laying on the ground. Play your own game next time! - cudgetting guards was more complicated than in the first two thief games due to lower radius. Do yourself a favor and save before each guard. - irritating mission goals and map system again - ridiculous physical behaviour of tumbling down guards - useless 3rd person mode included - why not program respawning guards out of nothing like in system shock? - why not program huge levels and a city which consists only of few claustrophobic lanes filled with guards? I was often nerved due to the hooking controls. I couldn't play it to the end, because a door in a manor didn't open, which was a mission goal and I couldn't find a cheat to end this mission. This awful game always had problems since his relase date.
Played this one after the bad predecessor with it's silly zombies, spiders, dead guards, dinosaurs, ... This time it includes robots, fantasy camera systems and so on. The story line was interesting and the mission design was variable. You generally have more room not being detected by guards, which makes it more tactical. Saving and reloading is your best friend. You can be caught after each corner, door or window accidentally. It doesn't matter if you are careful and sneak quietly or not. It is the same principle like in an ego-shooter, just don't be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes the guards won't see you in the shadows and sometimes they know exactly where you are not retracable for me. I found the map system confusing and hated the unfair mission goals I would never have solved without the help of the internet and youtube vids which destroyed the game flow and totally sucked. I am talking about difficulty normal as easiest option! Changing mission goals in missions were nerving. One time you have to put back a special key. You don't know where, because at this time you already collected a lot of keys. Isn't that funny? This is a special kind of nerd programmer humour: superfluous, but I liked the drunken guards telling us about their problems. My game experience end in mission 13. I couldn't find a special box with an important item to finish a goal. I saw youtube vids where this box was shown but neither was it located at the same place in the game nor could I find this box elsewhere. I couldn't finish another goal in this level, too. I didn't find the game that extraordinary, being great-grandpa of stealth game or not. It is a below average game with it's faults like all the others out there. If I had finished the game, I wouldn't have played it on harder level only to get more loot and gold, because the whole experience was too time consuming and frustrating enough. The medieval age setting with robots adds some atmosphere.
Be warned: this game is totally nerd overrated and very old school in a bad context. I paid 1 EUR in a sale and this was 1 EUR too much. Even skip it if it is for free. Yes, the atmosphere of the game is amazing, but that's it. Playing until the second cathedral mission was pure horror, very hard work and no game fun to me. Most missions are endless due to huge maps and a bad orientation system. There is a map function in the game which is really bad implemented. Sometimes the map consists of various paintings which is totally misleading. In the beginning of the level the starting position wasn't shown. One time I wandered around for more than one hour to find the exit, which was the last mission task! In some levels I had to watch several youtube vids to understand what to do next and where to go. I couldn't finish the first cathedral mission due to a game breaking bug. I had to use a cheat to end the mission to be able to go on. A door didn't open. I wished I had stopped playing. In the second cathedral mission you will be hunted and surrounded by zombies, ghosts and dead guards, which must be heaven for sadomasochists. One dead monk gives you confusing additional tasks. I had to reload again and again and again due to permadeath after each few seconds. Ridiculous was that sometimes the guards won't see me in the shadows and sometimes they know exactly where I was. Sometimes I was killed by zombies through a closed door. And hooray there was a mission with a time limit. You have to deactivate 5 levers in 5 minutes in a huge building to open a door. The levers were shared in several floors and in the garden. What an ingenious idea? Do yourself a favor and play a good game instead of this one.
The release version was a shame, it was totally bugged. After the big community patch it remains playable. Last year I found the time to play through the retail version of Gothic 3. In comparison to the first two titles it looks more sterile sometimes, but the graphics are beautiful again. The reason is the huge diversified world, which consists of grass landscapes, woods, deserts, snowy ice mountains, ... It has a nice spell system and the collecting mania works. There is a big variety of weapons, shields, armors, ... You have enough possibilities to earn money with quests to improve your equipment or to pay for training to build up your char. In Gothic 3 you only want to discover the next place, visit another city more, only fulfil the next additional quest and the hours are passing away. The bestiary is nice modelled, with varying behaviour and fluently movement . The gameplay switched to today standards with mouse and keyboard. The voice acting is very professional again. This time I found the story plot uninteresting, but there were some funny twists. I didn't like the possibility to cooperate with ork troops. I had a lot of fun to fight with sword and spells against the differing enemies, to level up my char and can really recommend it.
Last year I played the retail versions of Gothic 1 and 3. Both games are very good. Everything is fine in Gothic 1: the graphics are good enough, the different landscapes are varying. The voice acting is amazing. The world is small, but filled with life in each corner. The bestiary is good modelled. I like this kind of black humour. Over the years I needed four attempts to play Gothic 1 to the end titles. Three times I got the hang of it reaching the camp with the religious sect. To get the orientation at this point was the hardest task in the whole game. This camp is confusingly big. I played Gothic 1 only with the keyboard and it worked fine, mouse support wasn't really necessary. Gothic 1 shows a kind of big prison world with different factions. I chose the way of the fire mage in the story. At the end you are very mighty and you will be able to kill everything, but at the beginning there is a strong learning curve, because you are totally weak and untrained, the pure victim. There is enough variety of weapons in this game. As a mage you can use swords and bows, too. The collecting mania works. You can learn skills at teachers to be able to make coats of animals e.g. to trade them against other goods or restricted ore. The given tasks in this game are well done and have a lot of variety. A lot of people critized that Gothic 1 didn't aged well, but this is not my opinion. This game has enough character at all.
To me the third shooter in series which technical problems. I had to restart chapter 6 and to choose the right tunnel to avoid crashes with script messages. Before I couldn't finish neither deus ex invisible war nor chaser. In invisible war suddenly the savegames were invisible in the loading manager or corrupt and in chaser it wasn't possible to jump over a wall or on a crate to follow the missions path. Horrible technical issues remain today standards. I had to use a god cheat to finsh a flying mission against a dragon. I watched youtube vids and did the same, but my plane always explode. I played on girlie mode recruit and reached the end titles after all. Pros: atmospheric graphic style, pure action, helping soldier npcs, divers enemies, big range of weapons, jumping and saving works in this game, plane and tanks are included Cons: killing thousands of enemies, groups of enemies from everywhere hunting you, respawning from everywhere right behind, artificial stupidity, crawling women monster nurses on the ground Sometimes stupid and sometimes fun to play. At last a shooter you can skip or play one-time and then forget fast.
Warning: do you ever wanted to steer a submarine with bad controls into grey water into a grey ship graveyard? You can't see anything. It's really an absolute programmed mess. Have a look at these underwater vids on youtube before buying this title. I hate using cheats and stopped playing, perhaps I will skip these awful levels later on to be able to see the end titles. Really the worst levels I ever saw in a pc game. These programmers should have oriented themselves to the underwater levels of nolf or red faction instead before creating such a crap. Pros: budget shooter, sci-fi setting, the patched gog version runs stable on win 10 64 BIT so far, on average okay graphics, few graphic glitches, nice soundtrack, big choice of weapons, good shooting behaviour, bullet time mode, it's a little fun. Cons: huge levels without map function, sometimes you stand right in front of the exit, but you can't see it, stupid enemy intelligence, much too long and too many video sequences with bad voice acting and forgettable story plot, clone company of always the same enemy types with same parents, endless waves of enemies or buildings filled with enemies each number of meters, sometimes everywhere respawning enemies, especially from behind out of nowhere, at times very hard even on easy mode. Better skip this title and play again one of your well-known shooter classics.
Yeah, this was really an invisible war, a name as a program. If you want to enjoy this game please play it in one go, because you could get corrupt savegames, if you close the game and start it again. After playing time consuming deus ex revision, I wanted to play deus ex invisible war again. Invisible war is a light deux ex console port, which brought fun in the older days. This time it showed a lot of problems on my windows 10 64 BIT system. I bought it, because windows 10 was shown in the offer as supported system. After each loading screen and there exist a lot of them in the game, it flipped directly to the desktop and back to the game. If the game was end the resolution of the desktop switched to the resolution of the game. I had to restart my pc to be able to change the resolution, because I wasn't able to get into the right window. This is nerving, but you could live with it. You can't live with damaged savegame files. I tried it several time, deleted the game and installed it again, always with the same result. The savegame loading manager in the game shows no savegames anymore. I tried it several time to copy the savegame folder and to rewrite the old without being successful. One time I had the effect in the game that suddenly old mission goals were resetted. Killed npc's were still patrolling again. Zombies?!
