It can be annoyingly crash-prone, but when it works, it is incredibly fun, engaging and addictive. The systems are absurdly detailed for a game from 2007 (compared to most tactics games out on the market today), and tactics truly do matter more than anything else in this game. The breadth of play styles is also impressive — I can snipe enemies like it's Sniper Elite, sneak around, taking enemies down with a knife like it's Metal Gear Solid, or position my squad behind cover and shoot everyone like it's Men of War. To me, the game fully captures the fun of all of these play styles. Other than the crashing, my one issue with the game is that characters have trouble telling when they are shooting a wall — the game will sometimes tell you thatvthe enemy is partially blocked, but other times, everything will look fine, and even the dedicated scope menu will show you that there are no obstacles in the way, only for your bullet to hit a wall along its trajectory, ruining your tactical approach. The game gives you all the information you need to figure out when this is happening, but I wish the game was just that little bit better at detecting this without forcing you to use your eyes to see if the barrel of your gun is obstructed by a loose bit of geometry when you take a shot. Overall, I definitely recommend this game to everyone who thinks they may be interested in it (and if you're reading this review, I assume you must be).
The first thing to point out is that, unlike many other old-school dungeon crawlers (most notably the Wizardry series), this game is very easy — mindlessly so, even on the highest difficulty settings. Other than a select few enemies, who are capable of nearly wiping out the party with hitscan AoE spells, every combat encounter is a trivial matter of using some basic spells and attacks (mainly buffing your fighting classes and using AoE spells of your own) and bringing the enemies' healthbars down. You always have the option of simply turning tail and easily outrunning the enemies, as well as the option to run past everything in the first place. With that out of the way, the main flaw of the game can be directly addressed — it is repetitive and boring. The gameplay pretty much provides no challenge, so you are left with large and elaborate dungeons to crawl through, picking up lots of identical and uninteresting loot to sell off at a shop, looking for whatever key item you need to finish the dungeon. Frankly, this got old after 20 hours, and the game took 40 to beat. The towns are also simply tedious and slow — characters talk slowly, and there is no way to skip through their dialogue. You have to accept and hand in guild quests with each character, which means that you have to sit through the same dialogue multiple times. Selling off junk at a store is also simply not a fun gameplay loop. The game certainly has its strong points — the skill progression can be rewarding, with there being a big money crunch to upgrade your skills at guilds, incentivising accumulating loot. The game has that Wizardry-esque class progression, and classes and races feel distinct and unique. The game never fails to make you feel powerful, to a fault... Overall, this game can be fun, but I would not advise spending the time to play to the end if/when crawling through the dungeons gets boring — the game does not really offer anything except the party building and dungeon-crawling loop.
After the horrible Thief Gold, I had my expectations set at rock bottom, with any enjoyment being derived from the game being seen as a luxury, seeing as how more than 2/3 of Thief Gold were devoid of enjoyment. I'm happy to tell you that this game does not at all follow the direction of the later levels in Thief Gold, if anything, it mostly stays as far away from that as possible. At a guess, I'd say about half the missions in the game do not have a loot requirement at all, which instantly removes the frustration of running back and forth through a level for literal hours looking for loot, which was what took up most of my playtime in the first game. This game has a much stronger atmosphere than the first game, and the increased focus on completing objectives, rather than scouring the maps for loot, really adds to that effect. This game has some solid mechanics and enjoyable levels, and is overall a pretty good time. If you absolutely despised Thief Gold, don't be afraid to try this one, as I can tell you that I only got stuck and frustrated twice in this game, and those were mostly my fault.
...Or how endless compromise ruins a masterpiece. This game was clearly envisioned as an atmospheric first-person thievery simulator. The first few levels work great to give off that image, and one might walk away with a pleasant image of the game having only played the first few levels. However, it all shifts when the game suddenly becomes a grave-robbery simulator. At this point, the player is given little to no incentive to sneak around, and is practically encouraged to run around the absurdly large maps, scrambling to find enough loot to finish the mission. I admit, I'm not the greatest grave robber out there, but I got stuck for 1.5 hours (I kept an eye on the clock) trying to find the last piece of loot I needed to finish the Return to the Cathedral mission. This is, of course, the most extreme example, but most of the game ends up boiling down to running around zombies looking for loot on the ground, which is not only anti-fun, but sours your impression of the game as a whole. I chose to push through the 20+ hour campaign, but I honestly wish I hadn't. Worst of all, the game could have been great, had they not been too worried that a pure thievery simulator would not sell. Looking Glass nearly went bankrupt developing the game, so it's no wonder the game ends up feeling like it's held together by band-aids and parental love. Truly, they had good intentions with this game, but it ends up turning into a boring, frustrating experience, which truly makes you feel how your life slowly slips away from you, second by second. After spending many, many minutes scouring the map for a tiny bag of gold, you start to wonder how you'll look back upon this time in your life when you are on your deathbed, and just how much you'll regret having put yourself through this. TL;DR: 5/5 for the actual Thief missions, 1/5 for the grave robbing parts, -5/5 for the pain it all brought me. 5 + 1 + (-5) = 1/5 Addendum: Please play the whole game before writing a review.
This game combines elements of action games with regular rpgs, with a bigger emphasis on dungeon-crawling than something like Skyrim. With that said, the story is the most generic amnesiac protagonist fantasy world story you can think of. The story utterly failed to captivate me, and for the first half of the game, most of the quests are about walking around and talking to different people so that they can dump more exposition on you. This part of the game is a slog to get through, but it gets better in the second half. The second half of the game is essentially just a bunch of dungeons. You have to complete some dungeons to beat the game, and there are one or two optional dungeons for you to complete. You can do this in whichever order you like. At this point in the story, you have pretty much regained your memory, and you no longer have to go around and talk to every important person in Arx. This really changes up the pace of the game, and it turns into a first-person dungeon crawler with a focus on combat. I shan't go into detail on that, as I'm sure there are plenty of other reviews that do. Let's just say, the action dungeon crawler is not exactly worth more than a 4-star rating on its own even that is a stretch. Overall, the game seems confused with what it wants to be, with some pretty horrendous pacing and unfinished mechanics in regards to the combat. The magic is fleshed out well, but the spells take pretty much the entire game to get used to. The environments are not particularly imaginative, and the story is bland. Overall, it will occupy your time, but it is unlikely that the game will be very memorable or impactful.
This game was a huge disappointment. I played the Thief games, and really enjoyed them, and I know that the director of Deus Ex worked for a short time at Looking Glass, and he was clearly inspired by this game when making Deus Ex, so I expected that this would be a different take on the same kind of gameplay. What I did not expect is that, unlike Deus Ex, this game is garbage. The things that all the five-star reviews tell you about are not untrue: there is limited ammunition, you do traverse cramped corridors and shoot sPOokY enemies. The thing is, I don't really care about the story or the setting as much as the core gameplay, and this is the part that the other reviews fail to mention: what you actually do. What is it, you ask? You run around corridors looking for things. Playing on Hard difficulty, I spent most of the game playing almost exclusively with melee, and never had any trouble with ammunition or health. I would say that this was a very easy game. And the stealth system from Thief does not seem to have been carried over at all; I had as much luck sneaking up behind enemies as I did simply sprinting up to them from behind. There are no alternate paths to take to go around enemies, and the enemies continuously respawn, so you can never "clear out" an area. With enemy encounters out of the way, all that's left is the "core" of the gameplay, which is simply running around looking for things. "Find four vials and four regulators to put them into," "Find three SIM cards and three computers to put them into," "Find four art terminals with codes and a transmitter use the code on." It never ends. And I'm all for exploration (King's Field is possibly my favourite game series), but this is some of the most boring gaming I've ever experienced. The "story" is just audio logs talking about how everything went bad, which you should not care about (see: the ending) Overall, play Deus Ex. This game attempts the same kind of gameplay and fails horribly, so skip it.
Sure, it may not have as much of the atmosphere as Shadow of Chernobyl, but it's still S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and it's a pretty small price to pay for much better optimisation, DirectX11 support, bigger, more open maps, more refined mechanics, new mechanics and of course, bigger and better mods. Rating? Well, -1 star for the weaker atmosphere, +1 star for the actually open open world, +1 for the more refined mechanics and +0.5 stars for the good framerate (unless you turn on SSAO, so just turn that crap off) Now what does that make? 10 - 1 + 1 + 1 + 0.5 = 11.5 11.5/10
This is perhaps the best game I've ever played, it's got great graphics for 2007, a surprisingly gripping story, realistic gunplay and most importantly, small touches that add just that much to the atmosphere - you can relax by the campfire and listen to some guitar playing after ruthlessly murdering thirty military people and almost getting mauled by a horrible mutant. 10/10 if you don't play it, Putin will personally nuke your home
Imagine the great dialogue and art direction of Pathologic, except with a much better soundtrack and fun gameplay. That's The Void. I can't really put my experience into words; it's a hard game that will most certainly take you dozens of hours to get through. However, those hours will not be spent walking, like Pathologic, but rather, managing your colours and fighting enemies, which is actually fun, even if stressful. So basically, it gets a 2 stars for feeling like a fulfilling experience for the soul, 2 stars for the well-designed mechanics (this game is actually rather fair to the player, unlike Pathologic) and 2 stars for the awesome soundtrack and visual design. If you like the thought of being immersed in a world that will keep you under pressure the whole time you are in it, buy the game. If you like good soundtracks, buy the game. If you like the thought of filling naked ladies with colours, buy the game. If you're not a psychopath who doesn't understand the concept of emotion, buy the game.
This game features a lot of walking. It took me 25 hours to beat the Bachelor campaign, and 20 of those were probably spent walking, 3 were spent reading dialogue and two were spent quickloading. And I absolutely recommend it. It's a very immersive experience, and later on your walks get spiced up with all kinds of obstacles. Obviously, the selling point of the game isn't its walking mechanics, it's the story. But I am not here to spoil the story for you. You'll have to uncover that for yourself.
