Cross saves don't work: The Switch version does not store the GOG credentials and you have to re-enter them every single time -- only to then find out that the PC/GOG version of the game does NOT even see the saves of the Nintendo Switch version of the game, and this title is advertised as supporting cross saves! Just for the record, the Xbox version of the game does not support cross saves at all. So if you are, like me, hoping to play this game across multiple consoles and PC, you will be hugely disappointed. Also, Xbox controller support on PC is broken: It only works with wired controllers, the game will not see a wireless Xbox Series controller. Then, to add insult to injury, when playing through the tutorial section, right at the point where the game (on Nintendo Switch) tries to teach you to build a Wagenburg - the tutorial UI overlaps everything and you can't even see on the screen what you're supposed to do. The dialog window cannot be closed and clicking "back" doesn't work either. This was where I stopped playing this game and uninstalled it. Obviously, none of these issues will ever get fixed: There are reports online about these exact same issues that are now several years old.
I can no longer remember how often I have uninstalled this game in a fit of rage, only to re-install it again later. WOTC is technical garbage - on my i5/RTX 3060 the game crashes every few minutes. On my AMD Ryzen 5 4600H notebook, it runs stable, but the sound also occasionally stops and comes back after a while. From a pure technical perspective, WOTC is trash and they never bothered to fix it. Looking at just the game, WOTC's greatest offense is that it pretends that you actually lost the war in XCOM Enemy Within - which is not a good way to make the player feel welcome. It's second offense is that it makes you run a terrorist organization (which is what resistance groups are called when you sit at the other side of the table). It's third offense is that the people that you lead look like hipster punks and the opposing alien force have almost magical superpowers that just feel ridiculous, but almost make the aliens ridiculously overlowered while all you can lead into battle are four punks with peashooters. Add to this the infamous and brutally frustrating and intentionally unfair XCOM RNG and you have the perfect recipe to grigger the aforementioned rage uninstalls. This game is frustrating, stressful and not fun at all. And yet, it's XCOM and for some weird and inexplicable reason it keeps drawing you back in for more frustration and torture, and despite all the frustration, you will invest more hours into it. For some weird reason you want to see if your hipster punks with peashooters can beat the shit out of those overpowered alien superheroes that only exist to humiliate you. For the technical aspects alone, I cannot and will not give the game more than three out of five stars. And I will also say that XCOM EW is the better game with better atmosphere and it also does not have any of the technical issues that WOTC has. If you want to play WOTC, wait for a sale or play its enhanced version on Xbox Series X - it's a much better experience on console.
The game runs beautifully and stable on Windows 11. My AMD Ryzen 5 4600H noteboon runs it flawlessly in Full HD at maximum details, my i5 desktop with an RTX 3060 runs it equally perfect at 4K and max details. No crashes, no sound issues, no glitches. Technically, the GOG release is marvelous. The game itself shouldn't need any further reviews. Personally, I like Enemy Within much more than XCOM 2 WOTC - Enemy Within has a wonderfully eerie and myterious atmosphere, the game is more to the point and at the same time less stressful than its sequel. And on a relatively modern PC, it is gorgeous to behold and does not look dated at all. Enemy Within is a must play masterpiece.
It is the best of the Wolfenstein games and sets the bar. Full stop and end of review - this is a first person shooter that does everything right. I had a US colleague who more or less smuggled a physical copy for the Mac (PowerPC only back in the day) over the border to Germany so that I could play it. And this leads me to a remark for GOG: Why can I actually see this game in the German store if you don't allow me to add it to the cart and actually purchase it? You love to tease us Germans and our idiotic youth protection laws? Please - if we cannot purchase it, then don't show it to us. Besides, that would even be the correct legal way in Germany: You are actually not even allowed to show this game in your store, since it's on the index because of its Third Reich symbols. And that ruling, by the way, is outdated and has been dropped in the meantime - games qualify as art, and art is allowed to used these symbols for artistic purposes and/or to provide correct historical context. The newer Wolfenstein games are now also sold without any censorship in Germany. So it should be safe to also sell Return To Castle Wolfenstein now.
The creators of the legendary Monkey Island adventure games are back and decided to give us a new game that lives up to the memories that my generation has about these old games: Thimbleweed Park. In Thimbleweed Park you play five characters that have nothing in common but that at the same time are connected in ways they don’t know anything about. Even though the game begins as a murder mistery and with two Mulder & Sculley-like FBI agents that are supposed to solve a murder, the game game comes with all the weirdness and humor that you’d expect from a Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick game. Thimbleweed Park is a fun ride and it lives up to the expectations that someone who grew up with LucasArts games involuntarily has. If LucasArts games were still around and would still be making adventure games, Thimbleweed Park would carry their brand label. But even without any nostalgia, the game easily stands on its own and delivers great adventure game entertainment. A note to the younger generation: No, it’s not a 3D game, no, it does not have action sequences and the graphics are intentionally pixelated the way they are — if you play through the game, you will find that there even is a logical reason for the pixelated graphics embedded in the story itself. It’s not just about selling a nostalgic experience to old farts like myself, it’s actually a deliberate design choice to underline certain points of the story. It took me roughly twenty hours to play through the adventure, so at EUR 19,99, that’s about a buck per hour of game play — which is an excellent value and worth every single cent. Although there is an Xbox One version of the game, I bought it for the PC on GOG, because I simply cannot imagine playing a point & click adventure with a controller instead of a mouse. The hardware requirements are extremely modest, and even my eight years old Dell XPS M1530 Core2Duo machine could easily handle it. So my guesstimate is that Thimbleweed Park will run on almost any machine out there that’s still working. Android and iOS versions will come later, and I think I will buy a copy for Android just to support the developers in the hope that they will make another game like this soon. Just visit www.thimbleweedpark.com for purchase links, more background info and even an interesting developer blog.
