These SSI Gold-Box CPRG are by far the best fantasy RPG i've ever played. Whenever i looded at GOG i ALWAYS hoped to finde them. For years i came and looked nearly every day. Imagine my joy when i received todays GOG Email with the awesome news that Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds etc. had been added to GOG. Life is good! 'nuf said!
My dream came true: GOG re-released all the great SSI classics like in this case Eye of the Beholder I - III. I'm so thankful to be able to play all the so very awesome games again. Thank you so much, GOG!
The game is still as addictive as back in the early 1990s. Only problem: this version here is broken. Some reviewers already mentioned it: if you shoot down a plane at higher heights, they somehow don't crash into to ground, but come back as if they never had been shot down. The only solution to this: fly near the ground. If the shot down plan reaches the ground, it is gone for good. Another problem: once you've started a game, there is no way to end it propererly. You can' restart the campaign from the main menu. Not sure if this might be possible once you've reached End of 1918. One reviewer complained about the lacking save option. He remembers incorrectly: It was never possible to truly save a game in Wings. At least not in the way that you would have been able to reload and replay a mission. For that you had to get out the Amiga save game disk as fast as hell once the game turn ended. Else your progress was saved. For the better, or the worst end of it. So until we see a new Wings: fly deep, play with joystick, and make your peace that not be able to restart the campaign is the price you have to pay if you want to play Wings on your PC.
If you knew and liked Wings on the Commodore AMIGA, than you can grab this game without a second thought. This is not a cheap try to cash in on your memories, but the start of a whole new Wings era! Many little but very nice details improved, a fantastic new (and enhanced) version of the old soundrack - this game is obviously a product from people, who love the original Wings just the way like you and I love it. The journal entries have now an excellent voice over (great voice actor), there are additional missions and animations (wait until you see the heart breaking new burial scene) and some great new options, like changing your planes color, playing the game with the (very well aged!) Amiga soundtrack, etc. etc.. Could the game be better? Yes, of course it could. Like every game could. Good news is that Cinemaware wants to enhance the game. Even an optional Add-on with a german campaign might be following. To all of you who haven't ever played the AMIGA version of WIngs: in Wings you play a pilot within the 56th Squadron during WW1 on the Western Front. The game tells the story of this Squadron and the people who were part of it. The player can die and continue from the point where his predecessor died (next mission, as a green pilot). There are medals and promotions, some kind of RPG element, and three different kinds of missions (dogfight, strafing and bombing). And even the perma death is back in the game (at least if you play in the HARD mode. I strongly suggest to all veteran Amiga-Wings pilots to play this game only on hard. That is the difficulty level you're used from the old days, believe me. The heart of the game is the excellently told story, which knits all game ingredients perfectly into into a great game experience. If you like games like Wing Commander 1 and 2, than this is the right game for you, if you like simulations better, than you might want to take a look on a gameplay video first. See you in ths skies, comrade!
This review is for the Amiga Emulated game (i haven't played t/ won't play the old Ms-DOS version). The music sounds more or less just like on the Amiga There are some sound problems, but these already existed in the original version too, he gameplay seems at times a bit odd. My uneducated guess is that the game doesn't love fast computers: The mouse is too sensitive. I solved the problem with my own mouse settings. Be warned that it is hard to understand when you are able to click or not. At least during the "picture" screens where all you can do is to read or watch the picture, or listen to the music. If you click too often or too fast to get access to the game map (like "nice picture, but i want to play, click-cliick-click, come on, show me the game map, click-click-click"), than you can easily start a tourney or a raid, depending of where you clicked on the last screen. I found it impossible to win a sword fight, not to speak of the jousting tourney. I remember the tourney to be very hard on all versions of the games i played (Amiga, C64. Atari ST, GBA), as the game doesn't help you at all to understand when to click or where to click. But as i said: that unforiving, merciless behaviour is a feature from the old times, not a modern bug. The battles are is usually over pretty fast. Too fast. The higher the odds, the faster. Sometimes the battle is over before you were that it even had started. The siege turns out to be much easier than before: you can control the catapult with your mouse. Think about the difference between a digitial and analog joystick, and you understand what i mean. The game is not broken, it runs ok, but it hasn't aged too good. But don't forget that you get the Amiga version, the version where you can't fortify conquered castles, where you can't build your own little towers on the map, where you can't move troops to garisson unfortified regions and where you can't choose ammo for your catapult (only stones allowed, no greek fire etc. ).
