Crusader: No Remorse™

After playing the great Wing Commander games by Origin I bought Crusader: No Remorse in 1996, I was completely and pleasantly surprised and impressed with the game, the character of the brilliantly mysterious Silencer is very cool, the game play is awesome, the movies are great (I loved these movie based games) and the awesome musical score from Andrew Sega (mainly) was far beyond it's time. Crusader: No Remorse is not just any old game, it is a masterpiece of what a good game should be. Thank you GOG & EA for re-releasing this timeless classic and making me very happy again :) Bring on Crusader: No Regret!!

This was one of the first pc games I ever bought back in the 90's and it is still one of my favorites. I loved it and the sequel no regret so much that it is one of the few early big box games that I kept everything for from the manuals and inserts to the original boxes. It's good to see that GOG included a digital version of the resistance manual, the anti terrorist manual and the topline newspaper as they really add to the overall experience. While the controls can be tough to manage at times once you get used to them they work great. The FMV sequences are as awesome as I remember them to be. All we need now is for GOG to release no regret.

I figured i'd let my journalistic side out so here are the categories (0 - 10): Graphics: 8 The graphics are very nice, even though they've aged quite a bit. When you kill your enemies (including civilian workers muhahahaha!) you get different effects depending with which weapon they are killed (@ title). There are a noticable number of graphical glitches, no big deal though. Another nitpick are the "excellent" live-action cutscenes (The gun dealer for instance *facepalm*). Controls: 6 The Controls can be reaaally wicked at times. You control The Silencer in a Resident Evil-esque tank-style. You can jump, run, roll, strafe, etc. but the problem is that it can be un- and overresponsive, running into walls happens semi-frequently and fluid combat is impossible (mostly stand in one place and hold down the fire button) Story: 4 What story? Just kidding. The story is that you are a elite soldier dubbed "The Silencer", hunted by your employer because you spared some civilians instead of slaughtering them in some macabre fashion. Your two teammates get killed and you're out for revenge (sortof), join the resistance and, ironically, slaughter your former fellow employees in some macabre fashion. Life's a *beep* huh? To be honest, nobody I knew really cared about the story and just said "Whatever, I just kill people." Gameplay: 10, hands-down As I've (probably) mentioned, you get to shoot, maim, burn, disintegrate and (added bonus) peel skin and flesh off your enemies. Also you have to find the occasional keycard, operate switches, turn alarms off you triggered, shoot cameras, etc. Another awesome thing is, that similar to the N64 classic Goldeneye 007, many objects (75% ?) are destructible and prone to exploding, computers, crates, random equipment you name it. Gameplay-summary: Kill, commit massive vandalism, loot bodies, incinerate, find keycard, ride elevators, control Super-Duper-Mega-Hyper-Killer-Droids, dump people in acid, use switches and levers, destroy cameras, turn off the alarm, see (horrendous) live-action cutscenes, pick up a new gun, buy new guns, destroy more things, dump detpacks everywhere, etc. TLDR: It's massive destruction, maybe even.... TOTAL ANNIHILATION (YEAAAAAAAAH!) Summary: 8 This game is excellent! If you're into violence, destruction and needless GTA-like slaughter of civilians this game is for you! The title says it all: You "crusade" (i. e. mass murder) against 90% of all humans in the game, with as much bloodlust as possible and no remorse at all. And no regret. GOG.com: Please. Crusader: No Regret.

After 18 goddamn years I have finally managed to finish this game. Personally, I loved it. Way back it was the first game I bought that didn't fit on a floppy and was distributed on a CD. And for a good reason, it is fairly massive. Almost every single thing can be destroyed, there are tons of videos, the resolution is higher than what was usual at the time, the plot is not too bad, the controls are - but it's not too hard to get used to them. More importantly, the game is BRUTAL. Looking back at it, players became so lazy in the years to come. This here is a game, that is damn hard to get through even when you use cheats. The amount of instant deaths, troops with a rocket launcher waiting to jump you and set you on fire with one shot is just massive. And that wasn't even the hardest setting. I can't even imagine someone finishing this on No remorse. While the game is pretty linear, there is a lot of ways you can deal with every situation. Didn't find a keycard? Blast the doors open with a bomb, it will set the alarm off, but who cares. One more thing, read through the manual GOG is distributing with the game so that you don't spend the entirety of the game wondering, what some tool does :). All in all, it was pretty good. I am not a shooter person, but I have a soft spot for isometric games and this one was great.

In spite of a slew of control issues and annoying bugs :(, this is still a really fun game. There isn't really anything else like it. The Crusader series was made at a time when the action-adventure genre was moving from 2D to 3D, and very few isometric view action-adventures were ever made. There were, of course, many RPGs and straight Action games in the top-down view, but nothing quite like this series. Because of that, I feel like most of it's flaws can be forgiven. However, That doesn't mean that the game is completely without issues. The control scheme is pretty horrible, and it's way too easy to trigger many of the environmental hazards. Basically, you just have to give up any notion of this being a "fair" game. Conversely, you would have to be completely horrible to actually die off before the end of a level, so it's far from impossible. I think the genre that Crusader falls into is really important in understanding what kind of a game it is, it's strengths and it's shortcomings. It's right in between an Adventure and a straight Action game, but done top down. It doesn't really have any character developement that you can control, but it does have NPC's that you interact with and that develop the story as you go on in the game. You also can get equipment, which adds some customizing ability to your character. The Action part of the game is the most important part, and that's not entirely successful either. The controls are pretty bad, and it often feels like the hardest part of the game is fighting the crappy control scheme rather than the bad guys. On the other hand, the game never actually felt very hard to me, just tedious, on occasion. All in all, I would say that the rarity of this kind of game and the cool, futuristic military setting make it worth putting up with the games flaws. If that was all there is to this game, it would only be a 3 star game to me, but it's not. What elevates this game to 4 stars for me is all of the secrets that you can find on the map. It was crazy fun to try and find every single secret in Crusader. The "Adventure" component of this game, and what makes it deeper than the usual Action beat 'em-up is the environmental puzzles you have to solve in order to find the secret caches of weapons and other easter eggs hidden throught the levels. This brings me to my advice for you if you want to play this game... You NEED to save your game A LOT! Basically, what is makes this game fun is trying to uncover the whole map and find all the secret rooms. If you want to do that, you have to be really careful not to screw up your chances of getting into a room. There are little booby traps and machines that can blow-up, and annoying little hover-rafts that only give you a single chance to find a secret, and there is no second chances in this game. ONCE YOU PASS A MAP, IT'S OVER FOR THAT MAP. Example: A booby trap blows up, taking with it a locker that contains a key you need to open a secret room. Result: No access to the secret, you have to move on! Personally, I see no reason to play this game through if you don't go for all the hidden stuff, because that's what makes the game deep. Other than that, it's an okay top-down, futuristic military sim. The story is actually pretty fun, but the character interactions are lame. (in an awesome, period way) To sum up: This game is fun. The controls are just okay, there isn't much of a story, but it's actually a pretty fun puzzle game disguised as a shooter (but only if you force yourself to find the secrets).