TGA_backloggd
A hell of a incredible couple of games that play with some interesting theories I've never heard of before, but needlessly, make a far more interesting interaction all together. These two games were out before the other Zero escape game that was released first on Steam.
Not only due to have multiple paths based on your choices and where you go, but due to the Morphagentic Field, it makes perfect story sense that you could view one timeline, pick up some information, then take with with you for consecutive timelines to unlock the true ending.
Both games have very interesting set ups and some very difficult puzzles, though not unfairly difficult. I recommend this to any fan of the escape room kind of game where you need to look around and attempt to find a way out of wherever you are trapped.
Not only due to have multiple paths based on your choices and where you go, but due to the Morphagentic Field, it makes perfect story sense that you could view one timeline, pick up some information, then take with with you for consecutive timelines to unlock the true ending.
Both games have very interesting set ups and some very difficult puzzles, though not unfairly difficult. I recommend this to any fan of the escape room kind of game where you need to look around and attempt to find a way out of wherever you are trapped.
2004
Far, FAR better than the original. The beefed up the graphics, and yet my laptop could still play it very well. New aliens appear and old ones get a nice new polish added to them. Having breakable environments and the new grav gun and ability to pick up items makes the world far more interactive and easy to immerse yourself in this game.
If you have played the first one and not this one then what the hell are you doing?
If you have played the first one and not this one then what the hell are you doing?
I found that this game was absolutely wonderful! The DLC adds a lot to do in the game and though I'm certainly not a Lore master of LoTR, this brought me back to loving the world with talks of Sauron and the Lord before him as well as many other different parts of middle earth's history that get discussed in this through collectables and appendix.
The gameplay is like a mix of Arkham and Assassin's Creed. The latter from the parkour, which when people first saw this game advertised at E3, made people scream "AC rip off!" but beyond this mechanic there is the typical counter system from the Arkham games, but many interesting new things based on the game itself! For example, you slow time as you try to fire arrows at Uraks, but this charge runs down and you can even gain the ability to set enemies on fire too.
One mechanic I loved in this game was the Nemisis system where you can watch Captains grow more and more powerful. This gets much more fun when you can brand them and help your little captain become all big and powerful to finally become a chieftain, however you could also do something fun like turning all the warchief's bodyguards to your side and when you lure him out, set the bodyguards on him! This leads to endless fun, especially when you can control and shadow mount creatures too for added destruction!
Any fan of open world games like AC or the Arkham games will enjoy this as will any fan of the LoTR movies. Especially those who read the books as the creators try to be inventive with the unique main emissaries such as "The Hammer" "The Tower" and "The Black Hand" of Sauron.
The gameplay is like a mix of Arkham and Assassin's Creed. The latter from the parkour, which when people first saw this game advertised at E3, made people scream "AC rip off!" but beyond this mechanic there is the typical counter system from the Arkham games, but many interesting new things based on the game itself! For example, you slow time as you try to fire arrows at Uraks, but this charge runs down and you can even gain the ability to set enemies on fire too.
One mechanic I loved in this game was the Nemisis system where you can watch Captains grow more and more powerful. This gets much more fun when you can brand them and help your little captain become all big and powerful to finally become a chieftain, however you could also do something fun like turning all the warchief's bodyguards to your side and when you lure him out, set the bodyguards on him! This leads to endless fun, especially when you can control and shadow mount creatures too for added destruction!
Any fan of open world games like AC or the Arkham games will enjoy this as will any fan of the LoTR movies. Especially those who read the books as the creators try to be inventive with the unique main emissaries such as "The Hammer" "The Tower" and "The Black Hand" of Sauron.
This was a fun bit of nostalgia from my PS2 days really. It's a very fun Rockstar game, however like many of their games it isn't optimised too well for PC with issues with sound I often found. The interesting idea of this game is that you are playing a kid and not an adult causing chaos like in a typical GTA game. I believe they should try something like this again as I'm sure it'd be well worth the interest.
Edit: I had a lot of fun with this game, no matter which version I played, regardless of if it's on here or console called "Canis Candem Edit" which I really don't get.
You play this kid who hates his parents and gets dumped off at a supposedly prestigious academy where he immediately gets into a fight and has someone wanting to be his friend so that he could show him the ropes and how to do things and exactly what kinds of gangs there are around here. Personally I really liked the geeks who are all stereotypes, but they also create their own fun weapons in the form of fire crackers, rockets and other fun things that often do much more damage than your bare fists can manage.
You do have some romance options in this game too with some of the girls you get to meet from their different factions and the same humour is here as with all the other GTA games. It's just a shame Rockstar don't have the balls to ever make a sequel to this due to people getting angry at it's initial release.
Edit: I had a lot of fun with this game, no matter which version I played, regardless of if it's on here or console called "Canis Candem Edit" which I really don't get.
You play this kid who hates his parents and gets dumped off at a supposedly prestigious academy where he immediately gets into a fight and has someone wanting to be his friend so that he could show him the ropes and how to do things and exactly what kinds of gangs there are around here. Personally I really liked the geeks who are all stereotypes, but they also create their own fun weapons in the form of fire crackers, rockets and other fun things that often do much more damage than your bare fists can manage.
You do have some romance options in this game too with some of the girls you get to meet from their different factions and the same humour is here as with all the other GTA games. It's just a shame Rockstar don't have the balls to ever make a sequel to this due to people getting angry at it's initial release.
2011
As with all the others done by the same company it's a fun adventure title with a lot of laughs. However the flower puzzle near the end can die in a coal fire for all I care, argh.
It seems to be based on the same UI as the last Runaway game, meaning you get a button to ask for help and a button to see all the hotspots just in case you believe you are missing something, but not sure what. not to mention, the help was far better too.
Love the ending and it's quite a interesting political story to it too. Can't wait to try out their other game, Yesterday.
Edit: The female character (who I forget, editing this review several years after actually playing it) has stuck with me in regards to giving me one of my favourite words, "disconcerting" which was often what others said around where when she'd say strange crap that often confuses/disturbs those that she is talking to. Even herself when travelling through her mind in that one part, but really, that's about most I remember tbh.
It seems to be based on the same UI as the last Runaway game, meaning you get a button to ask for help and a button to see all the hotspots just in case you believe you are missing something, but not sure what. not to mention, the help was far better too.
Love the ending and it's quite a interesting political story to it too. Can't wait to try out their other game, Yesterday.
Edit: The female character (who I forget, editing this review several years after actually playing it) has stuck with me in regards to giving me one of my favourite words, "disconcerting" which was often what others said around where when she'd say strange crap that often confuses/disturbs those that she is talking to. Even herself when travelling through her mind in that one part, but really, that's about most I remember tbh.
1994
Very fun, though takes a while to complete, at least for me. I love this game so far, it's really awesome :)
Edit: Since the initial review I had works really hard to finishing the game, which was made difficult with an old bug that was shipped with the game where it interpreted more moderate difficulties to wanting the highest and hardest of all! So to actually complete it, I had to play at a lower difficulty, but I feel no shame in that as I still had a lot of fun and I feel some of the mechanics of this game hadn't aged too well as I covered when revising my review of the sequel.
At times I feel like when it says a soldier or alien can see someone, the person it still hidden in darkness and I often can't see them, having to rely on the cursor changing colour when targeting a square the enemy is in and sometimes it's not the main one I wish to aim at, but to take out the far more dangerous one equipped with a psionic amp.
The story, as I hope everyone should know, is that the Earth is being invaded by aliens and a taskforce is formed with funding from all the different nations around the world. However, if they do not see a change or you lack behind in saving people and taking down UFOs, they may choose to reduce or even end their funding entirely and that'll be the end of them and you will never be able to regain any funding again from them in the future, limiting the amount of funding you can have and causing a handicap.
One of the things this game did above the newer, successful, version by 2K is that you get the full gore with the autopsy which seems to be easier to get away with because it's pixelated, where as the others are essentially the same animation, but with a different alien.
I loved learning and reading up the alien's biology and getting a good idea as to why they would benefit from taking over this world and some of the disturbing parts of the aliens themselves, like how the "Snakemen" are filled with eggs that are reproduced asexually and if left to their own devises, could easily out-populate the planet in a short time-span. Or how the Etherials' bodies are severally underdeveloped in every part of their body, apart from their brain having great psionic abilities and is essentially the only real functioning organ in their bodies.
The lore for this game is really something and you may even miss some bits of it, depending on how good you actually are at catching the aliens and in vanilla form, the game itself doesn't require you to catch every single alien or all of the aliens of multiple different ranks to unlock everything necessary to strike back at the aliens and end the game in the one final attack.
I was also excited to learn years later of a opensource modding program, allowing you to modify this and the following game into a whole new experience! For those interested in wanting to play more classic X-COM without having to replay the same game over and over again, I highly recommend you check out this forum and website for all the mods and how to install them!
My favourite of the Megamods is X-Piratez, but I'm sure all of your could have fun looking up these mods for yourself and having your own fun. Maybe even getting involved in the modding community too!
Openxcom Forums
Mod.io/openxcom
Edit: Since the initial review I had works really hard to finishing the game, which was made difficult with an old bug that was shipped with the game where it interpreted more moderate difficulties to wanting the highest and hardest of all! So to actually complete it, I had to play at a lower difficulty, but I feel no shame in that as I still had a lot of fun and I feel some of the mechanics of this game hadn't aged too well as I covered when revising my review of the sequel.
At times I feel like when it says a soldier or alien can see someone, the person it still hidden in darkness and I often can't see them, having to rely on the cursor changing colour when targeting a square the enemy is in and sometimes it's not the main one I wish to aim at, but to take out the far more dangerous one equipped with a psionic amp.
The story, as I hope everyone should know, is that the Earth is being invaded by aliens and a taskforce is formed with funding from all the different nations around the world. However, if they do not see a change or you lack behind in saving people and taking down UFOs, they may choose to reduce or even end their funding entirely and that'll be the end of them and you will never be able to regain any funding again from them in the future, limiting the amount of funding you can have and causing a handicap.
One of the things this game did above the newer, successful, version by 2K is that you get the full gore with the autopsy which seems to be easier to get away with because it's pixelated, where as the others are essentially the same animation, but with a different alien.
I loved learning and reading up the alien's biology and getting a good idea as to why they would benefit from taking over this world and some of the disturbing parts of the aliens themselves, like how the "Snakemen" are filled with eggs that are reproduced asexually and if left to their own devises, could easily out-populate the planet in a short time-span. Or how the Etherials' bodies are severally underdeveloped in every part of their body, apart from their brain having great psionic abilities and is essentially the only real functioning organ in their bodies.
The lore for this game is really something and you may even miss some bits of it, depending on how good you actually are at catching the aliens and in vanilla form, the game itself doesn't require you to catch every single alien or all of the aliens of multiple different ranks to unlock everything necessary to strike back at the aliens and end the game in the one final attack.
I was also excited to learn years later of a opensource modding program, allowing you to modify this and the following game into a whole new experience! For those interested in wanting to play more classic X-COM without having to replay the same game over and over again, I highly recommend you check out this forum and website for all the mods and how to install them!
My favourite of the Megamods is X-Piratez, but I'm sure all of your could have fun looking up these mods for yourself and having your own fun. Maybe even getting involved in the modding community too!
Openxcom Forums
Mod.io/openxcom
This is a game I have always wanted to play ever since I saw it on a shelf in one of my local video game shops, but I didn't own a GameCube so I couldn't get it for myself, but the concept was one I couldn't shake from my mind. JRPG style game involving ships, crews and ect!
Gameplay:
Much of the combat is your standard JRPG affair, however, you can switch between elements freely with your weapons so you don't have to drop a powerful weapon because it's aligned with fire and you're fighting someone who is resistant to fire or ect. You can change on the fly, but often the more difficult bosses will have enemies on their side who are strong against the element they're weak against. This is mostly for the combat with the characters on a battlefield or fighting enemies boarded on a ship or something.
The ship combat is done in a more interesting way where everyone has their own turns lined up and to unleash your special power, you need to not only have it charged, but also be certain that you are pointing the weapon directly at them! Depending on choices in combat, you can end up behind them or they may end up behind you, putting you on the defensive! Because of how these battles can go either way, there's no point in trying to just go in blindly fighting like in poorly designed JRPGs and every battle will require quite a bit of planning ahead.
A big bonus of this version over the original one on the Dreamcast, is it comes with the DLC stuff you could only get by going online. Really feels SEGA were a little too ahead of their time...
There's also a really cool discovery mechanic where you can find treasure and hidden locations through the world that you bring back and report to the cartographer's guild and get paid. However, if you weren't the first to find it, you only get a fraction of the payment as all you did was confirm it's existence, regardless of if it's some magical kingdom or a undiscovered creature or continent.
There is also a bounty hunter system where you can meet all kinds of interesting characters to battle and get rewarded with not only cash but also weapons and things looted from them too.
There are one or two others, including gathering up a crew to give your ship passive boosts to different functions and a few others that may require spoilers.
Story:
You play as Vyse, a Skypirate! Often known as Blue Pirates because they only attacked armed vessels and aim to not just kill and massacre people. They are still stealing loot at the end of the day, but unlike Black Pirates, they don't hunt down people who can't defend themselves nor do they aim to kill people outright.
Anyway, you start by fighting a group of soldiers who are heavily armed and Vyse is with his father on their raid of this military vessel, until they discover and rescue a mysterious girl (getting Laputa: Castle in the Sky vibes) who claims to be from somewhere that was said to exist only in myth.
Vyse, his childhood friend and this mysterious girl investigate a nearby ruin that was said to be tied to the girl's people and soon are on their own journey to uncover the mysteries of the ruins, the past and the empire's current plans for world domination.
I highly recommend this for any JRPG fan out there as many of the mechanics feel fresh and it's such a crime that they haven't been brought back in a similar form! A game that the industry should look back at and take some real interest in.
Gameplay + Stream
Gameplay:
Much of the combat is your standard JRPG affair, however, you can switch between elements freely with your weapons so you don't have to drop a powerful weapon because it's aligned with fire and you're fighting someone who is resistant to fire or ect. You can change on the fly, but often the more difficult bosses will have enemies on their side who are strong against the element they're weak against. This is mostly for the combat with the characters on a battlefield or fighting enemies boarded on a ship or something.
The ship combat is done in a more interesting way where everyone has their own turns lined up and to unleash your special power, you need to not only have it charged, but also be certain that you are pointing the weapon directly at them! Depending on choices in combat, you can end up behind them or they may end up behind you, putting you on the defensive! Because of how these battles can go either way, there's no point in trying to just go in blindly fighting like in poorly designed JRPGs and every battle will require quite a bit of planning ahead.
A big bonus of this version over the original one on the Dreamcast, is it comes with the DLC stuff you could only get by going online. Really feels SEGA were a little too ahead of their time...
There's also a really cool discovery mechanic where you can find treasure and hidden locations through the world that you bring back and report to the cartographer's guild and get paid. However, if you weren't the first to find it, you only get a fraction of the payment as all you did was confirm it's existence, regardless of if it's some magical kingdom or a undiscovered creature or continent.
There is also a bounty hunter system where you can meet all kinds of interesting characters to battle and get rewarded with not only cash but also weapons and things looted from them too.
There are one or two others, including gathering up a crew to give your ship passive boosts to different functions and a few others that may require spoilers.
Story:
You play as Vyse, a Skypirate! Often known as Blue Pirates because they only attacked armed vessels and aim to not just kill and massacre people. They are still stealing loot at the end of the day, but unlike Black Pirates, they don't hunt down people who can't defend themselves nor do they aim to kill people outright.
Anyway, you start by fighting a group of soldiers who are heavily armed and Vyse is with his father on their raid of this military vessel, until they discover and rescue a mysterious girl (getting Laputa: Castle in the Sky vibes) who claims to be from somewhere that was said to exist only in myth.
Vyse, his childhood friend and this mysterious girl investigate a nearby ruin that was said to be tied to the girl's people and soon are on their own journey to uncover the mysteries of the ruins, the past and the empire's current plans for world domination.
I highly recommend this for any JRPG fan out there as many of the mechanics feel fresh and it's such a crime that they haven't been brought back in a similar form! A game that the industry should look back at and take some real interest in.
Gameplay + Stream
2001
When I started playing this game I had no idea what to expect. I was initially struggling to get two other games set up and ready to stream (Jade Empire and Thief Gold) and so I was looking for a back-up game to stream instead and saw the name, remembered I got it years ago (most likely during a sale) and I gave the store a quick look just to get the genre correct for my organisation with how I name/organise my streams by game genre, ect. That said, what came next I was not prepared for!
My first stream of the game and my legitimate first-hand experience of this game
First off, this game is a sci-fi themed RPG where you start out playing a Sylvester "Sly" Boots, a private investigator who is down on his luck and owes money to a crime-boss named Detta, whose thug throws you out of the window for not paying him on time. Sly needs to get a job or two so that he can pay off Detta, his bar tab and maybe even have a comfortable life.
However, what starts as a simple task to get money, Sly is thrown into a variety of situations that put him and his new companions in the situation to save the universe! As good as that all is...will he be able to pay off that tab?
My thoughts:
I didn't know what to expect from this game as I went in blind but I soon found that not only was it a fun sci-fi RPG, but ones of those hidden/forgotten gems! The game is filled with fun minigames that every character has as their unique ability to unlock something or obtain it (Sly having lockpicking, but later characters have different abilities), hilarious dialog from the kinds of NPCs you generally ignore in games (my favourite ones being the fling-bot and Krapto the Super Dog) and a epic storyline with many moments of drama and comedy throughout it! Including one section that was just a massive Star Wars piss-take!
I am so glad I decided to stream this in place of the other two games I was unable to run and it was quite the experience! It was one of those games that I found myself wanting to play, even on days I wasn't streaming! Not because the combat was amazing (it was pretty standard, kinda like classic FF7, but with the added ability of positioning yourself tactically) but just because I wanted to speak to random NPCs or find out what crazy thing would happen next! When we got the 5th companion I couldn't stop laughing on stream and had to tell people about it! Scratch that, I had to tell EVERYONE about it! Even people who weren't ever going to play it! Not only were these things, nutty, but they also fit in the context of the universe and the absolute amount of things to do in this game will see that you never get bored! Apart from perhaps Planet Burger where, for extra items, you're expected to stand around for hours.
A list of issues however, do exist. No perfect game exists and despite how much I love this game, I'm certainly not going to ignore the issues that are involved here.
1. Too damn Dark! Basically, you'll need to find a patch to update the gamma ratings because the in-game menu for that stuff doesn't work. Plus, that mod should be better than mine as my one ended up breaking a space-ship section where it didn't record where the curser was aiming correctly... Something fairly common with old games, but something that has to be brought up if you're considering buying this game.
2. Prone to crashes. Now, I played the Steam version and I've heard that the GOG version is better and more stable, however, it doesn't crash THAT often and considering how many brand new AAA titles I've played where the game crashes every five minutes I'm more than willing to forgive this forgotten game for having a few crashing moments. Here are some points to avoid crashing:
-If you resurrect someone as the battle ends it can crash the game
-There is a extremely rare case of crashing randomly, however in my over 50 hours of playing this happened...twice I think.
-A optional boss at the end of the game, inside the mystech caves on Anachronox, crashes the game whenever he uses a certain special move and due to the amount of HP even if you have everything maxed out and do max damage to him, you can't kill him before he pulls it off so it's best to just leave him there. After all, he's a purely optional boss and I doubt he's holding anything that important.
These issues can of course be solves with patches, but I'm just letting you all know what to expect so you don't think I'm being overly kind to this game or simply ignoring it's flaws.
3. Journal only records main quests. Your journal entry covers all kinds of things and can give you all kinds of great lore on the world, history of the world and so on, however, it seems to only record the main quest, giving you suggestions as to what to do next like who you spoke to, who you may want to talk to and what your current goal is. Sadly this doesn't follow many of the fun side-missions like assisting the resistance who are trying to take down Detta or the old friend of Sly's who is still a part of the peace-keeping forces and is investigating a series of murders. Fatima doesn't appear to really take any note of this so you need to make sure you remember to check out certain things since she won't remind you and these side-missions can give you great items, like a upgrade to your lockpicks.
4. Combat stats can be a bit intimidating. When I first opened up the menu to look at the character stats I saw a huge-wall of different kinds of stats with names that doesn't full make sense: Beefiness, Bouge, ect and it can be pretty intimidating, but thankfully there is a fighting instructor who teaches you stuff and in all honestly, the only things I found that were important were your equipment, mystech mastery (not a real spoiler as that slot is there from the beginning and mentioned in the tutorial) and your shield belt/power belt and how much is put into shield and how much is left over to use for other things.
5. Shield belt bug. This is a very minor bug, but at times your shield readout will reset to 0 as if you haven't dedicated any power to it. It's a very minor bug and it's fixed by simply re-equipping the item again and you're all good to go until the next cinematic and/or boss battle. It only happens after major events like this which, again, is why it's a very minor bug but worth mentioning.
Nothing else comes to mind, but despite these above issues the amount of fun I got from the game way exceeded any inconvenience that the bugs caused me and considering how cheap this game comes on sale then I highly recommend people buy it and help others discover this game!
My first stream of the game and my legitimate first-hand experience of this game
First off, this game is a sci-fi themed RPG where you start out playing a Sylvester "Sly" Boots, a private investigator who is down on his luck and owes money to a crime-boss named Detta, whose thug throws you out of the window for not paying him on time. Sly needs to get a job or two so that he can pay off Detta, his bar tab and maybe even have a comfortable life.
However, what starts as a simple task to get money, Sly is thrown into a variety of situations that put him and his new companions in the situation to save the universe! As good as that all is...will he be able to pay off that tab?
My thoughts:
I didn't know what to expect from this game as I went in blind but I soon found that not only was it a fun sci-fi RPG, but ones of those hidden/forgotten gems! The game is filled with fun minigames that every character has as their unique ability to unlock something or obtain it (Sly having lockpicking, but later characters have different abilities), hilarious dialog from the kinds of NPCs you generally ignore in games (my favourite ones being the fling-bot and Krapto the Super Dog) and a epic storyline with many moments of drama and comedy throughout it! Including one section that was just a massive Star Wars piss-take!
I am so glad I decided to stream this in place of the other two games I was unable to run and it was quite the experience! It was one of those games that I found myself wanting to play, even on days I wasn't streaming! Not because the combat was amazing (it was pretty standard, kinda like classic FF7, but with the added ability of positioning yourself tactically) but just because I wanted to speak to random NPCs or find out what crazy thing would happen next! When we got the 5th companion I couldn't stop laughing on stream and had to tell people about it! Scratch that, I had to tell EVERYONE about it! Even people who weren't ever going to play it! Not only were these things, nutty, but they also fit in the context of the universe and the absolute amount of things to do in this game will see that you never get bored! Apart from perhaps Planet Burger where, for extra items, you're expected to stand around for hours.
A list of issues however, do exist. No perfect game exists and despite how much I love this game, I'm certainly not going to ignore the issues that are involved here.
1. Too damn Dark! Basically, you'll need to find a patch to update the gamma ratings because the in-game menu for that stuff doesn't work. Plus, that mod should be better than mine as my one ended up breaking a space-ship section where it didn't record where the curser was aiming correctly... Something fairly common with old games, but something that has to be brought up if you're considering buying this game.
2. Prone to crashes. Now, I played the Steam version and I've heard that the GOG version is better and more stable, however, it doesn't crash THAT often and considering how many brand new AAA titles I've played where the game crashes every five minutes I'm more than willing to forgive this forgotten game for having a few crashing moments. Here are some points to avoid crashing:
-If you resurrect someone as the battle ends it can crash the game
-There is a extremely rare case of crashing randomly, however in my over 50 hours of playing this happened...twice I think.
-A optional boss at the end of the game, inside the mystech caves on Anachronox, crashes the game whenever he uses a certain special move and due to the amount of HP even if you have everything maxed out and do max damage to him, you can't kill him before he pulls it off so it's best to just leave him there. After all, he's a purely optional boss and I doubt he's holding anything that important.
These issues can of course be solves with patches, but I'm just letting you all know what to expect so you don't think I'm being overly kind to this game or simply ignoring it's flaws.
3. Journal only records main quests. Your journal entry covers all kinds of things and can give you all kinds of great lore on the world, history of the world and so on, however, it seems to only record the main quest, giving you suggestions as to what to do next like who you spoke to, who you may want to talk to and what your current goal is. Sadly this doesn't follow many of the fun side-missions like assisting the resistance who are trying to take down Detta or the old friend of Sly's who is still a part of the peace-keeping forces and is investigating a series of murders. Fatima doesn't appear to really take any note of this so you need to make sure you remember to check out certain things since she won't remind you and these side-missions can give you great items, like a upgrade to your lockpicks.
4. Combat stats can be a bit intimidating. When I first opened up the menu to look at the character stats I saw a huge-wall of different kinds of stats with names that doesn't full make sense: Beefiness, Bouge, ect and it can be pretty intimidating, but thankfully there is a fighting instructor who teaches you stuff and in all honestly, the only things I found that were important were your equipment, mystech mastery (not a real spoiler as that slot is there from the beginning and mentioned in the tutorial) and your shield belt/power belt and how much is put into shield and how much is left over to use for other things.
5. Shield belt bug. This is a very minor bug, but at times your shield readout will reset to 0 as if you haven't dedicated any power to it. It's a very minor bug and it's fixed by simply re-equipping the item again and you're all good to go until the next cinematic and/or boss battle. It only happens after major events like this which, again, is why it's a very minor bug but worth mentioning.
Nothing else comes to mind, but despite these above issues the amount of fun I got from the game way exceeded any inconvenience that the bugs caused me and considering how cheap this game comes on sale then I highly recommend people buy it and help others discover this game!
A very early "trial-and-error" kind of adventure game from a great nostalgic past. It's not without it's difficulty however, as I have spent many times dying and having no clue as to how to continue. The story to it is simple and with no dialog, but it explains what's going on through simple visuals. Your character goes to work doing a scientific test with a hadron collidor, but at that same time a lightning bolt hits the machine and the mix up of energy causes a explosion that teleports you to a distant planet for away and everything after that is chaos. The creatures are strange and in many cases horrifying as they can kill you quite easily. A great re-made piece of nostalgia that's worth it if you're interested.
Nice extension and continues right off the bat from the end of Half-life 2. Not much more to say from memory besides that if you played HL2 then you should certainly get this. I suggested getting the Orange Box.
2007
Can't have enough fun with this game. As long as you have a good internet connection you'll have fun and the achievements are hilarious too :)
Edit: I have had endless fun with this game and even been playing it not too long ago either. It's fun way to blow off steam and even when dying, you can get back into the action fairly quickly! I'm generally just okay with the game and it doesn't bother me at all. Despite the age there's a lot of fun to be had and now being free you can join in the fun, assuming you've not played it already.
Edit: I have had endless fun with this game and even been playing it not too long ago either. It's fun way to blow off steam and even when dying, you can get back into the action fairly quickly! I'm generally just okay with the game and it doesn't bother me at all. Despite the age there's a lot of fun to be had and now being free you can join in the fun, assuming you've not played it already.
Now you are playing as the Black Mesa soldiers who are invading and killing everything they see, however you too get sucked into the strangeness of Half-life. Action packed and filled with fun. If you enjoyed Half-life you'll enjoy this addition too.
Now this is what I call DLC! It adds a whole new location, many hidden dangers, new monsters and lots of quests with endings that remind me of some of the old ethically blurred endings in the classic fallout games.
The main quest line is focused on my favourite character, Nick Valentine where you track down an associate's daughter.
More stuff to craft too and more settlements make this grand!
Steam Review:
Now THIS is worthy of being called DLC! It is mostly focused on a single character, one I quite like, Nick Valentine.
This opens a new place known as Far Harbour and there are many interesting stories and missions going on including a hidden vault on the island for the wealthy who lived in pre-war times! There are also many mysteries to the island revolving around the toxic radioactive fog that appears to fluctuate between being in small concentrated areas or spreading out far and covering most of the island.
Then you have the machine in the trailer...I won't spoil it, but he is a VERY interesting character and has a close connection to Nick too. This DLC is well worth the price, unlike various other ones.
The main quest line is focused on my favourite character, Nick Valentine where you track down an associate's daughter.
More stuff to craft too and more settlements make this grand!
Steam Review:
Now THIS is worthy of being called DLC! It is mostly focused on a single character, one I quite like, Nick Valentine.
This opens a new place known as Far Harbour and there are many interesting stories and missions going on including a hidden vault on the island for the wealthy who lived in pre-war times! There are also many mysteries to the island revolving around the toxic radioactive fog that appears to fluctuate between being in small concentrated areas or spreading out far and covering most of the island.
Then you have the machine in the trailer...I won't spoil it, but he is a VERY interesting character and has a close connection to Nick too. This DLC is well worth the price, unlike various other ones.
As the subtitle suggests, this is a game based on Tezuka Osamu's (the father of manga) Dororo. For those who don't know, much like myself before playing this, the story is of a Feudal Lord who offers his son to 16 demons, who all take 16 parts from his child that he attempts to dump, but is found and nursed back to health by a expert in prostetics.
This child becomes Hyakkimaru, a travelling Ronin who have the ability to detect evil and quests to destroy demons to get his body parts back!
Dororo is a young boy he comes across who helps him on his journey when battling these demons and saving innocent people along the way.
It's well worth getting to watch if you have a chance, but if you don't want to spoil it totally, play the game which is so much fun!
It's a 3rd person fighting game where you can switch between using a sword with his prostetic arms or remove them and reveal the blades beneath! The game's RPG mechanics have it where your blades level up the more you use them so that you're ready for the next demon battle and with each new part you obtain, you grow slowly stronger!
The main demons are discovered in the storyline, however, there are many that are hidden throughout the large levels that you get to travel and will unlock yet another missing part of your body. The more parts you get, the easier the next battle will be due to how much stronger you will become!
That said, certain ones are sealed off and hidden either behind a unbreakable wall or something else that requires a new ability to unlock so you'll have to revisit areas to try and find these demons and obtain all of your body parts. Especially needed when you wish to fight the final boss who has your last body part!
The tutorial is in a greyscaled appearance, but after you kill the main demon you recover an ear which makes everything come into colour and you can hear clearly now! With your hearing you come across the commotion of people running from a monster, besides one brave boy who is fighting against the demon and helps you to dispatch it.
I highly recommend this game for anyone who is a fan of hack-and-slash games and you will not be disappointed with the amount of replay-ability that you'll get here too as it's so much gory fun!
Gameplay + Stream
This child becomes Hyakkimaru, a travelling Ronin who have the ability to detect evil and quests to destroy demons to get his body parts back!
Dororo is a young boy he comes across who helps him on his journey when battling these demons and saving innocent people along the way.
It's well worth getting to watch if you have a chance, but if you don't want to spoil it totally, play the game which is so much fun!
It's a 3rd person fighting game where you can switch between using a sword with his prostetic arms or remove them and reveal the blades beneath! The game's RPG mechanics have it where your blades level up the more you use them so that you're ready for the next demon battle and with each new part you obtain, you grow slowly stronger!
The main demons are discovered in the storyline, however, there are many that are hidden throughout the large levels that you get to travel and will unlock yet another missing part of your body. The more parts you get, the easier the next battle will be due to how much stronger you will become!
That said, certain ones are sealed off and hidden either behind a unbreakable wall or something else that requires a new ability to unlock so you'll have to revisit areas to try and find these demons and obtain all of your body parts. Especially needed when you wish to fight the final boss who has your last body part!
The tutorial is in a greyscaled appearance, but after you kill the main demon you recover an ear which makes everything come into colour and you can hear clearly now! With your hearing you come across the commotion of people running from a monster, besides one brave boy who is fighting against the demon and helps you to dispatch it.
I highly recommend this game for anyone who is a fan of hack-and-slash games and you will not be disappointed with the amount of replay-ability that you'll get here too as it's so much gory fun!
Gameplay + Stream
A must have for fans of the original Oddworld games. This one being in 3D might cheese some people off, but the creators have put a lot of effort into this, making new types of enemies to fight, out-think or control. The humour is fun as always and the chance for multiple endings will entice you for multiple playthroughs.
Edit: As a departure from the series, the focus isn't entirely on Abe this time, but Munch who is the last of his species and Abe has to help him by rescuing him and also recovering eggs and such to help bring back his population.
A new mechanic in this game is the sodas that give you temporary abilities and the machine fixed onto Munch's head which malfunctions and can be used to free these fuzzy little creatures that seem cute, until angry where they reveal their razor-sharp fangs and remind me a lot of the aliens from the Critters series.
Abe not only frees more of his people on his journey, but you can even upgrade them to become pretty effective warriors with big clubs or even ranged ones who shoot these energy weapons that can make you unstoppable with enough of them! This was a lot of fun and I can't wait to try out more Oddworld games in the future.
Edit: As a departure from the series, the focus isn't entirely on Abe this time, but Munch who is the last of his species and Abe has to help him by rescuing him and also recovering eggs and such to help bring back his population.
A new mechanic in this game is the sodas that give you temporary abilities and the machine fixed onto Munch's head which malfunctions and can be used to free these fuzzy little creatures that seem cute, until angry where they reveal their razor-sharp fangs and remind me a lot of the aliens from the Critters series.
Abe not only frees more of his people on his journey, but you can even upgrade them to become pretty effective warriors with big clubs or even ranged ones who shoot these energy weapons that can make you unstoppable with enough of them! This was a lot of fun and I can't wait to try out more Oddworld games in the future.