[Marte]

Just finished the newest Nance Drew game. Was it me or was this game shorter than the previous games? ;O

Maybe it's just me getting quick..

[Denaron]

Red Faction: Guerilla

In my opnion, the most interesting thing in this game is the physics. I had so much fun in the beginning but it starts to get a bit repetitive after a while. Almost everything is destructible and lots of particles are shattered around. But the rest is just regular, thin plot, weak soundtrack, and repetitive missions.

I don't know, maybe i'm getting old. This kind of game just don't turn me on anymore.

3/5

[HaroldO]

I've just finished Samorost 2 for the second time. I love the puzzle design and the whole art style. There's a bit of pixel hunt at some puzzles in the second part but it's all manageable. The soundtrack is pretty sweet and although there's no dialogue you can easily understand the story and setting.

EDIT: Since i try to avoid doubleposting I'll just edit this to say I've just finished:

Peggle Extreme. Loved every minute. I played through the adventure mode 3 times, got highest score in each separate levels and finished the challenge mode. This one is free but I'll consider getting a paid version for some portable device in the future. Who knows, maybe I'll get a iSlate next year if the apple fairy release it.

[Little Writer]

Escape from Monkey Island. Oddly enough, it was a lot more fun this time around than the first time; don't know why I never completed a second playthrough until now.

Spoiler:

Even the monkey kombat thing wasn't annoying. I only had four battles, then Jojo jr and the finale. It was so easy. Same for the lava pool and the tree trunks; I remember spending ages trying to figure it out, and now I got it on the first try, then I glitched the game by picking up a phantom banana picker at the mine after I'd already used the first one on the monkey head, and Guybrush wouldn't move anymore, so I had to load a game from five minutes earlier where I still had to do the lava pool, and then I did have trouble with it! I'm such a dolt at times ...

I'll be playing Tales again next.

[Intense Degree]

Recently finished The Witcher. Not my first time playing it but the first time i've completed it.

On the whole I liked it, despite the floors, but the biggest gripe I have is with the ending. Without getting too "spoileriffic" I found the last chapter (epilogue) to be rubbish. The promise of an intreguing story and interesting moral choices set out from the start didn't really come to much. The "twist" at the end seemed to be a complete afterthought, just tacked on at the very end in a couple of lines of dialogue and to be honest I didn't really care about it at all!

The "boss fights" in the last two chapters were much easier, in my opinion, than some of the earlier fights and most of the "group" fights.

Having said that I probably will replay it at some point, supporting the non-humans (I chose the impartial middle way this time) to see how it pans out but I honestly don't know if I would even bother re-playing the epilogue!

[Fantasysci5]

I just finished "Dark Fall: Lost Souls". I'm going to post my thoughts in the Dark Fall thread if any of you are interested, but as a quickie; Very, very disappointed.

[Denaron]

I've just finished Metal gear solid 4: guns of the patriots on hard mode.

Actually, it's the second time that I'm finishing this masterpiece. I just wanted to get the stealth camouflage (finish the game with no alert phase).

[JemyM]

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
I was introduced to roleplaying games when I was about 8 years old. It was also about then I got my first computer, a Commodore 64. Some of the first games I bought was Ultima I and Pool of Radiance. Unfortunate I was much too young to understand the game then.

Move ahead a few years and I had grown into a enthusiastic gamer. I have moved from Commodore 64 to Amiga. One of the fondest memories I have of this period was of the Eye of the Beholder series, the 2nd game in particular. Like Pool of Radiance Eye of the Beholder was made by SSI and it was also an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. This fully introduced me to the wonder of CRPGS. Unfortunally this was also the era in which the genré as we knew it would die out, or at least so it seemed. Even roleplaying itself had problems, TSR was dying, the Swedish RPG market was dying and everything seemed kind of bad for the hobby.

Until Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate almost singlehandely ressurected the genré, but now with a very different technology. There was real dialogue now, a long with great 2d and 3d graphics, deep storylines, moral questions and a very genuine RPG feel. For the next few years we experienced the pinnacle of this type, Baldur's Gate alone got several sequels, a long with it's sisters Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment. We also got to see the birth of Fallout as well as attempts from other companies who tried to make their version, with more or less success.

One of theese was Pool of Radiance Ruins of Myth Drannor, a sequel to the now ancient title with the same name. It was advertised as the first game that used the latest Dungeons & Dragons system and unlike Baldur's Gate it used 3d technology for characters and spell effects. However, the developers suffered from continous drawbacks and the team was replaced several times throughout it's production. When it was finally released it got mediocre ratings and I was one of those who started it just to let go of it after entering the very first dungeon. After all, at that time there were plenty of other great games to play.

9 years later, the CRPG genré is again suffering. Black Isle is dead. Troika is dead. Bethesda moved the market in the direct opposite direction of what I would have hoped for. Easy digested console games have replaced the hardcore "gotta have much brains" kind of games I used to like. At this stage I started to move back in time to see if there were titles I had forsaken and in the past years I have played plenty of theese, some great ones, some that should have remained forsaken.

I felt I had to make this introduction to give you the reasons why I play one of the longest CRPG's in ages that got always universally bad reviews. At the time I started it, neither Risen nor Divinity II nor Dragon Age had been released. Those titles are waiting for me now, so let's get onto my review.

Story
Since Baldur's Gate, storylines in CRPG's have been a deep affair. From the philosophical questions raised by Planescape Torment, Mask of the Betrayer or KOTOR2, to the epic games like Baldur's Gate 2 and Mass Effect.

It didn't used to be that way. In the eighties and early 90'ies AD&D had a lot of cheesy fantasy writing. It was about heroes and superevil villains who tried to destroy everything for no reason. It was about huge dungeons filled with monsters and traps.

The story of PoR:RoMD is like the latter kind. There's no real introduction more than "someone ressurected evil, we need heroes, game begins". In the game that follows you have very little buildup and it's first in the final maybe 15-20% you begin to see some story to it, which isn't different from what you are used to... the Big Bad Evil Person is Evil and you have to kill. I really cannot describe the story more than that.

What I will however, is to give the game a thumbs up for the fluff. Unlike most of the modern CRPG's, PoR:RoMD often present you with nice small text messages that give you info about your surroundings. Sometimes theese little messages give an extra depth on the otherwise generic dungeonwalls. There are plenty of stuff on the side that gives you the feeling that Myth Drannor was once a very living place that is now abandoned. There's plenty of ghosts, graves, remains of killed people etc.

Graphics, Engine & Sound
Much like Baldur's Gate the game is presented in top view looking down. The backgrounds is in 2d and the characters are rendered in 3d. Graphically it all looks what you would expect from a game of this age. It does look a lot like Planescape Torment or other early Black Isle games.

Overall the graphics in the dungeons are repetitive. Imagine spending 64 hours seeing the same walls and floors and you have PoR:RoMD. There's a bit of variation in the overland maps or in the final two dungeons, but mostly it's the same.

Another problem is that I think the game had less than 10 different variations of enemies. Sure, sometimes they change names which indicate a stronger foe, but the model is still the same. I could see saving space if you are using 2d graphics, but 3d models shouldn't have been that hard to produce. The old Baldur's Gate have a vast phleatoria of monsters in comparison to PoR:RoMD.

You will get used to the music. I filtered it out most of the time. However, there are plenty of songs in the game which is a nice touch. Theese songs sounds like ballads written specifically for the game.

The game isn't fully voiced, but there are some spoken sentences that is often pretty good. Sometimes lines are spoken prior to an encounter or in the beginning of a dialogue. There are voices that sounds really inhuman, especially from zombies, gargoyles, ghosts etc.

In the beginning the game was known to have a bug that would trash your windows. I avoided this one. However, the game doesn't work in Vista by default. I had to disable directdraw to get it work, a technique that unfortunally had a few consequences. Spell effects in particular doesn't look as good as they should, and they can slow down the game to a crawl, especially cloud spells and fire rains. Sometimes I reloaded the game because an enemy had thrown a cloud spell over my party, other times I specifically targeted that enemy just to get rid of the cloud. Very annoying.

The vanilla game is also TREMENDOUSLY slow. Even at highest speed battles take ages thanks to the turnbased combat. One solution for this is a speed hack that can increase the speed by pressing "8" and decrease it with "7". This made the game bearable.

I also had trouble with a sarcophagus emitted a green pulsewave. I saved next to it which made the game crash right after loading the save, so I had to replay from my autosave. It turned out that if I loaded the game in a stage in which the pulsewave was active, it would instantly crash when the pulsewave fired (which it does if you are nearby). Only way to circumvent this was to reload a save on another floor, run down the stairs, then run all the way to the room to resolve the battle there, then run back upstairs and save.

Gameplay
The game was developed with AD&D mechanics that was changed to 3.0 (or maybe 3.5). The implemention isn't complete as NWN or Temple of Elemental Evil. You do not get to select your feats or skills, the game select them for you automatically. Most skills, feats and spells are not in. Many classes are not presented, such as Druid and wizard. The game cap your level at 16 but allow you to multiclass to another class which allow you to get up to level 20 I think (my characters was level 19 when I finished the game).

The interface is decent. You have shortcuts but only F2-F10 which isn't enough to map all your spells. You have a rightclick menu which give you access to your skills, spells and inventory, and you can open your character screen to equip your character and rearrange your inventory. You can sell stuff but I only found like 2 items worth buying. The shops never restock and there are few of them. Money seems like a mechanic that wasn't fully thought through. I ended the game with 600k when the most expensive items costed only a couple of 10k.

Towards the end I found a combo that made my fighter into a killing machine. My other fighter could reasonably drop one opponent in a round as long as he could use his full-round action and rolled good with the dice. My first fighter almost never hit and almost always did 100+ sometimes 200+ damage per attack. I dunno how balanced that was.

Then you got potions, magic items, scrolls, keys, quest items and poisons. I missed the ability to poison my arrows though with my Rogue which felt quite useless in combat but was neccessary to open the tons of locked doors and disable tons of traps.

I noted that the game doesn't use proficiencies from the rpg. I couldn't use longbow with my elven Sorcerer, which in D&D 3.0 I can. I couldn't use wands with my rogue either.

You can divide PoR:RoMD into 9 large areas, the overland map and then two 4 floor dungeons. Each dungeon floor took me about 8 hours to play. Theese are the largest dungeons I have seen in a game ever and unfortunally they are also very repetitive and not that exciting.

Combats are turnbased. You might enjoy the tactical feel, and sometimes I did, but it ended up as slow, tedious and annoying to go several turns to chase down a foe that managed to initiate combat from far away.

Final Verdict
I played PoR:RoMD just because I wanted a partybased Dungeons & Dragons game, similar to Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. I would say that it's the only reason to play the game. You need nerves of steel to get through this very long game and endless turnbased combats, never changing walls and floors, with no real storyline on top of that. At least I have it done... Finally. Hey, maybe I should go back to play the original pool of radiance now...

[Denaron]

Nibiru: Age of Secrets

Well it's not a masterpiece but, overall, enjoyable.

3.5/5

[HaroldO]

I've Final Fantasy VII earlier this week. It's was probably the eighth time I started FF VII but only the second I've finished. Not to say that it's a chore to finish it, but I certainly find the first disc much more enjoyable from a gameplay perspective. To be fair, at least half of those times I didn't finish it was because of technical issues like bad memory cards, or a scratched disc. The dialogue is pretty weak but I love the plot. and with that said I'm retiring this game until the inevitable but yet unconfirmed remake arrives.

[JemyM]

Runaway 3: A Twist of Fate
I do not have a lot to say about this one. I didn't think much about Runaway 1, but I thought Runaway 2 was an excellent step forward, much more epic, many loveable characters etc. Runaway 3 takes a step down as far as I concern, having much fewer characters and a simpler plot. It's still really beautifully done and the voice acting is still awesome, but the plot wasn't really intriguing.

[Fantasysci5]

Just finished "Gabriel Knight: Sins" with the community playthrough. I must say, I loved "Beast Within" a lot more; this story didn't draw me in as much, and although I enjoyed playing the game, it was okay for me. Please don't kill me, Andrea.

[DustyShinigami]

Resident Evil 4

Positives:

+ Great in-game graphics
+ Atmospheric environments and more tension is created than in Resident Evil 5.
+ Great and fun gameplay
+ Decent voice acting
+ More puzzles than in Resident Evil 5
+ Difficulty is just right and increases at a decent level as you progress through the game.
+ Nice and lengthy. Whenever I reached certain parts of the game I always thought I was at the end, only then for a plot twist to occur and to be thrown into a whole new area to traverse through and explore. I was always happy that I had more to do as I didn't want the game to end.
+ Slightly more of a story than Resident Evil 5
+ Once the game's finished you unlock a few extras for the story campaign as well as some extra game modes. One mode enables you to play as a female character, Ada, who you occasionally encounter throughout Leon's story. It was fun to see the story from her perspective and at least these extra modes made the overall game feel more longer.

Negatives:

- Because I was playing the PC version, which apparently is more buggy than the PS2 and GameCube versions, I did encounter a number of issues. One, that I wasn't aware of until later, was that the lighting and textures weren't very good or were non existent. Rooms that should've been dark were all well-lit and it made no sense that the characters were using a flashlight in some of these areas. Thankfully I applied a patch, which took quite a while to install, that fixed these issues and made the experience much better. However, I still encountered a random crash from time-to-time. One occured right when I'd saved the game, only to discover that it hadn't even saved, and another kept happening after a boss fight. As a result, I thought I wouldn't be able to progress any further. Thankfully lowering the resolution bypassed the crash. I also encountered a glitch that prevented Ada from picking up certain objects that I'd shot down that were hanging over a well. It was right there, ready to be picked up, but the 'Pick Up' prompt wouldn't appear. All she'd do was examine the contents of the well whenever I kept pressing the appropriate button.
- The quality of the cutscenes in the PC version are of low quality and look fuzzy.
- I mentioned the voice acting is decent and that's about right as far as I'm concerned. I found it to be a bit crappy in places along with the dialogue. Ashley, the President's daughter you're sent to find, is the worst. Both her voice and personality were... ugh. But yeah, it's merely decent. Nothing to cry home about.
- Although there are more puzzles in Resi 4 than 5, they're still nothing special or challenging. They mostly consist of finding keys or artifacts to unlock doors etc. But at least there is some variation. You'll occasionally come across a mechnical puzzle but these aren't particularly difficult. A clue will usually be nearby. It always seems to me that there's at least one of those bloody slider puzzles in a survival horror game. Why?
- Again, I mentioned that there's a bit more of story in Resi 4 than 5, and that's true, but it's 'meh'. The stories in the Resident Evil games do nothing for me. They're very samey and clichéd. They all seem to be about some megalomaniac, evil corporation or evil cult trying to take over the world with a deadly virus that turns people into zombies, or where they perform experiments on people and turn them into some biological weapon/monstrous creation etc. Okay, true. It wouldn't be a Resi game without those elements. But still... they've been done sooooo many times it's becoming tiresome. I wish the stories were worked on a bit more and for them to be deeper and original.
- There's no item storage! In previous Resi games and Resi 5 you're able to store unwanted items/items you don't need at present into a chest or seperate window. Not so here. Any items that are placed and left in the seperate window to the right will be discarded. You can upgrade your inventory size from the merchant but it still isn't big enough to hold every weapon/item in the game. I was planning on buying/upgrading every weapon as well but there's just no way I can. There's not enough space and it would involve discarding or selling other weapons, that I've worked on fully upgrading, just to make room. And if I repurchase that kind of weapon I sold, I'd have to upgrade it all over again.
- I find Mercenaries mode to be disappointing and harder compared to Resident Evil 5. At least with Resi 5's Mercenaries mode you can play 2-player and help each other out at getting the score/rating you're after. In Resi 4, you have to go at it alone. I find it harder to get the scores/ratings I'm after. It doesn't help when the majority of headshots I make don't kill enemies straight away (like it would normally) and, as a result, I waste time on the same opponents.

Regardless of these negatives this is probably my favourite Resi game to date. I really enjoyed myself whilst playing this game and I didn't want it to end. This, really, is what Resident Evil 5 should've been. It is in terms of gameplay, but it isn't in terms of atmosphere, horror, puzzles, length and 'fun'.

Overall:



I hope Adventure Gamers don't mind be 'borrowing' their stars.

[DustyShinigami]

The Pandora Directive

Positives:

+ A very good, well written and engrossing story/mystery - far surpasses the story of Under a Killing Moon
+ Features a cast of weird, interesting, humorous and likeable characters
+ The hint system from Under a Killing Moon returns
+ Includes 2 difficulty settings this time, a number of different pathways you can take throughout the course of the game, and multiple endings
+ Some slight graphical improvements over Under a Killing Moon
+ More varied puzzles and puzzle difficulty
+ Solid acting from the cast - again, far surpasses Under a Killing Moon in terms of acting
+ Catchy 'retro' and 'noir' midi music
+ Just as funny if not funnier than Under a Killing Moon
+ Longer than Under a Killing Moon

Negatives:

- The control scheme is still the same as before - thankfully though, I have become a lot more adjusted to it.
- Although there's more variety in terms of puzzles, sadly the game features a number of mechanical and mathematical puzzles. I had to use hints and a walkthrough for the majority of these. And it's because of these kind of puzzles that the game took me longer to complete than it probably should've. I found my interest start to slip a number of times.
- Involves some item/pixel hunting - this, for me, was mostly because of the 3D rendered environments, and I ended up missing a number of objects that I either couldn't see or because they almost blended in.
- Wasn't keen on Day Seven where

Spoiler:

you're put under pressure because of that green alien entity. Because I didn't know how long I had until it would strike, and where, I ended up saving it just a few seconds before it got me. Whenever I reloaded... dead. I had to get a save and redo the day from the beginning. That, and...

-

Spoiler:

Controlling that robot through the ducts felt tedious and knackering. Having to keep clicking all the time to reposition, realign, turn, hover, lower down, backup etc. tired my ruddy hand out. I would've prefered controlling it with the keyboard instead of just the mouse.

- It felt to me, in some cases, that it wasn't always obvious/clear as to where you were supposed to go or what you were supposed to do. For example:

Spoiler:

near the end of Day Eight, after solving Elijah Witt's puzzle box, I'd wouldn't have guessed that Malloy's puzzle box had been sent back to him and was waiting for him inside his bedroom. I only found out by checking the hints.

All in all, this is a great adventure game. For some reason, way before I even played the game and saw/read about it, I knew I'd like it. This, so far, is my favourite Tex Murphy game. Hell, I'd put this as my second favourite FMV game right after The Beast Within. I just hope Overseer is just as good, if not better, than this.

For anyone who hasn't played the Tex Murphy games and loves character and story in their adventures, this comes highly recommended from me.

Overall:

[AprilLives]

The Moment of Silence is an excellent game with a few glitches. I loved the opportunity to hear long dialogues as that increased the mystery for me and fleshed out the story. The voices were mostly all good, especially the lead character who struck the right balance of calm and concern. The locations were very nicely done artistically and one snowy place reminded me a little of Syberia. I had that nice sense of being involved in intrigue throughout this game. Although I wished for a slightly longer ending, it was a good ending just the same.

On the other hand, it was sometimes difficult to save files. The option had trouble appearing especially towards the end of the game for some technical reason. Moving the character from place to place was awkward at times due to needing to be at a precise location before he could move. The guide option to show the way sometimes seemed inaccurate. Many of the puzzles were intuitive and very doable. However, there was a puzzle that had me going in circles for such a long time I finally took a hint for help.

I liked this game very much. Even though the game is a few years old, its messages are timely and interesting. I give it 7.6 out of 10.

[Denaron]

Adam's Venture: The Search for the Lost Garden

Very short, and easy, game. I've finished it in less than 2 hours, and I've got all ''secrets''!

The strongest thing of this game are the graphics, the best I've ever seen in an adventure game. Shadow/light, textures, effects eveything was is pretty good looking.

In other hand the plot, music and voice acting are just regular.

3/5

[Crunchy in milk]

Batman Arkham Asylum (PC).

I finished my first run through on the weekend and have since started a 'if I knew then what I know now' play through. Its definitely a gem of a game, I really enjoyed my time behind the cowl.

Spoiler:

the Ivy boss fight was harder than the final battle though

Once I got my controls set up how I wanted to, it was a delight to play, even with a keyboard and mouse rather than a control pad.

[JemyM]

Mass Effect 2
I won't bother people with another review of this game. I played it non stop for 5 days leaving only room for a morning at the university two of those days. I did finish every bonus mission there was. Like the many 10/10 reviews say, it's almost beyond flaws and complaining over the very minor ones I saw would be too much. Actually, the only problem I saw was buggy AI when it comes to large dogs (they usually get stuck behind something).

In Mass Effect I had problems with the lousy inventory system, the still black & white morality system and the poorly done "free-roaming" part where you just drive around on planets that have no point.

All of those have been adressed. I am happy the inventory system is gone, and it's replaced with a more suitable "research" system that allows you upgrade the weapons you have. Sure, this rules out a lot of equipment customization compared to games like KOTOR, but considering this is more of a Gears of War style shooter when it boils down to it, it's actually an improvement.

Maybe my only concern is with harvesting. You cannot fail really, you need to do it if you want the good stuff and you cannot fail which means it's just work.

The best improvement with the old black & white morality system is that while you have an advantage of maxing out at least one direction you can go both directions at the same time. This means you are no longer forced to hold off a move you find suitable for the situation. Also Paragon felt less wuzzy this time around.

The free-roaming bits are cut. You can still find missions on planets and they are simpler than the main quests but they feel somewhat unique now. They are very short but usually have some kind of twist.

I have to see the game as what it's trying to be. A shooter with roleplaying choices. Not rpg stats, but choices. As that, it deliver, even if the mechanics is somewhat weaker than real shooters such as Gears of War. It's much more optimized as a movielike experience than a shooter, but it was a great ride.

Now I need to sit back and digest the thing. Do some things I didn't do while playing it...

[HaroldO]

Sam & Max 101 Culture Schock
I've just bought the first season and gave this one a try. Love every minute. It's not very challenging but to be fair that's the way I like it. As long as the game has a nice plot and dialogue that's fine in my book. B-TADS cracked me up.

[nonax]

Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy
Solid latest in the long series. Good puzzles and a nice mystery.