Player Reviews

The Good
This is a pretty standard hidden object game. As such it has a flimsy but workable plot, lots of things to find which become keys/tokens that unlock other things which progress the story. Nothing really new there and it all "just works". The artwork was good, the music was pleasant and the voice acting was a little 'hammy' but OK.

The things I liked about this game were the little things like the Red Riding sisterhood of kick-ass vigilantes, true they did need my help to get them out of trouble but if they didn't there would have been no story.
All the hidden object scenes used the same format, which was a pleasant change, and all the items were hidden in plain sight and they were sometimes very well hidden. I did not have to combine two or more items to create an object and I did not have to move anything aside. These scenes were all well done and a pleasure to play.
Another nice touch was the use of paw prints rather than the usual sparkles to identify an area of interest.

The Bad
There truly was nothing here that I thought was badly done, nothing that grated or caused me problems. If I was being ultra picky I'd say that some of the puzzles could have been better explained. I like messing around and working out just what puzzle I am trying to solve plus this version has a strategy guide so, apart from one puzzle where I was pressed for time, I solved them all. In the base game with no guide some may struggle and have to use the SKIP button.

The Bottom Line
I played the FOCUS Essentials release. It installed via the Big Fish Games' game manager and it played flawlessly. I split the game over two evenings and in all it probably took me a leisurely five or six hours or so complete. It is not groundbreaking and I will have forgotten it in a few days but it was good while it lasted.

Recommended.

The Good
The gameplay is very simple. What you have to do is match 3 or more blocks to get rid of blocks and start a chain to send bigger blocks to your opponent. You have to have fast reflexes if you want to have a longer chain. The graphics are very colorful and take advantage of the SNES color palette. Plenty of game modes that will keep you busy. The modes are endless, time trial, stage clear, puzzle, and vs.

The Bad
The title makes no sense as it doesn't have anything to do with Tetris. Wish that they came up with a better name. Using Yoshi characters is a odd choice to replace the characters from Panel de Pon and especially odd to have Yoshi's "friends" be enemies found in Yoshi's Island.

The Bottom Line
A great puzzle game that anyone can play unless you have a low IQ like Michael Zimnicki.

The Good
Great graphics and iconic sprites. Easy gameplay for anyone to play. Cool cutscenes.

The Bad
The later levels become ridiculous with the power pellets barely lasting enough time for you to eat the ghosts.

The Bottom Line
It's Pac-Man. 'Nuff said.

The Good
the first chinese game

The Bad
it is very hard to play

The Bottom Line
good game for apple II RPG, I am very like this game

The Good
This game is a fun action platformer that poses a reasonable difficulty that keeps gameplay enjoyable. Throughout the game, you acquire power-ups that make you formidable against enemies of increasing toughness. Considering the limitations of the original Gameboy, the artwork is great and the music is enjoyable.

The Bad
There's occasional flicker and slowdown problems when there's lots of enemies on screen, but that issue is mostly confined to the final level.

The Bottom Line
This is just a good, enjoyable game. It strikes a good balance between challenge and enjoyment; your errors feel like your errors, not the game being deliberately brutal (e.g. the original Kid Icarus for NES). The level count is a little low, but it makes up the difference with the levels being pretty long. Pick it up if you see it being sold for a reasonable deal.

The Good
The title screen has a nifty graphic. It otherwise barely resembles the movie (which I've also never liked). There's three difficulty levels you can set it to, with the easiest still being reasonably winnable despite its frustrating flaws.

The Bad
The collision detection at the edges of the pits is just awful: getting out of the pits is an exercise in frustration of almost getting out, then falling back in. Very often this happens right when it changes from the pit screen (side view) to the world screen (top view), not even giving you a chance to compensate for the bad collision detection. Fleeing from enemies is overly tough, in that it's too easy to run yourself right back into a pit (the speed boost is too excessive).

The Bottom Line
I received this game at about 6-1/2 years old along with an Atari Jr. I think my parents picked the game up because it was probably on clearance. Even that young, and with only two other games to start with (Ms. Pac-man and Junglehunt, both far superior), I could tell it was a bad game. Even with the flaws, I could beat game on the easiest difficultly. I eventually returned to the game as a late teen, and beat the hardest difficulty out of pure spite. I've only occasionally played it to show others just how bad the game is. Yes, there are worse games that have been made, but this is the first game that was legendary for being bad, and that counts for something, I guess.

The Good
Combat system Huge Map Vast weapon inventory Open World

The Bad
None, no weak points imo

The Bottom Line
Loved it, one of the best games so far.

The Good
It plays exactly like you'd expect a Rock Band game to play. You get more songs; and you can install these songs to your hard drive to play them with Rock Band 3 (and 2, I think... it's been awhile).

The Bad
The only bad points will come down to personal artistic taste. Maybe you don't like the Lego-style artwork; maybe you're not so fond of the set of music that comes with the game. Maybe you just don't like rhythm games.

The Bottom Line
If you like the other Rock Band games and you still have functioning Rock Band peripherals, go ahead and pick this only up.

The Good
The controls are solid, and it plays much like you'd expect a MarioKart clone. Also, I think I got the game via my Games With Gold Membership, so it was free minus the membership cost, and free is not bad.

The Bad
It seems like I'm repeating myself, but it plays much like you'd expect a MarioKart clone: it's less frenetic and it just doesn't have the same "spice" to it as the MarioKart series.

The Bottom Line
There isn't really anything truly bad about the game, but there is just nothing about it that really makes it stand out compared to similar games.

The Good
The music is good. The open world design works well for those who like that sort of thing, for better or worse. Beating the game as quick as possible to see Samus unmasked and even in a bikini is a genius way to incentivize multiple playthroughs. The Mother Brain boss fight and escape sequence is very thrilling and was repeated in future games.

The Bad
Very difficult. It's too easy to die because enemies will kill you with their unpredictable moves as you try to traverse though the game. You start with 30 units of energy and it takes forever to fill up your health and missiles. When you continue after dying, you will still have only 30 units of energy regardless of how many energy tanks you've collected.

Unlike in The Legend of Zelda, there's no battery backup to save your progress, only using passwords which is tedious. It's especially bad when the Famicom Disk System version in Japan allowed you to save your progress in the floppy disk. It's too easy to get lost in the game because there's no map and everything looks the same and again unlike The Legend of Zelda, the game wasn't bundled with a map. You have to have the right Nintendo Power magazine to guide you with the included maps (or, you know, look one up online if you don't have it).

You can't have both the wave beam and the ice beam so if you have the wave beam and you encountered the Metroids, you're forced to find the ice beam in order to continue. Controls are a little slippery with making it easy to accidentally getting hit by an enemy or missing a platform which ends up you falling down lower or falling into hazardous lava.

The Bottom Line
I highly recommend you play Metroid: Zero Mission if you don't like dated design choices of the 80s.

The Good
The characters. The selection screens. The meta game. The fun.

The Bad
What is there not to love about this game? Really, tell me.

The Bottom Line
It's a lot of fun if you have a lot of people playing together.

The Good
Lots of levels and outfits

The Bad
Too easy? perhaps for some. But it also have different difficulty levels to select from.

The Bottom Line
If you were a fan of the show or enjoy rhythm and dance games then check this out.

The Good
This looks like a fun game. There does not seem to be any great depth to the plot, - 'Atlantis existed, it was destroyed and now a girl wants her grandfather to help her find it' - that's about it.

The game has two modes of play, a timed mode and a relaxed mode and I tried both. The hidden object puzzles were quite tough until I got used to them, some of the items were very small and the graphics are not pin sharp, but they were do-able and that is what matters.

The Bad
Before Anna can set off looking for Atlantis she has to solve some puzzles in her grandpa's house. One of these involves getting some money and I got to this scene in both relaxed and timed modes. Now in this scene in addition to the objects to be found there are two hot spots one of which triggers a hidden object scene along with a comment about helping Grandad tidy up. I found objects in the room, triggered and played the hidden object scene, was given a score after which the same scene was re-presented.
I have replayed the game to this point four times now and on each attempt I got the same result.
Another niggle is that on each play through my player profile was not saved so I had to restart from the very beginning every time. This may be because the game only saves at certain points and I just had not reached one but it does not encourage me to persist.

The Bottom Line
I got this game in the "Hidden Object Classic Collection Vol. 1" compilation and for some reason or other I could not get very far into it.
I cannot recommend it

The Good
Bee Wary is a very simple action game in which you, playing a bee, try to sting a spider into one of its vulnerable spots before it manages to eat you. You have large freedom of movement, and the challenge of the game is in having to get close to the spider and into the most dangerous zone in order to have a chance at scoring the winning sting.

The speed and animations of the game are impressive. The dramatic capers and quotes of the animals after each round are funny, even though they start to repeat quickly and are being dragged out a bit.

The buzzing of the bee can be played through a speaker by connecting it to the TAPE output. A nice gimmick, but it also gets a bit annoying quickly.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the game itself is rather frustrating. If a sting counts or not seems to largely depend on luck. Even though this is the case for the spider's attacks as well, the probabilities seem to heavily disadvantage the bee, and therefore the player. In some rounds, you unexpectedly get the spider with the first sting, while other times you can be getting dozens of seemingly direct hits at the spider without any effect, only to be eaten in its first counterattack. This made me grow tired of the game after just a few minutes, cute as it is to look at.

The Bottom Line
Extra points for the uncommon theme and excellent graphics of the game. The smoothness of gameplay and animations would have held promise for an exciting arcade action game. If only it were based more on skill, and less on luck.

The Good
Decent story and informative.

The Bad
The game elements aren't very good.

The Bottom Line
The story Attentat tries to tell isn't bad, but I do feel I've seen and read hundreds of books and films that told stories World War II in a better way. The Mini-games are all kind of lame. The "comic book" scenes kind of missed the mark because they all revolved about highly emotion scenes, and would've had a lot more impact if either acted out or written in prose. Attentat is quite unique in its presentation and gameplay which gives it some merit to try it out. It's quick to beat and you'll likely learn some particulars about World War II you didn't know yet.

The Good
This was a fun game for it's era, and balanced the sim aspects pretty well. Controls are based on mouse and keyboard, with keyboard controlling rudder and collective (vertical control), with the mouse controlling pitch and bank. There's a toggle to switch mouse control to the nose gun. Your helo is also equipped with unguided rockets. Enemy AI is decently challenging, and you will find yourself repeating missions due to being shot down.

The Bad
The graphics are very low-poly 3D graphics from before 3D graphics cards came out, and the controls don't even map well to a joystick. The way the mouse swaps from flight controls to gun controls makes dogfighting trickier than it should be.

The Bottom Line
My rating for the game is based mostly on my enjoyment of the game back in the era it was released. It would be difficult to go back compared to modern games.

The Good
A fairly standard hidden object puzzle game with puzzles.

There were a couple of puzzle variations in here that I had not seen before which I liked. The scenes are extra wide and I spent a lot of time scrolling left/right looking for tiny items that a shift in the parallax view may reveal, there was just one scene near the end where this changed to scrolling up and down. I've not seen this for a while and I liked the extra challenge.

The game has a rapidly charging hint system and in addition each scene allegedly has a hidden roll of film which grants a bonus hint, I only managed to find three of these hence the 'allegedly'.

The Bad
My main problem was that it saves at the end of a chapter. I had played through to a word puzzle and was working on it but I needed to take a break, this gave me a choice, quit the game and replay to get back to the puzzle or skip the puzzle and play to the end of the chapter.

There were points when the artwork showed its age and some of the items were a bit hard to make out, on the other hand many items were very well hidden in plain sight.

The game has no difficulty setting which may be a problem for some.

The Bottom Line
I installed the game today, started playing this evening and by midnight I had finished the game and I had submitted screenshots. Probably three to four hours to complete.

The Good
This game is rather unusual in that it is both military operations simulator and a flight sim. In this game you serve as both the commander of a U.S. Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit (MEU), and as a Harrier pilot. The operations simulator has you planning both flight missions and a beach head invasion of East Timor (which has since gained autonomy and renamed itself). The game manual (yes, I still have it), is actually a really interesting read; it goes into the geo-political background of the sim, and the make-up of the MEU and the enemy forces.

The Bad
The AI in the game is very uninteresting. Dog fights don't ever really get close in, mostly just quick passes, circling and trying to get missile lock. Don't expect any Harriers you are not piloting yourself to do well vs. SAMs or enemy aircraft; and you can't plan multi-aircraft missions, so they aren't really wingmen. The operations planning GUI resembles the operations software the Marine Corps was using at the time (probably on DEC Alphas), which means the interface is not intuitive in the modern context (or even for us Mac users when the game was released). Finally, it is almost impossible to land the Harrier, at least not without a full HOTAS setup. Fortunately, the game does give you an autopilot landing feature.

The Bottom Line
I can't really recommend going back and playing this one, unless you already have some nostalgia for it.

The Good
This is a decent, pretty standard hidden object / adventure game with a decent number of puzzles. The music is good and suits the game. I have saved it to my pc but that was mainly to show that it was possible, the four tracks are each only around 100 seconds long.

The puzzles themselves were well done and well explained but there were a few novel ideas here that brought a smile to my face and that's why I have given it three stars.

The English is excellent and the mad doctor's voice acting is well done.

The Bad
Nothing bad really. There were a couple of occasions where I did not know what to do only to realise that I'd missed the notification that a recipe had appeared in the portable laboratory.

Unusually I do not remember the main character's name being mentioned at all during the game.

The Bottom Line
I've played games with better plots, better artwork, and tougher puzzles but, even though this story is a ridiculous bit of fluff that is full of holes, I thought it was a bit of fun.

I bought the game at a car boot this morning for 50p and I played through on the casual setting. I wasn't particularly rushing it and I reckon I spent around seven hours playing it.

The Good
This is a fun world builder game that came out after people started calling world builder's "god games", then took that idea to a whole new level. It has some quirky humor that fits right in with the other non-Star Wars themed LucasArts games at the time. Unlike some other reviewers, I didn't find the game that complex to manage, but I was also playing games like SimCity 2000 and Civilization 2 around the same time period.

The Bad
The different ports of the game varied graphically, with the Macintosh port being far superior, supporting at least 16-bit color, if not 24-bit. Even in 8-bit color mode, the color palette on the Mac version represented the source artwork better than DOS or Windows. As best I can tell, the GoG version of the game is DOS version and suffers a bit for it.

The Bottom Line
Regardless of the graphics, this is a fun game to play, especially if you like other world builders of the period. But, if you can scrounge up an old Mac version of the game and a PowerPC Mac, that's the superior way to play.

The Good
Not a single thing. So bad!

The Bad
Horrible music. Barely any gameplay. No enjoyment at all unlike, not even in an ironic way. Terrible graphics that doesn't closely resemble 16-bit.

The Bottom Line
Much worse than E.T. and Big Rigs.

The Good
The idea seems good, the UI seems alright and the graphics have a charm to them.

The Bad
The gameplay is soo slow, and there's no real explanation to how anything actually works. You're left to just click about on a menu screen hoping to figure it out. Lost interest and uninstalled.

The Bottom Line
Maybe good if you can stick with it and find a suitable tutorial, but not exactly pick up and play.

The Good
Engaging story with rich lore. Beautiful pixel art graphics. Excellent voice acting and soundtrack. Multiple character classes add depth and replayability. Challenging puzzles and rewarding exploration.

The Bad
Classic point-and-click puzzles can be potentially frustrating for some players.

The Bottom Line
This game successfully captures the spirit of Norse mythology, offering players a compelling adventure that is both nostalgic and innovative. Whether you are a veteran of the genre or a newcomer, Heroines Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok is an experience worth undertaking.

The Good
It's army men, so it's a pretty fun franchise. It's a top-down/isometric shooter, which is a really fun concept. It also runs pretty well on modern Linux systems with wine.

The Bad
The graphics and controls are just not refined enough, compared to other isometric style games where you control groups of characters (think Age of Empires), World War feels really clunky. Selecting and de-selecting your squad is fiddly, you can also control where your guys are going with WASD and move the camera with cursor keys. However the biggest gripe is that the graphics make it almost impossible to see the enemy, certainly in the first mission. 3DO seemed to want to use a high-resolution photo-realistic texture pack which is nice, but when you opt for Sand you can't really see the tan soldiers.

The Bottom Line
Not as fun as other Army Men games in the series, would benefit from a complete graphics and controls overhaul to be any level of enjoyable.

The Good
Gameplay lends itself well for a handheld console.

The turn-based stealth mechanics work pretty well and create a very tense game.

The Bad
The game is very short unless you are interested in playing it over and over. That setup isn't very appealing to me. I had the same issue with Into the Breach. I would prefer a longer campaign with more surprises and twists along the way.

On the Switch, the game freezes for a couple seconds at times. Luckily it's a turn-based game, so it doesn't completely break the experience...

The Bottom Line
I enjoyed playing Invisible, Inc. The gameplay works well, although there is way too much focus on moving characters around. Having four characters made the game easier, but not necessarily more fun, because there's just so much more moving around to do. There seemed to be a very big imbalance in abilities/items. Remote detection and remote grabbing credits felt super powerful as did getting more moves after hacking, but pretty much all other powers and abilities I acquired went unused in my single playthrough so far. I liked the deterministic nature of the game, but in the end XCOM caused more excitement because of its chance-based nature.

I might at some point give it another run, maybe I'll see some completely different abilities that give the game a fresh feeling, but at this point it was just a very enjoyable but short romp.

The Good
Transformers! * Lots of visual spectacle. * Long play time for a few credits.

The Bad
Lack of depth. * Brainless and repetitive.

The Bottom Line
I'm not really a fan to begin with of these kind of on-rails shooters, but my oldest child reached the age where he became interested in going to the arcade so we played this together. Mostly he held the trigger and I aimed. He loved it, but it's the first thing of this kind he ever played. For me it felt kind of lame, nothing really changed compared to 90s lightgun shooters except the graphics are slightly more flashy. But since this is a game from 2013 even those fail to impress now (not for the 6 year old obviously). It's all very flashy and there's a lot going on, but the gameplay is rather dull with me just having to point at the UI reticles highlighted on the screen. There's some benefit in predicting where they will be, but it's mostly just quick point and click. We could play quite long for the two credits I inserted.

The Good
The gameplay is good. It's a bit of a cross-between a run-and-gun and a SHMUP, but not so bad to be a bullet-hell. You can fire in all four directions. The music is top-notch for the Gameboy.

The Bad
There's only five levels. No battery back-up to retain tops scores.

The Bottom Line
While there's only five levels, the gameplay and music are enjoyable. The scoreboard and power-ups are retained after beating the final boss, so there's some incentive to see how many times you can cycle through to rack up a top score.

The Good
The title describes the game exactly, no false advertising. I last played this in maybe 1988 at my cousin's house, but I seem to remember it being one of the few games that actually worked with the keypad controller.

The Bad
No frills, no scoring (that I can recall), no graphics, nothing to hold your attention at any age.

The Bottom Line
Skip unless your goal is just to collect the cartridge, or maybe just to quickly test if a keypad controller still works.

The Good
Realistic car simulation...

The Bad
Too many bugs, too hard to control/drive...

The Bottom Line
Too hard, not for me...

The Good
Cotton 2 is a great game for the Sega Saturn and one of the best shooters on this console. It's a beautiful game and I think the difficulty level is well balanced, unlike other games on the console, where the "normal" difficulty is very high, Cotton 2, the normal difficulty is ok and you have the other difficulties for veteran players.

The Bad
It's a short game, so I stopped playing after a week.

The Bottom Line
I think the game is underrated due to the large library of games of this genre on the Saturn.

The Good
What appreciate most are the simple set of controls, and the expressive video cut-scenes that occur after E.T. completes a theme planet.

The Bad
For an adventure game released in the early 2000s, isometric gameplay seems outdated as 3D games were already all the rage. Isometric gameplay can also be confusing to new gamers, though getting used to them shouldn't too long.

Though E.T. can run, some enemies, such as wolverine-like one, are hard to outrun. This can complicate things like if you open a door but only have a few seconds to get to it.

The Bottom Line
When E.T. made his video game debut in an Atari console in the 1980s, that game was maligned because of detection flaws due to tight production schedule. Nearly two decades later, an E.T. game was released for the PS1. Although this P1 game isn't a great game for its system, it is certainly a significant improvement over the character's first game.

The Good
Cutscenes are somewhat charming.

The Bad
The controls are absolutely terrible! It's a glitchy mess with poor hit detection. Terrible sounding music that sounds like it belongs on a Nintendo 64 game. Awful camera that causes deaths that come from enemies away from the screen.

The Bottom Line
This was released in 2001. This is unacceptable for the year and is much inferior to the PC version.

The Good
One of the best Colonization games of all time!

The Bad
Still quite buggy; came back recently to try version 1.0 for a bit; can't wait for version 2.0; what, 5 years maybe?

The Bottom Line
I keep coming back when I tire of playing other games

The Good
Villa Gorilla have created a seemingly unworkable blend of genres and turned it into a fantastic, chill experience with awesome "water-painty" art style and relaxing OST. It excels in almost everything it does, campaign is short but engaging. It's really the side quests that did it for me - there isn't many of them mind you, but the characters you meet are worth playing for just a little longer. The puzzle are never very hard, but are well thought-out and just enjoyable to solve in general.

The Bad
Lack of jump button felt counter-intuitive for me at first but after an hour or so, you realise that the flippers is all you need really, to enjoy the traversal. The map could be a little bit more detailed, a tad more readable - it's not too bad, but makes backtracking a chore sometimes.

The Bottom Line
Completed it in about 11 hours, that's full 100% - and I was taking my time with the game. All in all - it is a great "pinballoidvania", a blend of genres that should never work together, yet here they do. It's amazing that no one else had thought of a similar game since 2018.

The Good
The game contains the first 3 titles in the Phoenix Wright series originally released for the Game Boy Advance, but is more well-known as Nintendo DS titles because that's when the titles were released outside Japan. That's a lot of content that will take awhile to complete. There are a lot of interesting characters that make the games more engaging to play. You would also think that the music wouldn't be anything special, but it turns out that the 3 soundtracks are worth listening to outside of playing the game. All of this adds up to being a lawyer defending his client very fun and not boring or even insidious like in real life with lawyers defending criminals like OJ Simpson. There's actually a case where Phoenix has to defend someone who did commit a crime but blackmails him due to putting his friend Maya's life on the line which makes it tense, and makes Phoenix Wright a better character compared to lawyers in real life.

The Bad
There are times when you present evidence in court due to logic reasoning but the game will say that the evidence doesn't match with the contradiction. It won't be until later when you can correctly present evidence because the game says so. Some cases such as the last one in the first game aren't well made due to ridiculous accusations against the defendant and overall taking a long time to complete which makes you want the case be over with. Due to being a visual novel, there's a lot of text to go through and no action, so people that have poor reading comprehension skills like Michael Zimnicki won't like this game. The localization is worth criticizing due to the games taking place in Japan, but for whatever reason the English localization decided that the setting is Los Angeles, which becomes problematic especially in later entries because cases involve specific things in Japanese culture.

The Bottom Line
Get this game and fall in love with this series.

The Good
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms was released early-to-mid summer of 1999, before Tiberian Sun and Age of Empires 2, and more than a year since StarCraft, being one of major mainstream real-time strategies of those times. Yet you will not find this game in "top best rts of the past" lists, nor will you find reviews from major sources, which would dare to call it something above "good" and you won't even find it among answers to "best obscure rts worth playing?" question. Amounts of deranged nonsense, lies and obscurity surrounding this game are ridiculous. I will try to counter this.

Aesthetic value of games is often ignored, which greatly devalues many titles. Kingdoms stands out in this area, having truly beautiful graphics (this ranges from little details and special effects to overall look of the game, including loading screen, interface, mini-videos (just animated race emblems) and pictures during narrative sequences), and wonderful instrumental music by Jeremy Soule (Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege 2, Oblivion, Skyrim and other). Sound effects and voiceover are nice too. Weapon-hits-object sounds actually depend on type of target - flesh, stone, wood, which is unusual. Game's plot is presented as war chronicle themed narrative, and leaves very good impression too.

Kingdoms has proper simulation of 3D space (rules of this space apply to everything - no cheating), which allows many interesting things, for example: melee attack can miss if target suddenly moves away, catapult can accidently hit flying unit, walls block all projectiles, but defensive towers can easily shoot above walls (because of height difference) and winged units never hang in one place without purpose, instead flying somewhere or landing if idle. Melee units can attack on the move, and many can hit targets at different ranges (if i am not wrong) and possibly in a wide arc (this depends on weapon and attack animation randomly chosen for current strike).

Maps aren't small and can have cities, villages, forests, lakes, ocean and other, often including lots of "unnecessary" space. All settlements are inhabited by npcs and cattle, and wilderness by various animals. As a result maps feel like proper parts of imaginary world, instead of stupid cage for a player with pre-determined scenario of what will happen and how (excellent example of such approach is Wings of Liberty). Highly detailed pre-rendered 3D landscapes and overall nice and detailed graphics in combination with proper 3D physics create interesting feel of "being there", which isn't possible in much more abstract 2D rts (and interestingly most of 3D rts too). Of course to achieve this you need to play in 640x480 resolution, as increasing it will simply make everything smaller, and very distant.

Kingdoms has amazing quantity of unit types, many with interesting and often very powerful special abilities (permanent petrifying, paralysis, mind control (includes mass-control variant) or resurrection of any units to player's side (which means you can use enemy race), waterwalking, invisibility, raising dead as ghouls, various area of effect damage spells and more). Studio like Blizzard would deem most of units "unnecessary" and abilities "too powerful", but luckily Cavedog had different views, creating interesting and varied gameplay as a result, instead of boring multiplayer-oriented balance. Some of interesting units and buildings are bomber-dirigibles, floating (on water!) towers and trebuchet, game includes early guns and cannons too. Proper naval gameplay is present (for example building land army on a small island to attack continent), as well as possibility of full-scale air attacks (such possibilities depend on race).

Players with imagination are rewarded with interesting sandbox-style gameplay, considering all possibilities available. Resources are infinite, everything (even buildings) slowly regenerates hit points, and units (and defenses!) gain levels (within single mission). AI is often allowed to develop itself (it likes to build multitudes of towers in some missions, which makes enemy base much more fun to attack - you need to give AI enough time to achieve this, and not to hurt its economy, as it may never rebuild it), and is even able to develop your race's buildings and units - if it mind-controls your builder). Obviously if you rush to "complete" the game ASAP, you will miss all this, as many reviewers did.

Controls are very advanced (you will have to check game's readme file to learn all available hotkeys), clearly surpassed only by much newer Supreme Commander. Interesting and fun (and i suspect is largely unknown) unique possibility is to assign multiple factories to control group (for convenience - this way you can select all produced units by selecting this control group), and create "patrol" path (with multiple patrol nodes) leading to enemy base and covering it fully, and then order infinite unit production (of cheap units, zombies work best) - this will produce infinite automatic attack on enemy base, which can be very entertaining. Pure "attack move" function is missing, but is easily replaced with "patrol" function combined with aggressive unit behaviour. You can even drag-select an area to be cleared by a builder, and pressing "tab" will expand mini-map to fullscreen mode, allowing easy targeting of enemy units by "radar" (useful for trebuchet for example). Game speed has many levels, and can be slowed down to a level of "slo-mo", if you so desire. One review here says that mouse control is single click, but this is wrong, as it is possible to enable starcraft-style right click move/action.

The Bad
Game has some minor problems, but these are insignificant (for campaign mode at least). Units sometimes may go to "sleep" (if defensive unit behaviour is selected), forgetting to shoot enemies in range, but this is easily countered by refreshing unit's behaviour. In some (typically rare) cases pathfinding does not work well, but this can be circumvented by assigning multiple path nodes. Unusual structure of campaign sometimes disallows you to properly (with building bases and units) play certain races at certain campaign stages, but overall there are more than enough good missions, so this is not a problem. What is really sad is that AI does not want to create armies in "skirmish" mode, instead sending lone units to wander the map, but for "campaign" mode AI does work properly. Some missions are a bit strange - too easy or short, but this does not affect better parts of campaign in any way. Multiplayer never was the strongest part of this game, but this hardly matters nowadays.

The Bottom Line
What do we have overall? Excellent (mostly) quality, excellent and somewhat unusual gameplay (and with many interesting possibilities too), exceptional aesthetic value. I think that combination of wonderful music and graphics makes this game absolutely untouchable by most other games, as gameplay alone can never give such impressions. For that reason this game stays among the very best for me. But even for people who do not care about music or graphics, Kingdoms is one of the few great rts games of the nineties (and early 2000s), one of those elite games of the past, and it still has great gameplay.

In its time, lack of VIP-status "can write only good" for this game (hey, you are not C&C and not xCraft and not AoE - you are out of luck then!) and general stupidity of many reviewers (which disallowed them to see anything truly worthy in this game, and allowed to see "problems" which never existed), has led to Kingdoms being marked as some generic "ok game", not worthy of any major attention. But in reality it is truly wonderful game (a little miracle, really), which never got recognition it deserved - as it never had something obviously amazing for its time to attract people, and in addition was a bit "strange". If you have a good taste and some imagination, there's a very good chance of suddenly discovering one of the best rts (and maybe even games) in Total Annihilation:Kingdoms - if you give it a chance.

p.s. Kingdoms isn't really difficult or anything like that, because it was aimed at the masses, just like Tiberian Sun, Age of Empires 2 and other hits of those times, so you shouldn't be scared to try it. Add-on for the game - "Iron Plague", is mostly excellent too, and has many very good (especially naval) missions.

Some useful info (as it is very easy to not know this): - Choosing (by separate exe file) 3D-accelerated rendering mode (Direct3D or 3Dfx Glide) will make some effects look better and add some new. - Patched game version decreases visual size of dirigible, which is obviously wrong. Version 1.0 is fine (if it works for you).

The Good
Unique gameplay that only involves the stylus. Great soundtrack. Creative and humorous minigames.

The Bad
A lot of the songs are love songs which may turn off some people. Trying to get a medal by scoring perfectly is cumbersome: the game tells you when you can get an opportunity to get a perfect medal randomly. Once that happens, you only have 3 tries and if you blow it those 3 times, then you lose your chance and have to wait for the game to give you the opportunity again to get a medal.

The Bottom Line
More people should play this game and the sequels. A very creative series from the same people that made the Warioware games.

The Good
Solid gameplay, enjoyable quirks, decent graphics

The Bad
Too easy. Would be more replay-able if the difficulty increased more.

The Bottom Line
Briefly enjoyable retro game that needs the difficulty level turned up.

Playing against the computer was only challenging the first couple of games, with each subsequent increase in level Only getting mildly harder.

There were some fun bits, like using your blockers while trying to find a running hole or some clear air to pass through. Eventually, though, this just turned into a game of cat and mouse with the computer rather than having any need of nuanced strategy.

The Good
The best I can say about this game is that I bought a mint copy very cheaply.

The Bad
I had problems installing the FOCUS Essentials release of this game, Windows 10 flat out refused to run the installation process. I tried running as administrator, tweaking the properties and my usual tricks and nothing worked. Eventually I created an .iso file and using this I was able to install the game on the virtual Windows XP machine I used for playing old games. However even after it had been installed it still would not run.
My disc was in mint condition, my virus checker scanned it and said it was fine, I suspect the game tries to access some protected Windows settings.

The Bottom Line
I struggled with this game and I lost. A solution may have been possible if I had been willing to delve into Windows settings and tweak/relax something but, for me, no game is worth doing that.

As a result of my issues I cannot recommend this game.

The Good
If you like (pina coladas) - Ouija boards, fortune cookies, and taking surveys - this gives you a number of paragraphs of "prediction" about your personality. It is surprisingly accurate and reads like REAL analysis.

The Bad
You are supposed to answer what you THINK the other person would say - but, frankly, why wouldn't you just answer about yourself (ie: this is a bit of a twist).

The Bottom Line
What the heck! Answer the questions and have a laugh. You might be like me and still have the 1987 results in 2024!

The Good
Well thought out trading game like a cut down version of "Elite" on a ZX81. The flying sequence is basically Lunar Lander but it really shines when the camera view switches to landing mode - each trade port is lovingly crafted with the ZX81 character set. You'll want to visit them all to appreciate them all.

The Bad
The Lunar lander flying part is ludicrously hard - I bet that difficulty killed the player's interest in the rest of the game.

The Bottom Line
I think Crystal had gotten the idea from "Elite" on the BBC micro and tried a similar idea set on a single planet. The player would have to pilot his "lander" over the landscape to various trading posts and mining instalations to conduct business. This was easier said than done as it was VERY hard to land at destination without (A) crashing or (B) landing so hard that your ship was effectively wrecked. The graphics weren't hi res but they were lovingly crafted and if it wasn't for the difficulty curve in piloting the ship, it would be a pretty compelling game...

The Good
Some of the bells make sounds when you touch them. It's a competent platformer for 1983.

The Bad
Quasimodo has the strangest walking animation I've ever seen. The game is very strict on your jumps being precise when trying to get on a rope and jump over the guards with lances. There are sections where arrows and fireballs are shot at the left side of the screen just before Quasimodo gets hit which makes it almost impossible to dodge right away.

The Bottom Line
I'm probably spoiled by playing much better platformers released after this game, so I can understand why people have fond memories of playing this when it came out.

The Good
has an interesting dinamic

The Bad
its repetitive and it dosent have a lot of variants of weapons

The Bottom Line
a good game, I have good memories playing this

The Good
The game is in a similar vein as Limbo and Inside. The innovating aspect is how the player must keep their vehicle running. This isn't very hard to do, but does make the game feel unique. You slowly build a bond with the hunk of metal which is a great feat for a game to achieve.

The Bad
Not necessarily bad as the puzzles are nice, but 90% of them are quite simple and straight forward, only near the end of the game did they require a bit more experimentation to figure out.

The Bottom Line
A nice and generally relaxing road trip with some puzzles and world building in between.

The Good
- Lots of AI vs AI battles for you to wait out or join in - Physics puzzles are limited to stacking boxes, no annoying see-saw puzzles a la Half-Life 2 - No annoying burrowing or tiny flying swarm enemies - No annoying invisible radiation damage areas - No annoying kissing of player butt by NPCs - Good pacing, game is not in love with its own dialogue or level design to force impatient players into torturous waiting - The single best FPS weapon system to counter inventory management and ammo preservation syndrome: too few slots and too much variation, so at some point you give in and just start using what you get left and right

The Bad
- In particular the friendly NPC lowpoly 3D models look low-effort, no mouth animations - Dialog panel sometimes gets stuck (but it doesn't break the game) - [spoiler]You shoot dogs[/spoiler]

The Bottom Line
Do you love padded out FPS levels with unnecessary enemy waves to expand playtime? Then ADACA might not be for you. Else, you might appreciate the meaning of ADACA: (A) Attention (D) Disorder people will (A) Absolutely (C) Cherish this (A) Game.

The Good
Everything. This game is very addictive.

The Bad
This game needs way more maps. Disappointing how quick the game ends.

The Bottom Line
This game is too good to have a lil bit of maps.

The Good
Music is nice. A Dragon Ball RPG is a cool idea as you see Goku get stronger as the game goes on just like in the anime.

The Bad
Goku starts off very weak. He will die from crabs, dinosaurs, and wolves in the first area of the game which makes him look like a wimp in comparison to the anime. Stupid quests such as finding a pterodactyl's egg and finding a cat. Punching is useless because it leaves you completely defenseless. King Kai teaches Goku the kamehameha instead of the kaioken and the spirit bomb. Omits a lot of the Saiyan and Namek sagas due to only focusing on Goku. The kamehameha has poor hit detection. All bosses are the same. They will charge an energy blast or try to punch you. Ugly portraits of characters in dialogue boxes.

The Bottom Line
Play this game to see how the sequels are vastly superior to this game.

The Good
Clean platform game, with smooth movements and quite the weak gravity to help you to measure your jumps. The music is excelent, as usual for a Sunsoft game. Batsy with a gun... he he he

The Bad
Short and easy, Batman doesn't feel like himself. Shooting enemies doesn't hit the spot, if you know what i mean.

The Bottom Line
Worth a trying. Maybe not the best Batman game, but neither the worst.

The Good
Nothing good really.

The Bad
The gameplay is very repetitive. Jaws takes a million harpoons to defeat. Not a lot of enemy variety. Sometimes when you want to collect conch shells, you won't trigger the action stage, and when you just want to reach for one of the ports, you will trigger the action stage very often!

The Bottom Line
If you really want to play this game, make sure you use a turbo controller or enable turbo if you're playing on a emulator.

The Good
I’ve been playing this game on and off for eight months now. I started playing out of curiosity just to see how much of a single player game this MMO game offers and how far I can get without buying anything.

Well, as I say, I am eight months in and I am still playing so it definitely is possible to play this game in single player mode. Other players are around and I challenge them, or rather their squad of characters, in the game's 'Adventure Mode' and in leagues but I do not have to actually interact with anyone. I can befriend other players and friends can help each other I can exchange gifts with these friends and, I believe, messages but that is not what I set out to do so I have ignored that element of the game. There are also leagues to join but I have ignored that side of the game too.

So what is there in the game? Well there is a story, it is not just one battle after another. The players first character is Miya and a large part of the story is about her development. I play as a hunter, a sort of squad leader, and she is/was one of the first Angels who has been resurrected and is still learning to become ‘human’. We are fighting for the good guys, (but are they really the good guys), against the rebels (who may or may not be the bad guys) and then there’s the mysterious Eastern Alliance faction, the mysterious Old Gods and so-on - all his unfolds in 'Adventure Mode'.

For some reason Miya and I share a cabin on a space ship so on one level there is a social interaction side to the game where I earn points and buy furniture and equipment for our quarters. This is one way to level Miya up which unlocks events and conversations as I go.
The loot I win in battles can be spend them on levelling Miya up and increasing her, and the other Angels, combat strength.
Finally in the Adventure mode there is the main story and sometimes a battle there will earn a memory fragment that will help Miya remember who/what she is/was/will be – I know that is a bit vague but I am still working through this and even if I knew more it would be a game spoiler.

There is no nudity in the game. There are lots and lots of costumes some of which are quite skimpy so there’s some side boob and/or some buttock cheek showing but that’s it.

The game resets every so often, I think it is every month, and as a result progress in the leagues and tables is lost and has to be earned again. It is worth taking part in the leagues because not only are there rewards for winning matches but there are daily rewards for players depending on rank, anyone in the top thousand gets something with the rewards increasing the higher ranked you are.

Add this to daily and weekly goals, assorted rankings that get reset and which have to be earned all over again, plus resource management and you get a game where lots of micro decisions need to be made each day. Then there are the ‘Events’ which happen every couple of weeks. Mostly they seem to be geared to encourage players to spend cash and get special power ups and exclusive costumes but there generally seems to be something there for tightwads like me.

The Bad
The graphics are not as smooth as I’d like and sometimes they are a little glitchy, for example when I pick up the latest free costume and pose Miya, just so that I can add the DLC to the database you understand, occasionally her long hair disappears inside her body and I can see that some of her curvy bits are made up of short straight lines. Minor stuff because really I’m not that all interested in posing her in different costumes, the stock costumes look pretty good to me.

I have hit the point where the game is becoming a quite grindy. I am losing battles in the game’s 'Adventure Mode' to players who are at a lower XP level but have more developed characters, I'm guessing they probably bought a package. In order to progress I need to do stuff in the leagues and arenas to get the resources I need to level up my squad and make them stronger. What this means is that progression in the story side of the game has all but stopped. This is to be expected in this sort of game and I am OK with it but it is frustrating, like watching a serial on TV and finding that the next episode has been delayed until the autumn because the channel wants to show sport all summer instead.

The Bottom Line
Progress
I'm putting this bit in to show that it is possible to make, what I think, is significant progress, without shelling out loads of cash. There are probably better squad formation tactics, cleverer ways to play the game and manage resources than I know so anyone willing to put in the time and effort could probably do much better.

• In terms of XP I have reached level one hundred and twelve.
• My game has fifty six characters and I have unlocked fifty four of them, there may be other special characters that can be bought but I have just two left to get.
• I have levelled Miya up to level one hundred and forty nine and my highest level character is at level one hundred and sixty.
• In Adventure mode I have reached level 'Oriental Planet No. 1: Level 20' and in the 'Endless Trial' mode I have reached level twenty one.

Summary

• This can be played as a single player game
• Spending money means you get stuff faster but so far it has not been necessary
• There is a lot to do
• There is a story but it will take a long time to unfold
• Daily and weekly challenges
• Regular events
• Some of the load and home screen images may use tight and/or skimpy costumes but there is no nudity.

• This is not a game that grabbed me and held my attention and it is not one of those games that I look forward to playing as soon as I wake up yet I keep coming back to it.

• Recommended

The Good
The graphics are polished and the platforming is smooth. The E.M.M.I. bring for some interesting changes in pace and there's an abundance of bosses to fight.

The Bad
The discrepancy in difficulty between the boss fights and rest of the gameplay is rather jarring. During exploration and platforming the game doesn't provide much challenge, but during boss fights the game can be hard as nails.

I felt the game was a bit too linear. Perhaps there's way to break sequences as is common in these types of games, but there were a bit too many instances of closed doors to guide me some specific path, also at times where I wished to explore.

The Bottom Line
A very solid entry in the series, with some frustratingly difficult parts.

The Good
I'm more of fan of the 2D Mario platform games than the 3D games, but I still loved this one. There's a ton of content and lots of variety. My kids love watching me play.

The Bad
After defeating Bowser my goal became collecting all the Power Moons. There are 880 of them and I got close. But at some point there's only moons left which are frustratingly hard to get. Looks like I'll not 100% complete this game, missing out on the last 15 or so, which is a shame. Getting these last moons also removed any joy my kids had watching me play which was the biggest bummer. I wasn't expecting this type of challenge from a Mario game.

The Bottom Line
Still, a fantastic game.

The Good
Everything being themed around dice works really well. The visuals are nice and bring back memories late 90s and 2000s 3D platform games like Psychonauts, Rayman 2/3 and Alice. Unfortunately on the Switch the framerate isn't very high at points and there are graphical glitches during loading moments (you see stuff get unloaded) which is a bit jarring.

The Bad
Near the end of Two-Town, I lost interest in the game. While I would've liked exploring the other towns' concepts there were just too many things that didn't sit well with me.

The intro dragged on way too long. There's a ton of exposition before you finally get a set of cards and can start enjoying the game mechanics.

Or well, enjoy? My biggest gripe with the game is that the combat just wasn't very fun. The idea with the cards isn't that bad, but so far the deck building aspect was underwhelming and there was a lack of strategy in the form of synergies. The gathering of crystals was a tedious chore during combat. The constant spawning of additional enemies just dragged it out longer than it needed to be.

The exploration part was more fun, but underwhelming compared to something like Psychonauts 2 where there are a lot more cool things to find and the avatar has a lot more moves.

The Bottom Line
Lost in Random isn't a bad game, it just fails to impress. The parts where it innovates unfortunately don't really work out in its favour. If the combat wasn't as drawn-out as it was I might've played further, because I was definitely interested in seeing the other towns and major characters.

The Good
This does break away from the Hidden Object mold. Instead of being purely a linear adventure game, it has RPG mechanics, and is somewhat open-ended.

The Bad
Unfortunately, those RPG mechanics are in service to some nasty free-to-play mechanics, even in the commercial Windows release. (You get a limited amount of fake cash to spend in the cash shop, but the mechanics remain.) Leveling up unlocks additional rooms, but the amount of experience gained means that you'll be replaying the same rooms over and over, and playing a room costs energy. (This regenerates over time, or you can buy items in the cash shop to increase it.) I had a quest to acquire an object, and it had a 7% drop rate from a single room. I got lucky and "only" had to replay the room five times to get it. Even after you unlock everything, there's only 6 rooms, and you'd have to replay each one dozens of times to reach the ending.

The game's treatment of the mentally ill is exactly as bad as you can guess, by the way. This should be obvious, so I won't focus on it, but it's worth pointing out.

The Bottom Line
There are some interesting mechanics in here, and I'd actually recommend anyone developing a Hidden Object game play it for an hour to pick up ideas. That doesn't make it good.

The Good
Literally nothing.

The Bad
Everything. Especially the title screen noise.

The Bottom Line
So bad it makes the Genesis Dark Castle port look like Sonic CD.

The Good
... The rendition of Toccata and Fugue in D minor is good, I guess? But still, you'll probably be sick of it the 30th time it plays.

The Bad
Literally everything else. The controls suck ass, the rotating rock throws, getting dizzy/fainting after falling from 5 pixels, and those goddamn annoying bat sounds. And here's a fun fact: the items to defeat the Black Knight are USELESS. You just need to push a couple levers and THAT'S IT! THERE ARE SPEEDRUNS OF THIS GAME THAT ARE UNDER 3 MINUTES. I'm not making this up.

The Bottom Line
Yes, the same EA that milked FIFA annually published this waste of plastic. The original Macintosh game is good, but if you see the Genesis version, just go ahead and burn it. Don't get me started on the CD-I version too...

The Good
I can legitimately list at least hundreds of games worse than this. Worse games were made BEFORE this (Pac-Man [the atari port] and Custer's Revenge). and WAY WORSE after (Fire Fly, 1983; Sonic Jam on Game.com, 1997; Phoenix Games, 2000's; Takeshi's Challenge, 1986, to name a few)... To be honest... for an Atari game thats made mostly by one guy in 5 weeks, it's kinda good.

The Bad
Even though it's still bad, as I said, a list of games worse than ET would take an hour printing HALF of it.

The Bottom Line
Is ET the worst video game ever? Absolutely not. Never was and NEVER WILL BE.

The Good
the music overall; from the start-screen music to the level-up music. even that rock music that plays on the 3rd stage/round (scylla and charybdis by however!) - the overall concept and idea of the game. quite interesting. it IS called scent wars, after all. - the use of xbox 360 avatars.

The Bad
not enough stages/rounds. voice lines are a bit... eh. could use better theming/backgrounds/stages.

The Bottom Line
probably a bit of bias since i grew up with this game but i still like it overall

The Good
Interesting premise with climbing up mountains.

The Bad
The jumping controls suck! It doesn't remotely feel like jumping in Super Mario Bros. You can easily fall through the blocks that you want to land on top of which makes the game much more unforgiving. Music during stages is repetitive.

The Bottom Line
I think there's a good reason why the Ice Climbers will be stuck in Super Smash Bros. games as playable characters and not star in their own games anymore.

The Good
Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirl

The Bad
Score sux Cant make 100% Most u can make is a 95%

The Bottom Line
:((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

The Good
Excellent gameplay with bright colours and wonderful visuals. The essence of the gameplay was unique for a multiplayer capture the flag. The ability to make the princess (flag) slow you a carrier down more through cake. The many classes and their dual abilities being able to switch between them at a button press made gameplay quite fun. with the Worker class it assists in strategy a bit more as a well placed bomb can be quite devastating. The gameplay bred a tournament scene even.

The Bad
The DLC it had changed the dynamic a bit much. while the classes were fun even with the base classes still played, the dynamic changed so much that strategies started to gravitate primarily toward it. also while workers are useful to use bombs, it's a double edged sword. while workers themselves are severely underpowered and the Big bomb you get from upgrading workers can be used effectively against you as the position of the workers shop was near the front gate.

The Bottom Line
A fun game all around with some minor tweaks it could be legendary but for now. If you got to play it, I hope you have good memories as much as I have.

The Good
If you see paying $50 back when it was new with the actual game being $10 and the other $40 for a Wii Remote, then it's a good value. Tanks! is really fun and is the only one that doesn't feel like a tech demo. It does it job well on showing what the Wii Remote can do in games to people new to the Wii like with Wii Sports.

The Bad
If you see paying $50 back when it was new with the game itself costing $50 with a bonus Wii Remote included, then you would be better off buying a Wii Remote on its own as there isn't nearly enough content to justify the price. Everything the game has to offer can be seen after 1 hour of playing. Some games are very shallow such as Find Mii, Pose Mii, Table Tennis, and Billiards. The pointer controls for Laser Hockey are very sensitive and very easily able to lose connection of your paddle if you accidentally point away from the tv. No customizable options for any of the mini games and not a lot of variety on all of the minigames except for Tanks!

The Bottom Line
Rather than rush the game for the Wii's launch in Japan and Europe, more time should have been used to add more games and extra content for the existing games. Better yet, it should have been bundled with the Wii along with Wii Sports, 2 Wii Remotes, and 2 Nunchuks.

The Good
Carl-Henrik managed to save the spirit of the original M.U.L.E. quite well while adding his unique own ideas to the gameplay. All well executed with great graphics, music and sound effects.

The Bad
Game balance is not quite as good as with the original M.U.L.E.; when a player falls back early, this is usually "it" and the player can't recover

The Bottom Line
A "must-play" for M.U.L.E. fans.

The Good
It's in the headline. First and foremost, the game is about puzzles and they are great, well-designed, well-thought.

You have 2-characters which have to cooperate to finish levels. You switch between characters and carefully choose what your next step will be. You can easily end-up in dead-end (so you have to restart level). Game is hard, but not impossible and finishing tougher levels is rewarding. The game gradualy adds new puzzle elements in later levels. Switches, elevators, teleports, different type of blocks (falling, exploding, non-movable, etc..)

Graphics is nice pixel art, but as I noted, release is 1996, so this is definitely not state of the art graphics given year of release, but this is not hurting the game at all as gameplay and puzzles are game's main point.

The Bad
Sound is almost non-existent. Intro animation / story is there just to have some story / intro, nothing to write home about. And game is loooong and hard.

The Bottom Line
Great puzzle game, and I dare to say, it's casual game. This is not type of game, you want to play from start to finish. More likely, you finish some levels, then you will take break from it after few days. Then return back and finish another set of levels. I guess only puzzle game enthusiast will finish whole game (in my playthrough some years ago I was able to reach around level 50, I was still far from the end of the game). AFAIK, it's for free now, running it in Dosbox should be cakewalk, so all puzzle lovers have great option in this game.

The Good
The funny one-liners that's pretty much it.

The Bad
Everything else such as the guns and how limited they have in the game, gameplay, crappy story (if you want to call it a story).

The Bottom Line
Please don't buy this game, even if it's cheap don't get it I beg you!!!!

The Good
You can choose among the animatronics and customize them according to their difficulty, some being more difficult than others.

The Bad
Missing animatronics such as Funtime Freddy, Funtime Foxy, among others.

The Bottom Line
I don't have a topic to to speak about at this point

The Good
A much larger roster of characters and stages. Graphics are vastly improved from the N64 game. Great remixes of classic Nintendo music.

The Bad
Too many clone characters. It takes a while to unlock all the characters.

The Bottom Line
It's amazing that this game turned out the way it did with only 13 months of development. It also created a toxic community of competitive fighting players who don't like people playing Super Smash Bros. games for fun.

The Good
This is a simple game and sometimes, when you just want to kill something, a simple game is all you need. The controls are simple, the sound of the gun firing is very satisfying and if you don't get the power-ups it gets quite challenging.

One feature I liked was the way the power-ups come at you amid the stream of rocks and mines. If you just hold down the mouse key and blast away, as I did, you're likely to hit them and this causes them to spin away into space where they are lost. That's very, very frustrating but in a good way.

The Bad
The game is limited. It consists of simply blasting away to reach the target score and then do it again, and again, and again. There are just four objects - space mines, asteroids, shield power-ups and weapons power-ups - and throughout the game the mines & rocks always score 100 points and after a while it gets to be repetitive.

I also found that after capturing a few weapons upgrades I was unbeatable. The rate of fire meant that objects were destroyed as soon as they spawned, so all I had to do was hold down the mouse key and wait until I could proceed to the next level. I played to level 33, 108000 points needed for completion, to see if the game changed or had any kind of an end point - neither happened. While the game play never changed, the objects spawned much faster and closer, to the point where they were on me milliseconds after starting the level, so without power-ups they were unplayable while with power-ups there was no challenge.

The game has a leader board and it was only released nine days ago, but already it is stuffed with impossibly high scores - keeping at least one local high score would have been appreciated.

The Bottom Line
A bit of fun and in the early stages it can be a challenge, especially without the weapons power-ups. Not a long term keeper though.

The Good
The edgier tone fits well with this game. Nice variety of captains with special items and sidekicks with their own unique special shots. They also have amusing animations. Plenty of stadiums to play in. It wouldn't be a Mario sports game without items which make the game more fun.

The Bad
Online play is very laggy and had moments where connections were dropped. The CPU loves to use Waluigi and Dry Bones teleport ability to use past your Kritter goalie to score goals which is cheap. In the harder difficulty the CPU uses their mega strike with the highest amount of shots and fastest speed frequently which is unfair.

The Bottom Line
A great Mario sports game. Way better than the later Battle League for the Switch.

The Good
First impression for me was that, wow, this adventure is quite sophisticated. Seems like it's ahead of its time. You can freely switch between protagonists, you must take care of your financial resources when travelling to not end up in dead-end. But it's not overly-difficult, puzzles are hard but not insane, all of them have some rationale. Then I realized, no, it's not ahead of its time, it's that just adventures later became more flat (for the sake of targeting broader audience).

This difficulty is also main good point for me. The game is more deeper and more sophisticated than later adventure hits. To the point it's refreshing. And it's not frustrating (like e.g. KQ3) with repetitiveness. Really good adventure cocktail. It's worth to play, even if you end-up looking to walkthrough here and there as there are not much similar adventure experiences.

The Bad
Really not much, can't think of anything worth mentioning. Maybe pyramid mazes were bit repetitive but it was still ok. Compared to all adventures released prior to this game (90% were Sierra), this is clean winner for me. Only tiny tiny bad point is that yes, I ended up also looking to walkthrough at few points in the game (and I consider myself quite seasoned adventure player). Difficulty was quite high, but it was standard in those times, and I reckon, game is worth playing still, even with occasional peek to walkthrough.

The Bottom Line
Very important game in its genre. GK/DOTT level of importance. If there's some adventure player who not played it yet, I recommend it. It's easy to purchase and run it out of the box, there's also FM Towns version (with better gfx and sounds) of the game on one great game distribution platform ( which I'm not going to name ;) ). Go and get it.

The Good
At first, I really enjoyed this game. The first few puzzles aren't too hard, new blocks are introduced gradually and made the puzzles even more interesting. Loved the fact that the game allows for horribly inefficient solutions (no limits on the number of pieces you can use), and I even enjoyed making my solutions more efficient. And to top it off, there is a bit of a story going on, which isn't too convoluted, but it is well told and made me curious about where this whole thing was going.

So I finished the "Overlord Campaign", and I was ready to finish the game and give it a great score...

The Bad
But I am not sure I can consider the game done like that, because there is a whole second campaign... and somehow things went downhill there. Problem is, the puzzles start to get too complicated; not just harder, but a lot more... finnicky. I got to a point where I feel I could solve all the puzzles, but they would just require a lot of time and a lot of work, and I just lost the patience for that; I do not want to work, I want to play!

So, unsure if I should consider the game done (for the first campaing was finished) or abandoned... But I guess I will turn my attention to other games in my backlog.

The Bottom Line
Score... 81/100 for the first half (it was really interesting!); 62/100 if you have to finish both campaigns.

The Good
Graphics: People were hating it, but to me this style is a truthful evolution from the pixelgraphics design. Small legs, big head- very cute.

Soundtrack is a 11 out of 10- Michael Land is a genius and each time just gets better.

Voiceacting is perfect.

The Bad
The storyline. Right from the beginning, you know where it will end. Like everything is dying. Mele Island is empty, the Scumm Bar burns down. Herman Toothrot had a small but stupid cameo. Ron Gilbert is for sure an old grumpy gamer. You can feel how much frustration he put into killing this franchise- mainly because he is OLD! And yeah, even in the credits, he mentions that. Yes, we all know you are old now and young back then- but let me tell this: Nobody cares! Nobody cares that you have a good wife and family. I mean, I'm indeed happy for you, but nobody cares when you're making a game. A fictional story. My idea for your next game: Put in the final stage a huge sign that says that everything is just bullshit and imagination; because one day we all die, the world is horrible and that you hate everything. -THE END-

The Bottom Line
Don't pay more than 20 bucks for a computergame. Whish I listened to that advice and just got it on sale or maybe free on XBOX live or crap.

Now serious. As a game itself, for modern times, it's just good enough. New gamers will love it but standards are low for the current generation, anyways where people are overwhelmed or traumatized by "walking simulators".

RIP Guybrush

The Good
For a fourteen year old game it still loads and plays well. There is good voice acting and the game has a variety of puzzles.

The game uses three or four variations on the hidden object theme and in some of these the items to be found are hidden behind something else so, for example, I may have had to move a box to find an earring underneath. I did not have to combine any items - well at least not so far.

There is a hint function for that last elusive hidden object and by collecting gold medallions as I played the game I had the option to skip the puzzles that did not use hidden objects - five medals are needed to skip one puzzle so use them wisely.

The Bad
Hidden object games work best when their artwork is clear and that's where I had a problem with this game. In some puzzles the items were tiny and I did not complete the task in the allotted time - that's tough but I can accept that and I got there eventually. What I found unacceptable was that in one variation of the hidden object puzzle where I had to find hidden items based on a small image at the bottom of the screen these thumbnails were so faint that I had to close the curtains and play in a darkened room just to be able to see them. I know these eyes are not what they used to be but I have never had to do that before.

The Bottom Line
This game does not do anything groundbreaking but it is pretty decent and still plays well.

The Good
The game adequately shows convincing 3D on 16-bit hardware. The attack helicopter levels are fun and actually resemble a game.

The Bad
The game itself is really boring with objectives ranging from flying through rings and landing on a moving target while falling with a parachute. The later levels are unforgiving with the game being punishing on how many points the instructors give you. Be prepared to replay the levels over again until you meet the score threshold.

The Bottom Line
I recommend it, but use save states to reduce frustration. If you are playing on a SNES cartridge, may God have mercy on your soul.

The Good
..................................

The Bad
Glitches Obtuse puzzles

The Bottom Line
After The Depths, which was mediocre, I hoped the next DLC would be better.

Jinxed it!... The Hideaway is straight-up awful.

The gimmick in this DLC (which isn't relayed well, causing me to waste 20 minutes in the very first room) is that you use gnomes as allies, tossing them around to interact with the environment. Unfortunately, these little buggers are annoying to work with. Sometimes they just get distracted and don't follow you, forcing you to come back and fetch them. Often, they fail to cooperate and do what you want them to. On the other hand, sometimes they cluster around you, making it difficult to interact with objects because you keep grabbing gnomes instead!

The DLC is also full of glitches. Four times I had to restart due to a glitch, three times the same one (an object falling through the floor and disappearing). The puzzles are sometimes obtuse (for example, there's that one lever you have to throw gnomes at, except the game's very finicky about the spot you toss them from.), to the point where halfway through I gave up and reached for a walkthrough.

All in all, a terrible and obviously untested experience. Here's to hoping the third DLC will be better. [narrator voice: it was... somewhat.]

The Good
Still scary sometimes

The Bad
Fiddly controls Tedious puzzles Weak protagonist and atmosphere

The Bottom Line
This first DLC is disappointing. The controls feel even more fiddly than in the base game; many times, I died to the boss because my angle was just a bit off. The original game avoided obnoxious puzzles, but in The Depths, they return with a vengeance in the form of a long and frustrating crank puzzle.

The base game's wonderful atmosphere has also vanished somewhere. The protagonist is nowhere near as charismatic as Six, and the cryptic, eerie feeling of exploring an unknown world is missing. There's much less music and no memorable songs, unlike the excellent sound design of the main game. Disappointingly, even though you ostensibly collect messages in bottles, you don't actually get any lore from them. At least being chased by monsters is as heart-poundingly scary as in the original.

The Good
Highly immersive Delightful visuals and audio

The Bad
Occasional technical problems

The Bottom Line
One of the few games in recent memory where I was genuinely immersed in the world, and lost myself in the protagonist. Not just because of the atmosphere, but also because of the frictionless gameplay. There are no obnoxious puzzles that take forever to figure out. Controlling the protagonist feels so natural you almost forget you're playing a game. Various scripted sequences make the world feel real and alive (at least on the first playthrough). It helps that many of the chase and hiding scenes are forgiving enough that you can complete them on the first try; dying in a game and having to restart usually ruins immersion. (Little Nightmares mitigates this effect somewhat by having the protagonist "wake up" upon respawning, implying that you've just had a nightmare).

The visuals and audio are marvelous. I haven't seen this kind of Tim Burton claymation storybook style in a video game before, but it's delightful and very atmospheric.

Unfortunately, the immersion is marred by occasional technical problems and small glitches, such as the protagonist getting stuck and twitching in place. The save system is also quite confusing; at least once I resumed a game and found I had been tossed back 15 minutes. The controls aren't always reliable; sometimes I found myself unable to crawl into vents or grab ladders because I was very slightly off.

The Good
Very high quality graphics, sounds and music. The game is basically a metroidvania with RPG elements. Story is engaging and even has an interesting twist.

The Bad
Some glitches and frustrating jump sections here and there.

The Bottom Line
One of the best - if not the best - game on the Intellivision platform. Highly recommended.

The Good
King of the Castle features humourous, occasionally clever, and interesting writing – mostly in the form of dialogue. It's fun to see the various interactions between the nobles, and what they result in.

The visual style is delightful. I enjoy the character options, the colour palette, the user interface and the fonts, as they all come together in a very palpable cohesion. The various styles of medieval-inspired outfits are also impeccable.

I think the button-pressing gameplay was fine, though not too engaging, which might be suitable for significantly larger groups or livestreamed sessions (where stream chat members might join). As a non-hosting player, there is very little to do, whereas the hosting player appears to have a lot of options and control over dialogue, and even votes.

The Bad
If your goal is for your faction to win, it's incredibly difficult unless you're already ahead. Your faction's goals are very highlighted, meaning that with the odd chance an option that would sway in your favour is presented, there are rarely any reasons for the other two factions to vote for it.

The gold-spending phase, where players may spend their gold to increase or decrease a random assortment of values, is a bit ... silly? In my experience, there were options that would benefit my faction, but then another option that would directly negate that purchase – this led the other factions to ensure that if the beneficial options was purchased, the negating option would also be bought. Thus, money on all accounts were wasted for no results.

When playing with few people (e.g. friends), we liked to voice "our" parts of the dialogue. However, there was a great imbalance in whose characters would be shown – whereas my noble appeared quite often in my faction's scenes, my comrade's was only shown twice.

With the group size I played in, there was little faction-based overlap during votes. I wish there were more incentives for this, though I'm not able to concretely name any solutions – perhaps making sure options that might benefit multiple factions and/or the monarch occur is something.

The Bottom Line
This game seems definitely suited for a larger group or a livestreamed audience – where chat members may join in. I played it in a group ranging from 5 to 7 players (including the host).

If not taken too seriously, it's a charming storytime with friends. If you're looking for a strategy game, however, I would look elsewhere. The visual style and dialogue is very enjoyable, but the gameplay left something to be desired in my books.

I am likely going to play it again, but I might have to force myself to be less strategic about it, and simply enjoy the interactions.

The Good
Satisfying boss fights
Some of the music

The Bad
Annoying checkpoint system
Simplistic stealth gameplay
Fake difficulty parts

The Bottom Line
Before Metal Gear Solid, many games tried to mimic a movie, usually by cramming the CD with cheesy FMVs and bad voice acting. Metal Gear Solid finally got it right. From the start, you can feel the cinematic atmosphere as you sneak through a dock warehouse with dramatic choirs murmuring in the soundtrack, credits rolling across the game screen, and the game's title only appearing once you've safely exited.

The gameplay in Metal Gear Solid feels... odd. It reminds me of an amateur game created by an enthusiastic kid who tossed all his ideas in rather than opting for a cohesive design. There are many rarely used or one-off mechanics, making each room feel like its own minigame. It feels quite strange and disjointed to play, but I'd hesitate to call it a flaw. It's a major factor in the movie-like atmosphere; after all, the protagonist of a movie doesn't repeat the same actions over and over.

Ironically, the stealth sections—the game's main selling point—feel undercooked. The stealth genre was still finding its legs at the time of release, and it shows. There rarely are more than two guards to dodge, and in most rooms, it's very easy to stay unseen. The boss fights deviate from stealth gameplay and involve gunfights, missile salvos, and other forms of open combat. They are also invariably fun (except for the terrible tank fight) and difficult.

Some level designs feel a bit janky, bordering on artificial difficulty or padding. For example, there are rooms that have plenty of cameras with no way to sneak past them — you need to toss a chaff grenade to deactivate them. There's no strategy to it at all; if you have a chaff grenade, you win, if you don't have one, you lose.

The game's save system, inherited from consoles, allows saving only at specific checkpoints, like after passing between rooms. This works okay in most situations; it prevents you from save-scumming your way past challenges, and if you die, you rarely lose more than a few minutes of progress. However, the checkpoint system can be annoying, for example in the boss battle that has a lengthy, unskippable cutscene halfway through.

It would be remiss not to mention the numerous charming details, suggesting the developers really enjoyed creating this game. For example, in one of the snowy areas guards can track you by your footprints; it's unlikely to affect gameplay in any way, but it's there. Many puzzles are creative—for example, the way you find Meryl who's gone undercover; the solution makes perfect sense, and yet it's something you usually wouldn't do in a game. Some puzzles require you to pay close attention to the dialogue, but there are always sufficient hints, and you can always call your allies for advice.

The plot is melodramatic, but also so earnestly over-the-top that you just can't be mad at it. It helps that the voice acting is excellent, and most characters are memorable. While the dialogue scenes are lengthy, I was rarely tempted to skip them. The exception is the main villain, Liquid, whom I just couldn't like. His voice was eye-rollingly hammy, every single of his lines was cliche, and his personality was "cookie cutter bad guy #442". I was glad when I could finally take him down, not because he was such a satisfying opponent, but because I wanted him to shut up already.

One major difference in the PC version, compared to the PSX version, is the Psycho Mantis boss fight. The original PlayStation boss fight is famous for its strange, fourth-wall-breaking trickery, and the way it exploits the console's features. Unfortunately, most of these special effects cannot work on the PC, so pretty much all of them have been removed — robbing the fight of much of its appeal.

Sadly, the graphics have not aged well. They probably looked better on the original PlayStation, where the low resolution masked the lack of detail. As for the music, most of it is forgettable, and the boss fight themes are more irritating than engaging, but there are a few standout pieces, like the captivating opening song that welcomes you in the first room.

The Good
Story is very good , game is never boring and you rarely get stuck. Characters are lovely and have a very strong soul (despite they're all dead :)) plus they act very nicely inside the game. I Like 3d graphic considering that the game was done long time ago and sound theme keeps you good company. It's very long but in a good way. I didn't feel like i was solving fillers but everything is fitting very well inside the whole picture.

The Bad
Despite is quite rare you may feel lost from time to time. it's trick to get used to the controls and also animation are not perfect but these are very little things.

The Bottom Line
Grim Fandango it's a great game, keeps you a lot busy and the story is intriguing and a very immersive experience. I think it has also survived quite well in the last, what is it, 26 years? I just played it again few weeks ago and it was pure fun

The Good
I love the Hühner to shoot.

The Bad
One Level...............

The Bottom Line
Moorhühner make feel me gut.

The Good
Has the Bulls, mascots and nice highlight cut scenes. Fairly accurate basketball mechanics (finding passing lanes, shooting rhythm, defensive positioning).

The Bad
Becomes stale as soon as you figure out that passing quickly will easily get you past the CPU opponents.

The Bottom Line
Enjoyable for a few hours in single player mode.

The Good
Nice difficulty. Requires you to develop a rhythm for the obstacles in order to defeat the game.

The Bad
No need to replay, unless you’re trying for a higher score.

The Bottom Line
Enjoyable and challenging for a few hours.

The Good
The cartridge can be used as a doorstopper.

The Bad
The sprites are too damn small which makes it difficult to find Waldo. The cursor is too sensitive. The game can be completed in mere minutes.

The Bottom Line
Bethesda and THQ clearly didn't care about quality control when they released this in stores. Waldo can remain lost for all I care.

The Good
The music is okay, but that's stretching it since the Mega Man Battle Network games are known to have phenomenal music.

The Bad
The game plays by itself. All you do is build a deck and then check the win percentage to see if you will win the match. No strategy involved except for using your backup chip but even then all you have to do is wait for the meter to fill up a certain percentage and then use it. During matches, the battle chips are chosen at random. Most animations and sprites are recycled from previous games. Makes the Mega Man Battle Network games look bad.

The Bottom Line
Watch the "gameplay" on YouTube. It's the exact same as playing this crappy game.

The Good
This has the look and feel of a big game. There is a lot of very good music and voice acting. It is bright, colourful and it plays easily. I have only played for five or six hours and I have not cleared the prologue yet but then I have been messing about and did not always take the fastest route. Even so I have acquired a companion, fought slimes, some weird creatures and a dragon, harvested and cooked food.

The Bad
I found the early stages of the game a little overwhelming
This is a new kind of game for me. There seems to be a great deal of on-line content which I am not used to. At one point, through the game, I had opened web links to the Daily Check In to collect my daily reward, the HoYoWiki for character descriptions, an interactive map, the community interest group where there are guides and fan art etc, HoYoVerse - the official Genshin Impact Community, and the Genshin Impact Progression Calculator. I opened so much because partly I did not want to miss out on any freebies and partly because I did not know what was important an what was not - and t.b.h. I still have no idea. There is a lot to take in and with some players posting cosplay photos it is plain it has a really big following.

I feel really old!
When setting up one of the accounts needed to play the game and access the on-line content I was asked for my year of birth. They only go back as far as "1983 and older"! Still, at least I am in the same grouping as my daughter :-)

My character's companion Paimon has the most irritating voice. Don't get me wrong here, the character's voice is clear, well acted, and perfectly suits the character and the game but it is like talking to a bossy, spoiled, whinging five year old brat and it really irritates me. When I next restart the game I will be looking for a way to mute her.

The game auto saves and restarts, so far, flawlessly but I have no control over it so I cannot save, try one thing, restart and try another.

There are conversation choices but I have seen nothing which tells me what effect my selection has on the game or my character. For example I met a new character, Amber, and she asked about Paimon my companion, the two possible responses were something like "She's my best friend" and "She's my emergency food source". I'm guessing some choices will increase the bond between the characters but I do not know if this is correct and, if so, just what the effect is.

The Bottom Line
The game is free, it plays well, it looks and sounds good. Not sure about the story is going, it seems very basic - one twin is taken by a goddess who puts a spell on the other who sleeps for a long time and then goes off to search for their sibling. It sounds like a cross between The Snow Queen and Sleeping Beauty, it makes for the basis of a very pretty game but it may not be meaty enough to hold my interest.

My current plan it to play it as a standard single player RPG, avoiding all the on-line community stuff apart from the daily rewards that is, and see how far I can go without paying anything and without getting bored.

The Good
I am amazed about how the level designs and mechanics let you play in so many different ways... I played as Emily the super stealthy no-kill assassin (wait, what?). That means I never got spotted and killed absolutely no one... and the game makes it quite possible.

The best levels are those restricted to one big building -- in particular, the Clockwork Mansion and Aramis Stilton's Manor are amongst the most memorable levels designs I have ever seen. The way the game adapts when you knockdown a certain character in the game is one of these "WOW" moments that leave you speechless.

Many cool powers ("Domino" is awesome, whoever thought of that?), and an interesting main character.

The Bad
Level sizes make the city levels feel artificially limited (the "one-big-building" levels do not suffer from this).

Another flaw: me. Since I decided to play super stealthy and without killing anyone, I had to do lots of reloads, which broke the flow of the game. But that's entirely my fault, I would probably have a lot more fun dealing with the consequences of being seen and using more all my resources.

The Bottom Line
All in all, a great game that mixes action and stealth the way you choose. Score: 88/100.

The Good
Lots of fun and versatility with all the jobs and while it takes grinding, mastering a job is quite satisfying. I like space and the meteorites count... sorta.

The Bad
The content locked behind the end of the post-game makes no sense imo, all it does it require you to grind even more after getting powerful enough to defeat the final superboss.

The Bottom Line
The only Final Fantasy game I've ever wanted to (and have) 100% completed. Okay except the beastiary but I did the entire post-game and 100% all jobs on all characters so close enough.

The Good
Amazing soundtrack. Good graphics. Classic gameplay that started the legendary franchise.

The Bad
It's very easy to get lost since there's no in-game map. The game can be very difficult even if you have all the heart containers and fully upgraded mail. Some clues are very cryptic such as a mobin saying "grumble grumble" which requires you to give him the bait. Dungeons can be boring with the only differences being color and enemies unlike in later games.

The Bottom Line
Have a guide handy to avoid frustration.

The Good
the main story and gameplay were generally good. I specially loved how Baldur was Characterized.

The Bad
but I didn't like how simple and pointless the story ended. and why Kratos is ashamed to explain his past? it is true that he killed all the gods of his land but he had his reasons. why doesn't he explain his reasons to his son?

The Bottom Line
I really think this is a must play game for fans of god of war series.

The Good
It may be old but it still plays in my DVD player and it plays well. I played with my family and ten races was enough for one session. There are thirty races and as the betting slip has room for ten races, if both sides are use, that means that this game can provide at least three sessions.

The Bad
The game is not without its flaws. At the end of the race the photo finish is shown but other than the commentary there is no confirmation of the result and sometimes none of us were sure which dog came in third.

The game has notes of specific denominations, £50, £100 and so on but sometimes the way the odds and the bets worked out a player could win £275 and there is no way to pay the £25. When we played the bookie resorted to writing IOUs on the betting slip

Whoever takes the role of the bookie has to be very patient and have a calculator. It is a lot of work and discussions about winnings can get heated - or maybe that's just us.

The Bottom Line
We played as a family foursome one afternoon and we enjoyed it. The bookie came in for a bit of stick for paying out the winnings but not returning the stake money - but not too much because we all knew we could not do any better. Having played one session we have kept the game to play again when we next get together and I will be on the lookout for any similar games.

The Good
So much detail for this long ago

The Bad
How can it run on modern hardware?

The Bottom Line
I played this constantly as a child.

The Good
For a game that is nearly thirty years old this plays surprisingly well. The game is fully voiced and the voice acting is believable. The controls are a bit clunky compared to the games I have been playing recently but they work and after a while I barely noticed them. Decent background music too.

The Bad
The Bad-ish: There is no manual save in this game, it saves automatically at key points so if/when Seth dies it will restart and part of the game has to be replayed. I am not a big fan of this because I like to save after tricky puzzles and timed/platform elements, (i.e. anything where progress is more down to luck than skill), but the system works and I suppose I would rather have this than forget to save and lose lots of progress.

The Bad: The game is fully voiced but there is no text option, or if there is I cannot find it, and there's no way to review recent dialogue either. This can be irritating because if you get distracted, or if your hearing isn't 100%, you can mage mistakes.

Case in point - I am still in the early part of the game and I spoke to another character who gave me instructions to activate a secret passage but first I had to get past a guard. Well I tried and I tried but the guard would not budge so tried again the next day, and the next. Eventually I had to resort to a walkthrough where I learned that the other character did not say what I thought he said, he said he would distract the guard so that I could get past and search for the secret passage and I had to wait until he did that before I could make my move. So I put that mistake right and got past the guard but by now of course I had completely forgotten the instructions on how to activate the secret passage so back to the walkthrough again

The Very Bad: This is my totally fault, but I bought the game on GoG thinking it was something else that I played way back in the 90's. The lesson here is not to buy a game, even if it is on sale, because you think you recognise the cover.

The Bottom Line
I want to finish this game under my own steam because there it looks as though there is a decent story here (and I've bought it, and I hate being beaten by a game) but I am not sure I will be able to. Based on the experiences so far this is NOT a casual game, it will require my full attention but if I have to keep going to a walkthrough to make progress I will probably cut my losses and move on to something else.

The Good
It asks nothing and gives everything. With brilliant sound design and a bass-thumping, heart-pumping soundtrack, the relatively simplistic visuals waste nothing in immersing you in the action intensity, which is the entire point of the game. It will have you on the edge of your seat with a dopamine rush rewarding your every input.

The Bad
It has only one game mode and no way to compare your high score against others who have played the game. While there's enough random generation to keep each round feeling fresh, don't expect to be entertained by its only game mode for more than an hour.

The Bottom Line
Need something to sharpen your reflexes and coordination, get you awake and alert after crawling out of bed, or just give you a little rush while killing time on your break from work? This is the perfect game on all fronts. Good for 15-20 minutes of serotonin. Get your name on that high score list.

The Good
Some decent titles on the library such as Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, and Jumping Flash!

The Bad
Most of the additions are head scratchers such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Intelligent Qube. Missing games such as the Crash Bandicoot games, the Spyro games, the Tomb Raider games, and much more. No emulator settings which should be expected. Some of the games run on the PAL version, meaning that the games run at a worse frame rate compared to their NTSC counterparts. The controllers don't have analog sticks. Presentation looks barebones in the game selection menu.

The Bottom Line
Buy a supported flash drive and add the files to use emulator settings that Sony should have added such as playing all games in NTSC and adding scanlines. You can even add more games and different console emulators to make it function like a raspberry pi. Just make sure to buy one on the cheaper end.

The Good
Easy to pick up and understand. Despite being the first in the series, the game design is already quite polished.

The Bad
Controls are slow and delayed due to low graphic capability power of the PC-88. Later stages introduce fake walls which are not fun.

The Bottom Line
It holds up better than most games from the era because it's a solid concept that does not need much improvement

The Good
O.S.W. is a unique hybird of a 3D platformer and first person shooter. The game graphics/engine looks like a direct evolution from Munch's Oddysee. Unlike the other Oddworld games, this is all about a mysterious figure only known as Stranger, in a land far away from the previous stories/species/characters. The hero is not a defenseless little thing this time: Stranger is a big and strong creature, with a weapon! In the first half of the game, he is a bounty hunter, capturing outlaws for money, in a Wild West type setting. In the middle of the game, there is almost like an Akira level of twist, and the game sheds away its Western-likeness. In the remainder, he fights on the side of natives against the industrialists, in varying settings. This game does away with the alien aesthetic, in favor of a more dramatic storytelling, with places and beings that are slightly less weird. I am not entirely a fan of the story or the setting, but at least I can't say they're milking the same thing over again. All creatures are fully voice acted, we will not hear the familiar one-word talks here (which left much to the imagination and felt appropriately alien), so it was strange to me hearing the goons shout "Yes, lure him out, boys!" or "Aim at his groiiin!"

You can actively switch views between the outside view (with a following "camera"), and the ego view. In the outside view, it is more comfortable to travel around and explore. In this mode, Stranger can jump and double-jump, climb ropes, perform hand-to-hand combat, or run (which gradually becomes speedier as you move forward without interruption, eventually running on all limbs like an animal, causing damage if you collide into destructable/killable things). You can also control the camera around Stranger with your mouse, separately from the movement controls of the character, albeit the camera subtly aligns itself up to your movement.

When you decide to holster your weapon, the game becomes an FPS. But you don't really have a gun: your weapon is a double barreled crossbow, firing live creatures! Yes, your ammo is the local Oddworldian wildlife of small bugs and rodents, and you stock up by capturing them at their habitat, buying them at the store, or from designated crates (Take that, PETA! :D). All ammo types do different things, like making noise to lure enemies to it, knocking them out for a short while, schocking them or activating electric machines, etc. It's your choice, which two you keep loaded for which fight. And you fire with both barrels independently at will. You can carry only a limited amount of each ammo type, and the firing rate is also slow, but both limits are upgradeable in the shops.

The playable world is impressively big for a game from 2005 (I think, admittedly I don't know much modern games, as in from beyond the year 2000). And you have to travel a lot, between towns or the places where outlaws reside, going through lush wilderness and beautiful deserts. Your method of travel is by foot, the very fast running is the way to travel distances. And all this works mostly seamless, there are no visible loading screens, no levels in the traditional sense. Sandbox would be a massive overstatement though, the gameplay area is always constrained between canyons/cliffsides, and the missions are clear cut. In the towns you can have short conversations with the Clakkerz(sic) that inhabit them, sort of "OG Nintendo RPG" -esque, except fully voice acted. This is not an RPG though, there are no experience points to gain, just earning money from the missions and sometimes buying things that can enhance Stranger's abilities. The sum of money you have is also the indicator of your progress for story reasons, so spending has to be done carefully. Aside from those I kinda felt like, the way that you, as the player, are getting to know the intricacies of your strange weapon, ammo types, and abilities better with each battle, until you can successfully take advantage of them, that is the real leveling up. Anyway, the towns have bounty stores and shops, these are usually the main points of interest there. The towns also act as a hub. You take up a missions in the bounty store of the town, then you have to find your way to the path out of town (usually trough secured gates that get opened for the mission), that leads to the location of the wanted outlaws.

Speaking of missions and battles. Each bad guy you embark on to capture, hides at some place that acts as their fortress. And they command a slew of goons equipped either with guns, rockets, melee weapons, or even doing the "arab terrorist". You have to infiltrate the place and defeat most of the goons, to be able to face off with your main target. The missions then usually escalate into a monumental and tiresome boss fight, to the last man standing. Apart from the instances of total alarm (like in a boss fight), there is an element of stealth in the gameplay mix. Each enemy has a line of sight, which is shown to you in a radar indicator. The music is minimal, but during action, it accentuates what is happening. What I want to highlight here is the creepy, spine chilling music during stealthy affairs: it got seared into my brain! While there is no dedicated stealth takedown, with the webbing ammo type you can incapacitate your prey in relative secrecy. The enemies can be either knocked unconscious for a short while, or killed after a few rounds of punishment. This is indicated by "dizzyness" stars above their head. 3 yellow stars and they faint and get a red star. Once they accumulate 3 red stars they die. Or in case of the bosses, there are dedicated bars on screen. Speaking of indicators, Stranger himself has a health bar and a stamina bar. While raining gunfire can quickly deplete his health, once safe, he can heal himself by the press of a button, which only costs stamina. And the way he does this is very badass: he just shakes off the damage! By the way, all fired bullets remain as visible objects stuck to the characters or in the environment, a neat gimmick. Once the foes are down unconscious or dead, you can capture them in your... Ghostbusters-like suction tank of infinite capacity? (never explained), but you are vulnerable to the others while you are doing so. Captured enemies can be later cashed in back at the bounty store. It should not be a surprise that each one is worth more alive than dead, and killing the bosses is less of a peculiar work than stunning them. One more thing to talk about is the enemy AI, it's deceptively stupid, yet can be pretty clever in times you don't expect it. For an example, I was chasing an enemy, I was on its tail, and it acted cowardly. But once I relaxed a bit, it noticed and got confident, became an agressive nuisance.

The part when the Grubbs (the so called natives) were running in and out of their houses at the sight of you a was funny, especially while wearing a headphone, so you could subtly hear them peeking out :D

The Bad
The game begins with a classic tutorial mission, where message boxes jump up and pause the gameplay. Yeah, its an annoying little necessity, pretty standard stuff, ... wait a minute, Oddworld can do better than this! What did they used to do? Integrating the instructions into the environment in the form of billboards, information terminals, etc. so when you later played the game again, the start was like any other level that didn't interrupt you. Where did that idea go?

I have to nitpick some of the artistic vision. As I mentioned, there is little to none of that Alien aesthetic. Bugs look like bugs (the Zapfly is nice though). Chippunks look like chipmunks. There are now vehicles in Oddworld, that look and work mostly like Earth vehicles. A far cry from the creative trains or the "mine cart" from Exoddus. Worse yet, in one mission you have to recapture a laptop, which is flat out just a 2000s laptop. I would have expected something quirkier, like a chrystal ball attached to a typewriter or something. The phone in a cutscene looked like the part, why not the computer? Aside from these, I often found thinking to myself "hmm, that technology/architecture is a tad bit anachronistic for a Western", then I had to remind myself that this is not really a Western. Whatever.

The first half of the game is really fun once you "catch the drift". But then in the second half of the game, the experience becomes very rough. All your learned tactics and ammo types become useless, to deal with the new kind of enemy, that are better equipped and prepared. And the game mechanics doesn't really adjust to this. There is no point in capturing enemies either. While it's a nice thing that in the second half, you become overpowered in close combat, intead of using your weapon. But that's for a short while, as even that becomes just barely eligible.

The second half of the game has some very disjointed scenarios. Hm, let me quickly go trough what happens towards the end of the game. Doing some industrial sabotage? Check. Defending the native Grubbs from industrialist Wolvark troups terrorizing their village? Sure, why not! Wearing Viking-like armor while travelling long distances up on the river with your war galleon? Badass! Then dropping into like, a bleak, long, tortuous session of WWII trench warfare? What the heck!? Am I playing Call of Duty all of the sudden? In this scenario it feels like it would be most appropriate to spread lead and spill the guts of soldiers, but you are stuck to your sophisticated pea shooter and family friendly rating. Whenever you leave your cover, you get gunned down in seconds by the literal army of foes. And the whole setup is ridiculous: you tell me that bad guys are doing an all out war on just a bunch of cute little Grubbs? I really hated this part! Then it kind of tainted the final section of the game, at the dam aswell. The Grubbs are somehow storming the dam and winning the battle, but it's never shown how the heck can they even fight.

In the final cutscene, it is shown that by destroying the dam, you flooded the towns of the Clakkerz aswell. You know what, fck the Grubbs, what about the Clakkerz!? o_O [Yeah-yeah, there is a deep message that the ending cinematic is trying to convey. But pushing trough the last parts of the game with angry determination, this ending becomes like "Who cares!".]

The Bottom Line
Finally! It happened! I had the fortune to be able to play and beat this blasted game! After such a long time of just reading about it! The darn thing was an XBox exclusive back when it originally came out. In 2010 I missed out on the PC release, and then ignored it for some reason.

I am not a fan of the FPS genre. But I can see why Oddworld Inhabitants had to resort to make it into an FPS-kinda thing. Back then, there were a handful of interesting projects at Oddworld hyped on their quaint old website and fansites. All of these projects got nowhere, I guess for finantial reasons. The 2000s were not a happy time for quirky and/or independent studios, even less so than today. Boring big businesses and their typical FPS franchises (even soaked in muddy and yellow palettes) ruled the game industry firmly by this point. I am happy that at least this thing got released at all!

And how would I rate it now? It is surely a great game of its time, but far from perfect, especially the second half. I got some kicks out of it, but I don't think I will come back. [Sorry if I am hard or unfair on this game, I wanted to document what I thought while playing trough it.]

The Good
A metroid with a lot of upgrades and items to improve the abilities of the character (in this case, Samus) with which to advance and with a lot of action, a balance that I loved. I haven't completed it 100%, but I'm satisfied with what I've achieved.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the game was longer than I had understood, as I thought the story ended with the original main boss, but this remake added additional story that I imagine connects to future instalments.

The Bad
As a negative point I would only mention the length of the game. Not because it's not long enough, not because it didn't expand enough the original game, it just left me wanting to enjoy more discoveries. I feel that the Samus Zero part is short and the exploration of the area is a bit lacking after what was seen previously during the adventure.

The Bottom Line
A highly recommended game, an amazing gem, and probably, at the risk of being wrong, one of the best 2D games of the series.

The Good
The gameplay in Lyoko is good, with various platforming sections, locked areas to pass through at a later time via upgrades gained later on, and various battle sections that may seem difficult at first, but you'll quickly master, especially if you use Yumi, who is, in my personally opinion, overpowered. I recommend not upgrading characters to make it harder.

The game has a few levels where you drive the Skid, a kind of spaceship under the digital sea. If you go carefully and calmly, you'll aim and hit all the enemies without much trouble. What ironically annoyed me the most were the sections with life-sapping glow sticks.

The Bad
The “real world” is set in the Kadic Academy, and it's just a place with some very simple dialogues with characters mentioning events from the series, plus a door with the collectibles unlocked in the levels. It doesn't add anything to the game, and you can skip it completely without being affected by it. A minus point to something that could have given the game a lot more atmosphere, and could have been used to give more of a sense of danger to the attacks of X.A.N.A., the game's narrative enemy.

The Bottom Line
If you're bored and looking for a good time, and you like Code Lyoko, give it a chance, if you want. If you're looking for a game that offers a great challenge, and you don't even know what Code Lyoko is, there are probably a few better options.