PC Game Retro Reviews

[neatfeatguy]

Dungeon Siege 2 & Broken World Expansion

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Release Date: August 16, 2005 / August 1, 2006
Developer(s): Gas Powered Games / Wargaming Seattle
Publisher(s): Microsoft Game Studios / 2k Games

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows XP SP1
• CPU: 1GHz equivalent or faster
• GPU: ATI Radeon 7000 or better / Nvidia Geforce or better / Intel Extreme Graphics 82845, 82865 or 82915
• RAM: 256MB
• Storage: 4GB
• Other: 4x+ CD-ROM

Graphics:

Resolution options available to you, there are 3: 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024. If you can get the game to function without jumping through hoops, work at full screen and give you a mouse cursor – then one of these three options will be what the game will run at for you. If you have to get the game running with other methods it looks like the game will be maxed at 1280x1024 and stretched out full screen for you. Sadly this leaves black bars on the sides of the screen, hopefully it doesn’t deter you from enjoying the game play.

This game came out just a couple of years after the first Dungeon Siege game so there really isn’t a large improvement in the overall graphical appearances of the game when compared to the first one, but I’d say that the environments are a lot better looking. More work went into the environments making the jungles look more lush and full to the icy fields having dense coniferous type trees. The character models, no change really – still blocky and they lack any kind of facial animation/movement when they speak in the normal game. In the expansion the mouths actually move when NPCs are talking during a non-cinematic cutscene.

The cinematic cutscene videos, I think, are well done. They looks pretty good for the age of the game and it almost kind of reminds me of the Diablo 2 cutscenes in terms of quality, maybe even slightly better.

Audio:

Voice over work is decent, for the most part. You will find characters with drab, monotone voices that lull you to sleep and you’ll have voices that you’d expect from a B rated movie. With that aside, the voice acting is halfway decent.

Sound effects, you may recognize some that were reused from the first game, but there is nothing bad to say about how things come out of the speakers. Audio levels are good, the music is just as good as the first game and the ambient sounds as you’re traversing the world are well done.

As with the first game, Jeremy Souel does the music score with this game and does a solid job.

Gameplay:

Once again I delve into the world of an ARPG game.

Starting out, for me and having Broken World (BW is the expansion for Dungeon Siege 2 {DS2}) I get the option to pick from 6 pre-made characters that all start at level 39. However, since I’m playing through the original game first I will start a new character.

Character creation gives you 5 races to pick from, each race has bonuses and possible weaknesses to better help define the type of profession you may want to play. Here are the different races:

• Dryad - Excel with bows and magic, weak in strength
• Dwarf - Excel with strength, no inherent weakness
• Elf - Excel with magic, no inherent weakness
• Half-Giant - Extremely high strength, weak in dexterity
• Human - Well balanced, no great perks nor inherent weaknesses

You get to customize the character’s appearance a bit by gender (if applicable), hair color, style and face. Just because one race gives you a starting bonus for specific stats doesn't mean you have to pick that race to play a specific class. In the end, the small starting bonus you get won't impact anything.

Once you pick your character you then choose your difficulty. You have 3 options:

• Mercenary – intended for levels 0 thru 39
• Veteran – intended for levels 47-68
• Elite – intended for levels 74-94

You can only play the veteran difficulty if you’ve played through mercenary and same goes for elite if you’ve played through veteran.

The idea of how you level up in DS2 is the still the same as DS. Pick a primary attack method and stick with it.

• Melee – Helps build Strength to improve melee weapon damage
• Ranged – Helps build Dexterity to improve ranged weapon damage
• Magic – Helps build Intelligence to increase mana and spell power
  • Nature
  • Combat

Each attribute you build up you will gain some health and mana. Strength gives you the most health per point it goes up, followed by Dextierty and finally Intelligence. The same goes for increasing your mana pool; Intelligence gives the most mana per point, followed by Dexterity and finally Strength gives very little mana.

One new addition to the game is resistances you can build up against the following:

• Fire
• Cold
• Electricity
• Death
• Physical
• Melee
• Ranged
• Non-Elemental

As you level up your choice of combat skill, each time you level you will gain 1 Skill Point. You can apply these points to a skill in that particular combat style as long as you have the necessary prerequisites covered. Also, as you apply skill points you can unlock different powers that you can use based on your combat skill tree. These powers can be assigned to the number keys that are used to activate them when they are fully charged. Your powers can be game changers in situations, be sure to set them up in ways to best benefit your situation and team.

Party members can be controlled by you at any time, but you can only manually control 1 character in your party, the others will follow and use their basic combat modes to determine how they fight. When it comes to fighting you will equip your weapon of choice to use in combat for melee or ranged, pretty straight forward. As for magic you will equip attacking spells in your spell book, these spells can be cycled through using the default weapon layout keys (F7 thru F12). If you have any support spells you’d like to cast when needed you can put them in the auto cast section of your spell book. Doing this will allow your character(s) to automatically cast said support spells when they are needed, even summoning spells when your summon dies or expires. All you really need to focus on during combat is changing of spells/weapons and attacking targets, all your support spells will be handled automatically for you.

As for your party you are limited to the number of members you can have in your party at any given time and you will be also limited by the difficulty level you play on.

• Mercenary difficulty limits you to a max of 4 party members
• Veteran difficulty limits you to a max of 5 party members
• Elite difficulty limits you to a max of 6 party members

You start off, by default, being able to recruit 1 adventurer to your ranks. If you wish to add up to 4/5/6 you need to go to the Inn, find the inn keeper and pay them gold to increase your party slots. The first slot costs you 500 gold, the second one costs 1500 gold and it increases from there. If you decide to drop a party member, they do not simply just stand there like a lump, they return back to the Inn areas and you can talk with the inn keeper if you wish to reenlist that member. You can have multiple members waiting at the side in the inn, but you are very limited by how many you can actually have in your travel party at any given time.

You can purchase a pet. These creatures are designed to fight alongside you. They have various types of pets that might do magic type attacks, melee or ranged. Your pet is meant to grow with you as you make your way through the game. You can feed them unwanted items to help them grow and based on what you feed your pet will have an impact on stats when it levels up. Do be aware that a pet counts as a party member and you’re limited by the party size based on the difficulty level you are playing.

Death, it comes to all eventually. If any members have all their health depleted they will become unconscious. You can bring them back up quick if you have healing spells to cast upon them or they will slowly get up on their own once their health starts to refill. If they are outright killed you have to use a resurrection spell to bring them back to life. If your whole party is wiped out you will be brought back to the safety of the local town. You will need to use the NPC that resurrects dead party members if you wish to revive your dead party. If only some of your party is outright killed you can resurrect them on the spot if you have a resurrection scroll or spell available so be sure to carry a scroll or two on each member just in case.

To avoid death as much as possible be sure to equip the best items for your characters and these items will be tied to Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence or sometimes just level. There are 5 main types of items you can find and equip, they show up as such:

• Basic – Nothing special, some can be used for enchanting if they have "enchantable" in the description
• Normal – run of the mill items, nothing useful other than they can be equipped and used if you have nothing better
• Magic – Magic items, gives a couple bonuses
• Rare – 3 or more bonuses, can sometimes have unique trait or skill bonus
• Unique – these are “named items”, they give bonuses and sometimes unique traits or skill bonuses
• Set items – The more set pieces you equip, the better bonuses you will be granted from the set.

Spoiler

There is an enchanting system in DS2 and Broken World, but I didn't play with it. Honestly, it felt like a hassle because generally the items you find as you go about your game play are better than what you can craft.

BUT

There are apparently recipes for special unique items you can craft in the system. You will find these (rarely, in my experience) as you play through the main game, but you come across a lot of recipes as you make your way through BW expansion. I didn't bother crafting any of these items, so I'm not sure if they're worth the hassle or not.

There are a lot of nook and crannies throughout the game. You’ll come across secret areas that house high level creatures in a low level area, a little exploring enticement to get you to want to spend more time in the game by traveling back to these areas (if you remember) to see what kind of creatures and treasure you can get now that you can stand toe-to-toe with them.

Side missions, you can choose to do them or pass them up, that’s up to you. One thing to take note of is that what appears to be a simple side mission may span across multiple area locations, meaning a side mission you pick up in Act 1 may not be completed until you reach a certain point in Act 2. Some of these missions will send you back and a forth between areas you’ve already been to. I guess it’s a crafty way to keep you in the game longer.

Overall combat starts off slow, just like in the first DS. You need to be cautious, kiting and manually maneuvering your party around while picking off the weaker characters first so you can fight the tougher characters without getting wiped out immediately. Combat is also plagued by issues of line of sight with ranged (bows/magic) characters and this is because of the terrain design with the different levels of elevation. If your archer or mage is standing at the bottom of a hill or even right around a corner, they will not fix their orientation and their attacks will keep hitting the wall or hill. On the other side of things with melee, bad guys sometimes try to get away and as they run away you just swing at the air OR instead of stepping right up to a target to swing at it your character will run all the way around to the backside of the bad guy before swinging at it so now you’re wasting valuable time they could be actually hacking away at the target.

As you traverse you’ll find boss creatures – they are noticeable by the glowing light around them. Some are pretty easy to take down, a few powers used and no problem. Others will decimate you. The only real benefit to taking down these boss creatures are the item drops – sometimes it’s just a large amount of gold or a simple magic item, but other times you see a few rare and unique drops. Be careful how you approach some of these bosses.

Saving your game also functions differently in DS2 when compared to DS. When you save you are saving your character’s stuff (items, skill level, etc) you are not saving the location you are currently at. When you load a saved game it starts you at the teleportation statue at the nearest town you saved. Do not expect to pick up directly in the very spot you saved your game. The upside to this functionality is that creatures respawn after loading a game so you can farm items and work on building up your combat skills.

If you and a friend have copies of the game (unsure about digital copies) you should be able to play multiplayer via LAN or over the internet via direct IP connection (may require port forwarding). I haven’t tried it, but I see no reason for it not to work.

Time to complete main game for me was about 36 hours.

After completing the main storyline you can continue to play in that game session to complete any secondary missions you may have missed or you can restart the game on a higher difficulty or move on to the expansion (if you have it) using that same character.

Broken World expansion adds a little bit extra to the game that would have certainly been nice in the main game and also allows you to continue into the expansion with your character and complete party from exactly where you left off.

• Addition of a NPC that allows you to respec your skill points. This NPC is only found at the starting town of the game. If you need this NPC you have to teleport back to that area.

It is a welcomed addition to the game in my opinion. Other than that addition the game plays the same, runs the same, looks the same as the original DS2 game.

Time to complete the Broken World expansion was about 12 hours.

Controls:

Off the bat you have full control over key bindings so make use of them to fit your gaming style.

Under DS you had a lot of juggling to try and setup all characters with their own combat AI instructions. This has been simplified in DS2, yet not as useful as how it functioned in the first DS, in my opinion. During combat you have 3 methods that everyone in your group follows:

• Rampage attack mode – attack at will
• Mirrored attack mode – everyone focuses their attack on the same target you are attacking
• Defend mode – this mode forces all characters in your party to attack the target that is attacking your actively controlled character.

You need to right click on the target you want to attack, you’re controlled character will not auto attack and depending on your combat mode listed above, you’re non-controlled characters may or may not attack. This setup is different than the first DS, so if you’re jumping from the first game and into the second game your controls will take some time to get used to.

You can jump between what characters you want to control manually with the F1 thru F6 keys. As for weapon layouts, mentioned above in the gameplay section, the default keys are F7 thru F12. I’m not a fan of this setup because it causes me to take my right hand off the mouse, stare at the keyboard to find the key I need or I have to take my left hand off the left side of my keyboard, stare at the keyboard to find the key I need. I much more liked the shortcut keys in the first DS. I had to do a bit of key binding fixes to get the gameplay more liking to my needs. When setting up the weapon loadouts save them using Ctrl + {F7 thru F12}. Then simply press F7 thru F12 to use that weapon loadout.

Like the predecessor I find that making use of the Pause function of the game (the Space Bar key) to be vital in helping control and figure out my next actions. It may be best for you to get accustomed to using it unless you want to keep everything playing in real time.

Story:

You set out to earn a paycheck as a mercenary that was hired by the Morden. Your goal is to push back the Dryads and make way to their shrine. Valdis, the leader of the Morden, has his hands on the Sword of Zaramoth and plans to rule the world. Located in the shrine is a piece of the Shield of Azunai – apparently it is the only thing that can stand up to the power of the Sword of Zaramoth and Valdis is trying to claim all the pieces to prevent this from happening.

To your surprise, after capturing the shrine, Valdis turns on you and the mercenaries….you survive just barely. In the chaos you’re knocked out and left for dead. Upon waking up you are now a prisoner of the Dryad – the very same race you were paid to kill!

Now you need to prove your worth so you can get your freedom and help track down all the pieces of the Shield of Azunai so it can be re-forged in an attempt to put an end to Valdis’s reign of terror.

Broken World expansion the story continues where it left off from the main game, if you do not have the expansion you’re left on a cliff hanger of how the store progresses from there and the final conclusion.

Replay Value:

Low to moderate.

Much like the first DS game there isn’t much here that makes you want to replay through the game. The drops are better and you can farm for items in this game, but lacks some QOL features that make the game more tedious than it needs to be.

The first DS game I preferred the individual character combat AI you could setup. The attempt to simplify this in DS2 makes you constantly changing from Mirror and Rampage or Wait (you have manually set a shortcut key to use this mode) mode to help get your desired combat results feels lazy. When you do change combat mode it takes your characters a second or two to react which can be bad if you’re in combat.

Even with some of the issues I’ve listed throughout the review I do think there is a better chance for people to want to replay this game again simply because of the loot and ability to farm, plus the Veteran and Elite difficulty levels may be enticing enough for people to play multiple runs through the game.

The main game will net you at least 30+ hours to complete. If you have the BW expansion that'll be another 10+ hours. Those two games alone means a solid 40 hours. If you like the game that much and want to run through the harder difficulties you're looking at roughly another 30-40 hours each on the next two difficulty levels. You could get a lot of play time out of this game if you want. Even if you don't replay the higher difficulties you still have 30+ hours of gameplay value.

Technical Info/Issues/Bugs:

Took a little work to get the game functioning to my needs. Check the spoiler if you want to know more. It wasn’t difficult, just overly irritating.

Spoiler

Game installed without issues. I applied the latest (most up to date) patch I could find for the game and I launched it. Upon getting to the main menu screen the mouse cursor doesn’t show up. Killed, restarted, set the game to run with Windows XP compatibility – still not working. I had to add a parameter to the shortcut target of (without quotes) “ fullscreen=false”. The game loads up in windowed mode, but is now at a whopping 800x600 sized window for my 34” 2560x1440 monitor. Now the game is in a tiny window….. If I maximize the screen it takes up the whole monitor now, but it is now a windowed game and having two monitors my mouse is always going off screen. Time to find another solution.

More looking around a suggestion was to use a program called Windowed Borderless Gaming (https://westechsolutions.net/sites/WindowedBorderlessGaming/).

Sadly, I couldn’t get it to function for DS2. I followed the steps laid out from a couple of spots and nothing worked. Some people report they get this to work and others do not.

More looking around – apparently even the Steam version of Dungeon Siege 2 had reports of mouse issues since a windows update back during Windows 8 hay days and the issue seems to have stayed with Windows since. Thankfully there is a fix that works me that I found. I also have the Dungeon Siege 2 expansion installed so I was able to copy over all the files that someone going by the online name of Kilah had made and downloaded online – apparently using some of these files with just the original DS2 game should resolve your issues. I copied over all the files in my Broken World expansion and I can now run the game without a problem.

To pick what game, base or expansion, I want to play I just need to create a new game. From there I either pick a pre-existing character or create my own. Once I’ve done that I can pick from starting the base game or the expansion if my character level is high enough.

I won’t post the link here for the files, you’ll have to do some digging for yourself – I’m not sure if it would fall into any posting issues with TPU policies.

As in the first DS game trying to move through narrow passes is a pain when you have a full group of 5 or 6 members. Most of the places I click I get the light “dun” sound letting you know that move is not possible. Lots of clicking in these areas to get your group through. If you can, find an open spot beyond these stupid narrow bridges to click on so your party can run across without much issue.

BUG:
At one point during my play through (this was early into the game) the character I had setup to be a Nature magic caster, she stopped casting the spells placed in her book for auto casting – she wasn’t casting the healing, summon nor buff spells. I kicked her from the party and picked her back up at the inn, but nothing changed. I had to exit the game and restart it to fix the issue.

BUG or crappy feature, you be the judge:
There are a few areas around the late level 20 to early 30s area where you can come across some level 45 bosses. You think you could stand a chance against them with superior numbers, but no. They are always ranged and one, maybe two arrows from it will outright kill each of your characters. There is just no way for you to fight them and I don’t know why these bosses are in these areas, but it sucks. And they’re not just in some area you can avoid, you will come into contact with one or two in areas you must access to progress the game. There are only 3 ways around this:

• Save your progress, reload the game and make your way back to that area – the boss may not be there.
• Run like mad through the area and hope that you can make it through alive, but most likely this will be a complete failure.
• If you have characters that can summon creatures, if you can get those creatures to distract the boss (remember, even a couple of shots will most likely kill the summoned creatures so you don't have much time) long enough for you to run by and then keep running…..which in turn can be a problem because sometimes creatures chase you for a while and as you’re running you’re going to aggro every other creature you come close to and it turns into a real mess.

BUG:
I am finding that my weapon loadouts are not being saved when I come back to play the game. Once I save the loadouts they function as I saved them, but if I exit the game, load my game and start playing again, all the weapon loadouts I made before are lost and back to the default loadouts. This is frustrating because it saps time from actually playing the game if I have to take several minutes every time I load the game. In fact this became so frustrating that I simply don’t bother using the weapon loadouts anymore. I will pause the game, make adjustments as I need and then unpause.

BUG:
Valdis fight, at one point Valdis stopped moving and I was unable to harm him to finish the fight. I had to save my progress, exit and reload the game, run my way all the way back to the fight to do it all over again. I read that it is a bug that happens from time to time, so if it happens to you then this is what you have to do to get past it.

Broken World – Upon starting Broken World and hearing a couple of my playable characters talking I’ve noticed they have different voice actors. It’s not a game breaking issue for me, but I do find it extremely annoying.

Availability:

You can get yourself a physical copy of DS2 and the expansion Broken World, but you will be left with a bit of sleuthing to get the game to run. If you wish to find one or both of these games on disc you’ll need to venture to places such as Ebay or Amazon.

Should you want less hassle you can certainly obtain the games digitally on Steam as a standalone game or you can buy the Dungeon Siege Collection on Steam or on GoG you can get the Dungeon Siege Collection. Rumor is that some people experience the mouse issue I did (see above) when using the Steam version. If that is the case then I’d strongly suggest sticking with the version on GoG.

**IMPORTANTT**
Do make note that neither platform provides the expansion Broken World for DS2 and it appears the only way to get the expansion is by getting an actual physical copy.

Rating/Score:

• Graphics: 2.5
• Audio: 4
• Gameplay: 3
• Controls: 3.5
• Story: 3.5
• Replay Value: 3
• Technical Issues/Info: 2.5

Average Rating: 3.14

Conclusion:

With the annoying technical issues aside for trying to get the game to be functional off physical media I haven’t had any game breaking bugs, just a couple of minor annoyance bugs that are resolved with saving, exiting and reloading. My biggest irritation with getting the game to run on Windows 10 was all the time I spent trying to figure it out. This was one of the more irritating games to get to run on my system.

I think the story is better over the first DS game and I do like that I can import characters to the expansion and I don’t have to start them from level 1 at the beginning like you had to do on the Legends of Aranna expansion for Dungeon Siege.

I did greatly dislike some of the changes from DS to DS2 in terms of overall gameplay at first, but I managed to adapt and accept them. There are mods for the game, one that I did make use of was the mod that lets you remove the party member limit so you can have more characters in your party at one time even during the mercenary difficulty level. Honestly, it was so much nicer getting my 5th and finally 6th party member slot open. In the first DS game you could have up to 8 members without needing to pay to add slots to your party, in DS2 you’re greatly restricted in this regard and I don’t like the change. The limit remover only allows you to have up to the max number of 6 members in your party. DS2 is hard coded to only allow 6 party members, I do not believe anyone has a mod out to surpass 6 party members.

Melee combat feels a bit lacking, the idea is that your melee character(s) would be your tank, but that’s not really how it works most of the time. Your ranged, both bow and magic, tend to dish out so much more damage over melee that creatures will simply ignore your melee tank and go for your glass cannons. There really isn’t a way around this, the best you can do is mitigate this issue as much as possible by using items that may stun, slow or immobilize targets, but all that is really nothing more than a band aid resolution that doesn’t work all that well.

In terms of loot and enemies respawning, I do like those improved changes in DS2 over the original. So not everything new is bad. This game is more geared toward a long term play through for those wanting to capitalize on the fact it is more loot oriented than the first game. This may be enough for those that enjoy these types of ARPGs to keep them playing through multiple runs so they can say the completed it on all difficulty levels.

I find it way too easy for one boss creature to eliminate your party (specifically in the main DS2 game) and force you to resurrect in town. This is a huge pain in the rear. No amount of powers used help whittle down these bosses fast enough to prevent you from dropping like files if you're not constantly on the move. Learn to kite, kite and kite some more with these boss fights.

The end of Dungeon Siege 2 the story leaves you on a cliffhanger and leaves you with the impression that there is more to come for the story. The downside to this is that any digital copy of DS2 doesn’t include the expansion Broken World where the story is continued and finished. Sadly, you’re just out of luck not knowing how the story plays out if you only get a digital copy of DS2.

In the end, even with the issues I faced I feel the second entry is better than the first. So if you enjoyed the first game, once you get used to the control and combat changes I’m sure you’d enjoy the second entry just as much.

 

[rtwjunkie]

@neatfeatguy that is a heck of a lot of work you put in! Thanks!!

 

[neatfeatguy]

@neatfeatguy that is a heck of a lot of work you put in! Thanks!!

I spent about 18 hours on the game and then restarted because I hated using melee with my character. He was usually last to initiate a target and he couldn't out damage the ranged classes so they were pulling the aggro and taking a constant beating. I restarted and went with a ranged, throwing weapon build with my character, then eventually took 2 more ranged (bow and another thrown weapon), a nature mage, combat mage and a pet that does nature magic (they can cast a damage spell or heal). I found this setup to work much better for me.

In all I spent about 66 total hours because I restarted.

I find this entertaining. I'm finally getting my sorry butt to play through games I never completed or even played by doing this, and these are all games I own physical copies of. I never beat DS2 until now. I got about half way through the game years ago and stopped playing it, never came back to it. I figure I'd share my experiences and maybe some of these older games will spark some interest in folks that have never heard of or maybe just never played them. Most of them have a digital version if they want to give them a go, the few that don't you may find them on abandonware sites or have to bite the bullet and find a physical copy.

 

[iameatingjam]

I can't remember which dungeon siege I played. But I remember enjoying it a lot. I think that was back with my mac mini that I got in 2004-ish. So I'm thinking it might have been the first one but not sure. I think they were both available on mac back in the day, but I dunno. This is the ppc days... so, well yeah, that means different instruction set and no easy emulation/compatibility layers or anything like that. So if one was not available, that would answer the question.

Okay I looked and I couldn't find dungeon siege II on macintoshgarden. I guess that means, its was probably DS1.

 

[neatfeatguy]

What's this? Another Retro Review so quickly after the last one? That's right! Another game reviewed and out fast because this one only took about 5 hours to play through. Enjoy!

Release Date: October 27, 2006
Developer(s): Digital Spray Studios, Mandel ArtPlains
Publisher(s): 1C Company, Atari

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows 2000/XP
• CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz or AMD equivalent
• GPU: 128MB 3D video card
• RAM: 512MB
• Storage: 3GB
• Other: 8x CD/DVD-Rom, DirectX 9.0 Sound Card

Graphics:

An 18 year old game that has graphics about as good as NOLF2 that was released 4 years prior. With that said, graphics for character models are okay. Some of the models are just outright goofy looking (like these nurses that are supposed to have a dead, skeleton like face to them, but have boobs that are about ready to pop out of their uniform and they run around in high heels) to ones that actually kind of fit the vibe the game is going for. I’m not entirely sure what the game is going for, some kind of post-apocalypse type feeling or slight horror type atmosphere.

The buildings and surrounding areas you traverse look pretty good for the age of the game, but I’m still not sure what exactly the developers were going for; horror-esque or some kind of post-apocalypse. The mix of odd enemies and the atmosphere just don’t really go together.

Audio:

The game is rather lacking in this department. Gun sounds are okay, which is about the best thing going for the audio. The music is pretty uninspiring and overly loud at times. Sound effects from bad guys are okay and you tend to hear the bad guys just before they appear, almost as if the developers were trying to find a way to build up suspense in the game. However, the sounds the bad guys make are mostly just babble sounds or various grunts.

There is no adjustment level for Music or Sound Effects. There is just a master volume control, so when some of that uninspiring music starts to play it gets pretty loud with no way to turn it down other than turning down the volume for everything.

The handful of NPCs you come across are strange looking, but also are poorly voice acted. They are not only hard to look at, but they are also difficult to listen to.

Gameplay:

This is just a basic FPS. You follow the corridor-type levels, kill the bad guys and that really just about sums it all up. There are no tricks or gimmicks. Bad guy in front of you, shoot! Sometimes you see a red thing that blows up - shoot it! Standard FPS rules apply here.

When it comes to health and ammo, you’d be hard pressed to ever die from health loss or ever running out of ammo. This stuff is everywhere.

Speaking of health, your health tops off at 99…..99. What the frick? 99! Who thought it was okay to have your max health be 99? Your health is displayed in the lower left corner as two small light bulbs. I understand why 99 is the max health, because there are only two bulbs that display as numbers so you can’t have 100, but come on! Folks with OCD will hate this. I hate it.

Making your way through the game you are going to find letters posted on walls/doors, sitting on desks or perhaps even the ground. Read them because they are there to try and give you tidbits about what is happening around you, but even with that in mind it’s a stretch to think any of them actually add to the story to help you make sense of things.

Time to complete the game took me just over 5 hours.

Controls:

There is nothing special about the controls…..it’s your basic FPS. WASD for moving around, you look with the mouse, shoot with the left mouse button and so on. So, you know, the usual stuff for a FPS.

One thing I do dislike about the controls is there is no run/sprint button. You just trudge along at an annoying pace. The whole 5.5 hours I played I would constantly press the Shift key trying to run/sprint. I know it didn’t do anything for me, but that’s the key I use for running in other FPS games so it was just a force of habit.

The secondary fire action (default is Right Mouse Button) can do something different for a few guns. For example using the RMB with the pistol and Tommy Gun brings up the sights to aim, but this is tediously slow. If you need to aim do it while you’re in cover because waiting for the animation to bring the sight up is a second or two of not being able to shoot….getting out of the aim mode is just as slow and annoying, so be careful.

Story:

You start out, as appearances give, just a normal guy in the Soviet army. You mundanely go about your normal life. Get up, eat breakfast, dress in your army uniform and go to your post that you stand at all day. On your normal, mundane departure from work you are struck by a vehicle that appears to have run a red light.

When you wake up you find yourself in some deranged hospital with no idea of what is happening in your world! You need to escape from the hospital and work on figuring out what exactly has happened since you’ve been incapacitated.

Replay Value:

None.

This is, for all intents and purposes, a one and done game. There is no way around it. A generic FPS shooter that leaves nothing desirable for replaying.

Technical Info/Issues/Bugs:

The game does not natively support 16:9 widescreen resolution. I was able to find a mod on https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home for You Are Empty that allows widescreen support. I suggest you use this mod if you do get the game. With that aside, getting the actual game to install on Windows 10 was as easy as inserting the disc and running the setup. I was surprised because I read that the game wouldn't install from disc on Windows 10 due to the disc's DRM. I do bypass the need for a disc while playing the game so I do not know for certain if the game will play on Windows 10 with the disc due to the DRM.

Hit boxes on your character from melee based attacks are impossible to judge. None of the attacks look like they hit you, but apparently they do. If any melee based character gets close to you, even though their attacks look like they’re not even close enough to hit you, expect to take damage…..not like it matters because right around the next box or corner you’ll find health and some type of ammo.

Bug:
Enemy bullets clip through some environmental items such as stone walls/pillars. Be careful, even though you look like you’re behind cover doesn’t mean you’re 100% safe.

Bug:
I’ve had it before where a random enemy will be shooting and shooting and shooting at me, but I’m behind cover so I’m not taking damage. I’m not shooting back at the enemy and then all of a sudden the enemy stops shooting. When I poke my head out to see what the deal is I find the enemy dead. No reason whatsoever that I can tell – no other enemies were around to kill it. It’s just dead. I've seen different enemy types attack each other, but I have had a couple of instances where a bad guy would stop shooting and drop dead without anything attacking it.

Bug:
Bad guys, as they try to advance on you or sometimes just maneuver around obstacles they can cause things that shouldn’t, to move. I’ve seen bad guys push a car over on its side as they were walking, but if you walk into a car it doesn’t budge. I’ve used a desk for cover and a bad guy came up on the other side trying to get to me and as he walked he pushed the desk and me backwards.

I did have a crash to desktop while playing. Only happened once. Just be sure to keep saving your progress as you go just in case it’s something that tends crop up.

Availability:

Aside from a physical disc there is no digital copy of it to be purchased anywhere. My understanding is the game is abandonware, but I haven’t officially confirmed that. This means if you want to play you need to get a physical copy of it or I guess check out abandonware sites to see if it is listed there.

Rating/Score:

• Graphics: 2.5
• Audio: 2
• Gameplay: 2
• Controls: 2
• Story: 1.5
• Replay Value: 1
• Technical Issues/Info: 2.5

Average Rating: 1.93

Conclusion:

Aside from the graphics probably being the best aspect of this game there isn’t much else going for it that screams, “Play me!”.

The story is a hot mess and how you progress through it is mind boggling and poorly written. The idea behind it isn't bad, per se, but the execution of how it's told is like they had a first grader write it.

Spoiler

At one point you’re fighting for your life and then you get captured. Then the guy that is in charge talks to you, babbles about how you must continue on since you’re already here and that what you need to know you can watch on a film. He then hands you a reel that you must play at the cinema..... He captures you to take all your weapons from you and then let you go because you've made it this far already. This has to be some of the worst story telling I've come across in a game and this isn't the only poor story telling part of the game, you'll come across a couple more in your play through.

Perhaps this is an issue with the translation of everything from Russian to English….or maybe these are the types of games that Russia made and this is how stories are expected to be back then?

Mix the poor story telling (and story) in with an identity that the game can’t seem to find – is it supposed to be a horror type FPS or something post-apocalypse? – and you get You Are Empty. Half the enemy models make zero sense for either game type this FPS is trying to be.

Then you have the controls feeling sluggish. The only thing going for it is the mouse sensitivity you can crank up or down to spin the camera around faster, everything else is like being stuck behind those people that will not walk up or down an escalator, they just stand there waiting for the stairs to slowly move them to their destination and all you want to do is shove them out of your way so you can go faster!

Ammo and health are so strewn about that there is almost no worries about dying from loss of health or running low on ammo. This makes the game feel easier than it should be because it’s almost impossible to die outside of doing something stupid – like testing out the lightning ball shooting gun in an enclosed area only to find out that it does AOE damage you kill yourself.

This game is pretty basic (and that’s being probably too generous in all honesty) for a FPS game. I can't say that age is a determining factor here when trying to think of something to defend the game with because there are old games that have wonderful stories and story telling, along with a focused atmosphere and characters that make sense - this game really has none of that. Would I recommend this game? No, not if you have to pay money for it, but if it’s abandonware and you get it for free then maybe it could be something you could try out for yourself. If you pass on this game you aren’t missing anything.

 

[Splinterdog]

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​

Release Date: September 30, 2002
Developer(s): Monolith Productions
Publisher(s): Fox Interactive, Vivendi Universal Games, Sierra Entertainment

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
• CPU: Pentium III 500Mhz or equivalent
• GPU: 32MB Direct3D compatible GPU with DirectX 8.1 support
• RAM: 128MB (256MB for Windows XP)
• Storage: 1.4GB
• Other: DirectX 8.1 sound, 4x CD ROM, 56k modem for internet play

Graphics:

Upon launching the game you can set your Display Settings if you want before you even start things up. Resolution support appears to range from 640x480 up to 1920x1440.

After going through all the graphic/display settings and ensuring all options are maxed I ran the test to see how things looked, when the test finished I was given a popup telling me that I should increase the settings for my system. I thought it was humorous.

The world levels/environments are very much boxed in and on rails, enclosed, so you don’t see much in terms of environmental backgrounds to see how the game engine handles draw distance and textures. The immediate buildings and close up environment are adequate looking for today’s standards, but even with how well they do look it won’t help you forget that you’re playing a game that is a few years shy of being a quarter century old.

The character models for the age of the game are strikingly well done and look halfway decent. Facial animations are okay, the lips are stiff when audio is spoken, but that’s to be expected from technology available then.

As for cutscenes, character models look as they do during gameplay. The overall animation for the character models, you would probably be hard pressed to find another game released around the same time that looks as good as this one does.

Audio:

Spoken audio, a lot of it is well done. You do have some voices/conversations that sound a bit cheesy, but maybe that’s kind of the novelty of the game as it sort of puts you into a ‘60s/’70s James Bond spy-esque movie. A movie where the voice acting can be good, but you have those B-actors that shouldn’t be talking because it’s so hard to listen to them drone on.

Sound effects with guns and other aspects of the game are pretty good, even by today’s standards. You can hear bad guys walking and they can hear if you’re not sneaking, so be aware of your surroundings and audio cues.

The music when combat is starting or when you’re possibly seen/suspected as a spy and the bad guys are on the hunt is a bit annoying after the hundredth time you hear it. Otherwise most other music throughout the game is generally fitting for the areas you’re in.

Gameplay:

Here we have a First Person Shooter (FPS) game.

When you start your game you’ll be asked to select the difficulty level you wish to play, these are your options:

• Easy
• Normal
• Hard
• Superspy

When you’re checking out the difficulty levels you will be prompted for what to expect from each difficulty at the bottom of the screen, so be sure to pick a difficulty that you feel will be the one for your skill level.

There are RPG aspects in this game, a skill leveling system. As you do tasks throughout your gameplay you are awarded Skill Points (SP). As you build up SP you can decide how you wish to spend them across 8 different skill sets:

• Stealth
• Stamina
• Marksmanship
• Carrying
• Armor
• Weapons
• Gadgets
• Search

Each skill allows you to upgrade 4 times to reach level 5 and each upgrade will bolster the skill a bit. For example, if you train up Stealth to level 2 you’ll earn a 25% boost to your Sneaking and Hiding ability and an 18% boost to your Evasion.

The game allows you to pick up and move bodies to help from keeping other NPCs going on alert. So be mindful where you leave a body, if it’s in an obvious spot that can be noticed, stand over the body and when looking you’ll see a pickup icon appear in the lower left corner (above your health). Use the default key “G” to pick the body up. When you are carrying the body you will move slower, keep this in mind. To drop the body you just press the “G” key again.

If you trigger an alarm the bad guys will flock to that location and they will actively search you out, especially if one of them has spotted you. Even if you’re hiding in the dark, if they have access to a light source (lights switch for the room or flash lights) they will utilize them to search you out.

You get a slew of ammo types with various weapons, be sure to try them out and see what suits which situation best. One ammo type is a tracker dart you can shoot at bad guys so you can track them on your radar. I’ve only found this particular item useful in a couple of situations, but I was more of a brute force player and not sneaking about to try and remain undetected.

Controls:

You can change the keyboard keys to your liking, always a nice addition to any game so the user can play to their style.

You get pretty much a basic layout for a first person shooter (FPS) with the key configuration. Movement is tied to WASD, jump is on the SPACE BAR and so on. This game does allow you to lean, so you can use Q to lean left and E to lean right, for peering around corners to help plan your next move or attack.

As for interacting or action keys, the USE ability is defaulted to the RMB (right mouse button). This threw me off for a bit because the RMB in a lot of FPS games is usually an aim function for your weapon. Some weapons have different ammos you can use and the default key to change ammo types is “F”.

Be sure to look over the key layout to make sure things are to your liking before you just jump into game.

I felt that looking around with the mouse was way too fast with a 1200dpi speed on my mouse. I had to turn the mouse sensitivity down as low as it went before I didn’t feel like I was spinning like a top in the game when I slightly moved my mouse.

Other than the mouse sensitivity feeling way too high most controls are pretty spot on for your average FPS.

In the control options you can set the game to ALWAYS RUN, so your character always runs when they move. I have it set to ON and if you ask me, it doesn’t feel like you are always running. Your forward movement speed still feels slow and if you actually just WALK in the game it feels like you’re moving in slow motion.

You can zoom in with weapons that are equipped with a scope, use the “Z” key. You cannot aim down a weapon’s iron sights in the game so most gun play is basically you shooting from the hip – so to speak. Speaking of aiming, when you are trying to aim your weapon at something small (such as a camera or maybe a bad guy’s head) so you can take them out with one shot, the smoothness of the reticle isn’t smooth when you’re trying to do small movements. It feels as if you’re aiming on a small grid. It’s hard to explain and would be something you’d have to experience for yourself to better understand.

When you get to control snowmobiles the controls are overly sensitive and a tad irritating to deal with. I’d say it’s the part of the game I dislike the most, having to use snowmobiles.

Time for me to complete the game was about 13 hours, it would have been closer to 12 had I not wasted so much time on bugs that hindered my progress.

Story:

You play as Cate Archer and it is your job to work at thwarting HARM terrorist every chance you get as you work for UNITY. Your first job is to infiltrate a village to photograph a meeting. You quickly will find things unraveling around you as you continue to work on infiltrating HARM's organization to put an end to their evil doings.

Replay Value:

Low.

It’s a great little FPS from the past and even all the rave reviews and praise the game has received, I just don’t feel like I’d spend the time to play through this game again.

The story is good enough to keep you wanting to see how things progress and the graphics are great for the age of the game, but the overall gameplay value just doesn’t have anything enticing enough to warrant me to run through the game again. While I had fun playing it, I most likely wouldn’t return to it outside of just wanting to revisit something nostalgic-esque.

Technical Info/Issues/Bugs:

Run speed in the game is brutally slow, downright painful. The run speed feels like walking and the walk speed feels like you’re trudging through molasses. And if that’s not slow enough for you, pick up a body to move it and at times you’re almost not even moving forward at all. I’m left wanting to tear what’s left of my hair out.

End of Chapter 2 mission, as the game was doing a transition to the cutscene at the end of the mission, the game crashed to desktop for me. I’m only about 45 minutes into the game by this point, so that’s a bit disheartening. Thankfully the “Continue” option when I got back into the game took me right to the cutscene and I could continue on. So far this is just a minor inconvenience to me.

Chapter 3 – after doing a few things to obtain fuel for the snowmobile, upon returning to it so I could use it the pilot that flew me to my destination was standing alongside the snowmobile and wouldn’t move. Once I got on the snowmobile and tried moving it out of the spot it was parked, because of the pilot’s choice of standing next to it, he was ran over and killed. Thus forcing me to restart from the most recent save – which in my case was restarting the mission.

I had a quick save that wouldn’t load. I had to load up the auto save that put me back about 20 minutes worth of game time. It only happened once, but it’s something you should be aware of should it happen to you.

Performance gets choppy at times after during mission 7 and after when too much gets going on the screen. For example, when several police officers in the area get on the map at once the performance of the game drops and fluctuates between 80fps to over 600fps. You can feel and notice the hitching this creates.

BUG:
Mission 4 – after getting the necessary parts to access the Omega computer, when I enter the password the ceiling opens up and the floor raises to take you to the next part of the building. However, in my play through, my character would not go up with the floor. I would drop through the floor and die. The way around this is I had to keep jumping as the floor was moving up so I didn’t fall through the floor.

BUG:
Mission 8 – when having to access the main vault, after decoding the password for the vault door the door did not open. I had to reload and try again. And again…..and again….and again….the door opened part way, but not enough for me to enter. Reload and try again….after 7 reloads the door only opening part way twice, the second time it opened part way I just pulled out my AK and shot the crap out of the door and it swung open. I don’t know what the issue was, but this bug almost ended my play through.

GAME ENDING BUG:
Mission 8 – The Getaway.
You have to try and catch/apprehend the bad guy that’s been after you and even tried to capture you, but now you’re after him! That’s great and all, but this part of the mission turns into a rail shooter. The NPC you are with he drives and you shoot. The bad guy is working on escaping while you’re trying to take him out. Lots of twists, turns and other bad guys to kill and eventually you get to a point where you drive up to closed doors and the bad guy has vanished and you’re just stuck with no way to progress the game. I reloaded the game many times, over a dozen tries, and they all resulted in the same thing – stuck at closed doors. The game is broken for me and upon searching online it is a known issue with the game. I tried a few suggestions, but none of them worked for me. I have to stop playing the game here because I cannot progress any further…..that was until I found a cheat to bypass the level.

Availability:

You can obtain physical copies on places such as Ebay, Amazon and I’ve seen ones listed on Mercari. As I dig around on digital platforms it appears you’re not going to find it digitally.

I’m not sure the status on the game if it is abandonware or not or just one of those IPs caught in limbo with no real official way of getting a copy outside of physical means. I’d strongly urge that if you wish to play the game then find a used copy of it.

Rating/Score:

• Graphics: 4
• Audio: 4
• Gameplay: 3
• Controls: 2.5
• Story: 3
• Replay Value: 2
• Technical Issues/Info: 1

Average Rating: 2.79

Conclusion:

A game coming up on nearly 23 years old looks amazingly well for it’s age. Character models are still okay to look at when you compare them to today’s games and the surrounding environments you travel through are put together well.

Some of the controls in the game are irritating due to the over sensitivity, but thankfully snowmobiles don’t take up too much of your gameplay time. Combat is okay, but the variety of guns and ammos you can find help make up for it being just basic point and shoot game with a touch of stealth added to the mix.

I did enjoy some of the tongue in cheek and satire type humor the game writers had and the story was enjoyable enough.

Sadly, the downfall of the game for me was the game breaking bug that prevented me from being able to finish the game. Perhaps it’s an issue with how the game runs on current hardware or even Windows 10. I had to resort to using game cheats to complete bypass that mission so I could complete the game. Had there not been issues like the ones I experienced I would have rated the game higher in the Technical Issues instead of the bottom of the barrel rating of 1 I had to give it.

Even with the couple of bugs and game breaking glitch I would still recommend playing this game at least once. You may have to resort to using cheats to bypass the last part of mission 8 if you get hung up like I did.

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I have both NOLF 1&2 on disc and for originality, great tongue in cheek dialogue, NOLF 1 wins hands down in my opinion. I'm not sure if I ever finished NOLF2, possibly because I came across the same bugs as you.
Thanks for this review and yes NOLF1 is hard to come by - it can be found on Ebay in disc form, but at silly prices.

 

[neatfeatguy]

​

Release Date: May 3, 2005
Developer(s): Brainbox Games, Digital Extremes
Publisher(s): Groove Games, Hip Games

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP
• CPU: Pentium III or AMD equivalent
• GPU: DirectX 9.0 compatible card with 64MB RAM
• RAM: 256MB
• Storage: 2.4GB
• Other:4x CD-ROM drive

Graphics:

Starting out it looks like the cutscenes are a paltry 480p resolution, but what would you really be expecting from a game pushing 20 years old? The images are clearly dated in these cutscenes, but you can make out everything without issues. As for the in game resolution you can choose to set it from 512x384 up to 1920x1200. Even at the highest resolution things feel stretched out and not ideal. I don’t think the original game was designed to go that high and it just happens to be a widescreen supported resolution added to the version that I was able to acquire since the copy off the physical media doesn’t work on Windows 10 to even let you install the game (more on that in the Technical part of the review).

Character models are okay looking, but certainly they are not as good what Half-Life 2 offered that released about 6 months earlier nor even NOLF2 that released 3 years before this game launched. So, for what the game offers in terms of graphic quality when you’re comparing them to similar games of the time, they’re decent, but certainly not top end of that era. When you compare them to graphics of today, they’re barely sub-par.

Environments are somewhat bland in terms of quality and there isn’t much to do about getting past that, what you see is pretty basic.

One thing I hate is the blur effect when you run, more is mentioned about it under the Controls section of this review.

There is an option to turn off or on extra gore. All this does is turn off/on blood animations. With the gore turned off the combat feels and looks even worse because of the janky body movements bad guys make when you hit them – the movements just look dumb.

Audio:

The voice over work is okay and gun sounds are about average, but the music leaves something to be desired. So far I haven’t heard anything that really stands out for a FPS game. Explosions are decent sounding and bad guys spout off some one liners to try and keep things sounding more like you’re engaging in a real environment and not just some simulated game.

Gameplay:

Some of the less than stellar graphics is made up for by the fact that there are things in the environment that are destructible and even a few small details such as shooting a steam pipe shows a short animation where steam is shooting out of it.

There is no saving during gameplay. If you die, you go back to the last checkpoint/load point.

You have 4 health markers on the upper left corner of the screen. These markers will deplete as you take damage, if you stop taking damage before a marker is completely empty that marker will automatically refill on its own after about 5 seconds. If one of your markers becomes empty the only way to refill it is with the health device you carry around. When it comes to replenishing health, you carry health charges with you, the only issue is they take a few seconds to charge up and kick in when you’re using the healing device.

Guns, there are a variety of them from a rifle to a shotgun, grenade launcher and so on. Some guns feel less useful – I’m looking at you shotgun – and others take a bit to get used to their range – I’m looking at you grenade launcher. Once you get the feel for them you’ll be able to figure out what gun best suits the situation you’re in.

Speaking of guns, as you play through the game you want to look for green like, almost HDD shaped objects you can pick up. These are called “Energy Weapon Cores” (EWC). They can be used to upgrade a weapon and each weapon can be upgraded 3 different times. Upgrades grant additional features and increased power. Each upgrade level costs that many EWCs. If you upgrade your rifle’s first upgrade level it costs 1 EWC. If you want to upgrade it to the second upgrade level it costs 2 EWC and for the third upgrade level it costs 3 EWC. To fully upgrade any weapon takes a total of 6 EWC.

When aiming your gun the reticle (which is the circle in the center of your screen) will turn red when you’ve got a bad guy lined up in your sights. You basically get a free cheat in the game because of it; if a bad guy is behind foliage and you can’t see him, the game will still turn the reticle red once you have your sights lined up on him.

As for bad guys you’ll learn that the locations they come from are scripted. If you enter an area bad guys will appear once you get to a certain spot or do a certain action. If you replay that area you’ll notice the bad guys only appear once you get to that certain spot. This can be irritating at times because when the bad guys are populated, sometimes they appear right out of nowhere behind you – from a location you just came through and cleared everything out. Just be on your toes at times because you never know for certain (on your first play through in an area) where bad guys may suddenly appear.

As mentioned before there are destructible objects and cover in the game, you’ll learn what can be brought to ruins as you play and like most other FPS games, if you see something red and think it will blow up, then shoot it!

Time to complete is about 5.5 hours.

Controls:

You have your usual FPS controls. WASD handles your movement and the mouse handles the camera and shooting things. Shift key allows you to sprint, but I don’t care for the graphic effects – to simulate that you’re moving faster everything becomes blurry and looks awful. I don’t sprint unless I absolutely have to. I disable Motion Blur in games when I can, but there is no option to disable the blur effect when you run in this game.

When driving a vehicle you turn by using the mouse, the direction you turn the camera (mouse) is the direction the vehicle turns. To accelerate you press “W” and to stop you press “S”. Pretty simple. If the vehicle has a gun, you can shoot with the LMB and/or RMB.

Otherwise there isn’t much more to the controls that you wouldn’t be used to from playing other FPS games.

Story:

You play as Mason, a doctor/soldier (best I can tell). You are working on an escort mission of an infected person carrying an unknown virus. As you’re heading out your transport shuttle comes under fire and crashes! Your job is to find and contain this person, learn what you can about the virus and stop those that are after it.

Do you have what it takes to survive to save yourself and the infected transportee?

Replay Value:

None

The story is just okay, but the aged gameplay and combat in this FPS is pretty bland. There is nothing else about the game that grabs you, making you want to play over and over again. I wouldn't expect anyone to replay this game.

Technical Info/Issues/Bugs:

I never originally finished this game years ago when I first played it (was either on XP or Vista, I don’t recall) because the game, even though I had patched it, had audio cutting out and all together not playing after a couple hours into the game. I just packed it back up in the box and never came back to it until now.

The game will not install off the game disc for me on Windows 10, this appears to be due to the disc’s DRM. Because I cannot run the game off the disk this is an automatic 1 score for technical issues for me. This is due to the fact that I’m working on seeing what older, physical copies of games I have that I can install and play on a supported OS such as Windows 10 that I use. I’ve had to find a copy of the game to be played from other places that I won’t discuss here. With that bit laid out, I can move on to other issues/bugs.

I’ve been making use of FRAPS to take easy screenshots of games, the default key is F12. In the game pressing F12 adjusts the gamma and it is very annoying. I had to change FRAPS screenshot to a different key that didn’t impact anything in game so I have to remember I set it to the PrtScn key.

Starting the game it will sometimes start in window mode at 800x600 resolution. I have to actually set the game options to full screen and the proper resolution….however, as I continue to play the game just feels stretched out. I find that my feelings are confirmed when I try to access the weapon wheel (default key is “X”). You need to use the weapon wheel to apply EWCs to your weapons and you can’t do that on an unsupported resolution setting. I have to change the game’s resolution down to something it natively supports, such as 1280x1024. Because of this I’ve opted to play at 1280x1024 and not the 1920x1200.

Availability:

There are no digital copies to be found for this game. Perhaps it is abandonware, but I haven’t looked into it. You can certainly find a physical copy of the game for PC or the Xbox – yes, that’s the original Xbox.

However, based on what you read in the technical section about getting the physical media for PC to play on a supported OS such as Windows 10 – that’s not happening.

Rating/Score:

• Graphics: 2
• Audio: 2.5
• Gameplay: 2.5
• Controls: 2.5
• Story: 2.5
• Replay Value: 1
• Technical Issues/Info: 1

Average Rating: 2

Conclusion:

Dated graphics and remedial feeling combat keeps this older FPS from being a better game. Tack on the somewhat awkward feeling controls for vehicles and it doesn’t help things. The story is okay, nothing you won’t lose sleep over wanting to keep you playing the game nonstop.

The game play is short, but that doesn’t really surprise me because I don’t know how much more of the writers stretching out the story by doing the same thing over and over again – find the girl, lose the girl…..find the girl, lose the girl…..find the girl, lose the girl until you finally reach the end of the game to see how the story goes.

I don’t really have much else to say that wasn’t already covered. It’s just mediocre, at best, FPS from 2005. For even back then the game was just mediocre when comparing it to better FPS that released around that time. Are there better games of this genre out there from the same time period? You bet there is. Is the game worth trying? Eh, perhaps if you’re bored and can obtain a copy to play….and that’s about it.