game review – Page 8

Thoughts on: Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition

13/10/2023 13/10/2023

While I have never played the original Nintendo DS version of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes from 2009, I have played and greatly enjoyed the “HD” version of the game released in 2011 on PC, PSN and XBLA. It was a unique and highly enjoyable attempt to mix the turn-based strategy of the Heroes of Might & Magic games with very simple match 3 gameplay reminiscent of Puzzle Quest. It had frustrating aspects to it, of course, but I remember liking it a lot 12 years ago. And I have been considering revisiting the title for a while, but those plans had to be put on hold because I didn’t want to deal with the technical issues. Sadly, the original PC release became quite problematic to run in recent years and on top of that fans of the multiplayer aspect of the game (which I have never been interested in and have not played) were disappointed when a few years ago Ubisoft disabled the online functionality entirely.

The announcement of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition was a very pleasant surprise and I dove into it as soon as I had time. Unfortunately, I have to say that the game hasn’t aged as well as I have remembered and this new release does nothing to the biggest frustrations the original game had as well.

O tempora: Alone in the Dark 1, 2, 3

08/10/2023 08/10/2023

O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.

It’s been a while since I’ve last played any Alone in the Dark game. I admired the original and genuinely liked the 2008 game despite all of its numerous flaws. My favorite one was the first reboot, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. But the original still had that “something” about it that I really liked. Not the sequels, however. But for the sake of revisiting every game, I decided against my better judgement to play all of the first three Alone in the Dark games, knowing well that I will not enjoy the two thirds of the journey.

Happy about: Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

02/10/2023 02/10/2023

My whole experience with Ratchet & Clank franchise began and originally ended with playing the first 4 games on PS2. The first game was nice, but deeply flawed in several ways. But starting with Going Commando, the first sequel, the series carved its niche. And Rift Apart is still following the basics that were established and improved in 2002-2003. Playing it now, finally available on PCs 2 years since its original release, makes me miss the fact that these types of games aren’t really popular anymore.

Happy about: The Saboteur

27/09/2023 27/09/2023

There was once a game development studio called Pandemic Studios, who released a lot of projects that were either extremely critically and financially successful, like Star Wars: Battlefront and Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, or more polarizing, but still highly beloved like Full Spectrum Warrior or Destroy All Humans!. But then, after lots of delays, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames was launched to more mediocre reviews and there were reports that the game was released in a state deemed unfinished by the team. The Lord of the Rings: Conquest had even worse reviews and was relatively quickly forgotten. And the final game of the studio, The Saboteur, was launched after one of the development offices was already closed by EA and almost immediately after the game launch to relatively positive reviews, the whole studio was shut down.

Which came as a shock to me – I played The Saboteur when it was first released and considered it to be among the best and most enjoyable examples of sandbox-y open world games – games that I rarely enjoy. I remembered loving its sound design. How the parkour felt much better than what Assassin’s Creed did at the time (with only 2 first games launched). How its approach to stealth and sabotage felt like a perfect “simplified Hitman in open world”. But memories can often be incorrect, so for a while I wanted to revisit the game and give it a fresh look. Thankfully, it’s still available on GOG, and plays pretty well on modern hardware.

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Happy about: Resident Evil 4 – Separate Ways

23/09/2023 23/09/2023

While every Resident Evil release since the wonderful new RE2 has evoked varying degrees of disappointment, you never know if the next one will be exciting again. The remake of Resident Evil 4, released earlier this year, was quite good but also full of infuriatingly baffling decisions and most people were sure that Separate Ways mode won’t be added to it, if it wasn’t there on release. It was a remake, after all, and it made all the sense to include everything that was canonical to the original version, including the additional modes that the original game had. And even though Separate Ways were not part of the first release of Resident Evil 4, they were added since the PS2 version and were included in all of the newer releases.

Yet here we are, with the Separate Ways paid DLC that is released half a year after the main game. And to my surprise, I find it more entertaining than the main game itself.

Happy about: The Making of Karateka

18/09/2023 18/09/2023

Even leading up to its release, I wasn’t sure what exactly The Making of Karateka would turn out to be. A collection of games? A documentary with interviews? Some remasters or reinterpretations of the original titles? All of it, turns out. And it’s a fascinating compilation that, in a way, was possible due to how impactful and important Karateka was and because Jordan Mechner, its creator, detailed his experiences in a diary that was published as a book years ago.

Revisiting Split/Second

12/09/2023 12/09/2023

There used to be a time I regularly played fun arcadey racing titles. But then two things happened. First – racing titles started to pursue the open world concept that made all of them move farther from the simplicity and joy of just selecting a car, a track and going. Second – the popularity of more sim-like arcade racing games like Forza Horizon and Grid, games that I just can’t get into to this day. The nice thing is that the last two greats of the genre that I loved were among the best I’ve ever experienced – Split/Second and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, both released in 2010. The sad thing is – there hasn’t been a single racing game since 2010 (the remaster of Hot Pursuit notwithstanding) that I’ve genuinely enjoyed. Is Split/Second as amazing as I remember it being?

In love with: Blasphemous 2

07/09/2023 23/08/2024

While initially I bounced off Blasphemous due to its focus on the “Dark Souls inspired challenge”, I did end up liking it a lot when playing the final version of the game a year ago. The title remained a bit too cryptic with some of its design and there still were some rude moments, but overall it was redesigned to be much more fun and welcoming. Its visual style and soundtrack were phenomenal as well.

I was very cautious about Blasphemous 2 as I couldn’t predict what direction a sequel could take. I could bounce off it even harder, after all, depending on what the focus of the game would be. In the end, I loved playing it. Yet I feel like some die hard fans of the original might get disappointed.

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Ugly duckling: Tribes: Vengeance

02/09/2023 02/09/2023

There’s just nothing quite like Tribes. A huge sci-fi universe Dynamix created long ago and explored through their mech simulator games, strategies and fast paced multiplayer-only FPS titles definitely has interesting story and ideas to it, even if not exactly novel. But it wasn’t the story that made Tribes be as exciting and incredible as it is… I mean, they are those “multiplayer-only FPS titles” mentioned before, there’s not a much story needed for those to be good. Far future, different Tribes of people with jetpacks locked in an eternal conflict that, for whatever reason uses the typical classic FPS rules of “capture the flag” to win over each other – that’s all you need to know. The rest is speed, inertia, skiing over the ground and using projectile-based weaponry across gigantic levels to somehow snipe enemies flying through the air.

And yet, somehow, Tribes: Vengeance exists – a singleplayer first game with really heavy emphasis on story. Made by Irrational Games, fresh off their success with System Shock 2 and Freedom Fighters and soon to get even more love with SWAT 4 and then, of course, BioShock. And this game, for whatever reason, was very quickly dropped by the publisher Vivendi Universal Games and was all but forgotten.

In love with: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

27/08/2023 27/08/2023

After finishing the work on the third and originally final entry in the Ace Attorney series, Shu Takumi, the creative lead behind those games, wanted to do something similar but fresh. Which ended up becoming Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective for Nintendo DS in 2010. Unlike the Ace Attorney games, this title was more of a puzzle focused adventure game, where you are a spirit, who can perform the titular “ghost tricks” when possessing different items on the screen to solve problems. And instead of unearthing or solving crime you were often focusing on preventing it by having an ability to possess a recently deceased person and go 4 minutes before their death to attempt and prevent it from happening in the first place.

The game was very well received critically, but had poor sales, according to Capcom themselves, and soon after Shu Takumi returned to work on more Ace Attorney games. Luckily, the game wasn’t forgotten and we now have a new version of it adapted for modern platforms, running on RE Engine (as it’s now the main engine Capcom builds their projects on) and with a couple of neat improvements. And it’s great.