In Pursuit of Greed

The Good
This is one of those games where you get absolutely no sense of being there whatsoever. A space bovine shooting at ugly fiends with a thingamajig? Yes, the graphics are crappy! Yes, the weapons are laughably weak (in all senses of the word)! And yes, I actually enjoyed playing this surreal game! (And yes, the game is (was) quite playable on a 486SX/25, if you've got the memory...)

And, oh yes, the music is quite listenable (I actually took the time to search the web to find the original tracks), especially since you can choose any modules you want for the soundtrack.

The Bad
Crappy graphics I can deal with. Weak weapons just mean you have to hit the fire key more often. It's the overall feel of not getting anything done that got me in the end. I mean, this is not the kind of game you want to play on your own. No plot, no interesting level design, no fun.

Oh, did I say I enjoyed playing this? Well, I did until I found out that Greed was obviously solely designed for more than one player. That must have been right around the end of level one.

The Bottom Line
A treasure hunt with nasties to shoot. Never tried it with a friend, so if you can find it somewhere, maybe give it a go?

The Good
Like I said, In Pursuit of Greed is an odd, odd game. For a 2.5D shooter in 1995 that doesn't come close to even the visual level of Doom while retaining mearly a tenth of its frame rate, Greed features some of the best ingame music in any game to date. I'm amazed they got Necros to do the music for them, and if there's anything genuinely good with this game, it's definitely its music. Thumbs up, Andrew!

Music aside, I would say the only genuinely good thing about this horrible game is its half-decent story, which could've layed the groundwork to even if not a masterpiece, than at least an enjoyable game. Unfortunately, Greed fails that too.

The Bad
Hmm. Where shall I start?

Fair enough, with the introduction sequence. Long, nonanimated, thoroughly BORING. Yuck. Even the graphics aren't particularly good, and seemingly made by an amateur with 3D studio. Want proof? Check the screenshots.

Onwards to graphics. And I'm not even talking about the 3D engine - I'm talking about the horrendeously bad textures, the unbelievably nonrealistic sprites of enemies, the completely lack of imagination in the weapon design... argh! The humanity!

And now, the cream in the pie. The 3D engine is the worst I've ever seen. Seriously. I thought Ken's Labyrinth was bad enough, well this game puts it to shame. At least Ken's Labyrinth had reasonable framerates. Greed's 3D engine is, in fact, SO bad, that even its framerates are miserable, around the 8 mark on a P2-350. And the game is from 1995! Come on, I can code a better raycaster in my sleep!

The Bottom Line
The pain! The humanity! Why? Why waste such good music on such a bad game?!