phlux
Reviews
Crackdown (Xbox 360)
Even a Halo3 beta invite can't raise this game out of mediocrity
The Good
Initially, it looks like there's a lot to like about Crackdown: the impressive graphics with no loading times or glitches, the sheer size of the environment which can be enjoyed even from far above the streets, the joy of being able to jump on rooftops to collect stuff that makes you jump even higher or throw cars around... could be a lot of fun, and it is fun in the beginning. The premise that you can play along a friend in the same city, but not necessarily together, sounds even more exciting.
The game's sound (not music, that's a different story) is nice and crisp with a very charismatic sounding announcer. Loud explosions as well, which are always a plus.
Oh, and there's an invitation to the Halo3 beta in the box. Wait, I don't care for Halo3. Scratch that.
The Bad
From a game by a legend like Dave Jones, one would expect a bit more than Crackdown delivers. Yes, the visuals are pretty, but the basic premise falls flat quickly after novelty wears off. Agreed, it's fun to jump around in a huge city, upgrading your character to jump even higher, but that's about it already. The rest of the action consists of rather unimaginative shooting action without much of a goal. Side missions like you'd expect in a game like this are rare and don't feel rewarding at all.
While the city is huge, it's also devoid of much interactivity. A lot of people and cars move around, but that's it. No shops, next to no missions, no dialogues, nothing.
The game's music is rarely heard anyway, so why bother with licensing it? And even with the licensed music, it fails to impress, since the music's style is very diverse and often doesn't fit the game at all. The announcer also repeats himself a lot and doesn't always talk about stuff you'd expect from the given situation.
The game feels like they developed a "jump-around-a-city- simulator" first and then decided to add some "content" since there wasn't much else to do. Sadly, there isn't much else to do now either. It's a tech demo, nothing more.
The Bottom Line
There are three options:
a) if you are a Halo fan, you'll want Crackdown for the beta invitation
b) in case you like fancy graphics and rather shallow gameplay, you'll want Crackdown for it's fancy graphics and rather shallow gameplay
c) in any other case, Crackdown will likely collect dust on the shelf
In my case, c) was the letter of choice and now Crackdown collects dust on a shelf, which is too bad considering I dislike Halo3 as well.
By phlux on April 15, 2007
Sacred (Windows)
Many good ideas, but technically a disgrace to game programming
The Good
The environment graphics are really good, very detailed and the world seems to be really huge compared to games like Diablo II, for example. I say "it seems" - read about that later. The storyline is nice, not too convincing but with a nice twist at the end and many really funny dialogues (yes, Ascaron knows how to make one laugh - unfortunately, this isn't always a good thing). Many really good ideas are built into the game, like horse riding and the countless subquests with sometimes hilarious results - like Glubba, the stupid Ogre who has taken over the main villain's tower since he found it empty. He simply renamed it from Shaddar-Nur to Glubba-Nur and claimed himself "ruler of Glubba-Nur" - and sounds like a complete retard while introducing those facts to the hero ;) Extremely funny tombstone inscriptions make every graveyard visit worth the time. The german voiceovers are very good for most of the characters, since Ascaron didn't save on the voice actors: Manfred Lehmann speaks the Gladiator, and since Lehmann also speaks Bruce Willis in Die Hard and all his other movies, the Gladiator is actually like John McClane, he even taunts monsters with his trademark "yippie-ka-yay pigface" line. The voice talent for the Dark Elf character is the german voice of Nicholas Cage - sounds very good and rough - and the Seraphim is spoken by the voice of Dana Scully from X-Files, I think.
Well, but that's it. Yes, really. That's all I liked. No kidding.
The Bad
Omg, here we go.
I expected a Diablo II style game, or better to say, Diablo II brought to absolute perfection. Hell, it's 5 years since D2 came out, someone could do it even better, I'm sure. From the box text, from the demo, from the previews - all sounded like it could be heaven for D2 addicts. I also expected the game to be full of bugs, like all Ascaron games were and will be.
On the first part, I was wrong. Yes, it has some D2 aspects to it, like the randomly dropped items, set items, unique items blah blah. But that's about all. Sluggish controls, sometimes not even responding to massive mouse button bashing, slow pace with some characters, extremely bad skill balancing (the dark elf has a skill which freezes ALL enemies in a certain range - even huge dragons - and they won't attack until the cloud has lifted), really lame item generation with stuff like unique items without any attributes, set items which drop 7 times in 10 minutes, set items which don't even have the set name (so you can't really see it's a set item, only if you equip it). The 500+ quests are basically the same - get this, get that, rescue that person, kill this person. Wow.
On the second part, I was damn right. The game has definitely more bugs than features. Not all of them are visible in single player, but the problems range from complete unplayability (game doesn't start thanks to the crazy copy protection, "old drivers" or some other hardware "problem") over skills which don't give you experience when using them, non working random quests pointing to someplace where the quest target is nowhere to be found, disappering items, items changing their type, name, attributes every time you drop them and pick them up again to really huge bugs like non working main quests (you don't get to know where to go next since the quest triggers don't work all the time...), non-working skills, bad item generation resulting in items you should be able to wear, but can't, and last but not least the absolutely hilarious multi player, on which I need to explain more so you get what I mean.
Since Diablo II, players are used to the Battle.net online gaming service. It's free, it's easy to use, everyone can play with others or alone in their own games - it's a bit laggy at times, but otherwise no problem.
Ascaron seemed to want to create something similar, which would be the first company after Blizzard who tries this. Unfortunately, they failed miserably: they didn't make it so you can create own games in closed network! They open the games theirselves, but of course, for currently 15.000+ players, about 1200 slots are not exactly enough. So while 1.200 players are playing, the rest is waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Since the game servers aren't that stable, they tend to crash, making even less slots available. Sounds good? No. And that's only now - the international release will follow end of March 2004, so even more players will be waiting. Also, they messed up the interface. When you connect to a server, there is no cancel button and no timeout either, so it'll sit there four HOURS trying to connect to a crashed server.
Then, there are other bugs regarding multiplayer. Lost equipment when joining a game (all is gone or replaced by stuff like horses, goblin figures, healing pots; the latter resulting in your char walking around looking like a healing pot), lost characters because the game server didn't save correctly, dark elf characters looking like wizards or gladiators while still having dark elf skills... if you can read german and read the forums with the bug reports: it's a complete mess!
Ascaron issued a patch on the release day, but it didn't fix much. Multiplayer was enabled by it (the retail copy didn't even include it, regardless what it said on the box), but the game still doesn't run well. Needless to say that LAN multiplayer doesn't work properly either - desynched games, lost quest NPCs and extreme lags are just three problems.
The Bottom Line
All in all: don't buy it NOW. Maybe Ascaron can fix the bugs and build a proper multiplayer network, but at the time of writing, there is not much hope. I completed the game once, and to me, it has no replaying value. Other than D2, you cannot run bosses or something like that, also the items are boring as hell (no Windforce here, sorry). It gets old soon, and that's the main problem.
By phlux on March 10, 2004
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (Windows)
There is nothing like D2:LoD v1.10. Nothing at all.
The Good
Note: This review is based on v1.10, which was released in October 2003, after years in the making. v1.10 changed pretty much everything, so it would be pointless to review the old versions.
After three years of playing Diablo II LoD, you can imagine that I don't have many complaints about it. It's easy accessible for any gamer - casual or hardcore - and it's incredible replay value bases on one simple thing built into any human: hunting and collecting. You'll get to hunt down more monsters than you've ever imagined, and what's the point? Yes, leveling up your character (which is now quite difficult since on high levels, you get only about 0.6% of the experience, meaning that you'll take ages to achieve level 99), but most important: collect all the godly items and runes! Build runewords from extremely rare runes to make your character even more godly, get the uber uniques like Tyraels Might (unique armor without any requirements besides of level 85) or Stormlash (unique scourge with really impressive stats) - collect, collect, collect. That's the secret behind D2, it always was. The game itself may be pretty much the same every time you play it, but well, who cares if you can collect stuff? There are hundreds of unique items, and the extremely upgraded rare items which can be even better than uniques (but are even harder to obtain).
Also, 1.10 made the game more fun. All characters' skills now have "synergies" (except for the Amazon, they virtually killed the poor girl and made her unplayable, at least when using bows), making the skills even more powerful (and sometimes too powerful). This means: characters from v1.09 are worth crap, since they are obviously badly skilled now. Skills like Blessed Hammer, Meteor or Bone Spirit were almost laughable in 1.09, but now, they are the best you can use (Blessed Hammer now does over 10k damage per hit with all synergies maximized - and it's pure magical damage hurting ANY enemy, there are almost no resistances against it! Meteor can easily go up to 26k damage... go figure).
There are new items, and a new play mode - the ladder mode, where even more new items are available. Also, you get to upgrade runes (only in ladder mode) up to the infamous ZOD rune, meaning that expensive runewords are not likely obtainable, but at least it's possible at all now. New rune words? Yeah. All powerful, many totally uber - like Enigma, giving you teleport skills regardless of the char you use, or Breath of the Dying, which includes a ZOD but makes everything not only indestructible, but also gives up to 400% damage and extreme weapon speeds. Try this in an ethereal colossus blade or berserker axe ;)
So you see - tons of changes, most of them absolutely great, adding more fun to the already 5 years old game (yes, except for rune words and items, this applies to classic Diablo II too!).
Ah, I forgot the Battle.net service. Still free, still thousands of gamers online, still reliable - nuff said.
The Bad
Well, since 1.10, it has some imbalances - Sorceress with fire skills and Hammerdin (Paladin with Blessed Hammer skill) are simply too godly, the Barbarian and bow-using Amazons are no longer really powerful. Also, some of the best items were toned down, like the Windforce for example. But if you simply go "by the rules" (and play a Hammerdin ;), you won't have any complaints.
Oh, one thing: Blizzard randomized the monsters in Act 5 and put up some guest monsters from Act 1-4, which is very annoying for almost every character. Also, archer monsters are too strong, and the bosses are still too weak.
The Bottom Line
Well, if you have Diablo II (LoD), get v1.10 if you didn't already - experience almost a new game. If you don't have D2, get it - it's cheap now, bundled with the expansion and the v1.10 update is free. You'll get the best action RPG ever, and maybe you'll be as crazy as me and play it for years!
By phlux on March 10, 2004
007: Nightfire (PlayStation 2)
The game is Bond - James Bond.
The Good
I am a die-hard James Bond fan and so my expectations on this game were high. You can't imagine my joy when I booted this game up and it started right with the Bond eye sequence and then ofcourse the introductory "5 minutes warmup" scene every Bond movie has to have. This scene consists of full motion video sequences (very cool looking!) and player interactivity - first, you need to shoot some enemies from a helicopter and then you need to take over the steering wheel and drive a lady home safe ;) After the intro scene was done, well, what to expect? Yes - there is no Bond movie without the colorful and often weird "women-dancing-with-guns" sequence where the credits are displayed. Sure enough the game sports this and with an original song too!
After user creation, you'll be dropped right into the action. The game consists of three gameplay modes: first person shooter, rail shooter and driving. In the first mission, you need to get into a castle in Austria and steal some chip from the safe, then escape with your fellow woman spy. It's almost dark outside, snow is falling, and the guards are on alert. Here you can use your Bond gear and weapons. You start with the Walther PPK but you'll get a sniper rifle and submachine gun quickly. In this mission, you'll also need to use your watch laser to open a safe and cut some wires (beware: cutting the wrong wires like I did results in alert).
After some shootouts, you'll escape with the female spy in a gondola down the mountain where you'll be attacked by a bad guy in a helicopter. You will need to shoot it down with your rocket launcher ;)
Next on is a railshooter segment where the lady spy is driving a snow mobile down the mountain and James is at the gun, shooting everything that moves. These are very well designed sequences with lots of speed and great full motion video - you feel like you're watching a Bond movie.
The third mode was imported straight from the EA game "Need for Speed" - you need to drive the Bond car and accomplish the given mission.
Most of the sequences will be shooting scenes, but they will be alternated with railshooter and driving scenes so it doesn't get boring. There is always action on the screen, be it hard shooting stuff or tense sneaky intruding into buildings. There also are 10 different locations in various countries.
All movie sequences, be it in game or full motion video, are very nice modelled and of course with full speech. James Bond himself is spoken by the current movie actor Pierce Brosnan.
Ok, so now after all this gibberish I need to tell you what I liked ... well, I liked that it's like a Bond movie. EA didn't do the mistake and waste this license on some stupid shooting game without a proper story, they really put effort into it, wrote a story which is like a typical Bond movie story (crazy dude wants atomic war etc.). They made great movie sequences, used the original actor to speak Bond, created interesting missions with pretty graphics, let you use new and classic gadgets... well - it's a Bond movie! They even designed a sidekick to the bad guy who really looks and talks like Oddjob or his likes, and pretty (!) girls. Even the dialogue is really typical Bond style - on the party in the first mission, the bad sidekick approaches Bond, grinning like a shark, and asks with a threatening voice: "Do you enjoy the party, Sir?" :)
Yes, thank you - I did!
The Bad
The controls are a bit unprecise and the speech is too low - you often can't hear a thing (but there are subtitles). I also found the guards in the first mission were way too dumb - they never even walked around a corner (in later missions they get better though). Also, the sound the guards make are not well positioned - it always sounds like they stand next to you, but they often enough are far away.
The Bottom Line
If you like James Bond movies and action games, it's the one for you! There never was anything more authentic to the original movies than James Bond Nightfire. Hell, there was never a better movie licensed game (apart from Die Hard Nakatomi Plaza, but that was for the PC only I think).
By phlux on December 9, 2002
Turrican II: The Final Fight (Amiga)
One of the best platformers ever made. Period.
The Good
I never found a game on the Amiga platform which captured my senses as much as the "exception-from-the-german-games-are-crap-rule" Turrican II - The Final Fight. Manfred Trenz really put his heartblood into this game and what came out was pure magic. I mean, six huge worlds, all entirely different, with many secret areas, tons of hidden stuff to find and so many enemies, together with unreal graphics and by far the best music (done by the absolute god of Amiga music, Chris Huelsbeck) - everything on ONE floppy disk! Thrown in was a very fast loading scheme which caused minimal wait between levels - heart, what do you desire more?
Well - for the graphics, the game was by far superior of any other game back then (and it still is). Everything hand-drawn of course, with a big amount of details. The level design had something most other games lacked - originality! Not only the path went up-down-left-right and back again, the levels changed when you walked through them (backgrounds were different, different graphic sets etc.)
And the levels "interacted" with the player: the first level had a storm, blowing enemies, leaves and other rubble towards the player. You couldn't get past the storm, but you could a) get hurt by the flying enemies or b) use the force of the storm to climb some high ledge and get a bonus. Later on, you got into a shaft where air was blowing from the floor. You had to use the power of the air draft to get up a high floor.
Turrican II also featured the most innovative methods of hiding secret stuff. The most interesting was a cache of 6 or 8 extra lives lying on top of a shaft - which you just fell down (and they only appear after falling down). How to get them? Well, the walls give in when they are shot, so you could shoot "steps"... go figure ;)
The enemies are also great - ranging from your basic Mario-esque "stomp-on-me-to-kill-me" dudes over nasty exploding shrapnel-bombs to very large bosses.
Everything shines even more with the ever-changing background music in every section of the level. Huelsbeck really did an amazing (I would say: his career's best) job scoring this game with nice tunes ranging from funny, joyful melodies over oldschool minimal electronics (Mr. Walker & His Factory is my favourite track there) to ambient noisescapes like in the last world. The soundtrack is so good it was also issued on CD - and I really love that CD ;)
Words can not really explain why this game is so great - you better try it yourself.
The Bad
It's pretty hard and sometimes not really fair, but with all the extra lives, it has been proven as doable.
The Bottom Line
If you can get the Amiga version on a real Amiga or a REALLY powerful PC with an emulator - go play it! But never play this game without sound since the music is simply out of this world!
By phlux on December 4, 2002
The Three Stooges: Digitally Remastered Edition (Windows)
Nice to see Cinemaware back in action - but not with games like this please!
The Good
The background graphics are nicely drawn.
The Bad
Everything else :)
First of all, the gameplay sucks - it's repetitive and thus pretty boring. What makes it worse is the fact that the game was programmed in Flash - which may be okay if the game wouldn't rely on good controls. Unfortunately, the controls are jerky and unprecise - yes, Flash isn't best choice for game development :)
Well, and the "remastered" sound... the speech sounds like it was remastered by recording it off a PC speaker and then compressing it to 22khz low-bitrate MP3, the sound effects sound crappy too (as the music does but not THAT crappy).
With this game, Cinemaware releases a product which doesn't even remotely fit in their good reputation and may break it.
The Bottom Line
As the website puts it:
"Although enhanced, both graphics and sound will remain true to the style of the original products."
Who didn't know before that advertisements are lying to the customer, he should know after buying and playing this rubbish.
By phlux on July 31, 2002
Taxi Challenge: Berlin (Windows)
Crazy Taxi for Windows? Well... sort of...
The Good
Well, it's basically Crazy Taxi for Windows, which is good since Sega never bothered to port it. It has exactly the same game features plus the mission mode as well as some more taxis/drivers. But this is where the good stuff ends...
The Bad
Why did they come up with that NOW? The graphics look like crap - blocky, dull buildings, jerky animated pedestrians which always try to dive before your taxi, textures which don't deserve the name... bah! The sound may or may not be appealing to you - it wasn't to me - but the worst thing here are the slow motion controls. Turning the cab around a corner is so damn slow, if you don't start the turn way before the corner, you'll definitely collide with the next building. You never get the real driving feeling as all cabs have exactly the same crap controls. By the way, the car doesn't get visually damaged even after the worst crashes. And the game isn't too fast even on my P4/1500...
The Bottom Line
If you want a good game where you can drive taxi - buy Grand Theft Auto III, as it's the best real-world driving-action game to date and features a Taxi Driver mode. And since you get great graphics, great sound, great damage models, great pedestrian smashing, great police chases plus tons of other stuff to do, I would save the 25 Euros for this crappy game here and buy GTA3 :)
By phlux on May 29, 2002