Omega

The Good
This is the first "Rogue-like" game I've played that features a large city, villages, several dungeons, countryside, quests, and actual role-playing. In other words, it's a regular computer RPG with ASCII-graphics and a truckload of options. Because precious memory is not wasted on graphics or sound, the game has quite a lot to play, and you can play it in many different ways. You might want to worship a sinister deity and join the sorcerors' guild for missions of increasingly evil nature, or you might leave the arcane stuff to others and just work out at the gym to become the ultimate gladiator (though you'll not become a total winner that way, and the gladiator's guild doesn't give you quests).

The freedom of choice in this game really struck me with awe when I started playing, and the good game system makes the dungeon-crawling and combat parts a joy. "Omega" has loads of spells, monsters, weapons, and magic items, and enough interesting quests to keep you from getting bored for the first couple of months.

The Bad
The bad news is, Omega is NOT like Rogue, PC-Hack, or NetHack in that the game is always the same, and even though the various dungeons are randomly generated from game to game, you don't want to come back to the game once you've finished it (or once you've played it enough times to know all the tricks).

Another gripe is that the player character tends to get very, very powerful towards the end of the game, and no amount of game design and powerful NPCs will keep you interested if your PC can walk through walls, teleport at will, withstand most attacks, and generally raise hell just by snapping their fingers. At some point you just lose all feeling of being there and the game becomes a technical performance with no real enjoyment or reward - when you already feel like a god, what does it matter whether or not you become a "total winner"?

"Omega" is also quite buggy, and a real memory-hog (I had to save and quit every thirty minutes or so on my XT to keep the game from crashing because of low memory).

The Bottom Line
"Omega" is great fun for a month or two, but once you really get into it, it's not that hard to beat, and the predictability (despite the various ways you can play it) just gets the better of what curiosity the player might have. If you want ASCII action and enough game to last you a decade, try NetHack or PC-Hack, especially if you have an older machine.