Andy Voss @phoenix
Reviews
Gothic 3 (Windows)
The poor man's Oblivion
The Good
First off, I did not touch this game until the Community Patches were available and mature, so my review is based on the modified gameplay, not the original. I got the game to run under Windows 7 64-bit, but it required finding and updating the DRM driver. There were plenty of doom and gloom reviews when it originally arrived in late 2006, but after four years of bug fixing and number tweaking, it's a rather enjoyable, playable game. Parallels to Oblivion can obviously be drawn, much like comparisons between Gothic 2 and Morrowind.
The world of Gothic 3 is much bigger than 2. You can spend days, or even weeks, immersed in the forests of Myrtana, and then realize you have a whole snow-capped mountain range and barren desert to traverse as well. Teleport stones are a blessing in this game -- they're the first thing to find in any new city.
The storyline of the game is dependent on whom you side with. Rebels, orcs, nomads, desert traders, northern clans, rangers.. there is a lot of diplomacy and treachery to be had in this game. Hope you like quests, because there are several hundred of them in Gothic 3. Sure, there are a few shopping and extermination quests, but there really is a wide variety for what the game can do.
The day/night cycle is great; this game is a real treat with HDR and shadows. Lots of ambient sound effects, and a nice, dynamic orchestral soundtrack to back it up.
The Bad
Maybe it's just Win7-64, but the game is very RAM hungry. 2 GB was not enough, had to upgrade to 4, and even then it ate all it could. Lots of HD reading, but that's the consequence of turning detail up to max.
While I appreciate keeping the content focused, I miss a few things. There is little lore in the game, just a background story on the three gods and their factions while you read a few lecterns. Ironic that the towns are full of bookshelves when there are so few books and scrolls. Also, no flying or riding, just a lot of walking and running (and a little bit of swimming, but not underwater). Creatures don't fly either; there are a couple dragons but confined to caves.
Magic doesn't have the attention in Gothic 3 that it deserves. You meet few mages in the game, mostly toward the very end. Spells are fewer than Gothic 2, and not competitive with a sword and bow until much later.
For such a well populated world, there sure are very few women.. all the NPCs are male. There is an enormous amount of spoken dialogue (not at once.. just amongst many NPCs), and not a great variety of actors to speak it. Granted, the game was developed in Germany..
I get really annoyed by the time needed to make swing attacks, drink potions, and use spells/items. I realize it can be considered more realistic, but any attempt to use items near enemies will get the hero sent airborne in a screaming ragdoll death. Then you get to wait for your saved game to load..
The Bottom Line
Gothic 3 is about as non-linear as an RPG can get while having some sense of purpose and an ending in sight. You play the nameless hero, shipwrecked on a new continent with all your former friends. Gothic 3 sticks with the basics. No classes, alignment, elves, dwarves, fairies, or princesses.. Just you, the occasional ally, and a gigantic mass of land, filled with a few factions of humans and a whole lot of orcs, among some other wildlife. The Community Patch team did a pretty good job of bringing the Gothic 3 experience a little more in line with 1 and 2. That apparently changed with Gothic 4: Arcania, so it looks like I'll be trying Piranha Bytes' "Risen" instead.
By Andy Voss on January 3, 2011
Test Drive Unlimited (Windows)
The passion is back!
The Good
For those who loved the openness of Test Drive III: The Passion, despite the horrendous driving experience, say hello to the driving game of your dreams. This game takes the 1990 concept and enhances it to 2006 specifications.
You are on an island.. Oahu, Hawaii, to be precise. Aside from the ocean, you have no driving boundaries, which is refreshing after the restrictions of Test Drives 4 through 6. There, one finds houses to store their cars (and bikes!) in, car dealers, rental agencies, tuner shops, hitchhikers, models eager for rides (what a place!), and of courses, races waiting to be started. Fortunately, the car customization isn't insane like NFS Underground, so one can focus on exploring the island in search of new cars and challenges. I don't do multiplayer, so I can't comment on that, but it's there and online races are fully supported.
The races are broken into solo time attacks with checkpoints, solo speed attacks with radar guns at various points, and standard races with multiple cars. In some time races, damaging the car will incur a small time penalty. Oddly, the most money seems to be made by delivering cars with no time limit at all, but those can be done only once, while the rest can be repeated. There are seven classes of cars, and five levels of race difficulty, which one reaches by progressing in the game. The cars are accurately modeled inside and out. The scenery is breathtaking. Even if a lot of the plant life is just sprites, the sheer amount of it makes it difficult to notice. The customization options on the characters are insane, with around a dozen face regions alone. That makes it more about the player's desires, and less about a fixed story character.
The Bad
The controls are a nuisance to change. By default they're keyboard, but as most people will opt for a gamepad, joystick, or steering wheel instead, there is no default setup for those devices. You must set up each new function individually, or as many as you can map to your new device. Some, like map zoom, cannot be remapped, so if you're like me and have a mouse with no scroll wheel, well, you can't zoom. Oddly, controls cannot be changed while in a challenge.
Much like Test Drive 3, the steering is too sensitive. Even with Driving Aid on, it is incredibly easy to spin out. There is a slider bar for sensitivity, but unfortunately no "dead zone" slider, so it will react to the slightest touch.
Also while in a challenge, one cannot abort or restart. If you mess up, then either wait out the clock, or if you have a driving meter, crash yourself down to zero.
The purpose of the police cars is a bit confusing. If you hit a passenger car, even with no cops in sight, they're dispatched after you, at which point you can lose them by any means except slowing down right next to them. Yet if you whizz by one at 180 mph, they don't react at all. "Have fun!", they seem to say.
I'm rather indifferent about all the clothes shopping.. but it would be nicer to get cash rewards from people instead. :)
The Bottom Line
Test Drive Unlimited offers the driving freedom of Grand Theft Auto without the violence or (most of) the crime. :) The world is very realistic (as it should be, the terrain came from real life data!). Unfortunately, the driving experience isn't as realistic, but at least you get a variety of cars and bikes to boot, and plenty of traffic to weave through. I wasted much of my teenage life touring the roads (and off-roads!) of California and New England in Test Drive III, and now that I'm driving in real life, I finally have a game which is a realistic escape.
By Andy Voss on January 3, 2011
Bejeweled: Twist (Windows)
Positive Feedback Bonanza part three!
The Good
Bejeweled Twist is similar enough to Bejeweled 2 to appeal to the hordes of casual gamers who were hooked on it, but different enough that they're not paying $20 for a prettier version of the same game. While still geared toward mainstream hardware, it uses 3D graphics to display some beautiful visual effects in the background (thanks in part to former demo-coder Chris Hargrove, I'm sure). The option of 1920x1200 resolution works perfectly for my new widescreen display. If you liked the backgrounds of otherworldly landscapes, they still appear in the Zen (previously Endless) mode, which is good for practicing moves without frustration.
There's nothing drastically new about the gameplay, but changes here and there make it interesting. There is more strategy and planning this time around. The new Challenge mode is no longer the same objective over and over with different layouts. There are now a variety of challenges testing skill, strategy, speed, or just plain luck. The hardest ones really are hard and won't be finished in one sitting.
Instead of swapping gems to make matches (which has since been copied by countless other Bejeweled clones), the only move now is a clockwise rotation of four gems. It's confusing at first, but opens up new possibilities, especially when matches can be set up through multiple moves (although the game, through bonuses, encourages as many consecutive matches as possible). Still, it might've been nice to have an additional play mode with the traditional gem swapping as well.
The Bad
The speed mode (now called Blitz instead of Action) got a little more basic - instead of racing against an increasingly rapid time bar which, if you were fast enough, could go on for a long time, it is now is fixed at 5 minutes. That makes this play mode repetitive and more predictable. Blitz and Challenge are supposedly "locked" modes, but unlocking them is far easier than the second set of modes (Twilight, Hyper, etc) in Bejeweled 2 - they could've just been available from the start.
The music is a little more varied this time, with different sections playing on different levels. It still has a nice tracker style to it, but doesn't match the quality of Skaven's tracks, which are similar to the last game but are now mostly confined to the Blitz mode. If they had four years, they should've spent more time on the music, which is an important part of the casual gaming experience.
The goofy, booming low voice is back, now goofier, lower and even more booming. A more soothing, more.. human voice might fit this game better. It doesn't startle you at game over anymore, but now there's a jingle that's almost happy.
Finally, I have to ask: "Fruit Bonus Dance". What the hell is this about? How the whole jewel theme suddenly becomes fruit is inexplicable, and the dance bit seems thrown in to amuse the gaming moms, I guess.
The Bottom Line
The king of casual games returns doing what it does best - giving positive feedback! More compliments, bonuses everywhere, and taking level-ups outside the role-playing genre.
In my review of Bejeweled 2, I'd wished that the bombs or other gems would appear in the regular play mode. Well guess what, bombs now appear and are in fact a key part of the gameplay. You no longer run out of moves, but instead get bombs and other nasties in your grid which must be dealt with (blown up or matched) or else the game is over. Locked (unmovable) gems and coal (unmatchable) shake things up in the later levels as well.
Bejeweled Twist loses a little of the last game's simplicity and the ability to get hooked right from the start. But it does keep things interesting and adds features many people were looking for. Call it "extreme casual" gaming.
By Andy Voss on December 8, 2008
Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed (Windows)
The most realistic game in the Need For Speed series
The Good
Naturally, what led me to buy the game were the screenshots on the box, but it turns out the gameplay was very enjoyable too. There are two special modes, Evolution and Factory Driver, that allow the player to grow and be rewarded. A lot more games are picking up on this now to extend gameplay past the regular arcade mode.
In fact, the driving in NFSPU is more simulation than arcade compared to the previous NFS games. Some will scoff at that, but I enjoyed it. It made the Porsche driving experience more realistic, especially feeling the immense driving difference between a 356 and a 959. Old cars wobble and powerslide, and new cars growl with power. Each car is very customizable with engine/body parts and colors/decals.
The scenery on each of the ten or so tracks is nice, ranging from twisty forest paths to city speedways to snow-capped mountains. The driving controls make a fair amount of sense, and the gauge display is very customizable depending on how much or little you want on-screen.
The Bad
When you first play the evolution mode, it's a great challenge, but after a few plays, you realize you can just buy and sell used cars for profit, and keep racing races you easily run, to earn money, and it starts becoming trivial. Some of the factory driver missions take a huge amount of practice, and it can be frustrating trying to do the same spin over and over until the game decides you did it right.
The menus cannot be controlled with the arrow keys, and so you're caught shifting between mouse and keyboard when you pause the game mid-race.
There are a whole ton of 356 and 911 models in the game, but some are entirely missing from the game, like the 928, 924, and 968. Some of the missing cars are downloadable from the EA web/ftp site, but you can't drive them in factory or evolution mode.
The Bottom Line
Porsche fans will naturally eat this game up, as it covers 50 years of Porsche history in pictures, videos, and of course in the game itself. Even though it's in the Need For Speed series, and the newer cars can get quite fast, the game is more about driving than speed, and learning to appreciate the handling of each car... even the cheap little 914. Even after four years, you can still find this game new in the $10 bargain bins, which is a testament to its long-lasting playability and enjoyment.
By Andy Voss on April 4, 2006
Pinball Builder: A Construction Kit for Windows (Windows 3.x)
If you think you're going to make Pinball Fantasies 2 with this, think again.
The Good
Well, I guess it's nice to see a new pinball editor since EA's construction kit way back in '84. It's fairly simple to place objects on the table. Finally, they were nice enough to include some tables for you in case you decide to never touch the editor again.
The Bad
After Frontline Design/Digital Illusions crafted the lovely Pinball Dreams/Fantasies series on Amiga (ported later to PC), their publisher, 21st Century, had to make a hell of a followup if they were to release a construction kit. Let us count the ways they garbled it up:
1) You MUST be running in 800x600x256 mode under Windows. PB doesn't even do this for you.
2) Your table design must be selected from 8 premade tables; they call it 32 because each has 4 different flipper/outlane combos, which doesn't add much (I get to speak my mind here better than the game description :).
3) You can only add a few different targets, which MUST go in pre-established regions. You cannot add or move lanes and ramps.
4) You cannot change the dot-matrix-display messages - the Teddy sample table still has Alien table messages in it.
5) I realize MOD support for Windows in 1996 was weak, but having it on Amiga and DOS for 4 years then only allowing MIDI in the Builder is just mean.
The Bottom Line
And when it's all finished, your table is, at best, half as good as any in Pinball Dreams. You would probably have more fun hacking the graphics of one of the REAL 21st Century pinball tables.
AFAIK, the original developers had little to nothing to do with this release.
By Andy Voss on February 21, 2006
Colin McRae Rally 2005 (Windows)
On road, off road.. whatever you can drive through, CMR delivers it
The Good
- Loading time is surprisingly fast for the tracks, at least on my Athlon 64.
- Overall, the landscape scenery is breathtaking. Lighting and shadows are almost photo-realistic. Each tree, each rock, heck, even each *blade of grass* is right there where you would expect them. And yet, thanks to creative texture, frame rates are still quite good.
- The replays add to the realism. The default camera view is a series of spot and chase cams every five seconds or so, like a TV broadcast. You definitely see more detail, from the dirt on your car to the signs you pass by.
- Some of the environmental sounds are great - especially a rainstorm with thunder, on a surround sound setup.
- Car exterior models are just about perfect. Paint jobs and decals are pretty true to the originals.
- The driving physics are pretty good as far as console games go. You can tweak most of your car's components to get different results.
- The co-driver calls, once you figure out their lingo, are indeed helpful and separate the rally genre from other racing games. I just wish I didn't have to install all the driver voice packs, and save a gigabyte or two on my hard drive!
- The game came on DVD-ROM. It's silly that games today still come on CD-ROM, when they take up 5+ discs and no modern gamer PC is without a DVD drive.
**The Bad**
- Car specs aren't very detailed. You get engine size, weight, horsepower, and not much else. Gear specs, acceleration and other performance, and details about upgraded parts are missing, and they'd all be useful in helping you choose which cars to race with.
- Car repair times are a bit unrealistic. Because there's no monetary element in the game, you're given up to one hour after stage, with a time penalty for more. Each damaged component adds to the time, but the amount of damage does not. I can see how it wouldn't matter for tires (just change them), but a severely damaged engine or suspension should take much longer than one that is barely scratched.
- There is no water detail. As far as I've seen, water isn't even animated. Surely there should be some splashing in the game.
- I realize the menus and interface design are intentionally minimalist, but they can get quite dull. Text resolution doesn't go higher than the console versions, which makes the menus a bit fuzzy on high-res PCs.
**The Bottom Line**
First off, if you're not familiar with rally games, this is a slightly different beast than your Need For Speed or your Gran Turismo. Yeah, you pick your courses and unlock slick looking rides. And you are racing against other cars - just not at the same time. Each car runs solo and gets timed. There's really no room for two cars on most of these courses anyway. But, you do get a co-driver who helps navigate you through twists and turns. Sure, the game could let you ram other drivers into a ditch, but then it would lose the realism which makes it a sporting simulation. This game *begs* to be played with a steering wheel, and one with force feedback. I'm not quite ready to shell out $100 for a good one just yet, but if you want a pro-driving experience, pick one up and actually feel the jumps and bumps. You might end up getting a racing helmet as well. After a month in Europe, CMR05 debuted in the US with a surprisingly low retail price of $20. I was thinking of finally checking out the Colin McRae series, and that sealed the deal. But good luck finding a copy in the states these days, the supply seemed to dry up quickly.
By Andy Voss on February 6, 2006