Largo Winch: Empire Under Threat

The Good
The art direction and graphics are pretty great. It's not overly detailed or photo-realistic but it's very consistent and has a really nice look to it. I also really liked playing this character. How often do you get to play the Bruce Wayne part in a Batman game? We are so used to playing the underdog that it felt really fresh to play the top-dog for a change.

The Bad
Well like I said it's unbalanced. You see for the most part the adventure parts of the game where you walk around and solve puzzles are so easy that you'll start solving them before the game allows you to. Meaning you'll see exactly what the puzzle is going to be by the clues you get. A bit too easy but nonetheless the game has an interesting enough plot to keep you motivated. Sadly the unbalance for me came from the hacking scenes. They are really tedious and are a complete chore. I dreaded seeing them to the point that the last one I had to deal with made me stop playing. Honestly they just bored my and infuriated me. I'd describe what they're like but I really don't want to. Basically you move your piece one way and the computer moves it's piece one way hunting you down, but some spaces have multiple "nodes" and each node is a turn so while you're waiting to move away the computer is getting closer to you. And like Oliver said it's a lazy port. It's as if the programmers never played a computer game and don't know the buttons that are generally pushed for a game. And no mouse support in a game this new? Are you f'kin kidding?

The Bottom Line
Overall the game is ok if you have the patience for it but I think I would've preferred a director's cut version of it without the tedious puzzles. If you're going to make an easy game at least make it consistent.

The Good
What I really liked, hm, let me think about it... Yeah, the possibility of deactivating the subtitles :D.

Well, ok, graphics are good. They are far from perfect, but quite good. Music is good too.

Since I gave up the game already on an early part of the game, I can't tell anything about the development of the story, if it's good or bad, but playing Largo (the character, not the game) actually made fun.

The Bad
I can't believe that this game was developed by UbiSoft directly, as the voice acting, particularly the voice-lip-synchronization, is just made amateurish! Almost always this is so badly that the characters have moved their lips completely before the voice came out of their now closed mouths. Or on the other side, first "talking" and then moving the lips. Once I even saw Largo's lips in movement, while someone else talked alone (and this persons mouth was closed of course).

The localization of the game is another thing. I own the German version of the game, or better I thought I will own the German version before I bought it. After installing, it looked very nice, multilingual (English, German, Italian, Spanish) version, cool! But with the intro came the disappointment, UbiSoft localized only the in-game texts, the speech is for all four languages English-only, while the non-English languages getting localized subtitles. I hate subtitles. I don't mind it for being English-only (at least for myself), but what was the problem for doing a real localization anyway? No money, no time, no mood???

Another thing are the controls. I don't mind it for being controlled only by keyboard (and gamepad I believe), I don't like it, but I can live with it. But, why on earth can't I configure it at all??? Now that's what even old DOS games could...

And finally, I myself have a weird graphic problem with the game which I can't solve (and neither the UbiSoft Support), which makes playing a real pain. That's the reason why I gave up the game so early.

The Bottom Line
If I had written this review 2 years ago, I probable would have suggested to think carefully before buying, particularly for people wanting to buy a non-English version. But since the game is now available in the local bargain bin, there isn't much you can make wrong with buying it.