Neue Rezensionen von micatius

This game is a cult classic for a reason.
It instills a childlike sense of wonder and adventure in me which I honestly haven't felt in a long time.
It has a very cool stylized look which has aged gracefully, the soundtrack is amazing, and the gameplay holds up.
My only complaints are that I've experienced forced awkward camera angles in a few rooms of the game, and the PC port could be better:
Expect 5-15 minute of following guides here on steam or pcgamingwiki to get it working properly on most computers.
Also, controller support exists but seems very awkward so I opted for mouse and keyboard which handled decently most of the time, but the game is definitely designed more for controllers. I'd say for me it was a compromise worth making to experience this game.
Honestly I'm just amazed they couldn't do a quick HD remaster of this game to give it achievements, proper controller and widescreen support and touch up the UI a bit.

Despite some stuttering on the map which is forgivable since this is a game from 2006 originally and there are no loading screens betweens levels outside of teleporting, the game holds up really well. Still one of the best ARPGs ever made. Just make up your own build by experimenting and have fun solo or with friends.

This is a platformer with a ton of levels, and each one is based around a different mechanic.
Some of the mechanics were more fun than others to me, but I'd say most of them are well realized and don't overstay their welcome since each individual level is pretty short.
The controls are very simple: jump, a short glide, dash, and shoot projectiles in an arc and crouch. The cat controls more like classic Mega Man than Mario, since there's not a lot of inertia.
Despite the simple controls, the game never becomes simple or easy, on the contrary, the new mechanic each level along with the general difficulty ramping up as your progress through the game will keep you challenged.
The game gets really hard towards the end. Like old school hard.
Fortunately, it provides well implemented (and optional for those seeking a greater challenge) checkpoint and revive mechanics to make the difficulty a bit more manageable.
There are also upgrades which are purchased with collecteable gems you earn by beating various puzzles and challenges in each of the levels. I'd also like to note that the quality of the presentation and soundtrack in this game is suprisingly high considering the low asking price.

This game is absolutely worth the full $5 if you like challenging 2D platformers.

Let me start off with the positives. This game in my opinion looks awesome, especially for 2008, this is the best classic Lara has ever looked and some of the levels are just gorgeous.
Unfortunately, I don't think there was a single fun level in this game for me, and I'm someone who enjoyed TR Legend, Anniversary and the '96 classic. This is the jankiest and buggiest Lara has controlled in the Crystal Dynamics trilogy, which is weird seeing as it's the final game in said trilogy. I found the epic hollywood movie music extremely obnoxious because it always plays at random parts and gives the player a false sense of urgency and distracting you while you're trying to solve a puzzle. The more subdued pieces of music are fine, even though I did find them very repetitive.
The main problem with the level design is that I found the environment pretty hard to read in the sense of what I should scale next. I always understood what the game wanted me do, but not how exactly it wanted me to do it and that's where I got stuck many times over the course of the game.
The animations and camera are pretty bad and jerky, the camera feels really up Lara's behind making it hard to scan your environment, and animations just bug out at times making Lara get stuck or teleported.
The story is whatever. I didn't care for it, although I did enjoy Lara's aggressive attitude.
I would only recommend this game to people who beat Legend and Anniversary and are desperate for closure.

I'll start this review off by saying I loved the original Dark Forces and beat it on Hard difficulty with no issues, and it's crazy how much less playable this sequel is that came out 2 years after it. First of all, this game did away with sprites and switched to full 3D, which as you can see by the screenshots hasn't aged most gracefully. Sound also seems somehow less crisp than the DF1. The gameplay itself is good, the mechanics are good. It's a fast paced old school shooter with cool convoluted maps. Where the problems arise is that the game has awful balancing. Projectiles are faster and enemies are more precise than in the original so dodging is very difficult, even more so in tight hallways where game makes it impossible for the player to avoid getting hit by enemy fire. I've only played the first two missions, and the game has utilized a lot of such narrow hallways for cheap damage on the player, but also a lot of enemies positioned extremely up or down from the player where it's gonna take you a few seconds to find them and take damage. Which would be fine if the game had ample health and shield drops. Which it does not, at least not enough to counterbalance the cheap damage it makes you take. Ammo is also ultra scarce for some reason, can you imagine a Quake like game with survival horror amounts of ammunition? It just doesn't work. I had to run through half the level avoiding enemies because the game just doesn't give you ammo. A proper 3D engine with freelook and even bigger maps than the original is nice, but every other change this game made seems to be for the worse.

Very similar to DOOM 1 and 2 which were released not too long before this game, but with a bit more puzzles, platforming and actual objectives. The combat is fun and maps are maze-like and easy to get lost in, for better or worse. Navigating the maps is definitely part of the challenge for this game. Difficulty levels are very well balanced, easy still presents a reasonable challenge, and hard sure is hard but not unfair. To me personally it holds up better today than old school DOOM, and I'm sure a lot of people would prefer a Star Wars setting over edgy cartoony hell/demons setting.
Word of caution, without any tweaking of the DOSBox config the game plays at a very low and inconsistent FPS and I would advise everyone to check out a guide here on steam to fix the config and make the gameplay smooth.

The combat "system" is barely functional.

This is basically Half Life remade with Half Life 2 style gameplay (but without the gravity gun obviously) and the devs did a good job for what they set out to do.
This is not a definitive version of Half Life, it's a different type of game with a different type of feel. Levels from the original HL are masterfully recreated and reimagined to be more detailed and realistic.
Game lets you sprint infinitely or alternatively turn on an option that disables sprinting but gives you HL1 running speed while using the sprint button for walking when you need more precise movement. Both work fine, but still the pace feels slower than HL1 since a lot of the maps are now larger while retaining mostly the same layout.
Weapons are REALLY nice. Some have been a bit tweaked, handgun and revolver no longer feels like they have pinpoint accuracy (they're still very accurate just not pixel accurate like they used to be. SMG is way more accurate now which makes it feel like an actual useful weapon and is the change I liked the most. Original SMG was the effective range of a shotgun because the bullet spread was huge.
Voice acting was redone, a lot of it is word for word rerecorded lines by different voice actors who do a fine job, but I felt it lacked some of the charm of the original. Sometimes it sounds just as corny as before, other times not. I would say it's less tonally consistent but I guess HL1 had an easier time being consistent with literally 3 voice actors. A minor complaint here is sometimes voices REALLY don't match the characters (like 60 year old looking scientist with a 20 year old nerd voice), but that might just be me.
Overall, worth playing, but it's not a substitute for HL1. It's a different take. I'd say it's worth playing regardless of whether you experienced the original.

Fun 2D hack and slash game with 3D PS2 era anime style graphics. The combat mechanics are the absolute highlight of this game and really well developed, although graphics and story are also by no means bad. Story is told mainly through visual novel styled exchanges between characters, with a short cutscene here and there with an occasional voiced line of dialogue.

Slick artstyle, high quality synthwave soundtrack, and very satisfying gameplay reminiscent of Hotline Miami and Ruiner.
Your character has a basic melee katana attack which drains stamina, 5 or 6 consecutive attacks will drain it completely after which it takes a second or two to replenish (which is a lot in this game, it's very fast paced). For that reason you also have a gun with slowly replenishing bullets (they replenish faster when you kill opponents with melee). So the game encourages you to mix up your melee and ranged attacks to never run out of bullets or stamina. You also have a dash move with almost no cooldown which allows you to quickly move around the arena and an adrenaline meter which fills up as you murder your adversaries consisting of 3 bars: using 1 bar will alow you to do an attack in a straight line instakilling all the enemies you come across, while using all 3 bars instakills everything on the screen after a short cool animation. As you play you unlock new items (guns, swords and gadgets) which allow you to slightly modify your playstyle. From what I've seen they're balanced alternatives to the starting items, not upgrades, but I might be wrong since I haven't unlocked all of them. There's not a huge amount of content as the whole game is one prolonged battle in a single arena with some boss fights after you kill a set amount regular enemies with some special enemies mixed in, but it is well worth the low asking price since it takes a while to unlock everything and you will have fun mastering the game's combat system.