So you've played for days and weeks and finally, you get to what seems to be the ending. You can (virtually) already see the 'you have won' sign on the horizon. All you have to do is go east... but what's that? A hole, a frog and a small duck are blocking your way. This can't be what it was intended like? Turning back reveals the problem: bad sectors on the game disk. Argh!
Driving a car at a stormy night can be quite dangerous: Accompanied by your little brother, you're on a quiet and lonely road through the open country when suddenly an unrecognisable figure appears before you. Trying to avoid hitting it, you pull the wheel aside and crash into a tree. Everything goes black.
As so often, bribing / threatening (or whatever they did) magazines into giving the disastrous Curse of Enchantia good reviews worked. Sales were apparantely good enough to warrant a sequel. And so, Universe was made. Another monster let loose on humanity or did they get it right this time?
Sporting the tagline "Alter your reality... forever", Unreal promises an experience to remember. It doesn't disappoint either, with excellent engine technology, art direction and music.
The alien invasion of Earth is afoot, and there's just no way to stop the attacking forces by conventional means. Even if the puny earthling forces manage to destroy one wave, countless more are just waiting to take its place. So the humans recognize their only chance is to go to the source and cut off the invaders' supplies.
When Uridium first came out, it was breathtaking: great looking, lovingly animated and incredibly fast at the same time. As the years went by, such qualities gradually lost some of their effect, of course. Still good, still (relatively) impressive, but not a sensation anymore.
Uridium Plus, released the same year as the Uridium. Not much time to change anything, but also not much need to, since the original version was very successful - never change a winning horse. So the basics remain the same: The player flies the Manta ship's assault on the aliens' huge Dreadnoughts, first taking out the numerous waves of defenders, then landing and activating the self-destruct mechanism - all that to stop the invaders' supply of raw materials.
While I watch my character walking slowly towards the sunrise at the end of Valiant Hearts: The Great War, I take a look back at the road that has brought me here. Considering that for the most part it lead through the battlefields of World War I, the journey was surprisingly rich in variety, and it entailed even some nice memories besides all the horror. Yet it has been exactly those contrasts, these emotional ups and downs, which make these sensations so intense. Its beginning seems almost a bit unreal now, but soon the story will come to an end, and I cannot remember when I had such a feeling of accomplishment at the end of a computer game.
Sometimes them game-programmers really demand a lot of imagination - who would think of a human body and virii looking at this game? In Vaxine you are the last line of defense protecting important cells against agressive virii. Such a virus appears in 3 possible colors and can be eliminated by shooting at it with a little ball of the same color. To make this clear right now - at first you will think you got a cool fast action-game here. You will be frustrated soon because you won't survive very long. The game will just get faster and faster if you want it to and you won't be able to defend your cells since you will always miss the virii you try to shoot. You need to think of some basic strategies. Most important things are the black gates. Just drive through one and everything will freeze for one minute (remember to drive through one again before the minute runs out). Now you can search for the next virus and get into a good shooting position before you shoot at it (which will unfreeze everything). While this is enough for the first level you will need to eliminate the virus-producers (flat cells moving around on the floor) first in the higher levels. You will hear a special sound-effect each time one of them appears and that means you have to find the next black gate fast to have time to search for that little bastard.
This review is part of The Review Roundup - Round 2: Games Related to the Undead
A sudden cloud of bats splashing in your airplane forces you to land in a lost, dark and small valley. A place ruled by a vampire, and where, ignoring it, you have started to fulfil a prophecy of freedom.
