Recent reviews by Lofty

1997, one of the best years in gaming hands down purely because of how many hits were coming out and this one here was a great hit to me. Played on an old Ultimate PC demo disc I still have (also has constructor and beasts n bumpkins on it, people with a damn good taste will know these games too lol), Ignition is Micromachines on crack with a lump of dynamite shoved up your exhaust.

It's fun, it's well made, it can actually be challenging and the soundtrack is great. 11 unique race tracks, which unfortunately casts little me's mind back to the old days and wishing they had released an add-on with some more on it but eh. Each car has it's own unique stats, acceleration, top speed, handling and boost (I wasn't exaggerating when I said you have dynamite shove up your exhaust lol), and each time you complete a challenge mode you will unlock a new car.

Levels are great, lots of colour and uniqueness, ambient sounds, fun little set pieces as you drive and each level has it's own shortcuts. These shortcuts are however not without risk, each one will have some form of hazard on it from a tractor on a farm, to a plane on an airstrip to a mountain side with tumbling rocks. These hazards if they happen to hit you, will do things like squash your car and give you backward controls, make you flip or just blow you up all together. The AI is also smart enough to take these shortcuts too, so expect some fights along the way.

Music is great, I still listen to the CD in my player or my ripped version in my playlist. Sound is fine, a little bit crushed in places but it does it's job and the sounds arn't annoying. My only gripe with sound is SOMETHING must have happened in the mastering process, the tracks "Snake Island" and "Speed" both have some horrible scratchy distortion sounds to them which to me, sounds like a scratch on the master disc itself lol.

There are some annoying things to it, there is a very slight input delay which can get annoying at times but not enough to make you throw your keyboard in frustration up against a wall, as stated above there is aa scratchy quality to 2 of the tracks and the game MIGHT crash when you complete the 3rd challenge league (though it still saved for me and I kept that data too, so unlocked car still woot!), I'm seeing screen shots of people SOMEHOW getting stuck on rocks and things which.... I question how they did it :S In all my years of playing this I have NEVER seen nor done that before XD so well done guys. There are also 3 versions of the game you can play with some updates and patches, but the bogstandard version here just comes with the Dosbox version. This is the most stable but it also doesn't have a bunch of effects that the windows / 3DFX versions use so bare that in mind while you play, on top of this the music they have provided with this dosbox version does not work if you are playing the other versions of the game, BUT if you have an original CD or an iso of the game, it will play those from either the disc or virtual drive :).

Buy it. It's cheap, fun and a great look back in to gaming from one of the best years. It's not incredibly in depth but it will keep you interested for awhile and probably come back to everyone now and then as I do.

I am kind of judging this from a single player point of view and I have also reworded it a little better because honestly, I don't hate this game I just find some aspects entirely too frustrating, to a whine-worthy point. I wish I could give this a neutral rating as usual but it will have to be a thumbs down until there is some more balancing going on.

In with sound design first, great. Good music, environmental sounds, distant screams, rumbles all sorts. Really like it, however item and weapon sounds are completely flat and do not sound powerful at tall, doesn't matter what you are hitting either everything has the same metal ting to it.

The first part of the game is fine, great. Fighting things and learning the ins and outs, creeping around, trying to find stuff, going toe to toe with an alien and i have a spear? I adored it, almost perfect mixture of combat and stealth. I can tell a long time was spent balancing this area to draw people in to it.....and then you get to the manufacturing sector, ALL that balance goes out the window and it becomes the most boring survival experience going at the moment. You don't really get guns, You don't get enough good armor to put up a fight for the section or indeed the next section, you don't get to fight or have fun. You spend the ENTIRE TIME creeping around, hiding, using "stealth", hording things that are far to heavy for you to carry so you then spend the rest of this section almost, hiding quickly, filling yourself up and then heading home. Most of the good things will only be unlocked near the final 3rd / quarter of the game.

Combat can be horrible. Marines not looking at you? they will still see you. Marines not pointing their guns at you? That doesn't matter they have magical bullets that will lock on to you no matter what direction they are facing. They will soak up hit, after hit, after hit, it doesn't matter if you found the single glock back in the office building, that is made useless after 5 kills and you are down to melee again....and after hit, after hit, after hit, after hit, they somehow STILL LIVE and once again, turn around just kill you, like it's been designed to punish you for DARING to attack anything until near the end of the game. ♥♥♥♥ that, bad balancing so by the time you get weaponry / armor you can actually use, your character hasn't been able to train in it, so the most powerful enemies and ya aim is still all over the place XD fantastic, 10/10, why bother even putting them in? Also do not expect to hit things within your distance or even in your sight line, most of the time the computer will decide, "no, you didn't just hit the enemy that is standing RIGHT in front of you, ignore the weapon swinging THROUGH their head, you did not hit them....but their gun that is facing that wall? yeah it can hit you :D have fun with that!". In contrast the aliens seem well balanced, enjoyable to fight and have some good ideas behind them, even the more annoying ones are still much easier to fight than ANY of the damn marines. Also, headshots are meaningless until you again, have the better weaponry, 3 headshots to kill a normal marine, 4 headshots to kill a medic and 6 to kill a captain.... I mean that's a powerful cult right there, I see why they signed up :/

Oh yeah, and ya know the biggest middle finger of all? ALL the guns the enemies drop (except the glock) have a bio scanner on them... yes reader! that means you can't use that weapon until: A) You have gotten these bio arm wraps with DNA from a marine on it and B) near the end of the game. So I say again, what the ♥♥♥♥ is the point of guns in this game when the dev team does their best to make sure you can't use them? You don't even really get good enough melee weapons until way after to deal with them either, so yes MOST of this game is going to be spent not fighting marines, fighting aliens WHENEVER you see them, unless marines are nearby because then BOTH SIDES ignore each other and focus ON YOU, and hording TONS of items, which is also frustrating too which I will go over soon.

Badly optimised, I go from 60fps in the first half hour to constant dipping down to 40/30 FPS with extended gameplay, also expect numerous FPS drops down to 30 when walking in toa large area. Reception that you start near? FPS drop. Walked in to a loading section? FPS drop. Walking in to area where another big room is adjacent? BIG FPS drop, especially in manufacturing west.

Crafting is fun, Lots of things to build and you get a "safe home", but do not be fooled and do not keep ANY of your items inside it. Once you again get passed the office block and the dev team decided those portal storms that bug you every so often? Yeah we are gonna make them with BIGGER enemies. Bigger enemies that will be teleported right in to your home. Bigger enemies that will be teleported right in to your home and destroy absolutely everything you have. Bigger enemies that get teleported right in to your home, destroy absolutely everything you have and guess what? Most of your weapons passed the first group HAVE SPLASH DAMAGE! Splash damage that does ♥♥♥♥ all against a group of enemies but if a prop is nearby full of stuff? You better believe it's now a memory. Lost every filing cabinet i had because the heated spear, somehow has a meter range splash damage that destroyed everything close in side my home. ♥♥♥♥ it, ♥♥♥♥ the combat and ♥♥♥♥ the unbalanced nature of it all...

This needs to be highlighted again....It will take you, hours, and hours...and HOURS AND HOURS to ever get good with guns on it. They degrade, FAST. You can't repair them without the gun repair kits which barely EVER drop from marines and you don't find any till in things until the third (partially) and fourth areas, making almost every gun before then utterly pointless. You can't level your accuracy due to that unless you use the very weak crossbow and guess what? You arn't getting good ammo to actually use it effectively until? Go on reader, GUESS when you get the rebar bolts, thats right! near the end!. So you can't actually properly level guns till near the end of the game (unless you build the VERY crap makeshift pistol which is highly inaccurate, takes about 30 rounds to kill a marine and busts quickly), so gunplay is utterly pointless! Again, most of the time after the office block is spent hiding, sneaking, hiding, more sneaking, MORE HIDING, and looting things to run back to your home, to make crappy makeshift weaponry that is ONLY USEFUL during a portal storm, and guess what? most of the time the portal storms appear INSIDE your home, not outside so all those defences you built and setup? pointless because they are just gonna spawn inside ya base and trash it. This isn't survival this is a bad rendition of splinter cell pushed in to Half-Life. It start's good, and it ends good...and then all the middle is just trash.

It isn't a full survival game, its more like sneaky, cleptomaniac simulator, hoping your "POWERFUL" weapon can just about harm this middle-of-the-road enemy in front of you, and that's if the game will register the hit from you A TALL but not from the enemy of course, they always hit you even when their backs are to you. It can be really fun with friend's I will admit, if sometimes a little too easy, but only if they are patient people...and we all know what people are like nowadays, they will play it for 2 weeks if that, then get bored of it due to the grinding / complete lack of combat until after it matters, and then move on to the next game they've been told to consume.

This, is one of the best "retro inspired" games I have ever played. I had no idea of it's existence until 3 days ago, at which point I instantly bought it and ya know what? Well worth the price even when it ISN'T on deal. Its fun, it isn't easy per say but it isn't going to utterly frustrate you either, a lot of time, effort and care went in to creating and balancing this.

Sound, great! Reverb, nice loud sound effects, great soundtrack I'll be instantly buying that when it comes out ((just hope its in FLAC)) and we even have directional sound / distance muffling on this! Indie devs are starting to listen to those of us who love our sound immersion again, thanks a lot for that!

Game play, as stated above fun. No hand holding but isn't to diffcult, the puzzles are enjoyable to solve, though some are outright just told to you on the spot, the secret item puzzles are a lot better for those who just like to think off the top of their heads. No movement while firing like the good old days so if you wanna' gank something you plant those little polygons down and start blasting. Aiming is fine, it isn't as accurate or in-depth as lets say RE4s aiming system ((original, not remake V_V)) but it does it's job, and I GUESS we can forgive the hand wobble due to the main characters age... I SUPPOSE ((I mean really its fine I can just see some of the more impacient people getting angry at her hand wondering around sometimes and the enemies head flops to the side)).

Pad controls are nice and fluid, didn't get frustrated once using my old PS3 pad plugged in, however the keyboard controls are an absolute mess. It says before you even load it up that you NEED a pad to play so be warned on that keyboard players, and I say that because it's JUST keyboard, no mouse here. Not gonna lie I was a little upset when I realised that as I love mouse aiming, however again the pad controls have been tuned and feel very comfy.

Story is basic and obviously all in text but there was just enough to get me invested. You are "mara" going in to an old theme park to find out what is going on, or at least so you think.. however the story can be called from about the first 1/4 of the game due to the fact they didn't even TRY to make a certain picture look different from the lead protagonist A TALL. I hope there will be a 2nd one delving in to just what those weird "roots" are, where they came from and why they doin' what they doin lol

Graphics are absolutely fantastic for retro and I love them. It looks like Little Big Adventure had a weird love child with Final Fantasy VII that popped out, went to school and said "I WANNA' BE A SURVIVAL HORROR!" and the teacher smiled knowing you gon' go far in this world. As someone who prefers sound immersion over visual, I don't give 1 crap what era it looks like it was created in, as long as it plays well and sounds great and this right here? Is both. It Looks and feels like a proper old ps1 game, not just those silly walking sims where they've just made it look bad and added texture deformity, no this 100% feels like i'm playing on my old console at 1am again.

There are some small drawbacks I will say, but they really arn't enough to ruin the game. The aiming as stated above can be a little meh at times when the characters hand just suddenly goes "WOOP! im down here now deal with it", just turn the aim speed up in the menu and you'll be fiiiiiine. The protagonist can seem a little wooden at times, she doesn't particularly sound bothered nor raises an eye brow when she meets people. Its all very "oh hey im mara whatcha' dooooooin?" which spoils it a little, some more time could have been spent on the dialogue in my opinion but again it isn't intelligence insulting, it's just everyone seems so un-phased by whats going on around them. The underground section has a GIANT red herring which I can't help but feel WAS a puzzle at one point which they cut out for maybe being to hard? or messed with pacing? Who knows but the point is you get to that area, and you find tons of these buttons, levers with saw blades, 2 hatches with buttons and lights that do absolutely, zero, 100% NOTHING and get opened up later on by doing something different ((again this was either a bad red herring to confuse players OR is a cut puzzle element they ditched at some point in development, we can only assume)). Enemies could do with making more sounds, except the huge bone rattling thing, that made me feel nervous at points with its sound design so nice!

That's it. Well worth the price, you'll get about 5-6 hours out of your first run if you go and do everything, then after that point you have things to unlock for repeat plays. Anyone who used to enjoy games like Resident Evil, Little Big Adventure, Medievil etc will love it.

:EDIT: This was made before the anniversary edition came out. Most of the problems have been addressed except the lack of EAX emulation, enemy AI/AI map nodes and ragdoll physics. I also DID purchase this product despite what valve have marked the review with, the damn metal box sitting on my shelf is proof of that which made me raise an eyebrow...

Now reader, you may wonder why I'm marking Half-Life 2 down. Could it be I'm one of the original "alpha/beta" story fans who think the Half-Life atmosphere was captured better in those days? Yes, but no it isn't that. Is it the fact that due to those cuts it feels more like a glorified tech demo? Not that either because back when I first bought this (in the shiny metal case I might add) I kind of liked it, though again I still would prefer the original atmosphere. No, I mark this down because it is NOT the same HL2 I bought back in 2004 :/

Let us start off with sound like I always do, valve removed EAX support. All the lovely environmental sounds I used to enjoy, the directional sound, the reverb, the far off sound samples? All gone making it sound flat and boring now. I can't blame them for what creative did but I can blame them for removing the CHOICE of being able to still have it. Some of us still have usable sound cards that we liked to do that with.... we can't now, thank you ((can't on black mesa either because of it, none of you will know how it sounded at 2012 anymore...))

The ragdoll physics have been completely changed from there original quite life like flops, to a bland drop to the floor that 9/10 damn times looks more like someone has grabbed them from the back of the head and just driven their face into the dirt. It looks so boring and unfortunately Black Mesa also had to update their ragdoll system to this, ruining several set pieces (like the guy getting cut in half with a laser, though quite funny watching his gibs explode at 100 mph around the room -_- ). It sucks, why was it changed?

The blood that used to spurt from the enemies in a fine mist, and even splat up the walls in a more lifelike manner? Have also all been deleted and that has been like that since the cruddy Ep 2 update. Gone has the fine spray, replaced with a horrible paint splat whenever you hit something that takes up the entire middle of the screen if hitting them with a melee weapon. I hate this, it breaks the immersion valve would oh so happily spout in interviews back in the day and looks childish.

The AI has taken a considerable dip, a nose dive in fact. Back in the day ((and with proof with very old youtube videos)), combine soldiers would flank the player more, run off and hide, peak in and out of things to shoot you ((and by that i mean they would run in and out while shooting lol)) etc and was a good update to the original HECU marines......... That's gone, and if you look at the map sources alot of AI nodes have been deleted from the maps too. EVERY fight with a combine soldier now goes the same way, in a stupid little dance:
We runnin' to the left!
Then we runnin' to the riiight!
THEN WE RUNNIN' STRAIGHT AT YOU!!
AND THEN FREEEEEEEEEEEEEZE!!!!............... Was this done "to make it easier for new players"? Because its turned the combine soldiers in to an absolute joke. Playing on Hard mode is no longer hard due to this fact ((atleast until you get to that STUPID survival moment in nova prospekt then the balanced well paced game play it used to have goes out the window in to a new cheaply rendered puddle and skuttles off like the bottom feeding head crab its become)).

Other little bits that bother me too, like the metrocops eyes no longer glow blue, when I kill the sniper outside ravenholm, he no longer shouts "S**T!!" when I throw a grenade up to get him, they never let us use alyx's pistol nor did they bring back its fold-out function to turn it into a submachine gun :'( the vortigaunts were all changed as well from their hl2 model to ep2's models, changes like this suck, don't kick out the rungs of your game ladder evolution you show them off, lest you turn in to an un-evolved mess that can't count to 3. It also surprised me back then they didn't try to bring Louis Gossett Jr. back to voice the vorts... and we both know the reason you picked them valve and the same reason I would have too, they both appeared on Stargate SG1 and you got them to do the EXACT SAME VOICES they were doing on that lol.

Now, the biggest crime of all to a lot of people from back then... optimisation. Younger me somehow played HL2 on an AMD 1.4 gig pros, 1 gig of ram and a Nvidia Riva TNT 2 for christ sake. THIS RAN ON A POTATO! You run it now? FPS dips in so many areas that would never happen back in the day.

To me, this isn't a tech demo that had some fun to it anymore, its a broken mess that seems like it was made to bait and switch us in to steam XD Every dev who made valve what it is to day is gone, every person with good ideas doing something else. Meh....

Every now and then I get together with my dad ((both getting on in years now)) and buy some point n clicks to play. This one? It isn't bad for its low budget. The game is well made, puzzles are interesting, well mapped and created world despite what others are saying about it, like "why set it at a gas station THAS BORING" no it isn't, its actually quite quaint. My only gripe with the backgrounds is they do NOT look like the British countryside a tall XD It looks more like a tropical climate's forest which is a bit off putting but at the same time looks cute? The 2nd game is an even worse offender for this but both still manage to at least look good.

Special mention to the torch as well used to navigate certain parts, LOVED this concept of having to light my way around, more point n clicks should do this, but thanks to publishers "point n clicks are a dead genre because they don't make us money hand over fist"... like strat games ¬_¬.

Music does its job and very nice to be handed it for free as well, just a pitty it's mp3 only...would have prefered flac, but I suppose the game is old and people wern't working with high quality files back then. HOWEVER, the menu theme seemed veeeeery familiar to me and I couldn't quite put my finger on it, and then I re-listened to the ALIEN³ OST lol Can't fool me, I hear that bit from used from ADAGIO before ripley chucks herself in the molten metal ;).....

Voice acting is silly but fun, its like the old days of gaming where the devs are VA'ing instead of a bunch of hollywood morons who sapped most of the budget away but ya know "LOOK WHO WE GOT TO STAR IN THIS!". They have fun with it and tried, thumbs up from me.

All in all, good. Not amazing but good for its price, age etc whole heartedly think old school point n click players will enjoy it... just a shame the third part will never be released :( Braken Tor: Tooth and Claw......

It's ok. It isn't as amazing as a lot of people are making out, but it's certainly fun. It's not a full on retro shooter as most make out either. It's like DooM meets FPS from the 2010 era, its ALL arena survival fighting. Enter area, doors close, kill EVERYTHING in arena, move on to next arena with small connecting bit of level inbetween. I HATED this era in FPS because it was companies finding ways to make their games longer, at the cost of actual content.

Sound is great, same for music, but it highlights a problem I shall go in to a little later on. The sounds are as stated, great. Everything ((except the bolter)) has a nice some nice mixing to it, each weapon also has little a unique little sound when you are running low on ammo, about to blow your plasma rifle up all that type of thing and its very welcome, especially when you are in the middle of a fight. Very nice to be telegraphed that when i'm low. Music GREAT! Rock, metal, synth mixed very well together, I shall be buying the soundtrack later on down the line.

Gameplay is, eeeeehhh adequate. As stated above move to arena, kill, move on to next arena but the movement is nice at least... perhaps TO GOOD at points, the air control is VERY responsive and moves nicely in every direction you want, perfect for someone like me who loves jumping down from above on things lol. Bosses are fine, they do their job but there wasn't much balancing going on. Take the first chapter for example, they throw a lord of change at you on mission 6/7 I believe it was? Then 1 mission later throw the actual "boss" of that chapter at you, which is a sorcerer.... who you can chainsword to his FAYCE and get rid of him in seconds, even faster if you picked up the infinite health powerup. So yeah chapter bosses are weaker compared to the "miniboss" thrown at you earlier... bad balancing.

Shooting can be a tad annoying. Unless the enemy is bang on in the center of your crosshair you arn't hitting it, even the shotgun has to be almost dead center to hit the thing with it's spread.. that's fine, but why does the player's hitbox have to be 2x the size of the enemies? I do get sick of plasma shots SOMEHOW hitting me despite being a clear foot away to the side of my screen.

No crouch.... why are FPS games going backwards in terms of controls?

The levels themselves are actually very well put together despite what alot are saying, they are fine to navigate, but everything looks, HORRIBLY boring. It's the same grey corridors over and over, there isn't a lot of variation. I thought this might change when being flung into a chaos area, but nope. Same walls, same banners almost, EVERYTHING EXACTLY THE SAME just with some cool purple "chaos" effects slapped around. There is no gore inside the levels, there is no creeping masses of flesh, there is nothing that makes you feel you are going insane and there is no "warping of reality", infact nothing to make you feel "off". Hell there is BARELY any spikes in chaos areas... It's just more grey, with some purple. Not a very good colour palette IMO, especially when you have planets like catachan in the universe but here we have desert, snow and grey.....

Now, my gripe. The trailers show off 2nd ed looking stuff, its marketed towards the 2nd ed mind set, even showing off 2nd ed marine, bike and other boxes, your character cracking his kunckles inside a damn suit XD a floppy disc, it even had tracks from DROK! ((yes I own it mwhahaha, haha, hahaha...)) but there is NOOOOOOTTTTHING 2nd edition found inside the game. You are a sternguard smurf ((choosing smurf was also a bad idea, no one gives a crap about them....they are smurfs)), you have the latest edition bolter, the latest plasma etc etc and after they showed SO MUCH about how it was geared to my era of 40k? even showing off gun more inline with that old feel in the trailers? It did not deliver... It's Catholics in space, which a lot of us never liked that change, rinse repeat till you get bored....

Also pet peeve, the melta-gun in my day was a high powered blowtorch, VERY high powered blowtorch, which was used to cut up vehicles like butter... what the hell is this new silly, high powered flame thrower look for it? That's no melta :/

All in all though, good game. NOT worth its full price tag, definately get it on deal, because I refuse to pay 20 pound for what is effectively, DooM with some added bits ((also not very well optimised either, a 2d game should not make my computer hit 70c..... THAT'S TERRIBLE!)).

Over 40 hours in. Restarted 3 times. Have developed one hell of a motion tracker based PTSD therapy bill, much like your marines will experience while playing this. This game is worth the money. It does not hold your hand like alot of modern games, right from mission 1- No, from the TUTORIAL it demands you git gud. It is unforgivably hard, deletes the weak and expunges the wretched.... but if you get passed that first MASSIVE learning curb? The game starts to open itself up to you in such a good way.

I'll start with sound design, good. Everything sounds exactly like it should, the motion tracker as stated above WILL give you PTSD, every level will be UN-NERVINGLY quiet with that horrible beep getting louder, and louder, and louder.... The smartguns sound smart, the pulse's pulse, the sentry guns, unfortunately don't give their continuous beep like they do in the movie, nor do they scan sweep the area.... but they shoot like they do in the movie! OH how they shoot and sound gorgeous. The only problem is the same problem I have with most games nowadays, their isn't enough immersion. There isn't reverb in rooms, nor a lovely echo, you do get wind, and rain noises but eh, neither does it muffle distant noises ((though it does lower their volume))... I miss this level of sound immersion from games, but I will always want the EAX days back.

Character speech is also ok, I didn't want to rip my ears off and seal the gaping bloody holes up with concrete like I did playing colonial marine, there is NO new modern forced "social conflict" that is being put into stuff ad nauseam nowadays, infact it's only problem which I think even the voice cast picked up on, was the outright silly, stupid nod-winks to dialogue from the movie. EVERY TIME one of the cast has to push these horribly written nods to the movie out, they just say it with no respect whatsoever and it kind of made me like them even more, knowing they are thinking the same thing lol Also, special mention to 2 of the voice actors, I can't prove this... their entries are mysteriously absent from IMBD, but the second marine male voice sounds EXACTLY like an old actor that used to be on star trek, KLINGON and BORG especially., and Pryce? Pryce looks and sounds like Kira from Deep Space Nine so I SWEAR its her! But again, the characters and VAs who voice them are mysteriously absent from IMBD, so Im saying it now they are star trek actors!

Gameplay, damn good. As stated above, hard, VERY hard even on the easiest setting you are gonna be tested here 'n there and once again it demands you git gud right from the get go. Things are nicely explained to you, as you progress and play, you will uncover new things, which the game will then give you an indepth explanation about in its codex entries. THIS, is something more games should be doing. Let the player make the mistake, then tell them what it is and what you did wrong / how to combat it, like ICE DAMS! Then they learn ((frontier I'm looking at you)). If you get passed this though, If you learn the games mechanics properly? It opens itself up to you in such a great way. "You've done damn well, here's sniper rifles when you need them" "oh you are getting good at sneaking huh? Here's the APC from the movie! congratz!" "you took down that queen? Well clearly you are mister ill take on the entire damn hive myself, here's a bunch of stuff to put detection down!" Emergent gameplay, another thing long forgotten that this lot remember and bring back in such a good way.

Your squad has a small RPG mechanic, meaning they will level up on and between missions back on the Otega, as well as being able to get new upgrades / professions from techy ((hacker / drone controller)) to gunner ((SMARTGUN USER, SMART PEOPLE USE SMART GUNS!)) to recon with the amazing sniper rifle that is absolute amazing but often mess you over because the game ALWAYS puts the recon, AT THE BACK OF THE SQUAD! complaining more on that later...You can also find xenotech during missions to give you new goodies too, from putting down xenomorph detection, to a device that rips off a face hugger from a squad member without killing him...yaaay! No more face r***!

Story.... Is ok! It's not ALIENS movie level of acting but it is ok and the story can be called RIGHT from the beginning but is still, once again, better than Colonial Marine. It does a much more respectful job to the source material and I even enjoyed the cult angle, people may complain about that type of stuff but it's been in the franchise FOR YEARS in the extended media ((hell, one of the original stories for ALIEN 3 was Earth Hive, in which a cult ends up f***ing over earth by bringing them here lol)).

It is not without its flaws as with anything, and some can be glaring. When you have 4 marines, their AI seems to be fine... but I think somewhere along the way someone in the dev team thought "lets give them an extra marine half way through" and didn't quite fix the rest of the game for that, because that 5th marine? Yeah he/she gets stuck on things ALOT. I will often double take at my minimap, seeing 1 straggler somehow behind the rest of the group just because they are that poor 5th wheel.... Xenos and cult members also get stuck on things, alot. This is a double edged sword too, sometimes they will get stuck in your way, BUT! Each map is scripted to only hold a certain amount of xenomorphs on the map at any given time, so if you get some trapped somewhere? That can actually mean smooth sailing to your next objective so bare this in mind. I've also notice marines can sometimes ignore commands when not traumatised... maybe due to traits? not sure... and a big, BIG pet peev now continued from earlier, the RECON officer. Recon stands for reconnaissance.... up front, first, ahead of the squad....why is the recon officer AT THE BACK OF THE SQUAD!?!?!? This isn't a small thing either, he is your sniper rifle, your silent killer,... and you have to shove the other marines head's out first, which get them seen first before he can even shoot! Put him at the damn front where he belongs. Also the DLC is pathetic, I mean REALLY pathetic. It gives you 3 black, digital camo patterns ((which have proven to be a failure and good for nothing but trendy people wanting to look "futuristically army like!")) and a ginger cat around the ortega, which barely ever shows up. Who's bright idea was it to cut these out before launch and put them as a DLC? Are you from EA? Are you from the same 1 celled organism that's split off and is taking Unity down as well? Cuz ya know, I suppose aliens is the place to do it, hive mentality and all that.

If you can deal with hard games that don't just push you into the deep end, but drop kick you in, laugh about it then feel a bit sorry for you and throw you some floaties? Then this is for you. I adore it as both an RTS fan and HUGE fan of the first 3 movies ((3 is good F.U. I'm not defending it here I will in the comment section though lol)) I love it. It's going to be a game I will come back to on harder settings, if only for my queen to hit me slap me call me names tie me u-.... I fear I have shared to much >_>

P.S. One more thing.... It has been over 30 years, so many games released and still no one will give me the ability TO DRIVE THE DAMN APC!! Companies take note, all us fans want to drive an APC ok? We want to drive through a door, through a wall, shooting things, hopeing to GOD we don't blow the engine before we get away ok? GIVE US A DRIVABLE APC!!!!!!!

Bad. MP3 only on both this and the humble bundle versions, but the bandcamp has FLAC ((and proper one's too not just converted from mp3 to it)). Bit of a jip making people pay twice who want the quality.

So.... what do you get when you take postal dude, shove him into an old school FPS, mix in some DooM Eternal and add some great satire ((although not all of it makes sense))... You get Brain Damaged, why did you do that you idiot? Now you have to go to the docs and spend money you don't have. Go on, off ya' go.

Sound Design, good! Not always amazing, some things don't blend well and positional sound effects can be a nightmare sometimes, but high quality, quantity etc fantastic... just needs some mixing. Weapons all sound fantastic too, if it has weight it sounds and feels it, if its fast then go nuts with the fire button and listen to those glorious meaty bangs.

Gameplay, survival / arena shooter with a little old school exploration thrown in and a DAMN GOOD selection of weapons. All of them great, however sometime should have been spent tweaking them a little more. The holy handgrenade launcher seems a little weak one minute when using normal fire, then you use alt fire and it becomes a gamble where that damn 'nade is gonna send itself, but most of the time it will bounce OVER the enemy and no where near em... my only gripe with them. Special and also a F*** you! mention has to go to this as well, I was also about to break down and cry with what I had to use in one level ((forced I might add, FORCED!!)), the cat launcher........ you fire them out like discs, and I'm sorry I'm a saver of kitties in postal 2 and never use them as silencers, it almost broke my heart.... but then I realised you pull them back into the gun safe and sound and they deal even MORE damage, didn't lose a single one and ended up with basically infinite ammunition. Its amazing, the creator of this and the dilbow deserve an award. BEST weapons i've used in an FPS in a long time.

Levels, amazing, not to empty, not to cluttered fantastic balance that must have taken the team a long time and special mention to the last level. I had SO MUCH fun there it's been put into all time greatest levels list. Welldone, 10/10 job.

It is not without its problem... It's just damn good enough that they can be set aside and ignored / dealt with at a later date so here is my dealing with them. Enemies shoot through walls, in so many places, around so many corners that alot of the deaths come from cheap shots like that, which can get a bit annoying during a run.

Some weapons can be a bit annoying to use as I have already gone over ((the holy handlauncher)), the nail gun's secondary can be a bit annoying to fire properly but you can get used to it, the tesla brain's secondary fire is extremely weak considering its copying off a BFG and the shotguns grappling hook ((although so fun)) will basically get you shredded more often than not in a fight so its only really useful for navigating levels with... which there is alot of so no harm no fowl there, it isn't a useless gimic you forget about.

LASERS! WHY SO MANY LASERS!?!? Everything is shooting me WITH GUIDED LOCK ON TO YO FAYCE LAASSSSERSS!!! And you didn't add one shark... NOT ONE with a fricken laser beam attached to it's FRICKEN HEAD!? Unbelievable.

Half the enemies revolt me, half of them........... ok look furs wouldn't be that hot, it would probably be the WOMEN dressed up as the xenos and hot damn I want an army of dominatrix bodyguards now >_<. There I said it's on ALL your minds don't even try to deny it.

Got stuck in props or level geometry in numerous places, forcing me into a reload. Why do companies not supply an unstuck system anymore? So many unreal engine games had it now its gone the way of good sound design and immersion ((and I DON'T MEAN interactive f***ing fiction, that isn't immersive, stuff ya last of us where it don't shine because that's where the writers pulled it from)).

Buy this, it's more than worth the money and get the soundtrack too! Never has destroying part of your easy been so brain.

When this is finally fixed to a point that doesn't melt graphics cards then maybe I'll change it to Positive, but right now this game is a computer killer with nothing inside it to warrant that hit, nothing here to ignore those problems and to be honest it just doesn't have the interactivity 2 had.

To start with, almost every prop in the game is static, it isn't like 2 where you could walk into a room and there would be boxes, chairs, computers ALL SORTS to kick around and break. Everything is static, everything stays in place now. You can turn on SOME monitor screens / light switches, you can stick your fingers in plug sockets and you can turn taps on.... that's it ((does this sound familiar? ...something that took FOREVER to come out?)). Alot of these sections also seemed to be messed up and tied to other things, like finding a baseball bat in a shed that has the light fixture's zap on it.... what?

1.0 release and its extremely, badly, INCREDIBLY poorly optimised. Although a patch was released recently to fix this, my laptop still goes over 80c, infact it went up to 86 playing it today so I will no longer be even trying to play it until that is changed. No reader, my laptop is not to weak to play it, infact it can do every setting on ultra... its just poorly optimised, it needs ALOT of fixing and it should not have been given a retail release yet. I can run doom eternal on this thing, max graphics and it won't go above 60c, I can play GTA V with almost everything full and it won't go above that same threshold.... I only have 1 other game that goes to 80c and that is a terrible optimised SCP game, which got a recent update and fixed it. If an indie company can fix their over heating problems then someone like RWS should be able to as well ((and they haven't come out of early access yet)).

Bugs, so many bugs. It's Postal so we all expect it due to the size and scope but this is too much. I reload a game and I have 4 hobos CONSTANTLY spawning and shooting me, I get stuck there is no getting out, numerous sub missions don't complete properly ((had to reload and do the fire station mission 3 times before it completed properly)), numerous bugs with things like the "rampages", one of the top of my head would be the shoot 5 RWS signs in 8 seconds, easy right? I had todo it 6 times before I realised its bugged and the final sign won't register if you are using iron sights.... AND WHY THE F*** has iron sights been put in? I'm actually SICK of iron-sights, they are s*** and it's only little CoD morons that like it. Why would ANYONE like a function that makes the gun take up more than half the screen, AND THEN BLURS IT ALL!?!?!?! "duhhhhh my R like "REALISM" hurrhurr cuz it real to bluur screen when aiming HURRDEEERP!!", and one last big peeve that i've missed in gaming since the 90s, the reflections are bugged. Instead of the player seeing themselves in a mirror, they see a floating pair of arms holding a weapon, that isn't mirrored....10/10. One more thing, hobos seem to be covered in a wonderful layer of jizz or luminescent urine yellow paint, it's weird.

I don't feel like Postal Dude anymore having a weird day. I don't have chores to do, I can't go get milk while the most absolutely craziest s*** is going down, I can't rob a bank, I can't save the games company I work for from weirdos who hate games and neither can I assault an entire Taliban encampment... what I can do is "do this job for me". I can put out a fire in a fire station, I can light someones campfire, and I can do tons of sub missions that have been ripped RIGHT out of GTA. It just feels like the same mission structure of postal 3, you are working for someone else not yourself... only not completely ♥♥♥♥ at least, but still a bit boring. Half the fun of 2 is you are "normal"...ish? trying to have a "NORMAL" day, while everything else is crazy, this just feels bland. It feels like an American Sitcom to be frank only a little bit edgier.

Weapons are ok, flame effects are great, the flamethrower super soaker is always a genius addition to ANY game but most of the enemies you will be fighting are bugged to high hell. You have rats that are made out of helium and either die with the heads floating in to the air and wobbling left and right, or sometimes just outright slowly floating to the top of the room. People's feet will disappear inside the floor while running after / away from you, or just turn into a mangled mass of legs trying to spin like sonic.... I put that woman out of her misery very fast, she looked to be in pain. They will phase through doors, get stuck in doors, get YOU stuck in doors and where it doesn't have "it looks like your stuck" system 2 had, then you are reloading from a previous save. EVERYTHING feels like a step back here.

Sound effects are great, music when it's used is fantastic and it's nice to have some actual sound design again, ya know developers, that thing ya do with sounds? like putting echo effects in big rooms or rooms with lots of reverberation eh? Water Trickling? BIRD AND BUG NOISES!?! Yes?!?! IMMERSION!? SOMETHING EVERY DEVELOPER WOULD SAY AD NAUSEUM IN THEIR F***ING BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEOS IN THE 90S / 00S!?!?!?!? Maybe doit again instead of making everything look pretty and then DONE.... RWS, you could use that lesson again too, i'd rather it look crap and run well than pretty and melt my graphics card.

Sorry guys, but going back to a previous point and this one needs to be highlighted more, the humour just isn't there. I feel like the story and funnys were created by a marketing department, not you lot taking the p*** out of people nor having ago at the right places, it just feels like a marketing team made it, a team who has an almost stereotyped view on the players: "oh they are all A-holes from the 90s they won't need anything else other than toilet humour, killing, pop culture references and pretty graphics *snort* nah they don't need anything else you see OUR STATISTICS SHOW THAT-" and thats all postal 4 feels like, lots of toilet humour, killing to 11 and prettyness. This may shock you reader but not every player wants to be a psychoticaly deranged lunatic, stuck in a government bunker who's only friend is a radioactive rodent forced to play bad games for the rest of their lives CUZ THEY DESERVE IT YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID!! ((do you have any idea, how many mops I went through? WE went through!? the blood....the screams.....the fur....)), sometimes I like to see how far I can go without going nuts in postal 2, see how far I can get before the game just makes my eye twitch and out comes the sawn off < this right here is the postal feel, making you go, POSTAL. making you, ANGRY. MAKING YOU FLIP AND HAVING FUN WITHIT XD . Postal 4 is just a middle finger, on everything. It doesn't try to wind you up, it doesn't push your buttons, it doesn't try to stress you out and push you to a limit it's just "*shrug* ♥♥♥♥ you I don't care". I mean don't get me wrong, 2 had plenty of toilet humour as well ((and it was great lol)) it just also had jugular rippingly good satire, attacking people that you KNOW deserved it... there isn't much of that here.

:edit: special note on the menu theme. This piece of music, the composer knows how to go postal. The climb, the build to the inevitable snapping point. Perhaps worth it if only for this theme alone.

:edit 2: Ok so, making a checkpoint save system sucks on a game like postal, but RWS decided to give a save system that doesn't save. EVERY one you make will just revert to the last checkpoint, causing you to loose tons of stuff. F*** this game, it is absolute modern day, "pretty" trash, had enough of it (even with a new pc it's just, BORING)