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Xen reminds me of something out of Metroid Prime. : Black mesa is eye candy in my opinion. The gameplay is clunky and the gunplay is awful (And I enjoyed System shock 2 gunplay). To be honest, I don't know why they took ages to make all this crap, I have seen indie devs with far more ambition make better games.
if you paid $20 refund... lol even if you paid $5 refund.
Sanity is an interesting action adventure game made by Monolith. I didn't have opportunity to play it earlier, but decided to do it instead of replaying some other title. From the long and informative intro we find out, that Dr. Joan Aiken had discovered a way to inject a special serum into the human brain, which will grant this human powerful psychic abilities, known as "talents". The serum couldn't be absorbed by adults, so it was decided to try injecting two brothers - Cain and Abel. We play the role of Cain, who is working for Department of National Psionic Control (DNPC), which deals with those, who are misusing their psionic abilities.
Powered by Lithtech engine, Sanity looks nice even today. The color pallet reminds me of No One Lives Forever, but it's not the only similarity. With nice top-down perspective we control Cain like in a typical Diablo clone with some additions. We use our badge to help us getting through some checkpoints, and a cell phone to contact the base. But the main mechanic here are psychic abilities called Talents. They are represented by visible cards, giving us different powers. Every one of them belongs to the corresponding Totem, an equivalent of magic schools.
There is a lot of them, since we have :
1 - Fire
2 - Sun
3 - Illusion
4 - Science
5 - Demonology
6 - Death
7 - Storm
8 - Truth
As usual, we can find offensive, defensive and supporting talents. There are too many of them, and we mostly find them during our journey, killing the bosses and last but not least - using some secret paths which are optional. What I really like about them, it's their presentation. For example, when we use Mummy's Revenge, A huge mummy smashes the ground in front of where you click. Invisibility makes Cain covered in a blanket like in a magic show and dissapear. We can also summon different support, like demons, suicide robots and some more. Plus the shields, which are very helpful during some tough battles since Sanity
doesn't have any inventory system for Hit Points / Mana. We find vials with them in some places, but we mostly take them from killed enemies. This is why battles tend to be less about spamming strong talents, and more about defeating foes as efficient as possible. The are some health and mana upgrades, which permanently increase them, and for those who like to snoop around, there are some secret locations with them as well.
If our mana drops to zero, Cain goes into a strange delirium disco mode, when we can't do nothing and he looses some of his health. His regeneration abiliy isn't great, and unlike in newer titles, it only replenishes the small levels of magic energy. There are some hard battles, but for the most of the time, playing on medium difficulty wasn't frustrating at all. The gun is too weak, especially later on and it should be used as a last resort.
There is no side quests, but we go with the story and our first case quickly becomes something more. I don't want to spoil it, since it's not a long game, and told in a brief manner. For those who are more inquisitive, there are computer terminals and for something extra there is also mind reading, which is similar to Divinity 2. I wonder if Larian was inspired by Sanity. Sometimes the results are really funny.
And speaking of funny, we can see the type of humor, that was later expanded in NOLF. Mostly of course thanks to dialogues. The VA is excellent, we hear people from Half Life (Barney, G-Man) and Monolith favourites, like Kit Harris who voiced Cate Archer. Plus of course our protagonist, voiced by Ice T. I must admit, that I was sceptic at first, but the more I played, the more I was sure it was a good move. He is confident, not very often humorous, but knows how to play it cool. He really fits his role. You will hear very familiar voices through the whole game. The tongue in a cheek style of narration with some light jokes works like an adhesive that is attached to the main quest.
The music, once again made by Guy Whitmore has it's moments, but the tracks are just too short for the most of the time. What surprised me though, it's that Sanity is a very stable game. It uses the Lithtech 2.0 engine, and even with alt tabbing and keeping it running there was no crashes. During the playthrough there were no problems at all. Considering the problems and crashes that occur during running Blood 2 and Shogo, it's a great change.
The only problem I have found are the two puzzles, which took some time to solve them and the pacing of the game was slower due to that. Sometimes the camera didn't positioned properly, but it wasn't NWN 2 level of frustrations.
Since the game isn't available on GOG or Steam, the Cd version has a problem with installing. The installer is 16-bit, but we need a 32-bit version. Thankfully, the Pc Gaming Wiki has the solution for that:
Download 32-bit version of the installer executable from here.
Copy the CD contents to any folder on your HDD.
Put the installer from Is3Engine.zip archive in the same folder.
Run the new installer from your HDD.
The owner of this manor has an excellent taste, when it comes to paintings .
Sanity is an interesting action adventure game made by Monolith. I didn't have opportunity to play it earlier, but decided to do it instead of replaying some other title. From the long and informative intro we find out, that Dr. Joan Aiken had discovered a way to inject a special serum into the human brain, which will grant this human powerful psychic abilities, known as "talents". The serum couldn't be absorbed by adults, so it was decided to try injecting two brothers - Cain and Abel. We play the role of Cain, who is working for Department of National Psionic Control (DNPC), which deals with those, who are misusing their psionic abilities.
Powered by Lithtech engine, Sanity looks nice even today. The color pallet reminds me of No One Lives Forever, but it's not the only similarity. With nice top-down perspective we control Cain like in a typical Diablo clone with some additions. We use our badge to help us getting through some checkpoints, and a cell phone to contact the base. But the main mechanic here are psychic abilities called Talents. They are represented by visible cards, giving us different powers. Every one of them belongs to the corresponding Totem, an equivalent of magic schools.
There is a lot of them, since we have :
1 - Fire
2 - Sun
3 - Illusion
4 - Science
5 - Demonology
6 - Death
7 - Storm
8 - Truth
As usual, we can find offensive, defensive and supporting talents. There are too many of them, and we mostly find them during our journey, killing the bosses and last but not least - using some secret paths which are optional. What I really like about them, it's their presentation. For example, when we use Mummy's Revenge, A huge mummy smashes the ground in front of where you click. Invisibility makes Cain covered in a blanket like in a magic show and dissapear. We can also summon different support, like demons, suicide robots and some more. Plus the shields, which are very helpful during some tough battles since Sanity
doesn't have any inventory system for Hit Points / Mana. We find vials with them in some places, but we mostly take them from killed enemies. This is why battles tend to be less about spamming strong talents, and more about defeating foes as efficient as possible. The are some health and mana upgrades, which permanently increase them, and for those who like to snoop around, there are some secret locations with them as well.
If our mana drops to zero, Cain goes into a strange delirium disco mode, when we can't do nothing and he looses some of his health. His regeneration abiliy isn't great, and unlike in newer titles, it only replenishes the small levels of magic energy. There are some hard battles, but for the most of the time, playing on medium difficulty wasn't frustrating at all. The gun is too weak, especially later on and it should be used as a last resort.
There is no side quests, but we go with the story and our first case quickly becomes something more. I don't want to spoil it, since it's not a long game, and told in a brief manner. For those who are more inquisitive, there are computer terminals and for something extra there is also mind reading, which is similar to Divinity 2. I wonder if Larian was inspired by Sanity. Sometimes the results are really funny.
And speaking of funny, we can see the type of humor, that was later expanded in NOLF. Mostly of course thanks to dialogues. The VA is excellent, we hear people from Half Life (Barney, G-Man) and Monolith favourites, like Kit Harris who voiced Cate Archer. Plus of course our protagonist, voiced by Ice T. I must admit, that I was sceptic at first, but the more I played, the more I was sure it was a good move. He is confident, not very often humorous, but knows how to play it cool. He really fits his role. You will hear very familiar voices through the whole game. The tongue in a cheek style of narration with some light jokes works like an adhesive that is attached to the main quest.
The music, once again made by Guy Whitmore has it's moments, but the tracks are just too short for the most of the time. What surprised me though, it's that Sanity is a very stable game. It uses the Lithtech 2.0 engine, and even with alt tabbing and keeping it running there was no crashes. During the playthrough there were no problems at all. Considering the problems and crashes that occur during running Blood 2 and Shogo, it's a great change.
The only problem I have found are the two puzzles, which took some time to solve them and the pacing of the game was slower due to that. Sometimes the camera didn't positioned properly, but it wasn't NWN 2 level of frustrations.
Since the game isn't available on GOG or Steam, the Cd version has a problem with installing. The installer is 16-bit, but we need a 32-bit version. Thankfully, the Pc Gaming Wiki has the solution for that:
Download 32-bit version of the installer executable from here.
Copy the CD contents to any folder on your HDD.
Put the installer from Is3Engine.zip archive in the same folder.
Run the new installer from your HDD.
The owner of this manor has an excellent taste, when it comes to paintings .
Replayed Silent Hill 2, PC version with Enhanced edition patch. Ran smooth as butter and looked amazing, the only bug i've experienced was a distorted Toluca labyrinth map (though it made labyrinth into actual labyrinth).
Story-wise it's probably a pinnacle of the series, though gameplay posed like zero challenge - there were loads of ammo and healing supplies. Not feeling like playing on harder combat difficulties, since it makes enemies into complete damage sponges.
I remember when I bought Age of Empires 1 that it came with a detailed history book for all the civilizations, 200 pages in total or something. I wonder if I still have it somewhere…
Installed most of the mods i could find. Also added slower exp and dungeon progression and removed escape from battle and mission. + self-imposed rule - only one character from each class.
Week 2 - already only boss missions... Fuck this gay Earth.
smaug. At first when I saw your shitposter tag I was surprised.
but then you post the two most boring screenshots of AOEII that you could possibly find in the entirety of the game.
literally the menu screen and a fucking book.
and now I'm starting to appreciate you as the subtlest shitposter that has ever shat upon this forum.
well done
The GOG version comes with a wrapper for 3-D acceleration where it's possible to set a higher output resolution than what the game is set to be rendered at in the engine (it's best to keep that one at 640x480 or whatever was the default), so if the latter resolution is kept low, the performance should be decent. Swapping dgVoodoo for nGlide with which the GOG version comes and using Direct3D renderer in SVN Daum DOSBox might also yield better performance. I've beat it recently on a 2.6 GHz CPU and the frame rate was bearable for the most part. Only some final encounters with more enemies were a problem.
: Black mesa is eye candy in my opinion. The gameplay is clunky and the gunplay is awful (And I enjoyed System shock 2 gunplay). To be honest, I don't know why they took ages to make all this crap, I have seen indie devs with far more ambition make better games. 
if you paid $20 refund... lol even if you paid $5 refund. 
.
