![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hospital Manager - A sim game where you run a for-profit hospital, and try to diagnose and treat as many patients as you can to improve your reputation and also make money. Unlike many games of this type, rather than just having an “unlimited” mode, this has missions of varying lengths that each require a specialized design. That said, the designs aren't that complicated and the game gets repetitive quickly. And the hospital can get hella crowded, making it hard to tell what needs your attention.
Monument Builders – Alcatraz - Like the Gardens games, this is a resource-management building game, where you direct workers to collect wood, cement, money and the like and use them to produce goods and/or buildings. The systems aren't quite as refined as the Gardens games, though—and there's a lot of repetition of the same maps with only slightly different challenges. Also, there are several levels that will glitch and not acknowledge that you've completed the goals, or trap you without enough materials to retrieve more. This does feature a man with a giant mustache and a plethora of historical trivia about Alcatraz, so that's something, but it's definitely inferior to other examples of the genre.
Dracula: The Resurrection - A weird point-and-click and FPS hybrid—you need to click arrows to move to certain static points, but then you need to look around in all directions from a first-person view to find items and clues. (Which makes it much less fun.) Talking to people is done in full animated videos…with no subtitles. And the whole thing is a crummy sequel plot to the novel Dracula.
Darkstone - A shoddily-made action-rpg with mouse-based controls and little in the way of characterization. Just, “Plop, you’re an adventurer, go kill the evil cult and the dragon.”
Voyage: Journey to the Moon - A point-and-click adventure game with a lousy interface, that kicks off a timed section a few minutes in that has no obvious solution and doesn’t allow for pausing. I had barely figured out how to juggle my inventory when I started dying from lack of oxygen. The idea of a gaslamp fantasy space adventure is vaguely appealing, but this game isn’t fun to play.
Haegemonia: Legions of Iron - A tactical space sim with lousy controls and unclear goals. Apparently, you’re maneuvering a wing of fighters through our local solar system to try to deal with a war with the Martian colonies; mostly you’re listen to a Pavel Chekov knockoff tell you where to go next and then trying to figure out how to do that. Given that I didn’t like this, I skipped Haegemonia: The Solon Heritage.
Return to Mysterious Island - Another point-and-click adventure game with a bad interface, halfway between individual screens and free-roaming 3D with the disadvantages of both. Oh, and a hunger meter. Screw that! I didn’t bother with Return to Mysterious Island 2.
Moto Racer Collection - A collection of motorcycle racing games. I didn’t find anything special about them (they’re “realistic”), but note that they’re the sort of games where you can spend two laps of a race lazily in first place and then suddenly the CPU remembers how to drive and you finish the third lap dead last.
Sinking Island - An investigation puzzle adventure game trying to solve a murder on a resort island. Nothing immediately wrong with it, it just didn’t pull my interest.
eXperience 112 - This gets credit for a very interesting concept: A woman wakes up in some sort of research facility, but you’re not her, you’re in the security office watching via the cameras. You have to work together with her to disable security systems and get necessary features of the surveillance equipment back online, using basically a windows interface. I found it a little slow-moving and the only guides are in Russian, but it’s mildly interesting.
The Bluecoats: North vs South - A strategy/resource management board game (about the American Civil War, logically) with tactical battles and mouse-based action shooter scenes. It’s an odd combination and it’s not easy, even if you tilt the battles in your favor with the difficulty slider.
Still Life was unplayable because McAfee quarantined the game files.
I had lost interest with the bundle by the time I got to Iron Storm, Nicolas Eymerich - The Inquisitor - Book 1: The Plague, Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy and Syberia, so I skipped them altogether.
Overall: Microids…makes crappy games. Plenty of these are styles of games I’d otherwise be interested in—the concepts are solid--except that they do them badly.
Monument Builders – Alcatraz - Like the Gardens games, this is a resource-management building game, where you direct workers to collect wood, cement, money and the like and use them to produce goods and/or buildings. The systems aren't quite as refined as the Gardens games, though—and there's a lot of repetition of the same maps with only slightly different challenges. Also, there are several levels that will glitch and not acknowledge that you've completed the goals, or trap you without enough materials to retrieve more. This does feature a man with a giant mustache and a plethora of historical trivia about Alcatraz, so that's something, but it's definitely inferior to other examples of the genre.
Dracula: The Resurrection - A weird point-and-click and FPS hybrid—you need to click arrows to move to certain static points, but then you need to look around in all directions from a first-person view to find items and clues. (Which makes it much less fun.) Talking to people is done in full animated videos…with no subtitles. And the whole thing is a crummy sequel plot to the novel Dracula.
Darkstone - A shoddily-made action-rpg with mouse-based controls and little in the way of characterization. Just, “Plop, you’re an adventurer, go kill the evil cult and the dragon.”
Voyage: Journey to the Moon - A point-and-click adventure game with a lousy interface, that kicks off a timed section a few minutes in that has no obvious solution and doesn’t allow for pausing. I had barely figured out how to juggle my inventory when I started dying from lack of oxygen. The idea of a gaslamp fantasy space adventure is vaguely appealing, but this game isn’t fun to play.
Haegemonia: Legions of Iron - A tactical space sim with lousy controls and unclear goals. Apparently, you’re maneuvering a wing of fighters through our local solar system to try to deal with a war with the Martian colonies; mostly you’re listen to a Pavel Chekov knockoff tell you where to go next and then trying to figure out how to do that. Given that I didn’t like this, I skipped Haegemonia: The Solon Heritage.
Return to Mysterious Island - Another point-and-click adventure game with a bad interface, halfway between individual screens and free-roaming 3D with the disadvantages of both. Oh, and a hunger meter. Screw that! I didn’t bother with Return to Mysterious Island 2.
Moto Racer Collection - A collection of motorcycle racing games. I didn’t find anything special about them (they’re “realistic”), but note that they’re the sort of games where you can spend two laps of a race lazily in first place and then suddenly the CPU remembers how to drive and you finish the third lap dead last.
Sinking Island - An investigation puzzle adventure game trying to solve a murder on a resort island. Nothing immediately wrong with it, it just didn’t pull my interest.
eXperience 112 - This gets credit for a very interesting concept: A woman wakes up in some sort of research facility, but you’re not her, you’re in the security office watching via the cameras. You have to work together with her to disable security systems and get necessary features of the surveillance equipment back online, using basically a windows interface. I found it a little slow-moving and the only guides are in Russian, but it’s mildly interesting.
The Bluecoats: North vs South - A strategy/resource management board game (about the American Civil War, logically) with tactical battles and mouse-based action shooter scenes. It’s an odd combination and it’s not easy, even if you tilt the battles in your favor with the difficulty slider.
Still Life was unplayable because McAfee quarantined the game files.
I had lost interest with the bundle by the time I got to Iron Storm, Nicolas Eymerich - The Inquisitor - Book 1: The Plague, Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy and Syberia, so I skipped them altogether.
Overall: Microids…makes crappy games. Plenty of these are styles of games I’d otherwise be interested in—the concepts are solid--except that they do them badly.
