STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast™
Several years ago, when I was a kid, I bought a CD copy of this game as part of the Star Wars: The Best of PC collection. I had fun with it, but I was young and bad at the game, so really all I did was just fool around with the in-game cheats. I saw the game on Steam for cheap and decided to give it a more thorough playthrough this time around. After completing it, I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that this game is fantastic and holds up very well. I’ll break the review up into a few sections to simplify things.
– Real player with 27.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Sci-fi Games.
UPDATE After going to join game the other day, I guess the servers are not there any longer?
They ARE on Jk2MV, so, go with that I would say, less hassle with the resolution and some other visual improvements as well. Anyway keep the above in mind reading forward.
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Please just buy this now.
You have no idea. It has the best multiplayer ever of anything ever created ever.
Well, most of the community is on Jedi Knight 3 Academy now, but, read on.
Obviously this game earns my “I fucking love this game badge”.
– Real player with 20.9 hrs in game
The Apogee Throwback Pack
This is a pack of four games and as such I’m going to review them seperate but I will try to keep it as short as I can.
Blake stone:alien gold
A spirtual successor to wolfenstien 3d. It makes many improvements as well as refines old ones. The shooting is still great and there are more weapons as well. They give you a map which is VERY helpful. And you also get to go back to earlier levels at any time(you could restock or look for things you missed). You also have to think a bit more with your shots as well since scientists are scattered on every floor and can help you with info and even give you items, but you can shoot them. There are problems though. All the weapons use the same ammo, so some become worthless when you get other ones. The map is better than nothing but while it shows locked doors it doesn’t show doors that open on one side only. And this led to me back tracking for nothing at times. It also doesn’t show you where your facing in a room, but you can open the map a couple of times to get the idea. While having some npc’s are a nice touch you can’t tell which are good or bad(as some are enemies) and on higher difficulty levels you can get killed quick so it can make sparing a scientist very risky. Overall while not as remembered as wolfenstein 3d, it’s a solid shooter that has aged better.
– Real player with 39.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action FPS Games.
The Apogee Throback Pack is a collection of great games from the early 90’s. All the games uses the Wolfenstein 3D engine.
The first game is Blake Staone and the Aliens of Gold, released in 1993. The gameplay is very similar to Wolfenstien 3D. The only real difference is that there are npc’s in the game, the setting is in space and the way healing works. There are scientest npc’s in the game. Some are informants working for the same agency as the player. The rest are working for the bad guys. The only way to tell them apart is by interacting with them. Healing is done through buying health tokens from vending machines with money found through out the levels. The main way to progress thourgh a level is by finding all the keycards and returning to the starting point. Aliens of Gold has 60 levels that is complete maze hunts.
– Real player with 20.4 hrs in game
The Disney Afternoon Collection
The Disney Afternoon Collection not only came as a welcome surprise to 90s kids, retro gamers, & speedrunners alike, but arrived just in time for the reboot of the hit series DuckTales (2017).
(Note: An abbreviated version is posted here, because the full set with dedicated reviews for every game, would go far beyond the constraints of Steam’s character limit. Links to the full reviews with references are therefore included.)
Disney, Capcom, & Nintendo
Since these old licensed games are based on old TV series, here’s a bit of context to understand where they are coming from.
– Real player with 63.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Retro Games.
As somebody who grew up with a NES and watching the Disney afternoon cartoons, I can’t really review this objectively because I’m gonna view it through nostalgia-tinted-glasses, but I’ll try my best.
First off the package:
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This thing collects all the NES Disney games that Capcom developed and published in the 90’s. Those are DuckTales 1+2, Chip&Dale 1+2, Darkwing Duck, and TaleSpin.
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Everything runs through an emulator. You get the standard fare of these bundles in terms of visuals which is one default border and three screen settings (4:3, Pixel Perfect and stretched) and you can use a scanlines filter so the games kind of look like they’re played on old CRT tvs.
– Real player with 28.2 hrs in game
Grand Theft Auto 2
This GTA is different due to the camera angle, it has more of a 2D feel to it. However the idea is the same, open world game where you steal cars, kill people and explore. The cities are like levels, you beat a city and then go to the next one. There are 3 of them and each city has 3 gangs. The thing is, you can’t travel from one city to another. Instead you gotta choose them from the menu. The way you beat them is a little different too. Instead of completing specific missions, or a number of missions, in this one you gotta reach a specific amount of money. The money system is a little bit different in this game as you get money from kills and vehicles destroyed. Missions will give you money too. So you got 2 options : Either join a gang and complete missions for them or destroy everything until you reach the amount of money needed. Be careful with gangs, respect is everything! The more you kill other gang members the more likely you will get attacked when you enter their area (kinda similar to San Andreas).
– Real player with 466.9 hrs in game
This GTA is different due to the camera angle, it has more of a 2D feel to it. However the idea is the same, open world game where you steal cars, kill people and explore. The cities are like levels, you beat a city and then go to the next one. There are 3 of them and each city has 3 gangs. The thing is, you can’t travel from one city to another. Instead you gotta choose them from the menu. The way you beat them is a little different too. Instead of completing specific missions, or a number of missions, in this one you gotta reach a specific amount of money. The money system is a little bit different in this game as you get money from kills and vehicles destroyed. Missions will give you money too. So you got 2 options : Either join a gang and complete missions for them or destroy everything until you reach the amount of money needed. Be careful with gangs, respect is everything! The more you kill other gang members the more likely you will get attacked when you enter their area (kinda similar to San Andreas).
– Real player with 39.0 hrs in game
Mafia
Oh boy where do I even start, “Mafia” is an old classic, a very underrated game by today’s standards. I remember playing this game when i was in grade school, much later in 2011 I bought this game on Steam too and I have never actually wrote a review for this game.
Reading through other reviews by people, the media and even newer “retro” reviews I was glad that people do still remember this great game even after more than 16 years since it was released. On the other hand I was annoyed a bit that people still try to compare “Mafia” to the “Grand Theft Auto” series which just blows my mind, this game isn’t GTA and it was never meant to be a “GTA” game. Just because there is a semi-open world with a bit of driving involved, a character that you control in 3rd person doesn’t mean it’s automatically a “GTA” clone.
– Real player with 59.4 hrs in game
Nothing to complain about Mafia, this is objectively a masterpiece that came out in 2002. The game tells the story about a Taxi Driver, Tommy Angelo. Tommy, while working at night in the 1930s, stumbled across 2 gangsters from the Salieri’s Family. Since that night, his life changed entirely.
Sound and Music:
While playing Mafia, the player will completely dive in the atmosphere of the game: perfect sound and music experience (I’ll talk more technically about sounds and music later in this review). I highly recommend playing the game with Stereo Headphones. Just as an example, during the “A Trip To The Country” mission, that thunderstorm effect really makes you feel like you’re in the game during the whole chapter.
– Real player with 48.6 hrs in game
SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics
The Sega Mega Drive Classics is more than just an emulator, It can rewind, Save state, Mirror mode and has online gameplay. It also added challenges where you start in impossible situations.
It is a collection of 58 Sega Genesis games Or Mega Drive for European players. I am missing some obvious classics, but Sadly not everything is owned by Sega, Because if it where they would be included in this collection. Sega really went all out and made the best emulator they could, With tons of features and even Online multiplayer.
– Real player with 104.2 hrs in game
I am a total Sega Fan!!! And yes I still got all the games that go with this bundle!
This being said, below are the reasons why I can’t recomend this Game Bundle/Emulator:
-the game hub/game room is poorly coded, it has stutters and slow downs (on a pc which can run HL2 at full settings)
- the game hub/game room poor perfomance affects the emulation speed (the game room is executed in the background even if you go full screen on the emulator and causes drops in emulator speed, with some effects/filters on, the emulator performs very poorly) this can be avoided through the use of simple launcher, BUT…
– Real player with 84.3 hrs in game
Grand Theft Auto
I have to say, I was surprised by just how good this game is. In the blurry screenshots on the store page, it comes across as archaic to the point of being down right unplayable, but it is, in fact, a full formed Grand Theft Auto game. Each style of car drives differently and sports the fake radio stations this series has become known for. Those stations are a little too limited for the amount of time you’ll be driving around; it’s like one song plus a commercial per car theme, but as long as you’re sure to switch between styles frequently they won’t cross into obnoxious territory.
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
I never got to play the first game in the series back int he day, even though I did manage to get my hands on the PlayStation version. I guess since my first ever introduction to the GTA series was already in the 3D universe I got a bit put off by the less story-driven 2D games. Now I see this was quite a fun experience. But still, I would hardly call it my favorite, and can only muster up enough to say it’s just a bit underwhelming.
First of all, it’s the very reason this was pulled out of Steam: you can only run the game once. For some reason, the port changes a file type after you play a level that makes it so when it tries to read it again to start a new level the games simply crashes. You literally had to make a backup of the original file and manually replace it every time you wanted to play or look for a 3rd party program that fixes the file before launching the game and, if you wanted steam to properly read your game time like me, make a custom exe that would replace the original one so steam knew when you launched the game. It’s a similar experience to playing Fallout Fixit, but there the vanilla game works even if you don’t want the extra fixes, here it’s mandatory if you want to play and just that is enough to get a negative review as an experience since it would just be better to get the original PC version or even the PlayStation one.
– Real player with 21.8 hrs in game
MDK
The Steam release of MDK is a bit of a letdown. It inspired me to make a fan patch for the game since, not only does it not include any glide wrappers to make the game compatible with modern systems, it also missed a LOT of original content from the game such as cutscenes, artwork etc.
Using my patch though you should be able to experience the game as it was meant to be.
In my opinion MDK is a pretty awesome shooter. It’s insanely easy to play (especially with a modern WASD+mouse control setup), easy to grasp and while the game is a bit short, it has an insane amount of variety in level designs and graphics, especially for its time when most shooters looked like brown and grey corridors (coughQuakecough) and the game also features more open arena-like spaces a lot.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
MDK is a must own! MUST OOOOWWWNNN !!! The first time I saw this game was on a PC in a Tandy Electronics store in early 1997. lol, boy I tell you, I played it as much as I could. Which was only 15 mins. But when I had to leave, I knew I had to get away from games like Doom, Quake, Heretic, Descent, Blakestone 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D … etc. These 3D platform shooters were the next big thing!
The graphics amazed me back then. Now that I play it, I gotta admit it isn’t as great as I had remembered, but the gameplay is incredibly fun that you’ll pay no attention to the graphics. There’s this really cool slanting to the camera angle when you run left or right. I also find the parachute mechanism as integral and addictive to the gameplay as bullet time is in the Max Payne series.
– Real player with 6.7 hrs in game
Crystal Caves
Crystal Caves is a 1991 DOS platformer made by Apogee. It features EGA graphics and only PC Speaker sounds.
The game is divided in 3 episodes, the first one being shareware. There’s not a huge difference between the episodes. They feature pretty much the same gameplay and graphics with slight differences. The difficulty increases with every episode.
In every level you have to collect every crystal in order to leave. This forces you to explore the entire level and overcome most of the challenges in it. It never feels tedious because the levels are fun and not too long. The challenges are fair and the controls are tight (for the time at least).
– Real player with 68.2 hrs in game
General:
Crystal Caves is a puzzle platformer game about Mylo Steamwitz trying out various getting-rich schemes for which he needs crystals. The game is split between 3 episodes, each having 16 levels to finish. In order to finish the level you need to collect all the crystals first.
Gameplay consists of various enemies you can blast off with your rocket pistol and some traps and puzzles. Even though the goal of the game is quite simple you may find the game quite difficult for you can run out of ammo, destroy wrong glass block which you needed to jump on, shoot at the air pump, let monsters overrun you… yes, the caves are a dangerous place!
– Real player with 37.4 hrs in game
Descent 2
Download the DXX-Rebirth source port to play in 1080p without dosbox!
Vertigo expansion with its own redbook audio is available here.
The base D2 metal Redbook audio soundtrack is already included in the steam release, but you will have to download and set it up as an addon if you use DX-Rebirth.
As for the game itself, 1st Descent remains the best imho. Here you get the most overpowered weapon on lvl 3 (Gauss) and never switch to anything else, unless you run out of ammo (you don’t, not even on higher difficulties), shich kind of ruins the nice variety in weapons that D1 had. In D1 every weapon had it’s use, which was nice.
– Real player with 24.3 hrs in game
My childhood games have returned. Descent 2 and Descent: Freespace were the #1 hits of my day on the Windows 98 and finally after many years I get to relive these experiences. It’s taking me a while to get reacquainted with my old joystick but I’m totally loving every minute of it.
Descent 2 requires some definite tweaking. It took my about an hour to figure everything out, including my joystick issues, but it all functions properly and took no additional patches to work. Using the mouse could be an issue unless you really know how to modify the game. I however do not know this, but I feel the joystick is the only way to properly relive the experience.
– Real player with 19.2 hrs in game