Pathologic Classic HD

Pathologic Classic HD

Hands down, the best game I have ever played!

Pathologic is a very ambitious, very unique, genre-bending, medium-defining video game which does things no other game has done before or since. It is also devilishly vague, extremely difficult, incredibly slow and takes place entirely within one small greyish town over a period of about 30 hours. But as you go on you realise its incredibly slow pacing, its single greyish location, its trudging from one place to another are all essential to creating such an incredible atmosphere and game.

Real player with 117.1 hrs in game


Read More: Best Cult Classic Atmospheric Games.


This game already has thousands of reviews for it, and nobody is likely to read this one, so I’m not sure why I’m bothering to write it. Then again, I’m not sure why I bought this game to begin with, or played it, or dedicated myself to completing all three scenarios and collecting every achievement over 70 grueling hours. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.

Actually, I lied a bit there. I know why I bought this game, if nothing else. Like many here, I heard about Pathologic when its remake/sequel came out, and several popular YouTube channels featured intriguing summations of the game and declared it a lost gem. Despite their praise, though, the videos were almost pitched as dares, warning potential players about the game’s infinite rough edges, grinding difficulty, and uniquely eccentric approach to the relationship between the player and the game. Depending on how deep you go down the Pathologic rabbit hole, the fourth wall will be anything from ‘leaned on’ to ‘completely bulldozed.’

Real player with 70.7 hrs in game

Pathologic Classic HD on Steam

Defend Your Castle

Defend Your Castle

The play for this game is very different from the original flash version, and in a way that I think it makes it much less interesting and engaging. I think the primary difference is that you don’t get points for archer kills, which makes it essentially impossible to set up the castle defense to largely run itself. Even if you make it to fairly advanced levels, you’re still going to need to sit at the screen and manually fling attackers if you want to keeping building the castle. Additionally, conversion of enemies to defenders is much slower, which makes the game drag a bit. In exchange the attackers are slower and less numerous, even to the point where this game is much easier to survive than the original (I played on normal level difficulty). I guess in summary if you just want to fling attackers around it’s great, but for me a lot of the fun was transitioning from that approach in the early stages to having a well-managed castle fend for itself later on.

Real player with 8.8 hrs in game


Read More: Best Cult Classic Gore Games.


You don’t know true power until you pick up a stick man in the hit Wiiware game “Defend Your Castle” and forcefully slam his head into the ground and feel the vibration of his entire body imploding upon the force of the solid earth

Real player with 6.6 hrs in game

Defend Your Castle on Steam

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Free for everyone at the time of review.

Hardware: Win 10x64, 3570k mildly OC, GTX 1070, 16 GB, SSD.

Super laggy on my system; took me a full 30 minutes to complete a game advertised as 5-10 minutes. I see the system specs state “Windows 7”; I’m guessing this is either a Win 10 issue (some games lag badly in 8 / 10 that run fine in 7) or possibly the 10xx series video card.

I recommend taking a very brief glance at the videos before playing to see how fast the game is supposed to move. If the game is going to lag for you, it will start at the opening credits, which take so long to change screens (tapping an arrow key helps) that it feels like the game is locked up. Don’t press ESC; that instantly closes the game.

Real player with 0.5 hrs in game


Read More: Best Cult Classic Atmospheric Games.


‘The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff’' - Ambrose Bierce

James Cox has adapted, as part of his ‘100 games in 5 years’ project, the timeless classic short story titled An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge written by Ambrose Bierce in 1890. It has seen many variations since its inception ranging from short story to full novel inspirations, radio screenplays including a Twilight Zone broadcast, TV drama/movies and even music videos including Bon Jovi’s song Dyin' ain’t much of a livin'.

Real player with 0.1 hrs in game

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge on Steam

Resident Evil

Resident Evil

  • DIFFICULTY -

🔲 My 90 year old grandma could play it

🔲 Easy

🔲 Normal

☑️ Hard

🔲 “Dark Souls”

  • GRAPHICS -

🔲 “MS Paint”

🔲 Bad

🔲 Meh

☑️ Graphics don’t matter in this game

☑️ Good

🔲 Beautiful

🔲 You forget what reality is.

  • Game Length

☑️ Short (2-6 hours)

☑️ Average (7-12 hours)

🔲 Long (13-20 hours)

🔲 Very Long (21-70 hours)

🔲 Infinite

  • MUSIC -

🔲 Bad

🔲 Not special

☑️Good

🔲 Eargasm

  • STORY -

🔲 This game has no story

🔲 Like playing “Temple Runners” for the story

🔲 It’s there for the people who want it

Real player with 104.8 hrs in game

TLDR; A horror masterpiece made even better. Incredible camera angles, great resource management, an alternate control scheme for less tanky newcomers, Jill sandwich. 10/10 best game in the series IMO.

! Jill also has boob physics 69/10

Still one of the best examples of a remake done right, Resident Evil Remake (or REmake for short) added new puzzles, fleshed out story elements and implemented modern changes that simply weren’t possible in the 1996 original, all while faithfully recreating the atmosphere and gameplay of its predecessor. Although a classic, the 2002 remake surpassed the PS1 game in almost every way and cemented itself as THE survival horror game.

Real player with 37.2 hrs in game

Resident Evil on Steam

Space Quest™ Collection

Space Quest™ Collection

A Collection of 6 Space Quest titles released from 1986-1995. It’s a great Inventory Adventure series that Sierra On-Line created back when MS-DOS & Windows 3.1/95/98 was still by popular demand.

In Space Quest 1 - The Sarien Encounter:

Roger Wilco is one of the most important men on the starship Arcada: he is the janitor! Just when he was doing what he does best (dozing off in a closet), the shrill sound of an alarm penetrated the air. Arcada is attacked by the evil Sariens! Before Roger realizes what is going on, he discovers that he is the only survivor. The Sariens have killed the entire crew and stolen the valuable Star Generator. Roger’s immediate task is to find a way to leave Arcada, which is about to explode in fifteen minutes. And then he’ll have to show the Sariens why they should never mess with brave intergalactic janitors!

Real player with 143.3 hrs in game

Recommendation:

I heartily enjoyed the Space Quest Collection, but they won’t be everyone’s jam. These games are ‘classics’ in the sense that they’re old, and filled with design decisions that may frustrate the unprepared. If you are looking for sci-fi adventure games to enjoy then I would recommend the Space Quest Collection if:

  • You have the mindset of an archeologist. If you are interested in the history of video games, and want to experience older graphics and gameplay conventions then you’ll find a lot to appreciate.

Real player with 52.5 hrs in game

Space Quest™ Collection on Steam

System Shock 2

System Shock 2

The cult classic sci-fi horror FPS-RPG has returned.

System Shock 2 is an interesting game to review in 2014. When it first came out in 1999, it was met with a lot of praise from the gaming press, winning over a dozen awards, including several “Game of the Year” titles, and since then it has appeared on several “Greatest Games of All Time” lists. However despite the praise, not many people actually bought and played it.

It feels like System Shock 2 has been granted a second chance though. The success Irrational Games has had with BioShock and BioShock: Infinite has interested people enough to want to check out System Shock 2, which was the first game Irrational created. This is great news, because while you might not expect it, I feel that System Shock 2 is the best of all the “Shock” games. It makes you realize that for all of the steps forward we have taken in terms of technology, in a lot of ways modern gameplay has taken a few steps backwards.

Real player with 161.0 hrs in game

System Shock 2 is a first-person science-fiction exploration-based action-adventure horror game with RPG mechanics developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios using the Dark Engine. Taking place after the first System Shock, the player-character awakes aboard the “Von Braun”, an empty starship devastated by a biological mass commanding an egregoric hive mind.

Whereas System Shock 1’s intimidating, obscure control scheme and sheer age would unappealingly cling to it as the years went on, its sequel’s reputation is of a kinder, more accessible game for modern audiences. System Shock 2 is often played as a standalone title, which its story and presentation gracefully allows, and historically this is often viewed as the preferable option. Yet in a number of significant ways, System Shock 2 can be as esoteric and uninviting as its predecessor. The start of the campaign, for instance, is marked by a pronounced learning curve, albeit mitigated by a tutorial, and there’s an unflattering chunkiness to the visuals, intensified by jerky, stretchy 3D animations. Oftentimes the presentation requires the player to mentally fill in the gaps themselves, projecting detail and significance where there is none. Much of the gameplay’s mechanics are abstrusely informed to the player, requiring uncomfortable guesswork or guide-consulting. Before even beginning the adventure, for instance, the player is forced to choose between multiple progressive tiers of precious skill points before knowing any details about what they do. In-game, multi-part objectives are often dumped onto the player all at once and out of order, creating an alienating sense of halted progression. This isn’t to say the comparison to System Shock 1 is unfounded. On multiple levels, System Shock 2 actively strives to be more inviting, understandable and instructive than its precursor. In other ways, the sheer gap of time and innovation between the two titles solidifies it as having more modern sensibilities. Unmissable tools exist to helpfully identify collected items, and there’s no shortage of exposition to elucidate details of the environment. An objectives tracker mercifully updates itself, keeping the player up-to-date on what they still need to do. The music and sound design are of a standard which is more refined, effective and deliberate than the first game’s implementation of the same, and the progression of the story is more carefully directed than would be achieved in any first-person action games from the prior title’s era. And it goes without saying that the control scheme supports mouselook for aiming and shooting, aiming generally to put the player’s attention on the gameworld itself, rather than the HUD.

Real player with 69.3 hrs in game

System Shock 2 on Steam

Quake Live™

Quake Live™

If I can still have fun and be happy while absolutely sucking at a game then you know it’s good.

Real player with 10.8 hrs in game

Rating: 10/10

This game is an absolute masterpiece, it will forever be S-Tier to me. It’s a competitive game solely based on who has better aim, cutting out the middle man like most games. Though old, the graphics and maps are very stunning and iconic. This game is not for everyone because it’s hard to master the different weapons, a lot of the players are top tier, and the game sadly isn’t very popular anymore, so consider all when buying.

Real player with 9.3 hrs in game

Quake Live™ on Steam

Call of Cthulhu®: Dark Corners of the Earth

Call of Cthulhu®: Dark Corners of the Earth

OLD STYLE HORROR… Oh Yea!

Intro:

This game is based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, author of “The Call of Cthulhu” and progenitor of the Cthulhu Mythos. It is a reimagining of Lovecraft’s 1936 novella The Shadow over Innsmouth. Set mostly in the year 1922, the story follows Jack Walters (previously a police detective) and now private detective who is trying to solve cases even when there wasn’t any evidence. On September 6, 1915, he was called by the police to investigate a decrepit manor where gunshots were heard. A group of an unknown cult (Fellowship of the Yith) lived there and it’s leader, Victor Holt, demanded the police only send Jack in exchange for their cooperation. Strangely, Jack had never met or heard of Victor Holt before. As Jack entered the manor’s compound, all hell broke loose and both the police and the cultists started shooting at one another. You take it from here. All hell is about to break loose in the game.

Real player with 35.6 hrs in game

I am a fan of both Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s fantastic literary body having read most of his work and also the Role playing game the Call of Cthulhu (the table top one not the new one). I very much enjoyed this game despite the glitches (should you wish to play without the glitches I would suggest that you either buy this game on good old games or install the patch that can be found online, and turn down the resolution for the very last bit of the game to the lowest setting).

I have to say that don’t go into this game expecting something akin to one of Lovecraft’s stories word for word, while it deals with the same themes and even one of the same characters this game is a bit of Lovecraft salad. You get bits from The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow out of time, Dagon, At the Mountains of Madness and even some references to The

Real player with 33.7 hrs in game

Call of Cthulhu®: Dark Corners of the Earth on Steam