A classic point-and-click adventure game based on the movie Blade Runner but with a different storyline to the movie. You are Ray McCoy a rookie blade runner that has just been assigned an animal murder case. Suspected replicants are involved, so time to earn your keep.
Release Date
Pros
A solid detective type adventure game with an excellent storyline. You have to be very observant and pickup every little clue. Although very good, I think Tex Murphy’s “Under A Killing Moon” is better.
Scenery and locations are very faithful to the movie.
The sounds are very good and also faithful to the movie. Gives the game the movie atmosphere. The speech is also excellent.
The whole game is presented like a movie with transitions between locations all with beautiful Blade Runner scenery. The transitions do get boring after a while but you can skip them which is good. You could say this game is an interactive movie… except without the video footage.
If you install using the maximum install, you do not need to swap or even put the CDs in to play the game.
There are many different ways to get through the game and different things happen depending on what you say(or what conversation setting you use), what you do, how quick you react and even whether you draw your gun or not.
Starting a new game each time, assigns different agendas to different characters, so each time you play the game, things can be different.
Cons
Because of the use of Voxels, some times things get quite pixelated. But I guess that is the price to get a game running on a very low end computer of the times.
There are action parts in the game where you have to use your gun to shoot. You use the mouse cursor to point at the target and click to shoot and to simulate recoil, the mouse cursor will move and you have to re-aim. I actually found these action bits more annoying than entertaining and wish that I could skip it.
Other Points
The only place that I am aware of where you can get Blade Runner is GOG.com.
There is some Vangelis-ish music in the game but not a lot.
Biases
I really liked The Secret Of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, Borrowed Time and Under A Killing Moon.
I also liked Martian Memorandum, Curse of Monkey Island, Escape From Monkey Island, Indiana Jones And the Fate Of Atlantis and Simon The Sorcerer.
I did not like Dark Seed.
I really liked the Blade Runner movies. I watched the original version first followed by the director’s cut version. Both versions blew me away.
I have completed the game twice. Although I cannot remember the ending from my first play through, I do remember some things happening differently between the two play throughs.
DRM
Blade Runner is DRM free. As stated above, if you choose the maximum install, you do not need the disc in the drive to play.
Patches
There is a patch but I could not install it. It kept crashing when I tried.
I do remember playing through the whole game without a patch though.
Minimum Requirements (as stated on box)
- Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 (with service pack 3.0 or higher)
- IBM or 100% compatible Pentium 90 MHz CPU
- 16 MB RAM
- 16-bit SVGA graphics card w/2 MB video RAM
- hard drive with 175 MB available
- 4x CD-ROM drive
- Microsoft compatible Mouse and mouse driver
Computer Played On
- Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz
- 2Gb RAM
- ATI Radeon X1600 256Mb RAM (laptop version)
- Realtek HD Audio(no idea what model) with Altec Lansing ACS41 speakers or Logitech ClearChat Premium PC Headset.
- Win XP Pro
- Graphics settings are set to whatever I feel comfortable with playing on this PC. They are usually not set to the highest settings. All screenshots are taken with my settings.
Handy Tips
A fast PC(including my specs) causes problems in two areas of the game. First is, no targets appear in the shooting range. Second is, there is one point in the game where you need to run away from a bomb, but it is impossible to do so with a fast PC. I managed to get around this by slowing down the PC using CPU Eat ‘n’ Cool.
I found this solution at BRmovie.com, but the Turbo application mentioned on that site did not work for me.
If you have FRAPS or another program that shows frames per second of the game, I noticed that the shooting range worked fine when the frame rate was averaging below 200 FPS in the first stage of the shooting range. Without CPU Eat ‘n’ Cool my game was averaging 600 FPS in the first stage of the shooting range. Even at 200 FPS I had to wait 48 seconds before the first target appeared, but at least it appeared.
Another application you can try to slow down the game is Slow. This tool worked for me as well, but I liked CPU Eat ‘n’ Cool better because it reduced the heat on my laptop.
There is a how to install Blade Runner on Vista 64 instructions here. I have not tried it so I do not know if it works on Windows 7 64 bit as well.
