Dragonsphere

The Dragonsphere shows that the evil sorcerer is about to break free from his magic prison. As king you must now pick up the mouse and point-and-click your way to defeat him.

Release Date

Pros

When you die, the game will tell you what happened then automatically restore the game to just before you died. Very handy as you do not need to manually reload.

The story is very good. There is more to it than just whacking the big bad guy. Even though Dragonsphere was released over a decade ago, I have not played another game that has a similar story to Dragonsphere.

Cons

The speech sounds terrible.

The graphics being of that age are quite low resolution. This means that looking for tiny details in the locations can be a bit difficult.

Other Points

The introduction sequence does not have speech.

Although there is speech when talking to other characters descriptions must still be read. And there is a lot of reading to be done.

There are two difficulty levels, novice and challenging. After completing the game on challenging, I started again on novice. With the little bit that I played on novice, I only noticed very slight differences in descriptions of certain things.

Biases

Reviewed gog version. No idea what version number if there is one.

I really liked Blade Runner, 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 have completed the game.

DRM

Dragonsphere is avaiable DRM free from GOG.com.

Minimum Requirements (as stated on GOG.com)

• Windows XP or Windows Vista
• 1.8 GHz Processor
• 512MB RAM (1GB recommended)
• 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended)
• 2GB HDD
• Mouse, Keyboard
• I am unsure why gog listed the harddisk requirements as 2GB when the download size is only 82Mb and takes up only 88Mb installed.

Computer Played On

• Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz
• 2Gb RAM
• ATI Radeon X1600 256Mb RAM (laptop version)
• Logitech G35 headset and/or Realtek HD Audio(no idea what model) with portable egg 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

If Dragonsphere is freezing often when you leave a location, try this fix. Edit the dosboxDrangonsphere.conf file in the Dragonsphere install folder(gog installation). Search for the line that says “core=dynamic” and change it to “core=auto“. For more information, see this gog forum thread.

Red Faction 2

Futuristic first person shooter. You are part of a squad of super soldiers(Nothing to do with Captain America) that work for a country leader called Sopot. But now Sopot decides to hunt down all the super soldiers he created because he is scared of their power. So your squad is now very angry and plan on assassinating him.

Release Date

Pros

The Geo-Mod game engine has been improved since the first Red Faction and more things can be destroyed. It is still nowhere near the amount of Crysis or Stranglehold but the battles look a lot better with more things being destroyed.

Just like the first game, it has a good assortment of weapons and they work quite realistically.

There are team member NPCs that help you and their AI is quite good. They do actually help, not very much but still some help.

The AI has improved since the first game. They are now more unpredictable. Now they know how to sit and wait or even run further into hiding.

The graphics and animations are good and have improved since Red Faction. Although it is still nowhere near the likes of Bioshock, it is still good considering it is an old game.

The music is good and matches the game. There is some tunes that are taken from the original Red Faction, but they are not the weird tunes.

Voice acting is also good. It has definitely improved from the first game. There is even some humour in what people say.

You get to drive vehicles and use turrets!

The level designs are just as good as Red Faction with variety of combat environments.

Cons

The story is not as good as the first Red Faction. But still better than Painkiller Overdose.

The graphics support wide screen, but the scale is not correct. So when I played it at 1280×800, everything looks fat. I play with 1024×768 because of the wrong scaling. It is quite poor how they do not have proper wide screen support where as Pure Faction a free community patch for Red Faction does.

The stealth gameplay in the first game is not in this one. Maybe because it doesn’t fit the story but it means less variety in gameplay.

Not Moddable! A big no no considering that the first Red Faction is moddable.

There is no multiplayer. There is single player bot matches with the usual death match and ctf etc but it is pointless since you cannot play multiplayer.

Other Points

The story is a very loose sequel of the original Red Faction. The only tie in with the original story is the mention of Ultor, the Nano-technology and the rebellion that happenned in the first game.

Just like the first game, this is not a simple run and gun game. The weapons are realistic and thinking helps you survive.

There are four endings. I read that they are just different narrative over the same video though.

Overall, Red Faction 2 is moderately entertaining but if I had to choose between this and the original Red Faction, I would choose Red Faction.

Biases

Reviewed version 1.01.

I really liked Serious Sam, all the Doom games and Quake 2.

I also really liked Stranglehold, Red Faction, Bioshock, Alien Vs Predator, Soldier of Fortune 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl and Call Of Duty 4.

I also liked Painkiller Overdose, Battlefield 1942, Delta Force and Spec Ops 2.

I have completed the single player story campaign to get one ending.

DRM

The disc must be in the drive to play the game.

Red Faction 2 is available DRM free from GOG.com.

Patches

1.01 – No comments.

Minimum Requirements (as stated on the box)

• Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP
• 500 MHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon Processor
• DirectX 8.1 (included on disc)
• DirectX 8.1 compatible 3D Hardware Accelerated 16MB NVIDIA TNT1 or ATI Rage 128 video card
• 128 MB RAM
• 8x CD or DVD drive
• 2 Gb of Free Hard Disc Space
• DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
• 100% Microsoft compatible mouse and keyboard

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 laptop 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

To play Red Faction 2 on Windows 7 64 bit, you must first install the 1.01 patch followed by this unofficial VRAM bug fix patch.

 

Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars & Kane’s Wrath

Good, old fashioned real-time strategy(RTS) game that continues the story of Command and Conquer.

Release Date

Pros

Has a good tutorial that teaches the basics of the game.

The graphics are very good and very detailed.

The super weapons are really SUPER WEAPONS!

The campaign has a good story spanning all three sides and the mission structure and the videos drives the story well. The Kane’s Wrath expansion adds another Nod campaign to the collection and gives a good story that interweaves and extends the plot of the main game.

Three very different sides, gives good variety to game play. Kane’s Wrath adds 2 extra sub-factions for each side, but they are very much sub-factions with many similarities between factions of the one side.

Global Conquest mode in Kane’s Wrath. The main strategic map works differently from other Risk-style games in that there are no fixed territories. Each base or army has a radius range where things are affected by the base or army. And each army can only move or attack within that range for one turn. It really does bring a new way to play Command And Conquer.

Continues the Command & Conquer tradition of having nice videos that drive the story.

Cons

The Global Conquest game type in Kane’s Wrath does not allow saving of the game during a real-time battle. And there is a time limit before Fog Of War is lifted and then another time limit before all stealth units are revealed. This stops long and big battles from taking place which is good if you like fast battles. But they should have made it optional and allow saving during battle.

Other Points

The music is OK. No where near as good as the sound track to the first Command and Conquer.

Biases

Reviewed version 1.09 of Tiberium Wars and version 1.02 of Kane’s Wrath.

I really liked Dune 2, Command And Conquer, C&C Tiberian Sun, Rise Of Nations and The Moon Project.

I also liked Empire Earth 2, Dark Reign, Warcraft 1 and 2, Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation.

I did not like Homeworld.

I have completed all the campaigns for GDI, Nod and Scrin including the Nod campaign in Kane’s wrath.

I have also played a lot of Global Conquest games and ordinary skirmish games.

I have played a few games online. I think the teams are well balanced. I have tried all the different sides and have only won once so far.

DRM

When installing Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath, a key code must be entered for each game.

The correct disc must be in the drive to play the games.

Patches

Tiberium Wars 1.09 English – No comments.

Kane’s Wrath 1.02 English -Windows 10 UAC blocks the patch installation.  Must open command prompt or powershell with admin rights and run the exe from prompt.

Minimum Requirements (as stated on box)

• OS: Windows XP, Vista (32-bit)
• CPU: 2.0 GHz or faster (2.2 GHz or faster for Vista)
• RAM: 512MB (1GB for Vista) or more
• Disc Drive: 8x or faster DVD drive
• Hard Drive: 6.0 GB or more free space
• Video: DirectX 9.0c compatible Video card with 64 MB or more memory and one of these chipsets is required: ATI Radeon 8500 (9500 for Vista) or greater; NVIDIA GeForce4 (6100 for Vista) or greater. Note: ATI Radeon 9200, 9250 PCI; NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX are not supported
• Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible
• Input: Keyboard and mouse
• Multiplayer requires one disc per PC. Network (2-8 Players); Internet (2-8 Players with optional voice support): Cable, DSL, or a faster connection.

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 Logitech ClearChat Premium PC Headset or laptop speakers.
• 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.

Recommended Mods

Sick of seeing the EA logo everytime your start up the game? Then get this mod to remove the logo on start up. NoLogoMod. There is one for Tiberium Wars and one for Kane’s Wrath.