MacOS games.
Developed by Obsidian and published by LucasArts in 2004, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is a fitting sequel to one of the best Star Wars games of all time.
Continue reading Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords, PC
LucasArts/Bioware‘s 2003 release, Knights of the Old Republic, is thought by some to be the best Star Wars game ever made.
It’s a hardcore RPG in the style of Neverwinter Nights (also by Bioware) and other realtime/turn-based hybrids of the early 2000s.
Broforce is a satirical, side-scrolling run and gun shooter, with superb pixel graphics, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!
It’s a ‘modern retro’ game, in that: it’s a modern game (it came out in 2015), trying to look retro, and it works fantastically well. Broforce is so much fun to play…
Thimbleweed Park is a point-and-click adventure, released in 2017 by Terrible Toybox, and co-created by ex-LucasArts employees Gary Winnick and Ron Gilbert.
In case you didn’t know: both Gilbert and Winnick have been involved in the making of some of the best games of all time, including (but not limited to) titles such as: Ballblazer, Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Day of the Tentacle.
Planescape: Torment is a highly regarded – if somewhat bizarre – Infinity Engine-driven level-grinder that was first released in 1999.
This new remake – released in 2017 – was developed by Beamdog, using the same enhanced engine as developed for their Baldur’s Gate remakes. Which is great in my opinion because the new engine is brilliant.
Dark Forces is LucasArts‘ attempt at Doom, with a Star Wars make-over. It was first released in 1995 for MS-DOS PCs.
Looking at it now: it hasn’t aged too well, although it’s still fun to play if you get the controls set up correctly.
A game that needs no introduction in this day and age – Fortnite is Epic Games‘ popular survival online shooter; a game that has taken the world by storm and a game that virtually every games-player has heard about (whether they’ve played it or not). It was first released in 2017 and currently has approximately 200 million active players worldwide. The numbers are unheard of…
Nihilistic Software‘s 2000 release, Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption, is a 3D RPG with real-time combat and is held in very high regard by those who have played it.
On the surface Redemption is similar in style to Neverwinter Nights, although Neverwinter Nights came two years after Vampire, which demonstrates how ahead of its time it was.
Doom was good, but Quake – for me – was where id Software really broke the First-Person Shooter mould, with a game far ahead of anything else at the time – even their own games…
The 2006 sequel to the hit RPG Neverwinter Nights was created by American developer Obsidian Entertainment and published by Atari, Inc.
In many ways Neverwinter Nights 2 improves on the original game, and uses a new game engine (actually a suped-up version of the previous engine), this one called the Electron Engine.
Gameplay is essentially the same as before: a mixture of third-person, real-time and turn-based adventuring with a multi-character party system. The version currently available (time of writing: September 2018) features a main single-player campaign, plus three add-on campaigns (one of them – Mask of the Betrayer – being considered a classic); multiplayer mode, and the toolset for making your own quests/graphics/scripts/games.
There are some subtle but fundamental changes to the game, though, which makes playing Neverwinter Nights 2 somewhat different to the first game.
For starters: companion AI is much more complex, creating a bit of a mire in the process. What I mean by that is: a “mire” of options, which you can switch on and off to activate/deactivate certain behaviours. You can have companions be full AI controlled, custom AI controlled, or ‘Puppet’ controlled – puppet control being full manual.
Also different to the first game is the fact that you can now have up to three party members with you, making a party of four. In the previous game you just had one companion. It makes this sequel much more involving, and probably a lot more interesting. Actually, it is a much more ‘well-rounded’ game, this sequel, although not without its problems. Initially I struggled to get the camera to do what I wanted it to do, and almost gave up, but carried on in the hope that it would get better. It did, with some practise, but it took a while for me to get used to the interface (not to mention quite a few deaths).
Overall: Neverwinter Nights 2 is a fine, tactical RPG. It looks great; plays like a dream (now most of the bugs have been ironed-out), and is a worthy follow-up to a great title. It’s definitely worth a look if you like RPGs but have never played it, so look out for it in the next GOG.com sale.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_2
GOG.com: https://www.gog.com/game/neverwinter_nights_2_complete
