Recent reviews by Holy Zen!

This almost makes up for nearly every DLC prior to this completely ignoring machine races!

The Ur-Quan Masters has come to Steam! Happy days and Jubilation!

Originally called Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters, this is a game from my childhood which still holds up well today. The space battle part of the game is engaging enough on its own, but the full game is a sprawling open-ended adventure which will take several hours to complete, even if you know what you're doing. I already know all the tricks and secrets, and I wish I could neuralyze myself to be able to play this game as a first-time player again.

Of note, this is not the original 1992 game, nor a port of the 3DO version of the game, but a community-remastered version to allow it to work on modern systems and use the best aspects of both previous versions -- including the 3DO's (cringey) voice-acting -- as well as rock-solid netplay. You can tell this is a beloved game by the fact this community-remastered version even exists.

If you've never played this game, well, I envy you. Go play it! Go play it now! And if you haven't played the game since its original release, you may want to check out what the remaster has to offer.

It's okay, I guess.

Command and Conquer was one of the pioneers of the RTS genre. The first engine they made for the series had two games made on it: Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn, the first game they released, formerly just called Command and Conquer, and then Command and Conquer Red Alert. Tiberian Dawn is about a futuristic conflict between GDI, a global military superpower, and the Brotherhood of Nod, a terrorist group. Red Alert is about an alternate timeline where Albert Einstein used time travel to eliminate Adolf Hitler before he created Nazi Germany, and as a consequence, there was nothing holding Soviet Russia in check from waging their own world war.

EA, who ended up purchasing Westwood Studios (and promptly ran it into the ground), brings these classics back to life from a much-simpler time, allowing it to be ran on modern systems, in full high definition, with a coat of paint thrown over the visuals to suit HD (though you change the graphics back to classic pixels if you really want to). Both games play pretty much the same, all told, which is to be expected: They both played pretty much the same back in the day, too. The interface is upgraded ever-so-slightly with some modern tweaks, and they allow you to freely configure these in the options; If you really want to, you can strip these tweaks away and experience the game as it played back when it first released. One of the best features of the original two games were the soundtracks, mixing techno-industrial with heavy electric guitar riffs. Not only were all those tracks remastered here, but the game also includes several remixes of the tracks as well as the OST versions of the tracks which have additional soundbites that back in the day could not be included in the game due to technical limitations. Using the game's Jukebox feature, you can either just have it go through the entire soundtrack, or pick and choose the tunes you want to listen to, including the original lo-fi versions of the tracks if you really want to. Both the Tiberian Dawn and the Red Alert tracks can be played in either game, which is a feature I rather like, allowing me to choose my favorite tracks from both games for my playlist. Of note, both games had expansion packs released, and those expansion packs are included with both of the games, which is nice.

As stated before, Command and Conquer was one of the pioneers of the RTS genre, and was made back before a lot of the conventions of the genre were established such as Fog of War, a nuanced interface, and the concept of balancing sides. The remaster doesn't do much to update these mechanics. There's still no Fog of War, meaning that once you've explored an area, you can (usually) see everything that goes on in that area for the rest of the battle; later games only let you see what's going on in that area if you have units nearby. The Interface updates that EA put in are welcome, but the game still feels very primitive on that front compared to games that came out a short time later like, say, StarCraft. Both games had very questionable ideas when it came to balancing each side, to where GDI arguably feels much more powerful than NOD in Tiberian Dawn and the Soviet sides feel much more powerful than the Allies in Red Alert. This is hardly an issue in the campaigns, but can feel rather significant in Multiplayer. Also, the Full-Motion Video cutscenes which helped make these games so iconic back in the day are still here... but they have not been remastered whatsoever, and can appear very pixelated and grainy at high resolutions. Finally, there's a unique problem for this version of the game in that the campaigns have a difficulty slider for Easy, Medium and Hard. The original game only had one difficulty, and this is represented by the Normal difficulty. As a warning, the game's Hard Difficulty does not do anything beyond making the enemy units tougher and more damaging. This can throw off the balance for some missions, particularly those where you the player start with limited resources.

In summary, the remastered version presented here is very much still worth playing, and EA provided a nice number of options to help you configure your experience the way you like it and did a decent job with the remastering. Just keep in mind that these games did originally come out in the 1990's, so certain allowances need to be made.

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Nothing like getting up to Fight 20 in the endless tower mode and then having the game crash and wiping all my rewards. That's great.

An extremely bad mobile port. As interesting as it sounds to look at the series' arcade roots at such a cheap price, it's cheap for a reason: This game has loads of technical problems and looks terrible compared to the originals. Don't buy it.

Well, it's a ROM collection, more or less. There are pretty easy ways to play these games outside of this collection (apart from the Kid Dracula translation), but this is the legal way to play them. Some people are into that whole legal part.

However, I happen to know that there was a pretty snazzy remake of Castlevania X Rondo of Blood, as well as the translation of the original game, that is currently only available on the Sony PSP, as well as the highly revered Castlevania Symphony of the Night, which has been ported to various consoles but never to the PC. Neither of these games have an easy way of playing them on the PC, and this collection does nothing towards rectifying this, and many people, including myself, find this disappointing.

If you've never played these games before and you're really into the legal part of owning these games, OR are really wanting to play Kid Dracula, go ahead and pick it up, though I would wait for a sale. Otherwise, this collection will disappoint you.

I'll still leave this as a recommended review, though, because in the end, these are great games.

Coming from someone who normally hates horror games, this is a great game that focuses more on creepiness over the jumpscare shlock many modern entries of horror games rely on. There's a lot to do here, with more content on the horizon. The game is also fully mod-able, which has the potential to add endless extra content. This is a game I'd recommend to anybody without hesitation.

(Reviewer's Note: This is for the game without mods)

I've tried to play this game several times, and usually get several hours in, but then, I just stop. I think it all just uniformly grates on me until I don't want to play anymore.

First, let's start with the good. It's the same engine as Fallout 3, with some modifications that make gameplay more interesting. Armor is more useful, and also harder to get around for some creatures. The characterization is spectacular; There are lots of memorable characters and factions in the game who have fully fleshed out motivations, and you can choose to either help them or completely wipe them from the face of the Mojave. The choice is yours! And there are a number of choices to make! (Mostly-)gone is the hamfisted morality system in Fallout 3 which tells you that only one way is the right choice! Now your standing is different, faction by faction, and makes human reactions feel more believable and fluid. I also like how the Wild Wasteland gives neat comedic accents and references here and there.

And now the bad things....

While the characters within the game are great, the environment leaves a lot to be desired. It's a desert, so you're left looking at yellow and brown the majority of the time. There are exceptions, of course, but they're rather infrequent for most of the game. In the likes of Fallout 3 and 4, you're in notable city centers where the devastation of the post-apocalyptic world is on full display and there are plenty of locations to visit, either for quests or just to explore, whereas in this game, you're wandering through vast swaths of nothing. Staging your post-apocalyptic wasteland environment in a place that already WAS a wasteland seems a questionable decision to me, and the samey environments all the time start to severely wear on me after a while.

The soundtrack in New Vegas, that being the songs they play in between Mr. New Vegas's announcements, has some great and memorable tracks, that much is true. And Mr. New Vegas himself? Great DJ, absolutely! Probably the best in the franchise. It's all great going in... until you realize that there are only 15 songs on rotation, five less than Fallout 3 and 22 less than Fallout 4 (though to be fair, FO4 brought a lot of songs over from previous games). This means a LOT of repeats over the course of even a single playthrough. Mr. New Vegas himself doesn't seem to have a whole lot of news to share, either, leading to the same news stories given over and over. No radio dramas or other commentary to break up the monotony, either. Half the reason lots of people post music lyrics as part of their reviews here is that they've probably heard the track 15,000 times. You can turn it off, I suppose, and listen to the thrilling ambient tracks. But I shouldn't have to.

And then there's the technical aspects. Yeah, it crashes a lot, and that's a given for these Bethesda games. But the team here did a poor job in another notable area: Invisible walls. There are some pretty glaring ones in this outing, and this outing alone. I understand technical limitations, but I felt myself running up against invisible barriers more than a few times when I have attempted to get to the high ground, and that's pretty terrible. There was a certain level of care in other Bethesda games to make sure any terrain is impassible for a reason, and to employ these reasons before going up against an invisible wall should even be a thing, and yet Obsidian seemingly couldn't be bothered. I also seem to get in a fair bit of situations where I just get stuck and can no longer move, forcing a reload... which happened a fair amount in Fallout 3, but in this case, it was often between a rock and... nothing, really. Maddening.

And I know what you're all probably saying by now. "Just use mods." It's true, mods would fix a lot of these issues, or at least make them more bearable. The issue I find with that is that a lot of people, on Steam and elsewhere, says this game is great. Some even say the best game ever. Would that not mean the vanilla experience should be able to carry me to the end? It would seem that way. I know a lot of games that are great right out of the box.

All and all, I've never quite gotten the hype around this game. I think it has potential. Perhaps Obsidian should be given another try at the franchise they started, hopefully in a more interesting venue and being able to spend a bit more time polishing the game.