Recent reviews by Sorthious

First of all, this is a great Point and Click game! Probably one of the best. It has a great story, fun puzzles and is totally atmospheric! In addition, the music in the game is really great! So, why the thumbs down?! Well, the game is riddled with game-breaking bugs that either require you to force a shutdown of the game, or to load from a previous Save Slot(there are only 8). I won't describe the bugs, as it would include spoilers. View the Discussions page or online to find a list of bugs. It's a shame that they Remastered the game, yet left all the horrible bugs in it. Now, with that said, if you can look past the bugs and have the patience to find ways around them, I would still recommend buying this game. This is one of my all time favorite Point and Click games, and I plan on playing this again in the future! I would give this game a 10 out of 10 if it weren't for the bugs. With the bugs, however, I rate this game a 6/10.

This is the best Point and Click game I've played in a long time, and one of the best that I've ever played. I've been playing Point and Click games from their inception, and was playing Interactive Fiction(Text) games before that. Unlike a lot of games today, it isn't riddled with tons of bugs that never get fixed. The graphics are gorgeous, the interface is easy to understand and the story was decent, though I thought the endings could have been better, in that they revealed more information based on the ending you achieved in the game. The puzzles were great, though there was one puzzle that didn't seem to make logical sense to me, and I was stuck there and had to brute force my way through the puzzle. Other than that, this game is worth every penny and I can't say enough good things about this game! This is a must buy for fans of Text/Point & Click games!

edit 10-13-23: It's been 6-months(April 13th, 2023) since Zen released FX4 and the game is still unoptimized. FSR doesn't work right, there are numerous bugs that interrupt game-play; some 5-min mode games end with Game Over on ball losses, Pin-bot gets stuck trying to launch Multi-ball mode. and many others. The latest patch(October 13th, 2023) lists 3 bug fixes, none of which are game breaking bugs. Meanwhile, they've been releasing tables regularly, have partnered with 2-companies to make games for cabinets, and are working on Pinball M. I can't recommend buying tables from Zen, given that tables with major bugs may or may not be fixed; they may eventually fix the bugs, but who wants to wait 6-months or longer to properly play a table that you paid for?

The bulk of the games seem to be rehashed Pinball FX3 tables, which I'm not interested in repurchasing. If you are the type who wants to collect all the trophies/achievements, however, you would have to buy the tables again to do so. The assets/artwork on the tables brought over from FX3 basically look the same to me, with better lighting. Unless you're a die-hard fan who has to buy everything that Zen puts out, you may want to skip this. I'm running the game through Linux, so I'm not sure if Windows users have the same experience as I do. Some things I've noticed: random hitching/stuttering, high flipper latency(flipper delay), higher than expected GPU/CPU usage. very bouncy physics on most tables. In addition to this, the pricing is WAY different from FX3. In order to purchase all the tables, it would cost me almost $400 U.S. These tables are very expensive and I'm not paying that much for a buggy game. I have all the FX3 tables, and will stick with them until the bugs are fixed and the prices come down. I don't want to rebuy the same tables over and over.

This game was much better than Episode One, but it still had issues. The supporting characters get in your way a lot, and sometimes will get you killed; they want to stand immediately behind you and sometimes they will accidentally nudge you in a direction. I hated having to carry the gnome around to get the achievement. I would often get killed or badly injured after inadvertently walking over the gnome when it was on the ground; I don't know why it does this, but I would suggest saving often if you're carrying it around with you. Also, there is a section where you will drive a vehicle, and the gnome slides around in the vehicle and will fall out. So, you have to basically shoot the gnome ahead of you, then drive to it's new location, and repeat. It's a lot of work for that achievement! I also had a few issues with the game freezing up and I would have to reload, but it wasn't nearly as bad as Episode One, and nowhere near as horrible as Black Mesa! Another gripe is that the game would constantly prompt you what you needed to do by notifying you; i.e. "press F to use flashlight". I hate when a game treats me like an idiot. Too many games do that these days. There should be an option to turn off hints.

That said, I really did enjoy this game! It's longer than Episode One and the story is much more developed. This episode was very immersive, and, given enough time, I will probably want to play it again. A solid 8/10!

There were several times in this game where Alex wouldn't complete her dialogue/actions needed to progress. I'd have to start from a previous save point to move forward in the game. As much as I like the Half-Life games, having Alex as a partner reminded me of the issues with Half-Life 2, and having NPC's following me around. They constantly get in your way, block your retreat, get you killed, make you drop items that you're carrying with the Gravity Gun,etc. This was horribly annoying! It would have been much more fun without the braindead AI of an NPC getting in the way. This aside, it was a nice epilogue to Half-Life 2 and was pretty fun despite the aformentioned AI issues. I'd give it a 6/10 due to the bugs and the issues regarding AI.

As Steam only has a thumbs up/down option, I can't rate the game properly. The game is great, has good graphics, a nice story and is a lot of fun. I was running the game at 144FPS smoothly until the Anticitizen One Chapter. At that point, the game would hang and I would have to kill the process. Reloading the last save produced the same issue. I, basically, had to shut off auto saves with sv_autosave 0, start from the beginning of the chapter and manually save frequently to make it through. The issue seems to have something to do with the group of rebels that are fighting with you. After this chapter things ran smooth again, but I did have freezes later on. There is no fix for this bug, which is a game breaking bug for a player who isn't computer savvy. If you can work around these bugs I highly recommend the game. If you get frustrated easily, or don't wan't to bother with trying to work around this issue, then avoid it. Overall, I'd give this game a 5/10, only because of the horrible bug.

This game, at least on Linux, is riddled with bugs. Fortunately, I bought this in a bundle and it cost me next to nothing(less than $1.00 U.S.) The flashlight sometimes won't work when using the handgun. Video and Audio settings won't save properly. At one point, one of the NPC's blocked me in, and I couldn't move/jump; I had to load a previous save point. I have random graphical artifacts during gameplay. I don't recall the original Half-Life having this many issues.

That said, the game is fun, when it's working right. It's nice to see Half-Life with better graphics, but all these bugs are ridiculous. I wouldn't recommend paying good money for a game with this many glaring bugs. As I said, I didn't pay very much for it, so I'm not going to bother returning it. Also, I only listed a handful of the bugs I've encountered so far.

EDIT: I'm further into the game now(ch 16), and the later levels are very poorly optimized! I was running 144fps on highest settings, but had to ultimately change launch options to include, +fpx_max 60, to keep my GPU temperatures under control; I hit 111c on my rx5700xt! There are also graphical artifacts(mainly rays of black) on the later levels that make it impossible to see creatures coming to attack you. I adjusted all settings individually to try to find what was causing them, but nothing affected a change. My computer should be more than fast enough to handle this game, it's just poorly programmed/optimized. Here's my specs:

Ryzen 5 3600(6-C/12T(3.6-4.2GHz))
32gigs DDR4-3600MHz
Radeon RX5700XT-8gigs DDR-6(OpenGL 4.6, Mesa 20.2.6)
Asrock Phantom Gaming x570
HP EX920 NVME M.2

edit(02-19-23): I had recommended this game in the past but, due to Zen's refusal to fix the flipper problem, I can no longer recommend it. There are other bugs as well, though I believe those are mostly cosmetic in nature and don't effect gameplay. Another problem is the ridiculous use of animations and effects that obscure a players view of the ball, which can lead to ball drains. There is too much focus on using flashy graphics rather than designing a fun/addictive table. Given all that, FX3 is, sadly, still the best pinball game I've seen on Steam. Until players start requiring higher standards from software houses, this downward trend in quality will continue.

I like the Williams machines the best, but there are a few good machines made by others available. Some of the machines focus too much on eye-candy, backstory, mini-games,etc., rather than game-play. I wish there were more Williams-esque machines available, with clear goals, limited backstories, less focus on appearance and more focus on good game-play. That said, Pinball FX3, in my opinion, has the best overall options and tables of any pinball simulator on Steam. I do have issues with some bugs not getting fixed promptly, or at all, but it seems to be becoming an epidemic among developers. One of the bugs causes flippers to get out of alignment during play, and one time I had a flipper entirely disappear. This is big issue if you're playing tournament mode, as there is no game save in that mode. Exiting the game and restarting the table fixes the flipper(s). I noticed this didn't work if you exited the table and tried to continue a game that developed an askew/missing flipper. This bug was reported more than a year ago.

6.5/10

This is a great game that has seen many versions. Unfortunately, the game suffers from many graphical issues, a very clunky navigation system(using FreeRoam), and the few odd bugs. Some of the graphics for the game are really good, but others are so bad they are immersion breaking. The trees on Myst Island don't look that great. The rocks in the Stoneship Age are way too glossy looking. Yes, they are wet from the rain, but the effect used here is way too much. More and more often I see graphics assets in games where the item in question looks like it just rolled off the assembly line, or the item is super-glossy looking. This game has these issues in various places. There are other items in the game that seem to use low polygon models, rather than, given the graphical advances available to them, make an item that improves on previous versions of the game.
You can tell that several artists worked on the assets, as the quality varies throughout the game. It's a shame that the style of the game assets didn't remain more consistent. There are various textures in the game that look horrible, while others look great. I really thought the diamond plate metal walls looked really good in the Mechanical Age. They looked appropriately aged, aren't super reflective, or look like they were just manufactured. One last caveat; 4 out of the 34 achievement's are not intuitive at all and will take lots of extra exploration, and toying around with the navigation mechanics,to figure out what you missed.

If you love Myst and are looking for a somewhat acceptable version of Myst in 3D, than this game is basically as you remember it, just 3D. Graphically, the game is a mix bag of disappointing and spectacular; I don't think the new Myst is going to be any better. I saw a preview that looked like the characters had been replaced by cartoonish looking people(Atrus' video at the imager). I won't be paying for another immersion breaking game.

Bottom line: Good for those who collect everything Myst, those willing to overlook these issues, those with no preconceived idea of what the Myst world should look/feel like.

I tried this game on Linux Mint and at first the game wouldn't launch at all. I tried running various compatibility options(proton) and none worked. I cut off the Force Compatibility option and then all of a sudden the game launched. I created a save game and restarted, but it wouldn't let me load it. I shut down the game and tried again and it worked. I asked "Who's the Captain" to one of the robots and the game crashed to desktop. After 26mins I'm giving up, as I don't want to get stuck with a buggy game. I've gotten stuck with a game before because the 2-hour game time limit for a refund expired while I was trying to troubleshoot. I checked the reviews on the game and it seems that the bugs are not OS specific, as Windows users complained about the same thing.

I wish this game worked properly, as I am a fan of Point/Click games, Monty Python, and Douglas Adams, but it seems this port was released before all the bugs were fixed. I don't know if the bugs were present in the original game, or a result of porting it through ScummVM, but hopefully this review will give those interested in buying this a heads-up before they waste their money.

Here are my specs:

Linux Mint 20 ulyana
Ryzen 5 3600(6-C/12T(3.6-4.2GHz))
32gigs DDR4-3600MHz
Radeon RX5700XT-8gigs DDR-6(OpenGL 4.6, Mesa 20.2.6)
Asrock Phantom Gaming x570
HP EX920 NVME M.2 (AVG 2.6Gb/s read time) 256G
ADATA SSD 240G