Recent reviews by Slayer

This is an excellent adventure survival horror game, with multiple endings. It remembers Alone in the Dark and/or Resident Evil. The graphics (when the game come out, in 1995) and gameplay are very good. It has a lot of FMV cut scenes that are in the form of flashbacks. A lot of the environment is interactive, like the bowl on the dining room table that fills with blood. There are a lot of puzzles to be solved and some action sequences.
Overall, a very good game. In my opinion, it deserves 9/10.

This game is the sequel to The Elder Scrolls: Arena and what a game it is, with a reworked engine that greatly improved graphics, the gameplay and the sense of realism.
This game, which come out in 1996, has a legion of fans that still today are working on mods for it.
Like its predecessor, Daggerfall is an open-ended role-playing game, in which the main quest is but a small fraction of the various missions and assignments the player is able to undertake. The game is notable for breaking records concerning the size of its world (though much of it has been generated randomly). Interaction with hundreds of thousands of non-playable characters is possible. The player is free to join one of the many political and social organizations of Tamriel, as well as pursue a personal quest for power. The player is able to buy houses, ships, and horses, as well as become a werewolf, a vampire, or a wereboar.
Combat in Daggerfall is action-based and very well implemented: the player uses the mouse to determine the direction and the power of sword swings and shots from a ranged weapon.
I beat this game in 2011 and was very well impressed.
Gravis Ultrasound is the most recommendable option to go for music. General MIDI is the second best. There are videos on youtube which explain how to configure DOSBox to use them.
In my opinion, this game scores 9/10.

This game is legendary. It's the first of a series of fantasy role-playing games, all of them impressive for the advanced technology used at the time they're released.
When this game come out, in 1994, the graphics were praised for replicating effects like fog, firelight and reflective water.
Bethesda has created a true virtual world in jaw-dropping 3D graphics, using light-sourcing and shadows to magnificent effect. Puddles on rain-soaked streets reflect lightning bolts in the distance; fog, snow, and mist impair your vision as you move through the countryside; you can discern caverns lit by firelight in the distance, and peek through keyholes before entering potentially dangerous rooms.
Arena features smoothly scrolling 3D graphics, presented from a first-person point of view. There's an huge world to explore here, with over 400 cities, towns and villages, as well as many magical items and spells to create. The player can walk endlessly in any direction as more and more land will be procedurally generated. The story itself is resolved in a linear fashion, although the locations of items is randomly determined at the start of the game.
Melee combat is performed using the mouse and you can cast spells too. Game controls are a breeze to master. A left-click on the mouse gets you going—where the cursor is positioned on-screen determines your speed and direction. The combat system in Arena is just as smooth and natural. Click and hold the right mouse button, then move the mouse as you would the weapon you're hoisting—left to right (or vice-versa) to slash or punch, down for a smashing blow, or up to jab or stab.
On the downside, the plot are nothing special here and the quests turns a bit repetitive, after playing for some time (and this game requires you to spend a lot to beat it). I beat this game in 2011 and enjoyed it very much.
Note: you can greatly improve music in game by choosing the General Midi option.
In my opinion this game scores 8/10.

X-COM: Terror from the Deep is the follow-up to the resource management and tactical combat game X-COM: Enemy Unknown (or UFO Defense, depending on your nationality).
The game is almost identical to the original X-COM game. The user interface, weapons, and the aliens are mostly all the same. The only difference is the adaptation of the aliens and weapons (e.g. new hand-to-hand weapons) to the ocean environment. The game features both undersea and on-land missions, and is significantly harder than its predecessor.
The addictiveness is here once again. Prepare to spend many days and nights playing it.
In my opinion this game scores 9/10.

This is the game that launched the X-Com series, which is still going strong today. With games like this, you can see why the series has such appeal. The game amalgamates two main types of play - the resource management section which is heavily strategic, and the combat missions, which operate like a turn-based strategy game. Both are enjoyable. This game is very, very addictive. Prepare to spend many, many hours in it.
The game places you in the role of the CEO of X-Com, an agency created to terminate the alien threat to Earth. The aliens purpose on Earth is unknown, but as you proceed through the game and perform extensive research on the aliens and their technology slowly you will begin to understand more. This plot development is sure to keep you plugging away at the game until the end.
There are two main aspects of the game: resource management and base-building section. You have quite a large degree of control over your base and its staff. You can construct new areas in your base to make life easier on yourself (such as living quarters, training areas for your soldiers, and Storage areas for weapons and the like), you can hire and fire staff (soldiers, researchers and engineers), you can buy and sell weapons, you can build more bases across the world - there is a lot to take care of. Of course, all this has to be done with a limited budget to adhere to, so planning is very important. Your income is provided by a group of funding states, who may at the end of every month either raise or lower their funding to you based on your performance - especially your performance in their area. This is a nice touch, and contributes to the overall difficulty of the game - it's hard to keep everyone happy.
Research and development is also important to your success. When you successfully complete UFO recovery missions you will obtain alien artifacts which you can use against the aliens once properly researched. This is important because as the game progresses the aliens tend to get tougher - and your crappy machine guns and Interceptors aren't going to be effective for long! This adds a certain feeling of pressure to the game, you know if you don't succeed at the ground missions and don't research effectively you will become toast as larger, more powerful UFOs run rampant and more advanced aliens appear on the scene.
The air-to-air combat system is very basic, but it does the job. Once you send one of your fighters to intercept a UFO and they come in contact with each other a window with 2 blobs (your aircraft and the UFO), a radar-style thingy, and a few buttons pops up. You use the buttons to set your aircraft's level of aggressiveness and that's basically it. You exchange a few rounds of fire, and you either shoot the UFO down, get shot down yourself, or one of you flees.
The ground combat is where this game really shines. You take a large troop-carrying aircraft to a UFO crash scene and have to eliminate all alien presence in the area so you can recover the alien aircraft. Your soldiers have 'time units' (TUs) which govern everything from their movement to equipping and firing weapons. Once your men are out of TUs, you click end turn and the aliens have their go. Simple, but wonderfully effective. In combat, with most weapons you have a choice of shot, you can use more accurate shots which use more TUs or less accurate ones that cost fewer TUs, depending on the situation. Grenades, smoke grenades, and a whole assortment of other equipment are available to add variety to the combat.
You don't just engage in combat at UFO crash sites either. From time to time, you may detect a UFO that has landed, and you can send a team to investigate there, although there will be more aliens present in this case, and the mission will be more dangerous, but with greater rewards in terms of researchable equipment, your mission score, and suchlike if you succeed. If you neglect an area, the aliens may send a large craft to a civilian area and create a 'Terror Site'. Even if you didn't neglect, they usually create it anyway at the end of every month. Here, if you choose to investigate, your objective is to eliminate all aliens in the area while also protecting the civilian population of the area. Your base may also be attacked by aliens if they manage to locate you, leaving you in a situation where you must defend the base but must take care to protect your scientists and not do too much collateral damage. These different mission types are great, adding more variety to the game.
In my opinion, this game scores 10/10.

Loom is an odd adventure game. Developed by the same company which, just two years before, created a complex and very challenging adventure, it is a small experiment deliberately restraining itself to a single gameplay element.
Whoever first thought of making an adventure game consisting entirely of playing four-note melodies (called "drafts" in the game) on a magician's staff masquerading as a spinning tool deserves an award for one of the most original ideas ever conceived for this genre. Loom has no inventory, no puzzles in the common sense of the word, and generally no other actions but playing (or "weaving", as the game calls it) melodies on your distaff. Was there any chance for such a game to be accepted, let alone understood? Yes, but only thanks to the passion the designers managed to transmit through it, striking a chord with even the most puritan, hardcore adventurers.
The process of learning drafts is simple: you normally hear them when they appear as peculiar musical attributes of the few objects you can interact with, or when someone else uses them the same way as you do. You can then play the corresponding notes on your distaff. The expert difficulty obfuscates the names of the notes and also doesn't display them on your instrument; but even if you don't have a good musical hearing, trial-and-error will get you through most situations - especially early in the game, when you can only play four notes. Despite those limitations, the elegant simplicity of this system is magically captivating. To make things a bit less self-explanatory, you can also weave the notes in the reversed order, resulting in the exact opposite action. This leads to some interesting puzzles, such as casting green paint on clothes or, conversely, bleaching them, etc.
The story of Loom is somewhat of a philosophical fairy tale a bit reminiscent of those books children can enjoy, but only grown-ups can fully understand. It is very simple, yet also well-written and engaging in a way not unlike an archetypal myth told in a slightly different way. There is something strangely appealing in this seemingly bare-bones plot that steadily jumps between events with only sparse commentary. It is set in its own unique world of low-key medieval fantasy with a slight, yet noticeable apocalyptic tinge heralding darker times.
Loom comes in two versions on the PC. The original floppy release (my favorite) is among the best examples of EGA art. An enhanced soundtrack (with an added overture not heard in the original version) for Roland MT-32 was later written for it and the patch can be downloaded from https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=38767#p349896. The music heard in Loom is actually taken from Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Swan Lake", a romantic ballet composed in 1875 and 1876, a pretty appropriate choice, considering the part swans have in the game's storyline. Also, only the floppy release was packed with a 30 minute drama on cassette, adding much depth to the story (note: you can watch it on youtube, just search for it). The CD version, however, boasts splendid 256-color colors, far surpassing the original and acceptable voice acting. However, it cuts out all character close-ups, some dialogue and even some music, which is inexcusable for an adventure musical game. Many fans suggest the FM Towns version as a compromise: its visuals are almost on par with the PC VGA one, it doesn't cut out any content, and it has high-quality music tracks. Its only downside is lack of voices.
Note: There is a bonus cutscene that plays near the end of the game (when you return to the island). This scene only plays if you are playing at expert difficulty mode.
This steam version actually contains only the PC CD version.
In my opinion, this game scores 8/10.

Wasteland is a very old classic CRPG game, from 1988, with EGA graphics and PC Speaker sound effects, representing the technology that was available back then.
However, inXile Entertainment added a fantastic soundtrack, created by Edwin Montgomery, which adds up to the game atmosphere. They even included the hint book, just like the manual, in the "extras" folder. These two documents are very important to play the game.
The game takes place in the future, after a nuclear holocaust of World War III, in a post-nuclear world of disintegrating technology, dysfunctional society and mutant organisms. The player must create a group of 4 characters, to explore the USA from town to town, gradually uncovering a sinister plot that threatens what's left of mankind. It's also possible to recruit up to 3 characters that populate the game's world. There are (too many) random encounters where you have to fight enemies in turn-based style combat. During the combats enemy names and pictures will be displayed. The player have to travel around searching for information, equipment and items from NPCs in towns.
Wasteland also introduced an original skill system that has had a significant influence on the genre. Some of those skills improve the characters' proficiencies with different types of attacks and weapons, while others are needed to solve and/or by pass certain situations during interaction with the game's characters and objects. These skills are rather diverse, ranging from physical abilities such as swimming to more complex actions (medic, lock-picking), or even psychological states (confidence). Skill learning and progression depend on the main character's IQ rating.
The game makes use of the skill system in conjunction with traditional character attributes to achieve goals and get past obstacles. Beside helping the characters to fight more efficiently, main attributes sometimes have an impact on activities used outside of combat. For example, high strength can be applied to break a heavy object, charisma rating might influence the way NPCs interact with the main character, etc.
Wasteland introduce some inovations at the time of his release like:
- The other members of the player's adventuring party acted like "real" people instead of inventory cabinets with names and automatons with skill sets. Ask the party to divide the cash and one or more might refuse. Try to get a party member to drop his last clip of ammo? No way!
- You can create "macros" to easily execute repetitive tasks.
I had beaten this game in 2015 and loved it.
Overall, it was and still is a great game, with a fascinating science fiction story and lots of quests to do, some required to advance in the main plot, others optional, elements which later inspired Fallout 1 and 2.
In my opinion, this game scores 8/10 (only not perfect because it has excessive random combats!).

This is the third game in AL Lowe's Leisure Suit Larry series, which come out in 1989, continuing the plot of the previous one and still using the same SCI graphic interface.
You know what to expect if you played the first two games. This one takes 2:30 to 3:00 hours to beat. The plot is more in the style of the first game, with Larry looking for women to woo, again. You will not die so easily and so many times as in the second game, fortunately.
In my opinion, this game scores 9/10.
Note: you can greatly improve the sound using the Roland MT-32 option (there are some videos on youtube that explain how you can do that in DOSBox or ScummVm games).

This is the second game in AL Lowe's Leisure Suit Larry series, continuing the plot of the previous game. It benefits from an improved engine, using the SCI graphic interface, which was a big leap forward in technology at the time (1988). The higher resolution allowed for better graphics. Even though 320px200p may not seem that much over AGI's 200px160p, it is very noticeable. While still just 16 colors, but SCI introduced dithering, which mixed pixels of different colors into the same fill areas that gave the effect of more than 16 colors. Most importantly, support for the new sound cards: Adlib, Sound Blaster and Roland MT-32.
This game is also longer than the first. It takes 2 to 2:30 hours to beat it. There is some interesting variation in the plot with Larry now being pursued by KGB agents, which implies great danger. Be prepared to die a lot in this one.
In my opinion, this game scores 8/10.
Note: you can greatly improve the sound using the Roland MT-32 option (there are some videos on youtube that explain how you can do that in DOSBox or ScummVm games).

This is a very old graphic adventure game, from 1987, which uses the AGI graphic interface developed by Sierra. It's the first adult game of the classic series created by Al Lowe, well known for it's humorous descriptions and dialogue. For the time, along other games of Sierra, it was very advanced, since allmost all the adventure games were text adventures only, without a graphic interface. We can interact with the game using a 'parser' to wrote commands, as in all text adventure games at the time, though. It didn't age very well, because the graphic interface is EGA with 200px160p by 16 colors. But if you like old adventure point'n'click games, you're in for a threat. Also, i beat the game somewhere in 1994, so i admit i'm in for the nostalgia too. I'm very happy to beat it again now! (it takes between 1h to 1:30h). It's a classic that all point'n'click graphic adventure gamers must have.
As a bonus, the remake that come out in 1991 is included in the package, with updated VGA graphics and sound (supports PC Speaker, Adlib, Sound Blaster and Roland MT-32).
In my opinion, this game scores 10/10.
Notes: On the original, you can improve the sound if you modify 'tandy=auto' to 'tandy=on' on the DOSBox config file.
On the remake you can greatly improve the sound using the Roland MT-32 option (there are some videos on youtube that explain how you can do that in DOSBox or ScummVm games).