Old Skies – Stuck in Time

After many years since the release of Unavowed, Wadjet Eye Games is finally out with a new point and click adventure game titled Old Skies. While still having a focus on New York, Dave Gilbert is ditching the fantasy element for a futuristic sci-fi city setting, with time traveling shenanigans as its centerpiece. I do enjoy the occasional escapade through the vortex of time. However, most time travel stories touching this usually end up breaking their own internal rules, thus making a huge mess of the narrative. So, do Old Skies suffer the same fate? Let’s find out.

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Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem

Eternal Darkness is a Lovecraft-inspired survival horror from all the way back in 2002. It was made by Silicon Knights and released for Nintendo Gamecube only. However, thanks to emulators (Dolphin in this case), it’s possible for even me to play it without too much trouble. I did try it out when it was released, though, since I borrowed a friend’s Gamecube to play this game specifically and Resident Evil (the remaster). I don’t remember the reason, but I never got very far – I can only assume my focus was on finishing Resident Evil before I had to return the console. Anyway, here we are, and I have just completed Eternal Darkness, and what can I say? It’s a great addition to the genre, even if a bit linear at times. It did feel good to once again have to use tank controls and experience fixed camera angles. It’s kinda ironic because nowadays developers are hell-bent on cinematic experiences, yet, have totally ignored fixed camera angles, which to me personally feels very movie-like. If embraced, it would make their lives much easier since the game director has full control over what you will see and how.

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Quantum Break – You Got Time?

Decided to replay one of my favorite, semi-recent AAA-gaming releases – because the last time I played it, the engine the game runs on almost broke my old computer. Now, I’m on a new fresh one – so I thought it was time to play through this science-fiction time-travel epic in full graphical glory, and maximized FPS.

Let us continue on that note. The visuals, all these years later, are still absolutely fantastic beyond just having high-quality textures. With that I mean, lighting, location design, structures, and models, in general, make the game come alive. It just looks great, and realistic, yet, has this slight futuristic corporate vibe to it that is common in near-future settings – a bit similar to the modern Deus Ex games. Unfortunately, even now when I have “up-scaling” turned off, some areas are still looking blurry, which is disappointing. Otherwise, the game runs well on my new rig, but, unfortunately, I get drastic FPS drop in scene-transfers, and when cut-scenes change to gameplay. I don’t know why that is. It’s not too bad I guess, but still an annoyance since it happens fairly often. I assume it’s an issue with the engine, because CONTROL, a more recently released Remedy game, shares the same engine, and I didn’t have these kinds of issues here. The only thing I can assume from this is that the engine got better optimized between the games. Nonetheless, the game looks remarkable still, and will not disappoint on a modern computer with a good GPU.

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