Recent reviews by Hamakei

This infuriates me. CC is one of my all-time favourite puzzle games and I've owned multiple copies on various platforms over the years.

Sadly it seems that the most well known version is the Microsoft port as it was included in a couple of editions of the Entertainment Pack for Windows...and that version was butchered to be playable on the primitive systems of the day. Gone was the smooth scrolling, levels were modified, the game engine was changed so some levels played differently, the music was changed, the graphics were changed... and now that seems to be the version people consider to be "the original"

This new port is...horrible. The levels are good (generally) as always, but the presentation is extremely sloppy. It looks and feels like a college student's first attempt at making a game in SDL...the layout of the game screen is lacklustre, the new graphics are AWFUL, and you can't even change the window size without restarting the game. What is this, 1996? Despite only having five buttons, you can only assign one key to each (and you can't even change 'confirm' from enter to something like space). So you can have arrow keys or WSAD...but not both, even though nothing will ever be using the other set.

The game also "feels" different, so levels which you might have been able to breeze through in the past now require a slightly different approach. And they've come up with a whole new ruleset. CC afficionados know that there are the Lynx and MS rulesets, which slightly affect the way the game plays. But rather than use one of those, they've come up with a whole new ruleset which takes parts from each. I have no idea why they did this.

The graphic sets on offer are the new god-awful one, or "Win". Every other version appears to have been wiped from existence. The animations are sloppy. I have no idea what the fireballs are supposed to be...the purple balls have shadows and appear to be hovering, making it difficult to judge their location...and the force floors are enough to give anybody an epileptic fit. Good luck making it through "Forced Entry" without sitting as far back from the screen as possible. In addition, some graphical changes make the game much easier - for instance the traps visibly change when they're open.

Why couldn't they just license Tileworld and give us that with the official level pack? That would be far better than this monstrosity.

Even for free I'd rather play Tileworld with user-created level packs. Sure some of the original game's levels are good, but they are clearly running out of ideas by the second half.

Why does crouching kill you immediately?

Unfortunately because I didn't play this P.O.S. right away when I bought it, I'm now denied a refund.

AVOID AVOID AVOID this unplayable garbage!

Mind-numblingly tedious. I imagine walking through endless dust isn't as boring as this game is.

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Now please do 100 hidden guinea pigs!

It hasn't been remastered or updated in any way, but it's the original game exactly like you'd hope. Which is awesome. And I'm certainly not going to complain for the price. If anything, it works better than the original which to me was always a bit picky with the CD checks and the screen resolution changes. But please give us the bonus level!

I don't know how people played this back in the day without falling into a coma. I guess even then people were fooled into buying a game just because of the graphics and sound, and after the purchase they didn't want to admit it had zero playability because that would mean admitting they made a mistake.

I'm sure it looks nice by standards of the day, but even then there were other, better games out there. This is one of the most mind-numbingly inane games you'll ever play. People rave about "intelligent logic puzzles" and "tricky challenges" but that is just code for completely obtuse, repetitive gameplay.

Walk to this location. Rotate this object. Walk to the other end of the island. Take a note of this code. Repeat the entire thing seven times. Now go over here and flip these four switches into this sequence. You'll get no indication you've done it right, but trust me. Now go over here and click on this blank wall to reveal a hidden panel you couldn't possibly know was there. Now pick up this book and read all 24 pages just in case there's something in it which might prove useful later.

Now go over to this other island and count the number of bricks in this building and type the number into a computer on a totally different island to play a message. Count the number of syllables in his 10 minute long speech as that will be crucial much, much later on.

...okay, I'm exaggerating. But not my much. This game was terrible then and it's terrible now. The only reason people persevered back in the day is because they'd spent a small fortune on their new CD-ROM drives and couldn't afford to buy any other games for a year and so had to make do with what they had. Which is an interactive slideshow.

Very short, but very charming. There are worse ways to spend half an hour.

Pretty awful. Lighting isn't done properly, assets pop up out of nowhere when you're ten feet away. Audio volume goes up and down at random. Dialogue doesn't match the subtitles. Voice acting is terrible. Game is incredibly linear.

Buggy as hell, with objects floating in mid-air. Once I picked up a book and couldn't put it down again. Devs have set the game in Scotland but don't seem to have ever actually been there or know anything about it. We don't have water fountains in schools. We don't have lockers in the corridors. Oh, and our steering wheels are on the RIGHT.

Very badly designed. Keeps crashing with a Unity "out of memory" error

Simple and easy.

100 Hidden Guinea Pigs next, please?