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Summary: Interesting... But Not Exactly Good Released in ‘91, Spaceship Warlock was one of the first games to be released on the CD-ROM, and it shows in both the good ways and the bad. Keep in mind that back when most Macintoshes (it was released on the Mac first, ported to the PC years later) had only black-and-white screens (not even any greyscale!) and effectively no sound. Then this game comes along. Full colour, 3D rendered art, full-motion video, full voice acting. It’s got point-and-click action sections, hand-to-hand brawling, rail-shooting sections, puzzles, and more. It blew everyone else out of the water. Unfortunately, it does none of it well. The story is interesting, but too short to ever fully form. The action sequences are varied, but clunky and half-baked. The exploration gives you a large world, but is almost completely empty and just busywork going from place to place. This game is a significant historical milestone, but I’d recommend watching a play-through rather that playing it yourself. Full Play-though Here. (Plus, all its spaceships look like weird, early twentieth century zeppelins!)

Summary: Great Adventure Game, Horrible Combat Segments I got Shannara in the Nineties as part of a ‘Legend Game Pack’ along with Companions of Xanth and Death Gate. Being the middle child of the group, this game is noticeably better than Xanth, but not quite as polished as Death Gate. Having read the books is likely an asset, but I went in blind and didn’t have a problem understanding the relatively generic fantasy universe. Overall, the game is very well made. Beautiful art, surprisingly good voice acting (especially considering the year it was made), memorable if stereotypical characters, and a decent story. I played it, completed it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. However... this does not include the absolutely god-awful combat sections, or the surprisingly ugly over-world map. For some reason they decided to make the enemy monsters per-rendered 3D animations (the only 3D in the game) that not only look ugly, but clash with all the other art in the game. And the over-world looks like it would have been more at home on an SNES than a PC. Thankfully the creators realized they had a dog with the combat system, and the manual even explicitly tells you to avoid it whenever possible. Though for some reason they didn’t just remove it. It comes up rarely enough they likely could have and no one would have noticed. And a small tip, you MUST run away from the first combat in the game.