Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Jun 24, 2022

  Oh dear. Something has gone very wrong. I've only played for 15 minutes and immediate impressions are absolutely awful. First of all, the original game is a masterpiece, to be clear. I loved it back in 1997 and I picked up the ScummVM version on GOG a little while ago and it holds up very well. If you buy the enhanced edition, the ScummVM version is included, so you should play that version. Because... This? This 'remaster' is an insult to the original game. The cutscenes look waaaaay worse at 60fps (for the same reason that 'motion smoothing' looks terrible on tv screens). The audio cuts in and out! There's *gameplay bugs* like not being able to walk around the first scene, except if you click on an interactable object!! It feels untested and not ready for release. I know this was a troubled project but Nightdive seem to have just dumped whatever they had ready and called it a day. I'm not going to refund it (yet) because Nightdive have messed up before and fixed things, so fingers crossed they fix this too.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 24, 2022

  So let me start by saying that I am huge fan of this game as well as the film. I bought the original Westwood version when it first came out and in fact I still have the original discs. This version cannot be call an "Enhanced Edition". First off the upscaled AI video is some of the worst I have ever seen. It blurry and stutters. Otherwise the game seems to run more or less the same, but not as well as the original. For me personally, I don't have any desire to run this in any other language but English. Having said that, I can understand people being pissed off about the lag of inclusion of other languages when the GOG version has them. Bottom line, if you have the GOG version, you don't need this, period. I would say it's inferior and I'm very sad this is not what it could have been.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 24, 2022

  This is how the original game looks like when your eyes are full of tears in the rain.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 24, 2022

  not sure i'd call putting heavy blur on top of an existing game to hide video compression "enhanced". this is simply awful. along with multiple other bugs and issues this is absolutely not worth your money. all detail has been sucked out of the textures and the atmosphere is completely ruined. if you do buy this, make sure to play the original instead of the enhanced which is now included in the download. Until some of the bugs are fixed, and there's an option to revert to the original textures this is a strong refund. edit: since the original game via scummVG has now been added to this, it is worth buying, however the actual enhanced edition is still not recommendable. get this if you wanna play the original game which is very worth 10 bucks still, however i am still holding out hope for enhancements to the enhanced edition, since i do love nightdive's other work.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 24, 2022

  It’s too bad it doesn't live up. I get that the source code was lost, I get preserving this game by reversing it wasn't a small feat, I get the game is a bizarre technical nightmare on how it uses the voxels or whatever hell they are. I was still expecting better from NightDive. I sincerely cannot imagine anyone there looking at this and thinking it was acceptable. Let me be perfectly clear- Blade Runner is one of the best PC games you can play of the era, but just please do yourself a favor and go enjoy it on ScummVM. [Edit - the purchase now comes with it bundled, so do consider it solely for classic edition. Great move, in my opinion. I hope NightDive makes up for this release]. It's not just the small changes to movement, UI, interactables, ugly font and alike that bother me the most, it's how the visuals have been absolutely butchered due to changes in the way enviormental elements (like fog) works, how the models are rendered and the hard contrast between the two- it's incredibly distracting and off-putting. It genuinely would have been better to keep everything rather compressed or compensate with similar visual tricks to mask at that point. The original Blade Runner and it's sequel are by far some of the most gorgeous visual feasts in cinema, a triumph of craftsmanship, atmosphere and design, the eternally resonant monologue by Roy in particular is easily one of the most beautiful scenes in any movie ever made- and this gem of a game lovingly captured all of that. Something this title lost in it's enhancing to the point of insult. I don't know if something got messy in the end, and I hope to God almighty this can be saved or atleast compensated a bit, because more people should play this game. And hell, if you don't care about any of this, fine, the game still works and is easily accessible- I am sadly incapable of recommending it if you even care a little about the actual experience.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 24, 2022

  Look how they massacred my boy
• gamedeal user

  Jun 24, 2022

  One of the quickest refunds I've had, even the main menu had zero effort in it, they didn't even bother to align the buttons... Everything was disapointing and I won't get excited anymore for Nightdive Studios games, I'll wait for reviews to make sure it's not absolute trash whatever they come up with in the future.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 25, 2022

  I really don't understand how Nightdive have managed to mess this up so badly. The ScummVM version on GoG runs almost flawlessly, this version has actually removed some content and somehow introduced new bugs and glitches such as audio becoming desynced during cutscenes, flashing green screens during scene transitions, not being able to walk around areas (you can only click on POIs to move, whereas you used to be able to click to move anywhere), some particle effects being broken, sometimes you can't fire your gun/target some things properly, the list goes on. To top it all off, the graphical improvements are almost completely unnoticeable. In fact, some of the prerendered backgrounds have lost a lot of fine detail and now interactable items have a weird shader thing going on where they stick out from the environment like a sore thumb, whereas in the original game some of them were deliberately hard to find. Overall just a really lazy 'port', if you can call it that. Hopefully Nightdive does something to fix this mess.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 25, 2022

  Update 1: it now come with the original like the gog version. Sure this is playable, the subtitles are a nice addition(tho it use the new awful UI), controller support is cool for whoever needs it and console players wont truly notice whats wrong with it but in many ways this is worse than the original game and I'm not even that familiar with it! And yes I know this doesn't use the source code but that doesn't excuse it with their excellent port of Doom 64 and Powerslave Exhumed. This version doesn't have the directors cut, the UI is painfully amateur, the shooting barely works and a lot of the atmosphere is gone with the missing fog and rain(which is blasphemous). Will update this review when necessary.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 25, 2022

  In regard to all the negative reviews: Nightdive Studios just released a patch, which adds the CLASSIC VERSION of the game. As soon as you start the game it gives you the option to play the Enhanced Edition, the classic version or the classic version with restored content. Both are based on ScummVM! So far the classic version seems to run great and it looks good, even on a 4k monitor. I hope this game gets the same post release treatment as Blood:Fresh Supply, so we get a real enhanced edition, but for now this is as good as the GoG-version. EDIT: Nightdive studio released the classic version WITHOUT permission of the original creators! (Thank you Rocket Baby Dolls for the information) The situation is an absolute mess and I hope Nightdive will deal with it accordingly, meaning that they have to patch the "enhanced" edition as well as compensate and come to terms with the ScummVM developers. I did not want to justify the horrible release nor the policy of Nightdive (which I was not aware of when I wrote the review). I just wanted to inform people about the added classic editions. It's a shame, because I had a lot of respect for Nightdive and their remasters, although there were problems in the past (like the initial release of Blood:Fresh Supply). I haven't played the original back in the day and I will update this review as soon as I have completed a few playthroughs.