Crusader No Remorse

Crusader No Remorse was originally released back in 1995 and it's now available on GOG for $5.99 USD. I never played it in it's heyday though I really wanted to get it. Your character looks like Boba Fett and therefore oozes cool, also you've got no remorse so obviously you're killing and blowing things up indiscriminately. The story goes that you are a super soldier who originally is part of the immensely corrupt World Economic Consortium but after botching a mission where you were meant to kill civilians, you decide to join the resistance. I think it is a cool story even if it is played out in cheesy 90's, I can see each pixel, CD video. The GOG version runs DOSBox to make it compatible with your modern PC so very little has changed.

The first thing I noticed about this game was how clunky the controls are. Aiming with the mouse is terrible, aiming with the keys is too slow. Searching for loot and hitting switches takes far too long. The controls will see you going all over the keyboard for the buttons that you need and to figure this out you're gonna need to read the manual. The problem is every time I alt-tabbed out the game would permanently get stuck in tiny window mode, which is frustrating and makes me miss the printed manuals of old. Eventually I got the hang of it and I must say it is great to have a lot of control but it doesn't compare with modern games. I think it is a shame that there is no added controller support as this would have made it easier to play. The worst part was when shooting if you got too close to an enemy you wouldn't hit it, same with being too far. Also, the enemies seem capable of hitting you from the strangest angles that you yourself cannot achieve.

One of the coolest features at the time was how interactive the world was and it still stands out in this regard. You can basically blow up everything, hell, you can even blow up metal guard rails which makes no sense. There are a lot of traps and secrets to interact with that help to keep the world interesting. Some traps are as simple to get past as switching off a valve but there are more devious ones such as, hidden sensors traps that blanket the room in grenades and annoying walls that zap you with electricity. The game is also about finding loot, you must loot everything to survive! Like every other game like this, RPGs, Farcry, etc., picking up every bit of ammo and money gets tedious after a while but due to the clunky controls in Crusader No Remorse you'll feel it even quicker.

I honestly did have fun with Crusader No Remorse but I also had a lot of frustrations. I encountered a lot of bugs from in game traps not triggering right, to plain ol' disappearing off the screen at times. I didn't realise how long each mission was at first and that it is crucial to save at all times. Slowly but surely I made progress and got the hang of things. Still, I think this game is best left to those who played it back in the day and loved it, or those that really wanted to play it back then and are willing to give it a lot of time now 6/10.