Dungeon Keeper 2 on PC
I'll go ahead and give this game some props for being inventive and interesting as far as real-time-strategy is concerned but also be honest and say that it is relegated to obscurity since an update is desperately needed. Basically the controls and AI are just awful in today's world.
So basically, in a twist of what everyone expects in a game, you are the baddies in this one... which is awesome by the way and developing a dungeon that the good guys are incapable of getting through. You have to collect resources and set traps and what not, kind of like you would expect to encounter if you actually were the good guy going through a dungeon.
So I am not saying the game is bad in that regard.. because it definitely isn't. This is an exceptionally novel approach to gaming and something that I definitely appreciate. I am quite certain that it was extremely popular in 1999 (it was) but I didn't play it or even hear about it until 3 days ago.
I got the free download link (which you can have as well right here) and played it for about an hour.
Since the resolution is still in 1999 standards it was all but unplayable on my 40" monitor. Any slight scroll to one side or the other resulted in me flying wildly off target. I'm sure this was not an issue when a $700 monitor in 1999 weighed as much as a Ford Escort and required a super reinforced table but today, a large monitor isn't really all the uncommon.
Even going to the setting and setting the mouse scroll speed to as low as it possibly can be still had me screaming away from the action with the slightest movement off screen.
This isn't the game's fault, well, unless you count the fact that no one has made an update for nearly 20 years on it and honestly, why would they; but with today's equipment this game is just so poor looking that it can't possibly stay interesting and the novelty of being the bad guys wears off pretty quick.
The AI is just terrible and forget about trying to manipulate it because everyone just seems to run around towards some sort of beacon that I'm not really even sure how or where it exists. It can't stay fun because the controls are just so bad despite the very interesting game design.
Look, I get it... this game is 20 years old and I shouldn't be so hard on it. But it was made by Bullfrog studios who also made Populous and Themepark - both of which are still fun today - even using their original formats. This game simply isn't very good anymore and it isn't because the game was poorly conceived, it is simply because controls and PC speeds have moved on to the point where without some sort of graphical and AI update, it is more annoying to play than anything else.
This is one of those games that while it might have been great 20 years ago, needs to stay back there. No need to re-live it in the present and perhaps that is why this hasn't happened.
If you have fond memories of this game from "way back when," I'm sorry but this game has not aged well and honestly is not worth revisiting today.