Gorky 17

First of all, this is my first review so I apologize if you don't find this helpful, and I'm from Finland so sorry about all the typos. Oh and I also tend to ramble a bit so sorry about that too. I first heard about this game from a local PC game magazine called "Pelit lehti" and if I remember right, the reviewer gave the game 65/100 points for all too many fights, hard difficulty and poor voice acting. The next time I ever saw the game was in local shop with 20mk (The old currency of Finland, it's about 4 euros) and I didn't exactly remember the review so I bought it along with Baldurs Gate. The game came in a cool looking box with a manual that didn't explain a thing and was poorly translated, and even though the game box said "Odi-um" or something like that, the manual talked about Gorky 17. Those are both the same game as I later discovered, but it was a bit confusing at the time. The game tells a story about a group of soldiers sent to investigate a fictional Russian town where somekind of disaster took place. Your first priority is to locate the team that was sent before you but that quickly changes as you start to encounter different kinds of mutated monsters. After that your main objective is to survive and eventually get away from the god forsaken town. During your mission you will find survivors and other people that will help or hinder your progress. The plot might be cheesy, but the atmosphere, music and characters are great and I have played the game from beginning to the end about five times over the years. The gameplay is sort of mix between Resident Evil and Jagged Alliance. The combat is turn based, but you will not have enough bullets to waste them. Whenever a character uses a weapon, he or she becomes better at using it. Meaning they will hit more often and do more damage with it. The characters also have other stats, such as Accuracy and Health that you can increase whenever they level up. Each character gains experience from each succesful hit and extra experience from dealing the final blow to an enemy. Later in the game you will gain weapons like Flame Throwers and Stun Guns ect. that have unlimited ammo but you can't use them every round. This adds almost chess like tactical component to the game. And with enemies that are able to do the same things, there is a certain amount of challenge in the game that you should be prepared to face if you decide to play it. I have grown up with X-COM, Heroes of Might and Magic and Jagged Alliance ect. and I didn't find the game too difficult, but I belive the game might be too hard if you are mostly used to current generation of games. And if you have mostly played Halo or other (Umm, Marathon clones :P) you still might want to try it if you have patience. The game is not actually that hard if you take a moment and think before every turn where the enemies can attack, who can you attack, where can you take cover ect. The graphics were awesome at the time, and I think they still look pretty good. The hand drawn backgrounds with 3D objects and characters on it makes it look pretty unique. I would love to compare it to some other game but really, I can't think of any game that looks the same. The music deserves a special mention, and the OST is actually the reason I bought this game from GOG.com. It's just great, it's even better than the Resident Evil OST. It's a mix between ambient and electronical music with some violin thrown in the mix. And as far as I know, you can't get it anywhere else. Overall if I would need to sum the game in few words, it's hard and it's rewarding. If you like games like Resident Evil (The first one) for the difficulty, story and atmosphere, and you like Jagged Alliance or Fallout for the combat you will love Gorky 17. If you are one of the new generation gamers who doesn't like thinking or slow paced combat, you will not like Gorky 17. Otherwise give it a try. It's not like you will lose a lot anyway, and you will get one pretty damn fine OST with it.

For starters, the game has a very good atmosphere. Somewhat of a Stalker'ish feel. The game itself plays like a turn based game with battles occuring like the random Final Fantasy random battle style. You walk around the game world and sometimes get caught up in these battles. They aren't random but you never see them coming so moving around a new area is always a bit tense! As said before, the battles are turn based. You get the first turn to move your men around and use their weapons. The fighting is alot like Chess in a sense. For example, you pistol can only fire in four directions while the assault rifle can also fire diagonally. This kinda feels unrealistic of course, but it adds to the strategic element. Hitting the enemy in the flank or rear also adds more damage, again making the game a bit more tactical. The graphics are pretty good. The characters are pretty low polygon but the hand drawn enviromnents are great. You may have some problems getting the game to run due to codec problems but I've managed to solve them quite easily. I'm sure GoG-team will issue a better fix for all the other people someday. Now for the bad; the game is very very hard. Ammo is extremely scarce and you will need to resort to melee weapons in order to conserve it. While this adds some intensity and challenge it also makes it possible to completely screw yourself over early in the game if you use up all your rifle rounds or waste that precious "missile" on a useless enemy. The "random" fights can be quite annoying as well since you never know you are walking into a mutant death trap and haven't found more quality weapons in order to win that fight. The beginning area for example is quite open, you go into different directions from your starting position. But sometimes you really need to have visited point A first because there you can find weapons you need if you ever want to have a chance against the enemy at point B. In conclusion : A fun game but the difficulty may scare some people away (and this is coming from someone who loves hard games!). You may need to replay the beginning a few parts to really get the hang of it. Still a recommeded though! And for six bucks, you don't have anything to lose, right? :)

+++ How to Run Gorky 17 - Modern Computer, Hardware Mode +++ Quick tutorial - tested on Windows 10 64 bit. 1. DON'T set the game in a compatibility mode (seriously); 2. Download D3D Overrider; 3. Add Gorky 17 to D3D Overrider; 4. At this point game works (with broken cut-scenes, and horrible 640x480 upscaling) 5. Download DxWnd 6. Add Gorky 17 7. Check: Run in Window, Hide Desktop Background, Keep Aspect Ratio, Desktop Center. 8. Set resolution to: 640x480 (native) or 800x600 (playable upscaling) or 960×720 (taste dependent). 9. Save and run the game. 10. Near the end you'll fight with two Incubus. That's the only crash I encountered. 11. Quick Fix: for this fight only, turn on the software mode in the game settings. After the fight: save & turn on the hardware mode. 12. Hope for the HD remake :)) +++ High Nostalgia Factor Review +++ As a teenager this game belonged to my private Golden Age of Turn Based Combat Games (ca. 1999): Incubation, Heroes III, Gorky 17, Front Mission 3 & Fallout 2. Beautiful graphics (just look at the detailed backgrounds), atmospheric music, simple but quite interesting story and tough but rewarding combat. Seriously I'm no Rain Man but I love to count hexes, trying to predict enemies action points and banging my head against a wall in frustration, when I made a mistake :) Just plain old school: no tutorial and game over at the 4th battle. I like it. Very much! If you're longing for a decent turn-based strategy - give it a try.

At first I was a little disapointed, as it doesn't have many features and posibilities. Weapons shooting only in 4/8 directions=WTF? But when you start to treat it like chess it's pure fun. Simple rules, limited movement, a little horror climate makes it quite a good game. I think it's worth it's price.