xxxIndyxxx: Just a little update to let people know: after a hiatus i went back to it and these are my feelings about it (i have now finished the entire game):
Shareware episode is fun, some good level design and basicly a lot of running and gunning
Episode 1: same level of fun as shareware episode
Episode 2: bad, first half is no fun at all, later levels are mediocre at best, but it picks up.
Episode 3: good, not as good a the first and fighting robots takes some getting use to. too bad there are enemies that are invincible because i hate that.
Episode 4: decent to good levels, on par with episode 3, monks have way too much health though making it a bit of chore to play. First bossfight is stupid, real bossfight is better but too easy. The eggs thing is really stupid since the way to get all of them is way too difficult to find on your own (luckily i knew the history so i knew what to do). Overall i feel the levels or better than ep 3 but the enemies are more annoying.
SO in conclusion: if you like the beginning of the game and don't mind the repetitiveness of the game (like wolfenstein, it doesn't offer a lot of variety, even less then doom or quake), keep at it so you can work your way through the first half of episode 2 because the game does pick up again after that ;)
This is the order of fun i had with it: Ep 1 = shareware > episode 3 = episode 4 >>> episode 2
That's actually good to know, because I basically got fed up in Episode 2. Still loved the game. Maybe I'll go back and play it again.
Also, that's where the lives system started to break down. In the first episode it was fairly practical to actually use it... in other words, you could accept starting over after you died, losing a life and all acquired weapons. It's obvious the game was built for this, not just from the item collecting but also from the placement of bullet weapons (it's always possible to find another pistol near the beginning of every level, and enemies will sometimes drop another pistol or a machinegun). But in the second episode, it starts to become nearly impossible to play this way. Not only do you encounter powerful enemies before you can get any sort of decent weapon, but you're faced with tons of scenarios that require trial and error, or absolutely precise timing.
