Hard To Be A God

Let's Talk About loading times. Having been around long enough to remember my Commodore Plus/4 taking half an hour to crash itself, I'm not usually one to whine about games taking a while to load. But seeing how low-spec Hard To Be A God is the loading screens don't half have you by the jaffers. Mountains form in less time than it takes to save and reload the game.

On the plus side, when you're not looking at a row of horse's backsides (or whatever else is on the loading screen), you're partaking in an action RPG that has plenty going for it. While it's plagued with a fairly bad real-time combat system (the controls are simple enough, but the quasi-isometric view makes aiming a pain), Hard To Be A Gods storyline is strong enough to make it worth persevering with if you're a fan of the genre (as it should be, being that it's an adaptation of a book). And at least it has a simple, logical drag-and-drop inventory system to cushion the blow.

The adaptation is of a well-regarded Russian sci-fi novel by the Strugatsky Brothers. The blend of classic fantasy and sci-fi is interesting, but hardly genre-changing - after all, sci-fi is just magic spells for sceptics.

For my money, this is a tale best told on paper, if only because the book doesn't have such awful music and voice acting, and it isn't shoehorned into a generic RPG template.