One of the best-looking shooters ever released, The Reap from Finnish developer Housemarque features stunning visual effects and huge 3D-modelled levels spanning 4 different worlds.
As the official blurb says, the game uses "...rendered graphics to represent Desert, Underwater City, Ice Caves and futuristic Metropol gaming environments, with each world playing host to superb full screen animations. Unique light sourcing creates an ambient background atmosphere and highlights an attention to background detail seldom seen in PC entertainment software."
But graphics, as countless examples have shown, cannot save a game if it is no fun to play. Fortunately, The Reap not only lives up to Housemarque's early reputation as maker of Stardust games, but also exceeds it with even better graphics, bigger worlds, and more furious action. Although four worlds may sound too few for a SHMUP game, each world is so large and so difficult that it will take expert gamers a few hours (and blistered thumbs) to get through it.
Dozens of special effects and a catchy soundtrack round off this highly-polished underdog that is a good example of how good-looking a PC game can be without sacrificing speed or playability - and that is no small feat given 1997 hardware. Highly recommended.
Review By HOTUD
Comments and reviews
the ost was a banger! still have the original cd
Here it is, the classic! The most beautiful addicted shoot'em up of the 90s PCs, with the most awesome soundtrack. Closer to this only "Stardust" game, also with awesome soundtrack. The only down of this game, was the only low res option. No hi-res options (at the time 1024x768 with 32bit colors), I guess that was because of the many and very high gfx effects used could slow down the performance of the game in higher resolutions and problably needed more gfx memory or RAM memory. I am very surprised GOG didn't get their hands on this one yet.
Thanks, I had this game in my collection for a long time but was never able to play it properly.
Works well using DSOAL to get rid of those annoying poping sounds and probably use single thread affinity too.
Works with dgVoodoo2 and/or DxWnd.
Thanks for your 2 cents. That was indeed a nice song.
And for abandonware. Thanks for the reap ! i have the cd for ages but i couldnt play it anymore because its 16 bit and my pc is 64.
Chicken in the Corn by Bushy One String is an awesome song everyone needs to know
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.