Catacomb

John Carmack, the amazing programmer and lead in games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, and many others, released this for the Apple II in 1989. Later on, it was ported to MS-DOS, and given features like EGA graphics. You're a magician looking for treasure in the demon infested 10-level Catacomb. This shouldn't be confused with Catacomb: The Abyss, which came out some time later and was first-person. Here's the first Catacomb, a 2-D action/adventure title.

Gameplay: 6/10
I could just imagine plugging the 5½'' floppy into the drive and hearing the loading sequences. It looks, plays, and sounds exactly like you'd expect a game like this to. We've all heard of Gauntlet, and this is the first game that comes to mind when I play this. You gotta fight through the level, get the key to open the door to the mirror to the next one. The levels are fairly small, not too intricate, but always have some messed up trick about them. When I first started playing, I accidentally hit Enter, which cast fireballs in all directions, found a secret warp area, went to level 9, and got killed. I thought that was just a little bit funny. Eventually I picked up the strategy to the game and just started slayin' demons. I like that you can charge while you walk, plus points, the special attacks are super useful, plus points, but I hate how you can't walk diagonally. -4 points.

Graphics: 4/10
EGA graphics can support something like 16 colors. Now that we know that, it's fair to say they could have atleast changed the color scheme to the levels. You're looking at the same purple walls, green floors, and red demons the whole game. Your guy walks around in a hilarious fashion, sort of shuffling along. Just for fun, I tried it in CGA mode, and the former is a giant improvement, but still not enough for me to give points. -6 points for the ridiculous color scheme that never leaves you alone.

Sound: 7/10
I really enjoy the effort that went into the sound. It's constantly rocking these arpeggio boops and blips, sounds very similar to Commander Keen, everything has a sound and it's just a lot of fun to hear. No music though. -3 points.

Overall: 7/10
It's so easy to see how Catacomb Abyss was created using this as a backbone. The play style is inadvertently similar to its predecessors. I know one thing, I wish that I had this game back then rather than all the other crap I used to play. The Catacomb series is pretty badass, and there's quite a few games in it, but just how do they stack up? You'll have to wait and see. Snatch this game from the link below!
http://www.myabandonware.com/game/catacomb-27y#download

Drakkhen

MS-DOS had its good moments and this isn't one of them. I'm sure the game is perfectly playable, at least for 1989. I've played the Atari version and the Super Nintendo version, which were taken by some as a great game in the time, but this version is pretty bad, even considering its release date. When you start it up, you can create your characters which is a lot of fun, set up your color and sound settings, and bam. You're in Drakkhen. You're totally screwed.

Gameplay: 2/10
Drakkhen is a 3D RPG sort of thing. You wander freely around a world filled with grass, sky, water, trees, and buildings. Every now and then you'll get a monster that comes and starts to whoop your ass. This is where the battle sequence begins, and your four characters of choice will stumble onto the screen and start taking damage. You're somehow supposed to control all four of these guys by switching between them and choosing who's going to attack what, all in real time. At first, I couldn't figure out how to switch them, or how to do much of anything for that matter. Eventually I learned you had to click to attack mode first, and use each character to attack the monster. After getting my ass handed to me a few times and restarting the game, I finally beat some sort of blue snake thing and was fairly proud. Just at that moment, the game asked me the most unreasonable question for that point and time: DRAKKHEN CODES. LINE 11. WORD 1. What the hell, you want me to prove that I bought the game by looking through a manual to get a series of passwords? -8 points.

Graphics: 10/10
For the time, the graphics are good. There's a lot of animation going on, everything is colorful and detectable, and you're moving around a world in first person. I don't have any problems with how the game looks. The cover art is pretty sweet and the overall presentation is good. Too bad the game can't play as super as it looks.

Sound: 5/10
Drakkhen does a pretty good job with what they have. There's some music and some sword noises and stuff. But it's so, so annoying. The enemies that are constantly attacking you are playing a sound over and over and eventually it just turns to a grinding. -5 points for annoying me when you were doing a good job at not.

Overall: 3/10
I've known about this game for a long time and have never really found myself playing it for more than five minutes. This is probably due to the loose click combat system that only allows you to get beat up easily. You'll also bump into trees a lot, unfortunately, that's the most entertaining part of Drakkhen. It's a shame, too, because the game looks so good on the outside, but when you really get in to it, it's like a one-way trip to bad videogame town. It's free, but you won't get far, thanks to the archaic anti-piracy system. Oh, I forgot to mention, if you don't enter the DRAKKHEN CODE, the game restarts. Damn.
http://www.bestclassicdosgames.com/download/drakkhen.htm