Even though this had a PC release, Blizzard decided to convert the SNES release to PC for what they had available on their battle.net website. At the time of this review, it no longer appears to be a free download, but rather is part of a $20 bundle of five games.
The game is basically going through mazy stages looking for keys to lower barriers or extend bridges while killing non-respawning enemies with your shotgun or a limited number of bombs you pick up. Your shotgun has infinite ammo. The movement is similar to the original Prince of Persia. After each main area, your shotgun gets an upgrade. When you get to know the stages, it'll probably take 4-5 hours to play through the entire game.
Combat is not very good. It boils down to repeatedly "hiding in the shadows", which is simply pressing yourself up against the wall, until the enemy stops shooting at you and then shooting at it before it hides in the shadows, then hiding in the shadows until the enemy reemerges to shoot at you. The problem is that the enemies fire anywhere from 1 to 8 shots and there are no tells as to how many shots they'll fire. And after the first couple stages, the enemies get into hiding extremely quickly, to where you basically have to either cross your fingers and guess when they'll stop shooting, or wait it out until they shoot the maximum number of shots, which can be extremely tedious. It reminds me of the Police Squad/Naked Gun bit where Lt. Drebin would get into a shootout where they would hide behind trash cans and benches, and alternate shooting at each other.
Some of the enemy placement is terrible. Most of the enemies rarely move, but there are times when they will move close enough to the edge of a platform to where they will punch you as soon as you climb up, which deals damage and causes you to fall back down. This damage is unavoidable. You could try waiting for the enemy to move back, but that could take a LOOOOOOOOOONG time if it will even happen. The worst placement is one enemy that carries a key starts at the edge of a secret area (secret areas do not become visible when you enter them), and there's a good chance it'll move into the secret area. This means that you'll have to venture into the secret area and guess where it is while it's shooting at you.
One issue that caused me to have to restart a level multiple times is using items other than Iron Keys in the locks... sometimes. Normally, when you're in front of the lock, it'll automatically use the Iron Key, regardless of what inventory item is highlighted. Because of this, I wasn't paying attention and had the Levitator or Bridge Key highlighted and it used them instead of the Iron Key I had, making the stages impossible to complete. It'll also use Iron Bombs, which isn't an issue, and can actually be advantageous. I think this will happen only if you have an Iron Key, as I can't recall it ever happening when I didn't have an Iron Key.
It's not a bad game, but it's not a good game. I'm glad I was able to get it for free, as even as part of a $20 bundle, I would consider it being too expensive.
