GOG Patron
At first it feels janky, but there's a method to the micromanagement in this game as opposed to even prestige war tactics simulators like Company of Heroes. Here you have to repair your vehicles, load them with ammo, keep them fueled. Heck, you can't even command a vehicle without soldiers for each role, otherwise the one poor guy you assigned with attempt to do everything by himself...slowly. You need to keep track of your team's various roles. Sometimes you need to take direct command to draw a bead on a priority target. You need to equip a squad with various weapons for various tasks. This is the kind of game that values patience as much as speed. The controls ARE a little clunky and sometimes your men will make the wrong choices, bum rushing a tank because you forgot to put them in cover. Sometimes grenades will bounce at the wrong time or you'll run dry on ammo and rush to reload just as the enemy recovers and attacks. But all this feels realistic to the chaos of conflict. Very few times I felt outright frustrated with the controls. Some options are VERY specific (like unhooking a gun from a truck) but thankfully you can find them in a side panel or use a hot key more often than not. Regarding the game's production, the graphics are appropriately gritty and accurate. The tanks especially have tons of effort poured into making them look and move like the real deal. And trucks explode BIG which is always satisfying. Voice acting is...okay. Clearly this wasn't originally in English so translation can be wonky and performances shaky, but it wasn't a game breaker. The music is strangely subdued but you can replace it with something more appropriate. If you don't mind more a simulator than a crazy action-on-demand RTS, this is the best there is. No other game requires you to really get into the mindset of each soldier and care for every vehicle like this.
This is an oddity, but a welcome one! I remember seeing this advertised but never being able to find it. A I'm a huge fan of Max Payne, and this is that only without shoot dodging. You use bullet time to focus fire for headshots or pinpoint snipers or to get out of a no-win firefight. It feels less dynamic than hurling yourself across the room, but it's a bit more tactical because you can't just leap out of the way of gunfire. You need to find cover, locate the bad guys, and pick them off. By the by, this game has named enemies (including a second-in-command blonde guy who is a coward) and you heal with pain killers. The people making this game were probably GIGANTIC Max Payne fans because this isn't a rip off, it's almost a fan conversion of Max from a cop on the run to a DEA agent with heavy firepower and often an Swat backup team. It's a mission by mission sort of game so no open world like Total Overdose but on the plus side that means no pointless running around. The world is laid out as a series of fights with escalating enemy presence and gun variety. It's short and sweet and ran pretty smoothly. So if you like Max Payne, but wish he spent more of his time standing, crouching in one place blasting everyone in the room until time returned to normal flow and they all rag dolled into a pile...this is your game!
This is like playing an early 90s Image comic book. Everything is thick with profanity and insanity and bravado with cyberpunk drifting into bio-punk to the point that nobody is entirely human anymore in body or mind. Everything has a 'super cool' name too (your gun is called The Triggermortis) The gameplay itself is a third person isometric exploration game. I say exploration because the combat is a little shaky and surprisingly not that common: boiling down the lining up a crosshair on an enemy and squeezing the trigger until they die. The main show is running around, jumping, clambering up things looking for secrets and power ups and ways forward. The way forward is usually a near mystery. You can find the locations you can transfer map to map with pretty easily ( big glowing white symbols) but there's NO MINI-MAP so if you don't have a good memory you might even start drawing one out. There's no tutorial so you'll need to draw on inherent PC gamer know-how to figure out what you can do and how, but luckily your options are limited. The real draw here is the edge-lord story, the snarky voice acting, the quite pretty looking levels, and the thumping techno soundtrack. Combat is infrequent and imprecise. Traversal can be frustrating. But there's enough personality to enjoy throughout the experience and plenty of online support for this cult classic. Come for Lotos and Dumaine and their wacky adventures through cyberworld.
As a game this is a shakier and worse optimized Bloodbourne. I actually had more fun basically making the combat unfair so I didn't have to worry about glitches ruining extended bouts of dodging and suspect hit detection. But as a world this is a place I want to see more of! This is the French Revolution with automatons: wild secrets of alchemy, the deadly grace of courtly tools turned into weaponry, porcelain and bronze nightmares amid the deceitful quaintness of the countryside and the opulence of turn of the century cities. A tale of intrigue and high emotions as the backdrop of an alternate history unspooling with each new tantalizing clue and location! I so wanted this to be one of Spider's RPGs so I could talk to these people, visit these places, interact as an automat. But this is promises unfulfilled. It's beautiful, but hollow like the automats themselves.
This is one of those games I heard nothing good about for the longest time, even though this was the same team behind the Shadowrun games which had a lot of potential they didn't quite live up to. One sale later and I've bought the game...and it's a fine, deep, satisfying, very faithful adaptation of a sadly neglected genre: mech combat. It's all here for those inclined. This is NOT an action game (although the explosions and flying limbs of the mechs are fun to watch) it is a simulation strategy game, and in that spirit it's all here. Hire pilots. Outfit mechs. Recover and buy weapons and ammo. Repair damage after each sortie. Use cover and height to advantage. Level up pilots with new skills with experience if they survive. Negotiate deals with the various factions you're beholden to. Granted this is NOT a good RPG in the traditional sense. Graphics are nice, but the lion's share went to the mech systems. Cutscenes are either barely moving photoshop art or vaguely shifting 3D models that never move their mouths. There is a surprisingly drawn upon character creation mode with backstories that can come up in conversations so that's nice. But you have to want to micromanage a squad of mechs to enjoy this game. You pay for everything, from jump fuel to ammo, so you need to budget your runs and even avoid damage so you don't have to pay to fix your mechs and waste valuable days of downtime. Death is permanent so don't lose pilots if you can help it. The story is meaty but a slow burn. Turn based combat can be long, but it's such a feeling to target an enemy and blast them until their arms fall off. As a mech game it's second to none. Less so an immediate action game (although there's an option for single battles) or a bells and whistles RPG. Satisfying, paced, deep, and I would argue immersive.
It's no GTA, but Mafia II tells a sprawling and stirring tale spanning multiple years and many shady characters that few other games can boast of. Until recently the older version of this game was broken (the skyline kept glitching) so I'm VERY happy that the remaster is not only stable and pretty but restores one of my favorite games to working status! I'm one of the few who not only played this game before the first Mafia but also like the sequel much better than the original, and I'm counting the Mafia 1 remaster as well. Mafia 2 might be a shorter experience (still lengthy) but it feels tighter. You can aim better, drive better, run and walk on command instead of slowing to a crawl during cutscenes. It's a nightmare to spin out constantly in the first game but it's a joy to coast and dodge and weave with the cars in the second game I think. Also Vito is just a much more interesting character than many Mafia protagonists. He's got baggage but he's just shy of skirting the straight and narrow rather than feeling like a goon in waiting. I like the characters, the music, the map, the gameplay in this game better than either one or three, but regardless of my preferences if you don't mind a game with some difficult but varied levels, some really excellent visual storytelling (look at all the context clues to the people you meet just by their mannerisms, what they wear, the way they live...etc) and exciting action that doesn't feel quite as restrictive as either stop and pop or spray and pray. You can take cover, but you can run and gun, and you can do both at the push of a button. If you don't mind some old school mob cliches, this is an excellent crime yarn.
I remember the original Mafia fondly not so much as a game as an interactive gangster film. The problem with the very first game was the driving mechanics were beyond terrible, making just the first mission a pain. Thankfully that bit has been polished somewhat for the remaster, although this is more of a remake as they recorded all new dialogue with new actors, new locations, and of course shiny new graphics. It's still a blast to tool around in the 30s and there's some quality of life improvements others might dislike but I appreciate (game pauses when you open the map and location markers are on the mini-map along with street guides). Combat is clunky. Hitting a button instead of using the mouse for melee makes no sense and the ALT key mapped to block makes hitting Q for a swing and then reaching down to hit ALT for a block ridiculous. Shooting is fine. You can turn off aim assist thankfully. The cutscenes and animations are AMAZING. You can feel the performances of these characters with each subtle emotion carried by incidental movements of their faces or gestures. You can actually start to understand this cast as people, not just as NPCs. This part is worth the price of admission: authentic dialogue, great performances I think, and an excellent lively feel to everything from people to cars to the detailed environments. Some caveats: everything in the missions has been simplified. Want to lose a pursuit? Head for an inexplicable road work area dotted around. This is much more like Mafia 2 in that you tend to spend a lot of time walking around being talked to from objective to objective. Some interactive elements are lost (you can't ride the train anymore). But as a dense, beautiful, and compelling walkthrough of a violent part of history this is unparalleled.
I picked up this game physically way back when and I had an excellent time before I'd even heard of Diablo. Going back, Fate is definitely Diablo JR from the G-rated violence to the fairytale theme, but it innovated the genre too. It was the first time that I played an ARPG with pets to carry your stuff and fight by your side, which makes dungeon crawling far less tedious. There's fishing too! Torchlight really borrowed a lot from this game, although some of the developers may have been the same. The Celtic music gives it a feel all it's own: more whimsy and exploration than darkness and danger. Like other Action RolePlaying Games you have to love the loop to enjoy the experience. You get quests, go to the dungeon, travel down layer by layer fighting monsters and gathering new equipment while earning experience to improve abilities and spells. Simple, classic, clean. It can get repetitive but you don't play this kind of game if you're expecting Skyrim or Baulder's gate. It's procedurally generated so even the final boss is entirely random and your Hub might have the same buildings and NPCs but in different locations every new game you play. You can spend money in town to buy higher level gear or just grind for it in the dungeon itself. Also you can spend money for the bard in town to improve your reputation which means better prices for bartered items. Fate is charming, speedy, bright and full of color even in the deepest dungeon. Take it in doses and go in looking for a light and user friendly adventure!
This is undeniably Benoit Sokal (Syberia) from the art deco buildings to the lush but bleak landscapes and quirky characters going about their lives. Know what you're getting into here: this is NOT a traditional point and click game. You will be gathering evidence and combining items, but more often you will be comparing testimonies, checking fingerprints and footprints and comparing them to the suspects who follow little schedules all across the island. It's pretty open ended: ask anyone anything anytime until you get the answer you need to progress. There's some pretty deep lore about the hotel and the people you will need to read carefully to understand the nuances at play. But some things do come across as a bit arbitrary. I was stuck on the beach until I realized I wasn't supposed to gather evidence or make up my mind about the crime scene, I was ONLY supposed to determine if there was anything to suggest foul play and then send the info to my personal computer. You will get into some situations where you think ahead of the game but if you keep an eye on the specific question you're supposed to answer in every section you should be oriented correctly to follow up the trail of clues and testimonies. Another little issue is you do a LOT of running around. You're going to go back and forth constantly so it's a good thing the landscape it pretty. There's some niggling issues with evidence seemingly obvious but it taking multiple checks to verify and there's the issue you'll notice that characters do not move their lips in conversations, but this didn't completely destroy the mystique and the joy of discovery and investigation this game has to offer I think. Don't go in expecting either Frogware or Syberia. This is a different beast of talking, comparing, and exploring to your heart's content (especially if you turn off the time limit!)