The original Diablo is one of my favorite Blizzard titles. I played Diablo 2 first but I found I didn't like it as much as D1. Part of that is due to D1's slower pace and greater focus on atmosphere. You play as a traveller who goes to the town of Tristram and learns a cult as sprung up in an old monastary outside the town and you have to defeat a demon at the bottom of the dungeon, the titular Diablo. The various characters around town are very memorable. I also really appreciate how simple the rpg elements are in comparison to D2. While combat lacks the same depth as D1 I found I enjoyed it more due to the game's slow pace and focus on atmosphere and storytelling. It's a far cry from how clicknloot games play now where storytelling is an afterthought. You are invested in Diablo's plot from beginning to end. It also has a brilliant final level and a stunning ending. Genuinely it is one of the most memorable 90s era games and one I'm so happy GOG got ahold of.
Soldier of Fortune was a powerhouse of an FPS when it released. It was extremely impressive for its time and was hugely influential when it first released. The developers of the game weren't satisfied by the limitations they had at the time. The game had extremely impressive gore and animations and wasn't even made with skeletal animations. Not only that but the environments of the game were extremely steller for the time. Soldier of Fortune released around the same time as Kingpin on the same engine but looks far better and plays a lot better. Infact I would easily say Soldier of Fortune is the best Id Tech 2 engine game. You owe it to yourself to play this game. It's one of the best first person shooters from this era.
When "The Bureau XCOM Declassified" was first announced it was going to be a first person shooter just with slight tactical elements and a completely different aesthetic to the original Xcom games. This caused a severe fan backlash and resulted in the devs saying very vitriolic statements like "you can't sell a strategy game in today's climate". Implying that the publisher 2K was just putting this game out to cash in on an old IP that still had name recognition. After this backlash Firaxis jumped in and created Xcom Enemy Unknown. Which was exactly what the fans wanted. Enemy Unknown did so surprisingly well it even funded an expansion pack and later a sequel. This begged the question, what would happen to the first person shooter project? Well it was turned into this game. The Bureau was turned into a third person shooter with Mass Effect elements. A lot of which seem out of place like they were shoehorned in as a response to the backlash. A lot of the problems with this game amount to it just being very safe and generic. The alien designs look extremely generic compared to the original first person shooter trailer. The main character is extremely bland and forgettable. The game's twist is the only memorable story moment and it leads to a very unsatisfying ending choice. It's unsurprising this game was so quickly forgotten by people because it really felt like the product an apathetic publisher was just churning out to make back on their investment. This to me is the definition of an average to mediocre game. Overall even to fans of shooters I would suggest looking elsewhere. It feels very boring and passionless. And I would sincerely suggest getting Xcom Enemy Unknown instead. Which felt highly polished and very inspired by comparison.
Superhot is an indie first person shooter running on the Unity engine. It has such a novel premise I'm surprised it hasn't been done before. In this game, time slows down to a near standstill when you stop moving. And progresses forwards when you move and when you fire. The development team implemented this very well. Bullets fly through the air and are very easy to spot among the white level textures. The game has this very Hotline Miami feel to it. You can throw your guns at enemies to stun them, you can throw objects to block bullets, and you can even shoot bullets in midair as they fly towards you. For a game that should feel slow and calculated, it feels very fast paced and rhythmic. Stylistically the game is very interesting. The UI resembles a DOS based operating system. Enemies resemble low poly characters from old video games. At the same time the environments look very crisp and everything stands out very well. If you're a fan of films like Tron you'll definitely like this game. However, all that being said the game is not perfect, and it's very hard for me to recommend. For the 25$ asking price there's very little content and you can mostly beat it in a handful of hours. The level design also maintains the same white sterile aesthetic and doesn't have that much variety to it. While the core gameplay is pretty solid it appeals to a certain kind of player. It appeals to the kind of player that wants to play a level over and over to try and achieve a perfect run. If you're that kind of player I do recommend this game a lot. But to everyone else I'd say wait a little for the dev to either create a level editor or lower the price.
Revenant has a lot of things going for it. It has very good voice acting, great environments and the gameplay itself isn't half bad. At least that's the way it starts. Most people I know that have played Revenant usually didn't get that far into it. It is a very unbalanced mess of broken mechanics and half baked ideas. The storyline starts off very strong with it's premise of the player being a resurrected god king. But it eventually devolves into a very generic video game plot. It doesn't help the story ends on a very unsatisfying note. But the biggest broken aspect of Revenant is the gameplay. The enemies respawn constantly, the difficulty spikes halfway through the game to the point of being punishingly unfair, and the frequent loading screens and repetitive maze dungeons grow extremely stale very fast. It becomes a game about testing your patience. To put it into perspective there's a boss fight partway through that strips you of your weapons and forces you to fight a very challenging enemy with your fists. And it's not optional. So ontop of being a stat based RPG, every playthrough you must level up your fists just to get past that fight or use a cheatcode. The game in general feels very unpolished and like they didn't test it very well. If you're really curious I suppose it's worth playing but I could never stomach finishing it. And every time I try and replay the game I just remember how frustrating it gets and I stop playing it. As much as people claim Revenant is a forgotten gem, to me it represents one of the reasons why games from the 90s are frequently forgotten.
In every way this game is worse than Saints Row 2. Apart from it's port. The storyline was much worse. The protagonist is portrayed as much stupider and never makes decisions for himself. A far cry compared to how he acted in SR2 where he made all of his decisions. Shaundi acts like a very cold one-note character compared to how she acted in SR2, which is even made fun of in SR4. The villains are underwhelming because the storyline is very nonsensical and has no weight to it. There's nothing to get invested in with the story and as a result you do it just because you have to. Most of the missions are just activities from the main game and there's only a handful of actual story missions. But the worst part about it was the gameplay and world. The world of Steelport was a huge downgrade compared to SR2. In SR2 all of the mission locations like the Ultor building and the prison were all explorable outside of missions, and had things like collectables and side quests. In Saints Row 3 none of this is the case. All of your safe houses have copied and pasted interiors and there's no interior customization. The gameplay is much more bullet spongey and enemies take a full clip of your assault rifle to kill. When you kill or get rid of a gang leader in the story their gang remains in the city. By comparison in Saints Row 2 when you took out a gang you destroyed their money distribution, took over their territory and killed their leader. It really made you feel like you were actually taking over the city and not just a tourist. The game also lacks a day-to-night cycle. Which is something SR2 had and every other sandbox game has. They also removed competitive multiplayer. SR3 just felt really rushed. THQ was losing money and they had to spit this game out. I don't see why people call it the best game in the series. It hasn't aged well only 4 years after release.
Defiance gets a lot of flak even today. The game took it's combat system from Devil May Cry, the puzzle mechanics were easier and less important and the gameplay all around was fairly generic in comparison. Not to mention the player has to find all their Soul Reaver elements again in this game. (Even though you spent the entirety of SR2 finding them). But you didn't play these games for the gameplay, you did it for the story. The game does wrap up the story in an alright way, it could have been done better though. So if you expect the best of the series it's far from it. If anything I was surprised this game wasn't a colossal failure. So for that price it's nice if you want to see the end of the story. Now we just need the two Blood Omen games to wrap up the series on Gog.
