I'm not a huge fan of ARPGs in general, but I enjoyed Torchlight 2 a fair bit, around 100 hours. Grim Dawn, however, is a slog. Every time I try to push myself to play this, it literally makes me sleepy. I start yawning and falling asleep. What are the problems? Well, to begin, bad animations. The animations are laughable. They are so bad that they ruin any "coolness factor" of the gear you collect. Got a cool-looking hammer? Great, now watch your character swing it around in an unrealistic and clunky manner. The gameplay is also generally poor. I chose veteran difficulty, yet the game was extremely easy. I didn't die once in like 10 hours or something even though I was playing very carelessly (remember, I was half-asleep thanks to the game). Grim Dawn likes to throw hordes of effortless, 1-shottable enemies at you. Only the occasional special enemy is somewhat tougher, and they're few and far between. They're still not challenging, though, because you can easily beat them by kiting them around and shooting. It's just tedious to deplete their HP. What's good is the world design and environmental graphics. Character graphics are absolutely hideous, though, some of the worst I've seen probably ever. I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone but the most hardcore ARPG hack 'n' slash fan who's exhausted every other option.
Too many people are unaware of this tactical shooter gem. I'd rank it right up there with SWAT 3/4 and the Rainbow Six series. I don't have many bad things to say about this game. It features great tactical squad-based WW2 gameplay as the SAS. There's a lot of equipment to choose from and lots of great missions with a lot of variety. Then it has this amazing tactical map, on which you can assign precise orders to your squad members; this lifts the tactical aspect of this game to a whole another level. Direct orders can also be issued to your teammates if you're not fond of the tactical map. The shooting and gunplay itself is a lot of fun too. This is one of those games I keep coming back to over and over again, and now I'm happy that it's finally available on GOG. I'd recommend this game to every tactical shooter fan.
SWAT 4 hasn't aged one bit; it's still as good today as it was when it came out. It's still the best that the genre has to offer. Leading your SWAT team through the single player campaign is great, and if that's not your thing, you can always go and play some multiplayer CO-OP or adversarial. The campaign is quite lengthy with the expansion included, and every mission is as good as the previous one. There's also a healthy mod community for the game, and new mods are still coming out today. I highly recommend this to anyone who prefers methodical gameplay and planning instead of running and gunning. You won't find cinematic setpieces here. How you do each mission is up to you, and you only.
THE. BEST. TURN. BASED. STRATEGY. GAME. EVER (But make sure you download the 1.13 mod!) If you think the new XCOM game was good? Well, you haven't seen anything! THIS IS THE REAL DEAL!
