Jedi Outcast has nice plot, good missions and is a very good game overall but the most important feature of this game is its lightsaber combat. The next game in the series, Jedi Academy, might have had more lightsaber types and more lightsaber duels but in Jedi Outcast the fights and fighting mechanics were much better (also the plot and missions in Outcast are better). For starters lightsabers are deadly, most fights end in a single good hit. The lightsaber duels are usually intense struggles of dodging and parrying until one side makes a mistake. For comparison, in Jedi Academy the fights are usually much shorter, easier and you usually need several good hits to kill an enemy (a ridiculous amount of hits in case of some bosses). This simplification was probably a direct result of the added lightsaber types. Jedi outcast also did a lot better job in making the lightsaber duels feel special, instead of wiping out lightsaber users in every second room like in Academy, there were only a handfull of force users in the game and every one of those encounters felt memorable and challenging. Jedi Outcast is the best star wars lightsaber/jedi game there is.
Death to Spies is an interesting mix of Hitman style social stealth and sneaking that reminds me of the Commandos 2. The strongest point of this game is the mission design which is usually rather open and let's you freely use your own tactics for completing the objectives. For example, in one of my favorite maps your mission is simply to kill 3 targets in a large and open German camp, how you decide to do that is entirely up to you. It's not a perfect game however: some of the controls are really awkward and the game suffers from near perfect lack of voiced dialogue. If you think you can live with that and if you enjoy stealth games and/or WW2 games you should definitely give Death to Spies a go.
KotOR is definitely a game that every Star Wars fan should play. The atmosphere is great and manages to catch the feeling of Star Wars very nicely, especially planets Taris, Korriban and Kashyyk are very interesting and unique settings. The plot is well written and has some nice twists. Characters and dialogue are good and plentiful but many of the "dark side" dialogue options are really cheesy and kinda miss the essence of dark side (imagine Darth Vader stealing lunch money and kicking beggars for no particular reason) and the game doesn't really offer or support neutral approach as maxing light or dark side will give you essential benefits. When playing Light Side character (the way it's meant to be played really) the options are much more natural. This is pretty common problem with BioWare games although black and white morality fits a Star Wars game better than most. The gameplay and combat have their roots in D&D rules, it's tactical and interesting enough but it isn't the most smooth and refined system for a videogame. You will probably find yourself constantly running back and fort between free healer and the hard place or sitting on your hands in some corner waiting for the force(=mana) bar to recharge so you can heal another bit of your health bar before waiting some more. All in all KotOR has aged pretty well and it is the best cRPG with Star Wars setting. The occasional bits of mediocrity are easily offset by the overall great quality and some really memorable bits like [possible mild spoilers] infiltrating the Sith Academy as an acolyte or the Wookie family feuds and betrayals at Kashyyk.
Stronghold is NOT a hardcore medieval city building simulator and if you are expecting that you will be disappointed. Instead it covers the middle ground between SimCity and Age of Empires and does that very well. An average mission is constant balancing between food, people, production, money and defenses. The actual siege warfare suffers from the very weak and exploitable AI (reason for 4 stars instead of 5) but is still way ahead of it's time and surprisingly authentic even by today's standards. I strongly recommend this to all fans of city builder and/or rts games.
Blitzkrieg 2 great game which has interesting campaigns, authentic units with upgrades and stats that make sense, nice armor&penetration system and no base building, which is big plus in my opinion. The biggest (and almost only) issue with the game is path-finding AI which often makes it extremely frustrating to play: Even a short movement usually manages to obliterate any formation and the worst part is that when you give a group new move order it will try to use the current formation (which usually is total mess) instead of deploying in a line. You can even change the direction the mess is deployed in but units don't rotate to that direction which makes even that pointless. This wouldn't be such a huge problem if maps were big and open but instead, almost every map is a cluster of tight passages and obstacles. The result usually looks like drunks driving bumper cars under cannon fire and more often than not the weak side and rear armors are facing the enemy.
First hour of Luftrauser is rewardin achievement hunt with constant part unlocks and plenty of variety. Visual style, music and the atmosphere in general are pretty unique. However, after the basic part are unlocked (most likely in less than hour) there's still a last set of parts and (mostly useless) color themes to get but the achievements start to become frustratingly hard, leveling slow and the same gameplay with same enemies on the same open sea map starts to get old. The game could really use the same variety on maps and enemies that it offers on Lufrausers. As it is, it's really expensive for one hour of fun.
Last Federation is a 4X game without all the micromanagement that is usually involved with shoot 'em up tactical combat. The strongest point of the game is the true diversity of the races and the better than usual diplomacy. Each race can effect others in different ways, some races are moved by money, some by voters and others by entirely different things. Every race will join the federation for different reasons. Tactical combat is a mix between space rangers and shoot em up. It serves it's purpose and is tactical enough but visually hard to follow. The biggest problem which affects all the aspects of the game is that it still needs a lot of refinement and polish: There are some small bugs here and there, effects of different actions aren't in any sensible balance with each other and the game pretty much forces you to fight tactical battles all the time. Also the grindy endgame is quite a disappointment after the very tense and tactical early game where every action matters. The actual Federation is in practice only a forced non-aggression pact and doesn't really make the members act in any unison and feels really artificial overall. It's fun to play as it is but you just can't help noticing that pretty much every edge is still rough.
