Dishonored? Outstanding. Superb. A critical darling for good reason. Dishonored's DLC? Also outstanding! Genuinely integral to the lore and expanding the gameplay sandbox. Dishonored 2? One of the best ImSim puzzle boxes you'll ever play! Dishonored: Death of the Outsider? Utterly forgettable, clearly rushed
Not an instant recommendation, but if you like counter/parry heavy brawlers and don't mind a lack of story, you might get something out of this.
As someone who normally has lots of issues with Naughty Dog's work, these two games are exceptional in their attempt to grow the series up in many praiseworthy ways. Better gameplay, far more sensible writing, and I appreciate the amount of player agency. That said, this is with the caveat that the PC port does NOT run very smoothly, even on fairly beefy hardware. So be ready to have to tweak settings a bunch.
You have to understand something going into God of War 2018 - this is a game all about its story. If you're for that? You'll probably have a good time. If you try to treat it like the old God of War games though, and expect nothing but combat and melodrama? This ain't it. For me, I'm conflicted, as I enjoy both styles, and the way the 2018 entry tries to square things between them is heavily in favor of the cutscenes and dialogue as opposed to combat that truly feels intuitive. Also, unless played on PC, the camera controls are horrendously sluggish - do not play this on a controller if you have the option.
Vampyr was my 2018 GOTY and that remains the case to this day. From its handling of cause and effect to its tragic central romance, there are few action-RPG hybrids quite like this. Yes, it isn't perfect - you can tell it had budget constraints all over the place - but you easily look past them once you delve into its richly drawn world of London on the verge of collapse. I get that critics were harder on it at launch, but you won't regret giving this one a whirl. It's basically The Witcher with elements of Bloodborne thrown in for good measure! I just offer one quick bit of advice: don't choose the blood talons as your primary attack ability. You'll thank me later if you opt for either of the other two options.
You have to understand something when playing this one. As a cohesive whole... it's neither cohesive, nor whole. However, as a series of promising tech demos of what a good Call of Cthulhu game could be, you might get something out of it. You get to see it as an adventure game, an RPG, a stealth game, a walking sim, and even a (and I'm being very generous with this genre classification) first-person shooter. Yet none of these truly amount to a larger experience. It will be over before your know it, and you'll still not quite be sure what the point of it all was. Cyanide make good games. This isn't one of them, sadly.
I remember when I first had the chance to look at Kholat. I thought it'd be this incredible journey. It has a great starting premise of a real-life mystery and even Sean Bean narrating... and it is by far one of the lamest walking sims I've ever played. I'm not saying this as someone opposed to the genre either. I loved Dear Esther, Apsulov was an outstandingly good time even though its minimal gameplay gimmicks didn't hold up under scrutiny, and The Stanley Parable is one of the best examples of what this medium can accomplish. Kholat is nowhere close to that. Kholat is... watching paint dry, expecting something interesting to happen at some point, and then when it finally dries, exclaiming "Wait, that's it??" I appreciate the artistry of the audio-visual work but they're in service to a nothing-burger that I just can't recommend to anyone.
Aspyr fumbles it again! While it's great to see Bounty Hunter finally on PC, this is not the ideal version of the game. The screenshots and trailers not only misrepresent how the game actually tends to play out, but the port itself is a serious mess. Camera glitches in vents - and even in wide open areas with Ultra-Wide. They changed how aiming works by default (you're supposed to use lock-on, but they made your default be manual aim) that completely upends the balancing. Yet they didn't remove terrible things like the "5 continues and then you restart the level over" or some enemies who were always ludicrously overpowered (bosses are ironically pretty easy by comparison to some basic threats!) After this and Battlefront Collection, I'm so over Aspyr and Disney casually trotting out classic games in subpar states. You'd be better off emulating this and using save states. The game itself is a great mix of Tomb Raider and Max Payne with little sprinklings of ideas from Metal Gear Solid and Hitman thrown in. You should definitely play Bounty Hunter! Just... not in this form.
Days Gone is probably the last truly GREAT game from Sony, for those who remember back when their brand was weirdly experimental AAA titles rather than just playable movies. This is the last gasp of that era, and runs beautifully on PC. The story is paced out like a well-written novel, the little mechanical nuances are great, and it's the antithesis of the Ubisoft copy-paste open world design so many other games worshipfully follow these days. This is what a zombie apocalypse game should be. Darn well deserves a sequel far more than the edgelord nonsense Naughty Dog's been pumping out lately.
I can't believe I have to say this as plenty GOG ports still have multiplayer functionality - but you need to grab F.E.A.R. 3 on Steam. Its multiplayer component (2 for campaign, 4 for pvp and the other co-op modes) is one of the main selling points of its design. Even darn Zero Punctuation praised it for the smart co-op design and Yahtzee frigging hates multiplayer. Releasing this on GOG without any way to play with friends at the same price it goes for on every other platform is an utter joke. They should've at least included Contractions in a singleplayer form in addition to the main campaign - but given they literally copy-pasted the PR text for the co-op version on the store page, it's clear Warner Bros. wasn't exactly worried about ensuring their product stands on its best features.
