If you are the sort of person who can laugh off missing a ton of shots that supposedly have a 99% chance to succeed, then XCOM 2 is for you! This game is equal parts 1): gaining true tactical mastery over the game's mechanics, and 2): being helpless against one sadistically lopsided RNG. You will cheer, you will cry, you will swear, you will feel your teeth clench as you accidentally trigger a pod of enemies at the very end of your turn. No matter how careful or smart you are, things can always go ridiculously sideways - and they will, a lot. Don't misunderstand me; the game's unforgiving nature is actually one of its best qualities. This is a game about risk assessment and damage control, not about always doing things perfectly. Your knowledge of the rules and the integrity of the strategies you employ will improve over time and greatly increase the survival rate of your troops. You will lose plenty of runs, but each time you try, you will find yourself getting closer and closer to successfully completing the game. You WILL be rewarded for improving your tactical-thinking skills. When you start to see the fruits of your labor, mowing down every enemy on the map before they have a chance to fire, it's a uniquely rewarding experience. But things will never get... let's say... boring. The RNG is a compulsive liar that really, really hates you. (No 99% shot should EVER be taken for granted!) Fog-of-war is ill-defined, meaning you may reveal enemies in a part of the map you thought you could already see. Soldiers will "panic" (go AWOL and take random actions) at the absolute worst moments. Your favorite and most decorated soldier will suddenly get one-shotted by the most unlikely attack. But let me tell you something. I have been fighting this game on and off since its release - almost a decade. This past week I FINALLY finished the campaign... and I feel like a friggin' god. That feeling wouldn't be possible with a victory that came any easier. That's XCOM, baby.
Spore is an oddity. Despite being creatively original, mechanically unique, and immensely popular in its day, it somehow managed to escape being the inspiration for a thousand cash-grabbing copycats. This means that, nearly two decades later, Spore is still a one-of-a-kind classic that retains its novelty for any modern-day gamer just now deciding to give it a go. To start off, the scope of this game is absolutely, absurdly massive. I mean that thematically AND mechanically. Each savegame spans billions of years. Your perspective starts with a single-celled organism and gradually zooms out, so to speak, to encompass an entire galaxy. To illustrate this huge amount of time and evolution, the game actually *changes genres* no fewer than four times. And we're not splitting hairs here, either - the game literally goes from "flOw" to RPG to RTS to a hybrid space-trading god-sim. You will go from putting eyes on an ameoba to putting sails on a ship to putting genetically engineered lifeforms on any planet you wish. Just the fact that all of this is present in a single game is insane and beautiful. So why didn't its novelty and popularity spawn a host of lifeless Spore clones? Because it's not actually a very good game. Spore quickly becomes butter spread over too much bread. Each of its many states of being is a shallow gameplay experience that, because they are all only vaguely interrelated, fails to lend depth to any of the others. You will always come away from it feeling that something was missing - that perhaps you had just played a feature-stripped open beta. Then you remember that it was 2008, and this was just how it shipped. But with all of that said, there's still something wonderful about it. You need an imagination to fill in the gaps, but I enjoy that. Do try it out. You will either find it charming and come back to it every now and again (as I do), or you will be bored and never come back. Either way, it's a rarity you've got to experience at least once.
I wish more games were like Kenshi. There's not much I can add that hasn't already been said about this gem, but I'll throw in my two cents for others who might have similar taste. - It artfully blends the RTS and RPG genres like nobody's business. I've never seen anything else that has even attempted to do this. - It is a true open-world sandbox experience. Absolutely nothing is trying to bottleneck you into anything, not even questlines. Your characters can do whatever they darn well please. - The setting is wonderfully fleshed-out and interesting. But more importantly, though there is plenty of ambient lore to discover if you want to, the game NEVER forces you through any kind of story. No time-wasting cutscenes, no boring plot that the writers desperately need you to care about, no wading through fifteen pages of dialogue before you can even play. Every time you boot it up, you can jump right in. No bull. (Interestingly, this actually makes me more invested in the dialogue and worldbuilding that is there. The writing is an absolute gem. Funny, serious, intriguing, silly... it's all done so well.) - Every member of your clan is customizable, which gives the game an almost Sims-like open-ended story generator feeling. You will get very, very attached to your people... - ...And then mourn them for IRL days when the brutal difficulty, gruelingly slow progression, and your own overconfident bravado get some or all of them killed. This is one of those games where the seeming unfairness of the difficulty actually enhances the experience. You learn to love the pain. Then fifty hours in, when you finally kill your first goat without losing leg, it will feel like a true triumph for your faction. Such an emotional rollercoaster! - As a game made by mostly a single person over many years, of course there is some jank - but if you go in with the right expectations, all its little quirks are forgiveable. This beautiful timesink will stay in my top five forever.
Point-and-click adventure games generally don't have any replay value, and this is no exception - but Fran Bow has left such an impression on me that it will always have a place in my heart. The game's combination of the macabre and the innocent is truly unique and skillfully done. First and foremost, the game is horror-driven, particularly in the opening chapter. This will be off-putting to those who do not see any value in being disturbed. If you fall into this category, you can stop being curious about this game right now. Seriously. There are plenty of great adventure games that won't traumatize you like this one will. Now. With that out of the way, let me say that this game does horror in a way I have never seen before: it infuses it with childlike innocence and hope. The story really is a STORY with themes and a message, not just some meaningless gore-fest without substance. It will make you feel intensely unsettled, but then it will turn right around and make you feel warmth and cuteness. The dissonance is well-executed and, in a word, delicious. In terms of its worthiness as a LucasArts-style adventure game, it definitely pulls its weight. Puzzle difficulty is nicely balanced - neither too simple nor too obtuse. (This is with one very stupid exception... you will know it when you get to it. I do recommend looking up the solution in this one particular instance.) The narrative is a mix of literal and abstract, and some players may find the non-linearity annoying. I, however, feel that it is the kind of story that can only be understood after it is finished. The ending (no spoilers!) initially felt like a let-down when I first completed it, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. It really gave me something to chew on for a bit. If you can stomach it, I dare you to take the ride! This is one twisted piece of beautiful art.
I'm not the sort to bash games just because I enjoy complaining. And this really isn't a "bash," so to speak; for what it is, the game is a quality piece of playable art. But if you're looking for anything other than that (like fun, for example), I'd recommend steering away from this one. The art direction is its core strength. With its minimalistc visuals and soundtrack, the game really nails the quiet, eerie, depressing atmosphere it's going for. The experience left me feeling more emotionally hollow than many of the over-the-top apocalypse settings of some AA and AAA titles. Whether or not you will enjoy this hollowed-out feeling will depend on your taste, of course, but for my part, it served as a pretty good deterent against starting another campaign. And that's saying something. After your first playthrough, the game unlocks an "all dogs" mode where you can play, ostensibly, as an entire troup of fluffy shiba inus. As great as that sounds, the game just really couldn't pull me in enough to want to play it again, no matter how many shiba inus it promised to let me shove into a minivan. See, there are games that are addictive because they are simple, and there are games that are fun because they are difficult. This game is both exceedingly simple and brutally difficult (on any setting beyond the default). But the way it combines these two things just feels... empty. Repetitive. Joyless. I love tactical turn-based strat games, so it's not the mechanical genre that I dislike. There's just something I can't quite put my finger on that makes this experience feel excessively flat. Each playthrough will take you less than five hours, which is a really disappointing length of time for a $20 game. Endgame consists of dry "play it again but with even MORE difficulty" challenges that try to stretch out that time but fail to motivate you to actually play more. It's a quality indie title, so I wish I could speak higher praise. But the fact is that it's just "meh."
Bottom line: if you are having difficulties getting the original on-disc game to run in recent Windows, THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT. It's absolutely worth a re-buy to save yourself the headache. I recently came across the Re-Volt CD I had as a kid, and of course I immediately went to see if my Windows 10 gaming setup could install and run it. The answer was yes... at first... with caveats. The game ran just fine, but textures were missing and sound was spotty. Tweaking compatibility settings and applying various fixes did not help. Running the track editor required me to find a depricated DirectX-related .dll file on the internet and add it to the install location. (Scary. Bad. Do not try this at home, kids.) This was all annoying, but I could live with it, as the game did technically run well enough to play. So I played a bunch - won all the championships, unlocked half the cars. That's when the game randomly decided to wipe all my progress from the registry. I have an above-average familiarity with stuff like this in Windows, but it was clear that whatever software incongruity was going on here was beyond my ability to rectify. I had fallen back in love with the game at this point, so you can imagine how happy I was to find it here on GOG. As with 99% of the purchases I have made on GOG, the game just freaking works, unencumbered by the less-than-ideal workarounds, game-altering fan patches, and sketchy internet advice that is typically involved in getting games of this era to run. Having been able to closely compare this release to the original on-disc version, I can confirm that this is 100% the game you remember, just with support for modern screen resolutions. It was absolutely worth the five bucks to be able to have this game back in my rotation.
This game definitely deserves its cult classic status. It's on the shorter side, but what's there is an absolute joy; proof that twelve solid hours of fun is better than 60+ hours of slog. The jokes had me gut-laughing quite a few times. The graphics are charming. The soundtrack is perfectly befitting of the game's age and style. Gameplay mechanics are delightfully simplistic - not heavy with gratuitous complexity or crunch. Overall difficulty (including combat, progression, and what few puzzle-type elements exist) sits right in the sweet zone for a game of this length. Playing with a keyboard feels a little clunky, but thankfully this version of Dink includes serviceable plug-and-play controller support; I played with an eight-button Genesis/Mega Drive style controller and loved every minute. My only gripe is that buttons cannot be re-mapped from within the game itself. And all of this delightfulness was FREE! Do yourself a favor and just try it out. You, like Dink, have nothing to lose.
