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This is really not a bad deal for 3 of the better classic motorcycle racing games of the late 90s-early 2000s. The first two games are pure arcade racers, kinda like Screamer or early Test Drive games with bikes or Road Rash without the fighting. It's tight, almost feel like they belong on arcade cabinets, and pretty straightforward. These games are great fun in short bursts, but aren't particularly deep. You have the bikes (road and motocross), the tracks, go and have fun! The third game is the most contentious one, as it not only got rid of some of the series mainstays like a career mode (here instead you have a bunch of individual races and championships that allow you to earn points to then buy a handful of extra tracks and bikes) or track editor, but also tried to shift the handling from pure arcade to simcade, with the bikes feeling more floaty and heavy as a result. It still has the same modes as before, but now they are given equal billing credit (whereas before the racing mode was the main dish and everything else was garnish). As a result the game feels somewhat disjointed and incoherent, but it also resulted in more content for non-racing modes. In particular this led to what i still think is the most accomplished videogame depiction of moto trials - essentially floor-is-lava kind of obstacle courses that you need to hop around on the bike. Ubisoft's Trials series later exploded in popularity, but those games are pure arcade (they are essentially 2D), whereas here you have a genuine attempt to translate the niche discipline of moto trial in a videogame. I spent hours trying to nail those courses, but even then it's not going to keep you occupied for more than 3 or 4 hours at most. Overall it's a pretty good deal if you want the whole series. If you only want the arcade racing parts you'd be better off just buying the first and game on its own.
The racing part of this game feels disjointed - in fact the entire game kinda feels like a series of minigames in a package that is held together with a common engine that they are running on, but otherwise pretty insulated. The controls for the racing part are somewhat floaty, and while the visuals and sounds could have been considered impressive for the time, they are really nothing to be write home about. At the non-sale price it is quite overpriced, I would not pay anything over $5 for this game, but to me it always had one and half redeeming feature. The half is the traffic, I always found it very fun to zip around, and this game has notably more traffic, even if it's acting totally erratically and is in no way predictable (so I suppose it is somewhat realistic, as you're racing around Paris). The main attraction, for me at least, was always the trial mode. Unlike the previous games (or rather game, as the the trial mode was only present in World Tour for the PlayStation before), where the racing modes were clearly the main dish, with everything else acting like garnish, here the devs kinda tried to make all modes equal, and this resulted in what I think is still the best videogame depiction of motorcycle trials (obstacle courses). Now obviously it's a pretty niche sport within a niche itself, but if you want to have a somewhat realistic depiction of motorcycle trials, this is the best it ever got (as far as I know), as it's full-3D and features somewhat realistic physics (for 2001 anyway). UbiSoft's Trials series took off about half a decade afterwards, but that game is essentially 2D, and is anything but realistic (even though it's fun). So, tl;dr, not really worth it if you're looking for motorcycle racing, the previous games are arguably superior, but if you are a trials fan, this is a very fun little time waster.
Great continuation of the concepts introduced in AoW3 and Planetfall. Mechanically this game feels like a big expansion for the latter, or an extensive conversion of its mechanics to a fantasy setting. If you enjoyed Civilization (Galactic or otherwise), you will probably be very happy with the macro-level strategy that this offers, as well as the high amount of customizability you get when choosing your "civ" and the incentive to try out new ones. It also throws in the adventure RPG elements of HoMM, and I think it does a really good job of it - the menus could have been clearer (sometimes it feels like the devs sacrificed ease of use in favour of appearance), and some mechanics need a slightly more hands-on tutorial, but it's not overwhelming like some other 4X games. I really think it's an almost perfect blend for those who either want a "grander" HoMM or a more "personal" Civ. It has a lot of customizability and automatization options to aid newbies and yet more than enough replayability to keep the more wisened 4X veterans occupied for dozens (if not hundreds) of hours. From a technical standpoint in my experience there's much to write home about. It feels like the Steam version has more issues, but in my 10 or so hours I haven't yet encountered a crash to desktop and the performance has been smooth (I have a Ryzen 9 5900x and GTX3070) - I only just wish there was an in-game FPS limiter option (currently only various vsync), as I don't need 90+fps in a game like this. I enabled it on driver level and am a happy camper. On a side note, kinda sad that some refund a great game because it gives more gender OPTIONS, like it's something unacceptable in a high-fantasy setting where one can play as giant rats or mole people. Refer to one J.R.R. Tolkien, who described dwarf-women as "in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other people cannot tell them apart" all the way back in 1955.
Charming little RTS from a Ukrainian developer that I remember fondly from the kinder days. The devs were big Total War fans, and it shows. It's a detailed but also limited RTS that focuses on tactics rather than macrostrategic elements. If Total War is a sea, this is a very deep puddle. Arguably, this game suffers from its attention to small detail. The devs were clearly keen to be historically accurate, and most units from every warring side get their own special traits that reflect their historic standing with a truly daunting number of parameters. However, perhaps due to lack of time or resources, there's no real campaign (and obviously no online play anymore), only a series of vaguely connected individual battles that can be played in chronological order (5 nations in the main game and a focus on Rus' in the expansion). This makes it feel disjointed, as there's very little continuity between battles and you don't really feel like you're part of some bigger campaign like you do in the Total War games. Unlike Total War series you don't get to place your units on the map, and the maps themselves are somewhat small and cramped (though it gets better in the expansion). The terrain plays a larger role too, but it all depends on the AI, which is very uneven and inconsistent. Sometimes it just mindlessly rushes you with cavalry, only for it to be slaughtered, sometimes it stays completely static, only to be shooed off by passing horsemen and break ranks. It feels like to compensate for the AI deficiencies the developers always put you at a notable numerical disadvantage. This gets even worse in the expansion. The animations are just okay for the time and the textures are murky. Some people, who really ONLY want to revel in the tactical aspects of THOSE PARTICULAR medieval battlefields, will probably find plenty to enjoy here. It's cheap (I paid less than $3.50 for this batch of 4 Fulqrum/1C titles) and I am sure someone out there will enjoy its tactical depth.
This game is essentially a Max Payne 2 mod - it is one of the very few non-Remedy developed games (indeed, perhaps the only one) that runs on the Max-FX engine, and it really shows. The game feels like a large mod/conversion of Max Payne 2 made by a group of enthusiasts. Unfortunately that translates to a very cheap videogame, which lacks the original game's atmosphere, story, level design, and essentially almost everything that made it feel like a quality title. However it feels cheap because it WAS (and, at the currented discounted price of $CAD 1.79, still IS) cheap, as in it was not a full-price title on release. The game is quite short, 3-4 hours at most, the story is laughable, sometimes literally so, something you'd see in a 1980s action film, with very predictable twists and paper-thin characters, and the gunplay is FUNDAMENTALLY broken (emphasis on FUN) - while in Max Payne guns fired bullets as objects that that travel through the world, which made bullet time a useful and visually interesting mechanic, here you have hitscan detection, which means all guns essentially fire a laser that connects with its targets instantly. However, the engine was clearly not meant for that, and the developers didn't adapt it to it, so you will soon discover that if you hug a cover (by crouching and facing it, no cover mechanics here) and fire your gun, your shots will still manifest on the other side of the cover, mowing down helpless enemies that can offer no resistance, unable to grasp your cover-phasing powers. Utilizing these god-like powers you can run through the entire game in a couple of hours, enjoying the cheese voice acting and occasional fun glitch. You can play it straight through as well, which makes for a more forgettable experience. For the price that is being charged it is a fine little mindless romp for an evening or two (max) that might make you reminisce about how indie-equivalent titles looked and played like in that era circa 2005.
This is a sort of a Russian version of Elite from 2007, but with really weird lore with (bio)mechanical AIs (housed in spherical data drives) piloting hovercrafts instead of spaceships. You have an overarching goal, which is to create the most powerful AI clan and then basically let out in a sizeable open world to complete it. You are given very little direction on how to do it, and you have a fair degree of freedom on how to develop your character. The problem is that the ambitions of the developers were clearly beyond the technical and budgetary limitations imposed upon them, so the game feels very uneven, buggy, and generally unfriendly towards the player. It will also get quite repetitive around halfway, where you are expected to grind yourself to higher levels. However, it does have its charm. What is an issue though is, as the French reviewer noted as well, the game is not really "updated for compatibility with modern PCs", it is almost guaranteed to crash when you try to start the tutorial. There is a community fix that you can find on Steam community forums. Other than that, this is a Russian game from mid-2000s, which means that the translation is dodgy - it is perfectly understandable but wonky. Also the bugs and glitches are largely still there, which means many of the quests will refuse to trigger until you restart the game, and there will be crashes. Another point is that the game doesn't seem to have the option to download a Russian-language version, even though it is advertised as such on the store page, which is probably a GOG hiccup. But otherwise it can be a fun experience, with some very unconventional setting, and a high degree of freedom even today. It looks rather barren, and the controls can be very uncooperative at first until you upgrade your glider, and it will overstay its welcome, but at this price it is not a bad deal.
However, it's a very low bar to clear. It gets a lot of things right, the atmosphere, the visuals, the sound design. It's very cinematographic too, and still looks decent. However, it can get very repetitive, and once the woah-that's-cool-factor wears off you will start getting tired of the very similar looking grey and brown environments. That's an issue with most Warhammer content though - bright colours tend to be this universe's kryptonite, but you could do better than this game too for sure. The final stretch is better in this respect, and it mixes things up with battle design too, but you need to get to it first. And, more importantly, the GoG version omits multiplayer, which was good fun back in the day. If you intend to play online go with the Steam version. The biggest draw of this game is basically to experience Warhammer 40k Dawn of War games from the point of view of a Space Marine. And the game does do that - at its best it really makes you feel like a right badass, but it can also really drag on at its worst. There are also some minor technical hitches that don't seem to have been fixed. Nothing game-breaking, but you might get stuck on scenery or experience an odd audio stutter. Some other issues, like crashing, can be fixed by turning on V-Sync. The game is also relatively short - you would probably get through the campaign in about 4-5 hours if you know what you're doing. Given all this it definitely is NOT worth the non-sale price for most. Even at -75% it is a bit of a tough sell for non-Warhammer fans, but you can definitely do a fair bit worse.
And it's (mostly) by design. There isn't much to say about the mechanics - it's almost a rail shooter, and all the developers did was tighten up the gunplay, make shots feel impactful, and get rid of truly tedious levels (e.g. Havana) from the first game. The downside is that it made the experience very short, but I think of it less as a videogame, and more as an interactive movie. A movie that is designed to fill you with bleak nauseating unpleasantness that starts badly and only gets worse, a conga line of pain and humiliation that captures the ugliness of violence in a compact 4 hour package. With this game IO really leaned into what it does best, which is sense of style and atmosphere. If the first game tried to pay homage to movies like Michael Mann's Heat (but mostly failed because of a drawn out and incoherent story and pitiful gunplay), this is a lot more like Mann's Collateral or Cloverfield, with its blurry, shaky, gritty VHS-handycam-style presentation, experimental-industrial dark ambience soundtrack, and raw (but pixelated) gore and violence, all of which create a rather dark and oppressive atmosphere. The title of this review is a quote about one (disparaging) review, and I think the reviewer was absolutely on point when they wrote that. The thing they were wrong about is whether or not this makes Dog Days bad. It is, essentially, a nihilistic journey of pain, a videogame equivalent of misery p0rn, filled with blood, pixelated gore and mutilation, torture, murder, and suffering, all captured through obtrusive neon lights of digital Shanghai by a shaking handheld camera, as if it's a third character following the two protagonists around. In many ways it is most similar to Last of Us Part II in terms of its sickening hideousness, but without any hopeful or redeeming elements. Just bleak, grotesque, bloody ugliness. Not a good GAME per se, but it can be appreciated as a intriguing EXPERIENCE, though it's definitely NOT for everyone.
This game was massively hyped up in the run-up to release, promising a cinematographic team-based shooter with compelling characters from the creators of Hitman. In reality, this often feels like a mod of Blood Money which removed the good stealth and puzzle elements in favour of mediocre shooting and squad mechanics. The simple fact is that the shooting feels bad, even worse than in Hitman. However, whereas in Hitman shooting a priori meant that something has gone awry, here it is what you'll be doing most often. Like in Hitman, the shots don't ever land where the reticle is, the bullet spread feels random, and there is little sense of impact, as the enemies just fold like a bad hand in poker when you kill them (after way too many hits to be satisfying). And, like in the first Hitman game, it has a jungle level that is a major pain for all the same reasons. The entire Havana section is an exercise in frustration, thanks to dumb teammates, lack of cover, relentless enemies and machine gun emplacements and the obligatory helicopter mini-boss - pretty much a mandatory element from that era. The storyline is a mixed bag - some scenes and "camerawork" are really well done and look quite stylish, but the overall story is quite thin and none of the characters are particularly compelling and/or see very little (or no) development. It feels like the more interesting stuff all happened sometime before the game's events. The squad mechanics are also really simplistic, and the teammates are frustrating as you constantly have to go and revive them only for them to either walk in the path of your or enemies' bullets or even shoot you in the back (unintentionally, the AI is just weak). For all the hate it got, the sequel is a much more polished and satisfying experience that leaned into the first game's strengths (sense of style, somewhat interesting characters and their interactions with one another), fixed some of its worst elements (shooting mechanics), and cut out the rest.