Crystalis is one of the best NES games of all time. Its an action-RPG where you have to save a post-apocalyptic world from an evil empire and a doomsday tower. Along the way you get elemental swords and magical powers. Think Mad Max meets Star Wars meets Nausicaa Valley of the Wind. The gameplay is most similar to Ys Origin and Oath In Felghana. Great music, charming 8-bit graphics, a fun story for an NES game, and a good sense of power progression.
http://uhexen2.sourceforge.net/ This is a link to the source port you'll want. This game is an underrated gem and one of the best action/adventure/FPS/fantasy games ever made, although some parts will have you reaching for a walkthrough. You'll have to be thorough and detective-like as you explore the environment looking for clues on how to progress, but at the same time, you need to have as quick a trigger finger as Doomguy or BJ Blazkowicz. Recommended classes for beginners: Paladin or Cleric What the GOG version has that the Steam version doesn't: The soundtrack, and getting it to run is less of a pain.
This is a game people will still play and love 20 years from now, as evidenced by the fact that Duke Nukem 3D is still replayed by thousands to this day. If you like Duke 3D, well, here's more of that same goodness. The weapons, setting, protagonist and enemies are all different, of course, but this is the successor to Duke 3D.. The gunshots pack a more satisfying punch and headshots actually matter now. The cyberpunk setting is gorgeous. The soundtrack sets the mood just right. You can travel back to areas you've already been to if you want. This game has it all, if you're a Build Engine freak. If you've beaten Duke 3D countless times, if you've devoured every last expansion level of Shadow Warrior, if you've beaten Blood on the hardest difficulty and know that it makes you an FPS king, then you owe yourself this game. This is the fourth triumph of the Build Engine, a classic that will be played for decades. In 20 years, will CoD Black Ops 4 still matter? I doubt it, though I'd bet Ion Maiden will still have a place on many hard drives by 2039.
Took em long enough to fork over Jazz to GOG! I guess Epic finally decided that they like money and realized that releasing Jazz digitally might make them more of it. I hope it does because they deserve lots of money for these soulful, creative games, and maybe it will inspire Epic to make a new platformer instead of yet another cover shooter (Gears was fun for awhile, but c'mon!). I love Jazz so much that I bought a used copy of Jazz 2, I think it was like $50 or so on Amazon (downloading this masterpiece free from an abandonware site just felt shameful to me). The Jazz games were great demonstrations of Epic's creativity. They reached their creative peak with Unreal in my opinion, but Jazz was the first hint that Cliffy and the gang were a special team. It was also an early display of Alexander Brandon's musicianship, which would lead to the killer Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex soundtracks (check out his solo albums, available for sale on his website, they're pretty good!). The graphics are wonderful and charming. The artists clearly took pride in their work. As with the first game, the level design is topnotch. As for the game's concept? Imagine Sonic the Hedgehog meets Duke Nukem, he's a bunny and he has a friggin gun. If you like this game, check out Jazz 1 too, which isn't quite as good but it is still worth playing.
The original Wolfenstein 3D is a very nostalgic game for me. After all, it introduced me to World War 2 at the tender age of 6. If I had to be honest, though, I'd say RtCW holds up better by modern standards. When you think about it, it really did improve upon Wolfenstein 3D in every way that matters. This was one of the last great, fast-paced "run n' gun" shooters" before Halo came out and slowed the FPS genre down to a sluggish crawl. The game's graphics still look decent today, thanks to Id Software's legendary Quake 3 Engine. There are minor stealth elements in the game like kinda like The New Order has (though not quite as polished), and the mission variety is diverse enough to keep things fresh. If you like Quake 1+2's singleplayer campaigns or Unreal Gold, this is a must-have in your library.
Playing this awesome shooter, you wouldn't guess it suffered a troubled development. This was John Romero's last great game. John actually did not envision this game as a Doom-like shooter, but instead as a barbarian fantasy game (he later said Darksiders is basically the game he wanted to make). Of course, his vision fell through what we got instead was sort of an updated Doom. The multiplayer was groundbreaking for its time, and although Doom's singleplayer is more widely remembered than Quake's, a case can be made for Quake's superiority. Quake's competition when it was released was Duke Nukem 3D, which I more or less view as Quake's equal. They were both great for different reasons. Duke featured a hilarious game world, colorful protagonist, fun weaponry, realistic urban locales, and best of all, highly interactive level design. Quake on the other hand features gothic atmosphere, horrifying-looking enemies, a Trent Reznor soundtrack (which I believe GOG included with their version of the game, unlike Steam), and the game world consists of this bizarre collage of sci-fi and dark fantasy which mesh together very well, creating a surreal nightmare world to explore. To boot, each had multiple expansions, which I'm happy to say GOG packaged into the game. Unfortunately, this was the end of Id's golden age. Romero left Id after tensions with Carmack escalated, and, well, Daikatana is also available on GOG if you want to see for yourself what happened there (but for heaven's sake, wait for a sale!). I highly recommend the book "Masters of Doom", an entertaining read which documents Id's rise and arguable fall. Although Quake 2 and especially Quake 3 were great in their own right, they were each lacking something: Quake 2's setting was dull and unimaginative compared to previous games, and Quake 3 lacked a singleplayer adventure altogether. You played these games for their fine multiplayer. Doom and Quake 1's standard was BOTH excellent singleplayer AND multiplayer.
Since GOG.com obviously has no standards or quality control for its user reviews, I guess its perfectly fine to "review" it here anyway. The game looks good. There, that's my review. Please select "No" below where it asks if my review was helpful, thanks. Hopefully GOG's staff sees this game's review page and cleans it up.
Yes, this is the finest stealth game ever made. MGS, Splinter Cell, Deus Ex, and Hitman may be great, but none of them nail stealth quite as much as this game does. Thief 1 is also great, and Thief 3 is okay, but neither quite come as close to perfection as Thief 2. This game delivers what many modern games are missing: a likeable non-generic protagonist, open-ended and complex missions with stellar level design, great atmosphere, humor, easter eggs + hidden secrets galore. You can really tell the developers at Looking Glass really put their hearts and souls into making this, My only gripe is that sometimes climbing and mantling certain surfaces doesn't work like its supposed to (Garret will fail to grab the ledge). Thats easily forgivable though. For real, this game here is the #1 reason to have a GOG.com account. Nothing beats the satisfaction of completing a mission without being heard or seen once.
