Note: I own the game on Steam, but I wanted to leave a review over here on GoG due to a some reviews I disagree with. This is a quality arcade racer that takes me straight back to when I used to play F-Zero Advance or Ridge Racer Type 4. Graphics are beautiful, but I recommend downscaling the resolution to 1x or 2x, because at full resolution the sprites look too clean and don't resemble a period arcade game. Please play the tutorial and don't listen to some of these other reviews that are saying the drift mechanics don't work. To initiate a drift, turn, let go of the accelerator, tap brake, and then accelerate. It's that simple, just LT+RT. The drifting is not spotty at all, it will activate every single time. If a reviewer gave the game one star based on that mechanic not working, they simply didn't put in the few minutes it takes to get used to the controls. There's a lot of different stages, each one is gorgeous, and a lot of different game modes as well, and I enjoy every single one of them individually. If you want to play a traditional racing game campaign, you can do Grand Prix. If you want to run a custom playlist of stages, you can run Cannonball. I sometimes even run Cannonball with rivals turned off and no enemy racers so it's just a casual cruise where I can drift through my favorite stages and enjoy the feeling of speed. I give Slipstream a 4/5. I have two complaints: the rival AI are straight up BS cheaters. I spent about 3 hours this evening completing a perfect run of defeating all 5 rivals in a row, and that was only on medium. They only appear in Grand Tour and Cannonball, however. The soundtrack is ok for the first few hours, but I quickly tired of it. You can load custom mp3s to be played ingame, but it's a lot easier to disable the music and play your own selection in a browser tab or media player. Your favorite eurobeat, smooth jazz, vaporwave, or futurefunk are the perfect complement to experience pure arcade racer bliss.
Strike Commander went the extra mile by including a story with animated cutscenes- as far as I know, the only flight sim to do so. They look pretty good even today. This is the CD-ROM version, so it also includes voice acting, which isn't fantastic but is reasonable for this game's era. I classify Strike Commander as "simcade," which is exactly what it sounds like- the middle area between the 500 page manual you need for Falcon on one end and the over the top arcade action of Ace Combat on the other. That said, SC does lean somewhat more towards sim. You will not need to learn how to actually fly the F-16 in real life to play this game, but you will need to manage your radar, weapons systems, energy, fuel, and avoid high G's to prevent blackouts. It's not completely pick up and play- it took me a couple of hours to fully acquaint myself with flying the F-16. I can only rate this game 3 stars, and it's not because of poor gameplay but because of technical issues. I wanted to finish this game, but I hit a mission that stopped me dead in my tracks and I could not complete no matter what. I wondered if it was because I wasn't skilled enough at the game. As it turns out, the CD version of the game breaks when played at higher CPU speeds. Enemy pilots gain superhuman reaction speeds and launch flares which destroy every missile you fire. You're forced to use your cannon instead. That's not so bad, but I could not finish a ground attack mission because my air to ground missiles did not track targets at all. They flew in a straight line into empty dirt. I found a patch on the forums that fixed air-to-air missiles, but it didn't fix AGMs. The only way to avoid this is to reduce DOSBox cycles to around 10,000, but you're playing at nearly single digit FPS at that point. That might have been acceptable in the 90s, but it's a bad experience nowadays. Verdict: SC is not a bad game at all, but the technical issues get in the way of it being experienced as intended.
I have wanted this game to be on GoG since I first learned of the site. Many tout this as the greatest space sim ever made. Personally, I say this is the greatest game ever made, period, and certainly my favorite. The depth of the gameplay, the sim elements, the dogfights and space battles, and the dynamic music all blew me away in the 90s and it still amazes me now. Unfortunately, the GoG package does not include, what is in my opinion, the definitive version of the game: The Collector's Edition CD-ROM. That's what I had, it's the original DOS version (not the Win 98 re-release), includes every expansion pack mission, and on top of that includes full voice acting- every single mission and briefing being fully voiced. I have to say I'm disappointed that's not the version that was released on GoG and hopefully it can somehow make its way on here in the future. That said, the lack of the voice acting, while a bit of a letdown, does not diminish the sublime gameplay in any way. Even without it, this is a full 5/5. Buy a joystick.
