In short: "A good spiritual successor to Dead Island". In shorter: "A Better Dead Island" It's got a bunch of your Dead Island gameplay/mechanics/tropes: Kicking, tons of melee weapons with RPG-esque damage scaling, weapon recipes, tons of zombies, special zombies, scavenging for supplies, leveling up & skilltrees, and so on and so forth, and then some. Then there's the parkour system, which is pretty neat. You also get a grappling hook at a higher level, which is incredibly helpful and fun. The game's protagonist is voiced by Resident Evil 5/6's Chris Redfield, AKA Roger Craig Smith, and sounds more or less like Chris does in RE5/6. I like to call Kyle (DL's protagonist) Diet / Discount Chris Redfield. The expansion (The Following) is pretty good, introduces an upgradeable Half-Life 2-esque buggy to drive around the countryside, good fun. The expansion even features old western weapons to find and wield (like from Call of Juarez). I fancy the Ranger myself, best handgun. Technical note: Not sure if they fixed it yet, but when I played the game via the DRM free installer (V. 1.20), and not through GoG Galaxy, the game kept crashing on command when entering Old Town. This was due to duplicate object names conflicting with eachother. To fix it, just rename the DW_DLC39 folder to something else when you are in old town, and when you're out of old town, and want to access The Prison dlc, rename it back. Also the game's optimization is slightly dodgy, at least for me. I know my computer isn't a beast, but it certainly should have ran a bit better, especially with the settings on medium/low. Hopefully Dying Light 2 will be better optimized.
Divine Divinity is a Diablo 1 & 2 inspired game. While the game only has 3 proper classes, there are male and female counterparts, each starting with different learnable abilities. Each of the three classes have their own innate class exclusive ability. Warrior: Spin Attack. Mage: Teleport swap w/ NPC. Survivor: Sneak. The game takes the D1 route of class/level progression, in that any class can learn any ability, aside from the single class exclusive abilities. Like with alot of Divinity games, the main quest gets pretty open after a while and can do most of it in just about any order you want, which is great. The combat is more or less D2 ARPG point and clicky movement/combat, with the exception of clicking on an enemy once will have you attack it until it is dead, or you cancel. Why didnt D2 do this too?! The game only has 2 acts. The first act is a massive "D2 Act 1" forest/village/city/dark forest/sewer, etc. type deal, and the point of no return Act 2, is unironically, a huge desert, that leads to the final dungeon. The controls feels a bit finicky and jittery at times, but otherwise fine. The game has a nasty habit of crashing sometimes, mainly when fighting a magic spam happy boss that also have minions involved. Also, there's this one readable document in the cursed abby, that when read, crashes the game on command. Aren't missing graphic files neat? You can move/take most objects you can highlight with your mouse, you can even put an ENTIRE CHEST in your trousers, take it to a town, and make your own stash! Like D2, this game has waypoints, but you have to unlock them with teleporter scrolls, each held by a leader of their respective race, which you get by earning their trust. There is also 2 teleporter pyramids you can set down and use as home made waypoints, very helpful. TONS of sidequests, I'd say DD is about 30% Main Quest, 70% Side Quests. Overall, great game, despite some finicky control, some instability, and a few cheap, annoying bosses.
Make sure to get "Better Rayman 3" fan patch (find it on pcgamingwiki), it adds more resolutions, widescreen & controller support, & use a controller (I used PS4 controller). Keyboard controls are about as bad as Rayman 2's. Mouse & keyboard controls *could* be fine, if the mouse buttons worked. It's a wonder why the mouse movement works for camera (mostly), but the mouse buttons do nothing, and can't be used. What were they thinking?! Not even Better Rayman 3 adds mouse support. Rayman 3 is generally more linear than 2, but it makes improvements on the gameplay. Except for carrying things. It's actually worse in this game, can't throw them upward & attack, & you move slower. Swimming underwater is dumbed down, the height control is automatic, although you do have infinite breath now, so that's arguably better. The combat is by far one of the most improved things over Rayman 2. It requires you to strafe left & right to curve attacks while evading, and charging attacks when needed. You'll face multiple enemies at once usually, unlike the last game. The combat works pretty decently in this. Bosses are mostly an upgrade over 2, although the first boss kinda sucks, but the rest are fine. The progression is very "temporary powerups", they last a set amount of time, to do stuff like: destroy pillars platforms to jump on, blasting open doors, swinging across hovering hooks, shooting rockets, ascending higher with a helicopter hat, or just destroying foes even faster, etc. Hub world is gone, green lums aren't a thing anymore, Rayman no longer poofs back to checkpoints when touching certain hazards, you don't collect lums anymore, but optional treasures, theres a combo point system that unlocks bonus stuff, etc. Also, there is a bug with the grimace move, a level after I got the ability, red lums would instantly glitch out of existence, not giving health. Would love to see a Rayman 4 someday, that puts the best elements of both Rayman 2 and 3 in it, and then some.
Rayman 2 is a mostly great platformer (With controller fix, using a controller - PS4 controller works fine with fix) if you can look past some of the game's rougher aspects (Like the rocket mach sections, and their subpar handling/turning controls & over sensitive/rough collision detection.) Playing with a keyboard only can be a bit of a nightmare - especially if your keyboard doesn't allow more than 2 or 3 keys to be pressed at once, so make sure to get the fix and use a controller. You can find it on pcgamingwiki - it's the Rayman 2 Input Fix. GoG should really include stuff like this in the game by default, or at least make it an optional download right under the installer download, jeeze. Also, make sure to set the game's refresh rate to 120hz or 60hz via the nglide_config in the game's main folder, otherwise some bugs can happen, like the nasty Umber (Golem dude that walks through the lava) control/cutscene bug. Hell, the bug might happen regardless, so make sure to jump off him the moment you get control back. This game could use a redux of some sorts, I don't even need better graphics, just improve the controls, give proper mouse and keyboard support, REBINDABLE KEYS, and a proper, non-dodgy mouse/analog stick operated camera. I know the PS2 version exists, but that's more of a remake, rather than just "Better Rayman 2". My overall score for Rayman 2 is more of a 3.7/5, rather than a 4/5. I wish GoG had half star increments on it's rating system like GameFaQs does, 3.7 is far closer to a 4 than a 3, so I just gave it a 4/5. If the game worked out of the box better *COUGH CONTROLLER SUPPORT COUGH* and was more polished and refined in certain areas, it would be a DEFINITE 4/5. Also, maybe add more checkpoints, more specifically in the slidey sections, and the rocket sections... and some of these sharp turns in the vehicle sections absolutely suck. And the final boss gets all of his health back if you crash even once- You get my point.
It's more or less a 2D sidescrolling Deus Ex inspired cyberpunk game, with a lot more punching people in the face - combat. The melee combat is a bit rough around the edges, and the game is a bit brutal for the first 15-30% of the game, but it gets much easier as time goes on (Regen aug is *very expensive*, but cheese.) As with Deus Ex, it's important to utilize stealth, as well as silent takedowns, especially early on. Further through the game with more levels and equipment, you can afford to go guns - or fists blazing with less consequence. The game also has a pretty integral SCHMUP styled hacking minigame, it's pretty decent, and more importantly: fun, unlike most hacking minigames. You can even stun augmented enemies (AKA pretty much literally everybody - this is a cyberpunk universe, remember?) with hacking, with the acquired perk, very helpful. Would love a sequel someday.
A fairly difficult turn based survival horror. You and a team of soldiers (who remind me of the UBCS - AKA Carlos, Nicholai, Mikhail, etc. from Resident Evil 3) are sent to investigate a city teeming with dangerous mutants to investigate just what the hell is going on in this town. You aren't terribly heavily armed to start with, so you'd better conserve your resources, and get at least 1 guy to specialize in melee, and be sure to allocate your skillpoints carefully, because you can't refund them. Also make good use of the taser, and also get the 2nd taser. Taser stunlocking is king. You even get a sentient mutant as a party member for a time, and he's fairly powerful. Neat. Battles are completely finite, there are no random battles, and there is certainly no grinding. Just set encounters. Ammo and other resources are very finite, obviously. The combat is more tactical than say, your usual JRPG for example. Let's just say it involves a lot of grid squares and carefully placed shots and AoE attacks for anything not melee. I would love a sequel to this game that plays just like this - with improvements of course. This series does have other games in it, but they weren't exactly hot. This is easily the best in the series. I played the Steam version first, and remembered having problems running it, the same problem might be on the GoG version as well. So if you're running into problems, try toggling hardware rendering on or off, and if that doesn't work... look up other solutions.
Dead Space is a great survival horror set in space, with the twist that you need to target limbs instead of just the head to effectively kill enemies, it was inspired by Resident Evil 4, and so on and so forth. The GoG version of Dead Space works mostly well on Windows 7 64-bit, although I still needed to apply a third party mouse aiming patch, because the devs did not give 1/10ths of a s*** to make it work well themselves. Even with the third party mouse patch, the non-aiming looking around camera is a bit under sensitive, and for some reason when you're walking on the sticky stuff that slows you down, the camera sensitivity goes NUCLEAR. That makes no damn sense, why does it do this?! Also the game runs at a horribly fixed, low, and sloggy framerate with VSYNC on. With it off, it's buttery smooth, but at a price: More bugs. The dying randomly on a zero gravity land bug still seems to be present, and it's one of the worst. I mean, you guys still can't fix that?! Something tells me it was a weird anti-piracy measure that just happens randomly that the devs programmed in for s***s and giggles, but forgot to properly remove, I dunno, just a hunch. Guess it's just developer incompetence instead. Some massive technical issues aside, great game.
If you liked Original Sin 1, you'll like this even more. It takes what made Original Sin good, and made it even better by expanding upon it, improving the UI in many ways (not just in looks, but also in functions), rebalancing and reworking stats, skills, abilities and so on. As well as introducing a ton of new stuff, the game also introduces 6 set in stone main character protagonists which you can choose from, unlike OS1, which your 2 main characters were always Custom Generic Mcgee, but you can also make a custom main character here too. The campaign works in several different chapters, with points of no return, kind of like Beyond Divinity, and with each chapter, there is a huge area to explore, that is also filled with interiors and lesser areas. I'd say the game is about 30-40% bigger than OS1. My main gripe with both this and OS1, is that there is no form of fast forward in battles, because enemies still take eons to take their turn, especially if there is a lot of them, also that AI glitch is still present, in which an enemy will sometimes stare into space for several seconds on their turn, like a 4 year old deciding which chess piece to move next, that might make sense if I were facing an actual player, but I'm facing AI controlled enemies, which should be able to decide actions within milliseconds, why is this still not fixed?! Also the inventory lags really bad when it's even remotely cluttered, which will be always. Witcher 3 also had a similar problem with it's inventory, where it would take a moment to process each item dragged wherever, etc, if it was even remotely crowded. Can no one program an inventory system efficiently these days? Oh well. Overall, Original Sin 2 is damn good, with few major flaws, recommended to just about any fan of turn based RPGs.
At it's core, it's essentially a modified X-COM: Enemy Unknown (minus the overwatch ability). Hard West is a tactical turn based adventure, set out across several different campaigns, some of which, are completely separate from the main story, but are still fun to play and have interesting stories as well. The game's difficulty starts out fair, then gets harder down the line until you better learn the mechanics and get better gear. HW does have permanent unlockables that are gotten by purchasing certain items/weapons in a campaign specific shop, or exploring/dialogue decisions or some other, and sometimes, just given to you (I think) in which you can then later buy unlocked items/weapons from a certain merchant when available, thus making later campaigns/replays a lot easier, especially when getting your hands on a certain wondrously overpowered rifle. It also has a bunch of world map exploring/micromanaging elements that differ from campaign to campaign. This game also has some supernatural tones (Hint: It's kind of like The Darkness invaded a western, but more satanic) as such, your character makes a deal with the devil whether you like it or not, and you gain supernatural powers in the form of tarot cards, which can be equipped on any of your characters to provide bonuses, abilities, or both. Cards can also be put together in a certain combination on a character for even further bonuses. Overall, a pretty cool and challenging turn based western experience.
I first played the N64 version when I was around 10, and remember having fun despite the rough controls and horrendous framerate. Although I never properly beat the game for the longest time due to the confusing level design, especially in the later half of the game, as well as easily missable objectives, so I usually just used the bewareoblivionisathand cheat and fooled around across the levels and bossfights with the warp cheat. About 10 years later, I finally decided to sit down and beat the game legitimately, using a guide when stuck, which took about a week or so. Now, buying the remaster on sale just recently, it only took me 2 days to beat the game with minimum help from a walkthrough (just a few of the primagen keys really). Damn, what a difference good framerate, better controls, objective hints, AND QUICKSAVES make! Also I'm not sure if you could do this in the N64 version, but now you can zoom the map overlay in and out, which is incredibly useful, too bad I only figured that out in the last 20% of the playthrough, heh. In any case, this is a *really* good (and necessary) remaster, because playing the N64 version is like trying to drive with your elbows, and trying to get the original PC version to work on a even remotely modern PC is much of the same. Although I have to consider the game's inherent flaws as well, otherwise this would easily get a 5 star from me. Overall, Turok 2 is a great FPS with 6 huge, (somewhat confusing at times) sprawling levels, many different enemies to fight, and 4 fun boss fights to tackle. In some ways, this game was ahead of it's time, such as how enemies flinched, staggered, and reacted to being hit in certain parts of their body, even the legendary Half-Life failed to get that detail right (for the most part), because even if you shot a marine several times *IN THE FACE* with an MP5, he wouldn't flinch for nothing.
