"What can I say? I'm full of surprises. And mostly good ones."

Good game that desperately wants to be a movie while simultaneously ripping off half a dozen of them in the process. While it’s not a mechanically very complex game, it was a thoroughly enjoyable and exceptional coop experience. Played this with one of my best friends and we were constantly shooting the shit by letting the story take a backseat and mess around with all the (optional, mind you) interactions the game offered, like playing arcade games, Darts, Banjo Hero™ and cracking jokes at Leo’s ENOURMOUS NOSE. I’m still docking one star because the story is stretched very thin and neither my buddy nor me really liked the plot twist and continuation of the story, thereafter, foreshadowing or not.
I’m so grateful there are still dedicated developers creating unique game ideas that don’t waste your time with a constant need for player engagement and let players have fun playing.
Game gets a total recommendation if you want to have a few hours of fun together.

Since we're talking Monolith, then NOLF2 is to NOLF what F.E.A.R. 2 is to F.E.A.R.: not a bad game by itself, but a massive drop in quality compared to its predecessor.

--- Addendum ---
I don't particularly condone piracy, but since this game has been in legal limbo for (close to) two decades now with no way of buying this digitally: search for "NOLFrevival" to acquire a copy that works great out of the box, as this also comes with the NOLF Modernizer patch.

Marking this as complete after beating the final level and seeing the end credits roll, even though this is the kind of game they want you to play continuously for elongated periods of term. I don’t really see the reason for this. Sky is basically a retreading of everything we’ve seen in Journey and Abzû, although it does reward exploration a little more, where it reminded me of Grow Home/Grow Up. The biggest issue I have is that I don’t have any idea what kind of game this is. Best I can tell, it’s a quasi-social MMO that let’s you befriend other players and explore the world together, but… why? I understand there are different seasons, and more challenges or areas are added, but there is not much else to do once you’ve seen the end, except raise your Candle points (equivalent to experience points) so you can use these points to unlock cosmetics so that you character looks slightly goofier than all the other players. On top of that, you get such a miserable little amount of the points, you will HAVE to buy some through the games in-game shop. The blight that is Freemium games and its predatory mechanics. Honestly, that alone was the reason I was willing to give this game one fucking star, baby. However, I did enjoy my time with the game and emoting around with other people, but again, nothing extraordinarily good.

A conceptually very interesting game that's a lot more enjoyable to play than the main game of the bundle. Bowser's Fury is more of a continuation of the more mission-based levels of Super Mario 64 or Sunshine. In this game, it's just one big world with zero loading screens, but the structure is more emergent, as the world opens up more areas to play in. On top of that, each area changes depending on how many of the Cat Shines (this game's Power Stars) are found. Essentially this means there's always something to do because there will always be another Shine to collect, that was previously unavailable until the player revisits areas from before.

The downside is that there are only like 6 types of 'levels' to get each area's specific Shine. Those are recycled throughout the entire game. However, it only has 100 Shines in general, which means the game can be completed on a weekend maybe. Also, the world is very drab and basic-looking. Remember Lethal Lava Land from 64? Yeah, like that, just self-contained obstacles with no rhyme or reason.

Now, I can't quite put my finger on it, but I believe I have seen this sort of gameplay before, where in-game progression also has visible alterations in the world itself, buuut... I can't remember. The closest I can think of is maybe Banjo-Tooie or Conker's Bad Fur Day.

However, I do believe this is can be seen as a Tech Demo of what is to come for another Mario game and I hope the emergent gameplay will be ramped up in bigger and more cohesive levels in the future.

That said, Bowser's Fury alone isn't worth the 60€ price tag. Super Mario 3D World is fine as it is, but Nintendo's stance on re-releases and price policy will forever be a thorn in my side.

"I won't have it said I left you with nothing, kid."

As far as corridor shooters go, this is the best of the bunch for me. Now, my relationship with the Call of Juarez franchise is iffy at best. They go from moderately okay (Bound in Blood) to absolutely forgettable (The Cartel), so color me surprised when the fourth entry in this series won me over almost instantly. Gone is the unnecessary semi-open world that makes exploring pointless, gone is the clunkiness of the movement and the cheap attempts at physics-based "puzzles". They dissected each game, took elements that worked, stitched it back together in a blood-fueled sepia-tinted Wild West adventure.

I love this game. The way the colors pop out in an almost cel-shaded world. The crunchiness of each shot from all the weapons. The soundtrack that takes Morricone and cranks it up to 11. And the presentation, the grit and gruesomeness that gives Gunslinger a vibe akin to the grindhouse subgenre.

The biggest point that won me over during my first playthrough was, however, the story and how it tied into the gameplay. The game is being told from the perspective of its protagonist, Silas Greaves (amazingly voiced by John Cygan, RIP), who is recounting his days as a bounty hunter to the folks in a local pub. This is a classic case of the Unreliable Narrator but is done in such a way I have not seen in any other video game ever -- no idea, there probably is, I just don't know about it. The twist is that elements in the game change when the protagonist corrects himself in his narration or one of his listeners intrudes on the story. The result is that you must go through some paths in a level several times, but in different ways. Sometimes the type of enemy you fight changes, or Silas opens up a path through a Deus Ex Machina that would otherwise have remained blocked. It's the little things like this that make Gunslinger stand out.

One letdown is how short the game is. If you're decent at shooting stuff, this won't take you more than maybe 5-6 hours. There's side content, sure, but who the hell cares about time trials in 8-year-old game? I'd hate to have paid full price for this when it came out and ~13 bucks are still a lot for such a railroaded experience, but from the bottom of my heart, let me tell you, it is one of the best out there.

SLUDGE 4 life 4 ever 4 me, dawg!

Yeah, the game is definitely unique in that I have no idea who the target audience for this even is, but whatever. Let me be the nth person to tell you it has a distinctive style and charm. Found it on GOG by sheer accident and was drawn in by its looks. And honestly, I bought it on a whim after listening to the soundtrack a little, which is absolutely dope.

The best I can describe it, is it looks and feels like an amalgamation between Jazzpunk, Jet Set Radio, Blendo games and a corporate wasteland -- it's all about living and surviving in a concrete nightmare, tagging walls, talking to weirdos, and getting high on shrooms.

And there are dedicated buttons for smoking a Ciggy™ and farting. We need more games like that.

"How do I wear goblin mail?"

RuneScape is like THE one game I would love to experience for the first time again. The only reason I'm giving it just 1 star is because this is gamified crack-cocaine for me and I have quit the game and relapsed into it so many god damn times ever since I started playing it in 2006 it's not even funny anymore. As far as I'm concerned, I will most likely check it out again sometime, so I can see what they've added since I left. I do have to say, although it's grindy as hell, the quests in RuneScape are some of the best and most well-designed in any game I have ever played.

"You're going too darn slow!"

Seemingly one of the many lost and forgotten games of this era, which truly makes me wonder how my father stumbled upon this game in the late 90s. Doesn't help that there is also another game called "Whiplash" AND a rather famous movie with the same name. That's why I will always call it by the European name, with which I'm familiar: Fatal Racing.

That title invokes so much more what this game is about.

Now I'm not one to go out of my way and call this game 'ahead of its time' and 'groundbreaking' and admittedly there is some nostalgic bias to it, but there are some elements in this game that, as far as I can tell, were relatively new.
Of course, the most noticeable thing is the completely 3D-based, fully textured world. That certainly sounds silly nowadays, but for 1995 it was impressive. There are 8 driving teams or selectable vehicles and the same number of tracks, all of which contain some crazy elements. Be it a loop, an angled jump, sections of the track that change their elevation.

The most interesting thing is that similar to games like Destruction Derby, all cars can take damage. This means, of course, that the player can ram and destroy other cars at will to gain an advantage. The consequence of this is that you can also be destroyed yourself. After the third time, it's over and the race is considered lost. There is a pit stop section on each track where you can restore your health. Unlike in F-Zero, however, you must stand completely still in these sections, which of course costs valuable time. So, you have to decide how aggressively or defensively you want to drive.

I think the game is well done, and even driving is fun with the keyboard (or with a joystick, as I used to do). I would love to see a remake of this, since Burnout is more or less dead and there are little to no alternatives left when it comes to vehicular carnage.

It's a shame that Fatal Racing isn't available on GOG.

"You have been in stasis for ... [16] ... days and ... [4] ... decades."

Supreme galaxy brain tier shit right there. Marketing this as a veteran's Portal player certainly wasn't a lie (unlike the cake, lmao amirite guise?), so I'm not faulting the game for the steep difficulty, because I'm definitely not the target audience for this. Yeah, the puzzles are doable, but a lot of the solutions felt more accidental than actually genuine and as far as I could tell, for example by lookting at the walkthrough (shut up), there doesn't seem to be a lot of flexibility or alternatives in getting out of the puzzle room. If memory serves well, this was never the case with either Portal or Portal 2, where the fun came out of trying to figure out things and knowing how to place the portals. Here, everything just feels very strict and sort of continues the tradition of adding a fuckton of walls that doesn't let you place portals.

Anyway, this is a free mod to one of the most interesting game franchise, and adding a third portal with time mechanics is a nice twist so it absolutely comes recommended, even if this is just not my cup of tea.

"I've been a ghost all my life."

I want to preface this review by saying that the game is somewhat solid if it is your first (and preferably ONLY) Thief game you ever played. If you enjoyed it: good! But stay away from the rest of the series because I can guarantee you, you'll either A) won't find the earlier installments as captivating or B) they'll make you hate Thief 2014 retroactively.

If you don't like some old man's rambling about how everything used to be better, just skip to the second half of the review.

Now, I'm a huge fan of the stealth genre in both 2D and 3D, and I also played a lot of the major ones such as Hitman, Splinter Cell and of course, the Thief trilogy. With Thief especially I'd like to point out that I have played these recently for the first time ever, so there was no familiarity or nostalgia involved. Instead, it was an almost marvelous revelation of how a game can present itself with memorable and intricate level design while still giving the player the choice to rummage through the levels as he pleases. Sure, it can be overwhelming at first, even for their time they look ugly as sin, so I'll admit they aren't without faults.

There is however on thing they do right: they let you play the games however you want in whatever way you want. Thief - and by extension, any of the Immersive-Sim games - is something I'd like to compare to something like Pen&Paper or any other board game. You're given a place to play in, have to adhere to the rules the game has set for you and in between starting the level and finishing the objectives it's up to the player to figure out how to do it. There's no handholding or restrictions, other than, you know, a mission failure or death maybe.

Want to ghost the entire mission? You can do that. Knock out any guard and rob the place blind? You're a thief, so naturally you can. Fight every creature to death with your dinky-ass sword? Well good luck trying to evade death.

The beauty that sets the early Thief games apart from its modern successor is immersion. You're a thief, not a fighter. You have a few weapons and tools to dispatch enemies and make your adventure easier. There is an overarching, but negligible story. With every mission, you're given piece-meal information, just enough to know what to look out for. The maps are borderline useless but give enough context for navigation. And honestly, why would some random thief have the fully detailed map for some highly secured mansion or long forgotten dungeon? It all works, but it IMMERSES you into the game.
 
Onto the ACTUAL review now...

Thief 2014 has the same problems as, ironically, other titles that Square-Enix tried to modernize: Hitman Absolution, Tomb Raider 2013 (and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but I've not played it as of yet): They all fucking suck and have almost nothing in common with the series' roots anymore. This is absolutely hyperbole, but all these games, along with whatever shit comes from Ubisoft/EA, are very much everything what's wrong with TrIpLeAaA-Gaming.

The developers don't even let you properly play the game anymore. You're just being guided on a tour that's all flashy, without any substance to it. Look how great the game looks! Here, check out this cutscene! Whoa, did you absolutely, POSITIVLEY LOVE OUR QTEs WE PUT IN THE GAME? Huh? What's that? You don't?

Everything in Thi4f is a chore and simultaneously so dumbed down. Traversing the open world is no fun. You cannot jump whenever you want. You cannot climb up something whenever you want. You cannot place a rope arrow whenever you want. Actually, this is so terrible I have to mention it again: YOU CANNOT JUMP AT YOUR OWN LEISURE! As a thief! You know? When you need to blow the scene? Get everybody and the stuff together? What the fuck! It's all either scripted, automated nonsense when the game lets you perform a jump (think 3D Zelda for example) or scripted QTE nonsense every time you want to open a window, just to hide the fact the game needs to load the interior of the house or load up the next area of the game when each part barely qualifies as an alley. I think the worst part about it is this automatic, vomit-inducing camera movement every time you pick up some loot, open a closet or the six billion trays of a drawer. The camera goes whoosh and zooms in on the object, tilts and turns, then zooms out again as to simulate player movement, without actually being in control of it. You know how picking up loot worked in previous Thief? You just point the mouse somewhere, click and be done with it. But I digress ...

Besides all the restricting movement that only accentuate how barren and linear the levels are, the MC now sports some additional abilities. Remember, this is way past the prime PC Gaming era, so everything’s gotta get casualized because Stealth is haaaaaaard and I don't wanna put in the effort, dammit!
The first one is a dash, which lets you zip quickly in between hiding places. At first, I thought this ability nifty, to give the game a little more flow or give the player the chance to correct a mistake, as to not be spotted by a guard. However, since there is almost no cooldown on the dash, you can abuse it easily, because you're quicker and basically invisible while performing the dash.
The second one is ... Detective Mode from the Batman Arkham games or Eagle Vision from Assassin's Creed. Because why case the area yourself as a Master Thief when you can have the game highlight the loot and things you can interact with, show the guards patrol route and so on. It's an insult to anyone who went through the earlier games. But yet, here we are. And the most annoying thing? You WILL use it. The game is so chockfull with detailed environments you can't even tell what button you can press, which drawer you can open and so on. It's a necessary evil because the developers know you're an idiot.

My point is, the game doesn't make you think or figure out things on your own, there's no actual exploration, everything is just by the numbers and turned into a cinematic faux-Hollywood dark, brooding edgelord story which only shares the name of the game in similarity to its predecessor.

There are other minor things to gripe about in the game but were personally not huge dealbreakers. The higher focus on the story didn't do it for me. Garett's sidekick acted like a dumb cunt and I couldn't care less for her. The upgrade system had no purpose other than to have an upgrade system in it. Not reusing Garret's well-established voice actor was a bummer and the lack of any fantastical/steampunk elements that enriched previous games with some lore was disappointing but ultimately minor in comparison to what else the game did wrong.

So yeah, fuck this game, fuck the greedy AAA-industry behind it and play Dishonored/Prey instead.