I've always held a prejudiced view of old UK games as being mid-at-best knockoffs of Japanese or American classics, made for silly, underpowered computers by insanely British goofs elevated to the status of rockstars by a quality-starved press and public. So, let's just say that this exhaustive exploration of the early work of Jeff Minter ... doesn't do a whole lot to change my mind.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of two good games in here, out of about forty. But then again, I'm not a Pink Floyd obsessed stoner living in the early 1980s with access to a Speccy and nothing else, so maybe they're just not for me.

But love what Digital Eclipse is doing, as always. God help me if they ever make one of these profiling someone I actually care about!

1998

Gross garbage and a horrendous misuse of a good game engine. Takes some real talent to take DUKE 3D and make it virtually unplayable.

Another really outstanding WAD and easily the best in the trilogy. This one has the benefit of another decade of FPS design history since the last one, and it shows, despite being made by only two of the guys from that original team. Fun, charming, detailed, and once again featuring genuinely great level design and excellent pacing. Crazy that this dumb marketing gimmick series is so accomplished.

Fussy, overdesigned GONE HOME. A walking simulator that's ultimately 80% reading diary entries shouldn't have/need a tutorial that's more than a half an hour long, sorry.

As with the first one, probably better than it has any right to be. You're on the Chex guy's home planet this time, which is of course a cute parallel with DOOM II, and this allows the devs to once again showcase their biggest strength from the original - solid level design. Wish it was longer!

Pretty darn successful 2D stealth. Interesting and challenging design for the most part but things do end up getting quite samey after a while.

Can't think of too many modern 2D platformer/shooters that feel this bad to play.

Also fun to remember just how played out the '80s action movie throwback thing was by 2011 already.

LEMMINGS plus THE INCREDIBLE MACHINE. Functional.

Hey do you wish that PIPE DREAM had enemies attacking your cursor and an incredibly aggressive time limit? Me fucking neither.

Feels a bit novel and exciting at first, but the fiddliness, anonymous style, and overall simplicity of the gameplay wear you down quick. I'm guessing slightly less so if you're playing with friends.

Also - a bigtime charter member of the 'Games That Definitely Don't Need Combat' club.

SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE if everyone on the development staff had a brain injury.

Can't really explain my visceral negative reaction to this. The game just feels really wrong in every respect and I was more or less physically rejecting it while trying to play. Gives me the heebie jeebies. Something not right going on in there. I've got a good sense for these things.

The store page for this game on GoG is just the rights holders/original devs of the other games in the series openly shitting on this one because it was made by another team. But ... it's not really meaningfully different or worse than the other ones ... ? I mean, It doesn't have the cool damage modeling from CARMAGEDDON II and it's more focused on actual racing (which was essentially a joke in the previous games, on purpose, I guess), but I dunno. I guess if you're a real Carma-head you hate this one or something. I don't see what the problem is. None of them are very good, lol.

Absolutely unbelievable vibes but I don't love some of the meter stuff and putting could be better.

KATAMARI DAMACY by way of GISH. It's pretty good! It's by Drinkbox (you can tell because there are billboards of memes in the background every ten feet), so it's fairly well put together and feels fine. You can see some of the DNA of GUACAMELEE in here. Not exactly memorable, but a quick fun little platformer.

An okay concept (twinstick metroidvania) done serviceably. Not a standout in any real way besides the art, if you dig this kind of style. The combat is a weakness - they should have probably beefed it up (weapon upgrades, faster firing) if they wanted to emphasize it like this - as it is, it's mostly an annoyance while traveling/puzzle solving.