Really incredible story told in a unique and abstract way, facilitated by some extremely fun top-down souls-like combat.
The art-style here is what probably grabs most people when they first look at the game, and it is incredible how much is able to be achieved and conveyed with what are essentially coloured scribbles made to look as unsettling as possible. There's not really any points where attack animations feel unclear, or hit boxes felt wrong, which is really impressive.
Along with this, the game boasts a really strong soundtrack, which definitely helps with some of the more difficult sections of the game. From industrial sharp tracks like The Underground to more melancholic ones like A Dream, there's a lot on offer here, and it all sounds really great while maintaining the whole unsettling feeling of the game.
As mentioned before, the gameplay is very souls-like, with slightly more hack and slash elements mixed into combat. There are some exploration elements, to get new virtues, mantras, or familiars (passives, weapons, and ranged skills respectively) and a lot of combinations between those three to personalize combat to your own playstyle, or just to keep things fresh while going through. Combat itself feels really great for the most part, parrying feels great, near enough every enemy has a parry-able attack and most have only parry-able attacks, so there's definitely reward for players who want to be more proactive, while also not punishing more reactive playstyles. The biggest issue I can think of is the lack of any i-frames after being hit but also a time where you can't dodge, meaning that it's really easy to get chain attacked and die after only one mistake, which can feel unfair with some of the more annoying attacks in the game.
I think the real surprising thing was how good the writing was, while definitely unconventional in both how it's conveyed to the player and how it's written, there's a really heart-wrenching and beautiful story here, with some absolutely incredible queer representation and themes of shifting relationships and finding oneself approached in really mature and thoughtful ways; and the want to find out more about the world and characters definitely helps to get through some of the harder sections of this game.
The only major flaw I can really think is the in-game timer, while I think most people will beat the normal game in only one or two playthroughs, the corruption meter becomes way more punishing on NG+. Luckily, there's a really cool way of keeping it down introduced, but I could definitely see it being a turn-off for a lot of people, especially considering that it is arguably the hardest part of NG+ apart from a potential oversight that can make it entirely negligible. This all is definitely alleviated by each playthrough only really taking a max of 4 or 5 hours, so I'm very willing to accept it as a fun challenge as you don't really lose all that much from a lost run.
I really loved this though, I'm a sucker for more abstract art styles and story telling, which this has in abundance; and while I can definitely see the challenge falling into being really aggravating for a lot of people, I had a lot of fun over my three or four playthroughs to get the true ending, would love to go back and do the DLC at some point and really looking forward to the follow up.

Definitely a game that started showing it's age a while ago, especially visually, both in a graphical sense and in a clarity sense, but it would be quite unfair to judge it based on this, as it's still a cut above a lot games that were released at the time.
Deus Ex is an immersive sim in the same vein as Thief or System Shock, all of which are structured into distinct levels and have a focus on offering the player a number of different solutions to obstacles presented throughout. A large part of where this game shines is just how well it does this, often you'll see a number of different paths available to get through any section of Deus Ex, encouraging exploration and experimentation. While you could lockpick a door, you could also hack a nearby power generator to find a key, or you could've found a code earlier that lets you bypass both of those options. This process is similarly applicable to combat throughout the game, absent is the focus on stealth from future Deus Ex games, so there is always the binary choice of approaching quietly or loudly and then further how you want to go about doing either. It's this freedom of approach that both makes the game replayable and allows for agency in how you skill JC without feeling locked out of any content or considerably weaker than if you had spec'd into other things.
Though often referred to as an RPG, the connection is tenuous at best, very little Role Playing is done throughout, having more in common with a title like Cruelty Squad than any actual modern RPGs. The closest thing is the skill system which more exists just to feed into the ImSim elements of the game than do anything by itself, and there is very little in how you play that affects the story outside of some small acknowledgments very early in.
That's not to diminish the writing here though, what's on offer is phenomenal, leaning heavily into conspiracies prevalent at the time, Deus Ex does an incredible job world building, both through it's environments and the story, and has an extremely strong narrative to go along with it.
Overall, Deus Ex was an incredibly enjoyable experience, and very impressive from both a game-design and story-telling perspective. Though maybe not as ground breaking as when it was first released, it still holds up unreasonably well for a 24 year old game.
However, I was promised you could fly when it was raining if you maxed out swimming and then was sorely disappointed to find out I had been gibed so it's basically unplayable.

I originally played one finger death punch on Xbox indie in my nan's living room, which is crazy to think about now, 11 years on, but point is I never beat it at the time. Coming back to this as an adult who actually plays games on difficulties above easy, I managed to do it in about a week, which is both a mix of experience and this being a really difficult game to put down.
The core gameplay is an on rails fighter revolving around only pressing two buttons to defeat vague enemies coming from two directions. As adamant as they are that it isn't a rhythm game, for the sake of simplicity, it's a lot like a rhythm game.
For how simple it seems, it's extremely fun, the simplicity of gameplay allows for more focus to be put on the levels themselves and the difficulty curve to make it all feel as satisfying as possible. There was no point where a stage felt out of place or incredibly difficult in spite of the monumental changes between the early and later stages.
While mob rounds are this games bread and butter, it does have a massive variety of other stages it throws in, a lot of these feel quite gimmicky, some are just worse versions of mob rounds or they're focused too much on one thing that they're just extremely easy, but things like the light sword rounds and thunderstorm rounds are incredible and really stop the game growing stale.
There are issues, especially as the speed reaches above 200% visual clarity becomes a massive issue, enemies can cover weapons, thrown or not, and can result in you miscounting and missing or taking a hit. A pretty huge issue is that your character stops for a fraction of a second when equipping weapons which can result in a hit, it's so short that it shouldn't be a problem, but with the amount of enemies in later stages it does become one.
Overall, it's a fun game, that's definitely worth the tiny asking price, though I could definitely see it growing stale for others far quicker than it did for me.

It's mind-boggling how far ahead of the curve Rockstar is when it comes to storytelling in games. The character work is untouchable here, Arthur is one of the most compelling protagonists in a game I've played, and nearly all the gang members get their time in the spotlight.
The gunplay is simple but satisfying, and, while not particularly challenging, tagging 4 people with deadeye and watching them all drop is endlessly entertaining.
The fast travel system is done well, it's not brainless but it still saves enough time to not make the horse riding get old; and rest-assured, there is a lot of horse riding. It's no where near the level of driving in GTA but it's not bad by a long shot, I think it's especially raised by small details in how your horse will react to it's surroundings.
But yeah, really incredible game, Rockstar are at the top of the game when it comes to exciting action set pieces contextualized by breathtaking stories, and this is one of their best.

Thief is a really interesting game, and it's safe to say that without it, the entire stealth genre would look incredibly different than it does now. Really, the biggest problem this game faces is when it was made, it is not nice to look at, and not in a particularly charming way: assets are constantly reused and in many levels it's hard to tell if you're going in circles because of the same textures being used on very similar hallway layouts. There are also definitely some stages that are just inferior to others, whether it be limiting player agency or just general traversal of a location. However, when this game shines, it really is one of the best 3d stealth games ever made; and it shines a lot more often than it doesn't.

Very cute little platformer, starts off incredibly easy, with a limited move set and quite simple levels and puzzles, but develops into something much more interesting and complex, if frustrating at times.
This really shines in it's bonus levels which are, sadly, locked behind secret collectables in the main game, but it's so little you're near enough guaranteed to have enough as long as you aren't blitzing through the levels. They are a lot faster paced and make full use of the entire games arsenal, in fact, the first is one of my favourite levels in the entire game just because of the effort put into designing a really engaging while challenging level on such a small moveset.
Arguably, the biggest issue the game has is it's main gimmick in the hammer, while it is cool and works throughout the majority of the game, fast paced sections requiring precise throws just aren't fun and they can happen a fair amount.
Still, worth giving a shot if you're into platformers and the concept looks fun; I enjoyed my time with it, although, admittedly, the games it takes inspiration from, celeste most notably, are some of my favourites.