Its a looter-shooter, probably the first of its kind. The main story is not something memorable, but I guess it was servicable. You play as one of the four Vault Hunters, looking for the Vault to open. As you're about to leave the bus you arrived on, you get contacted by a woman named Angel, who will guide you on your journey to the Vault. The whole plot is about getting that Vault Key and opening the Vault, thats it. I don't think there's anything about this story that is worth not spoilering.

You have all the stuff you can expect from a Borderlands game, like looting, auto-leveling, a bunch of characters to choose from (I've played as Mordecai, without knowing that he was overpowered), big map with different side quests, except you also have weapon skills that you have to grind (thankfully, it was never brought back in the next games).

Though, it gets kinda boring eventually, quests aren't as interesting and all you're doing is shooting bad guys and driving. As for the combat, weapons have more grounded designs and there are dozens of them with different stats and looks. Unlike in other FPS games, if you want to land accurate shots, you'll have to wait for the reticle to shrink after aiming at the bad guy, just like in Deus Ex.

Overall, it was a mid, but fun game to play for the first time, for the second time, not so much, maybe its more fun in co-op. Also I liked the "dark and gritty" visuals and ambients, which makes the game more unique compared to other Borderlands games.

Its a sequel to the previous game, with a similar beginning, but different story. You play as one of the six Vault Hunters, also looking for the Vault, but they get ambushed and the train they were in got bombed. You are "saved" by Claptrap, one of the only remaining units of its kind and you're also guided by Angel for the same goal as previous Vault Hunters, but with a few twists, which I won't spoil. Also Handsome Jack, the new owner of Hyperion Corporation, wants you dead.

The main story and side quests are way better now (and fully voiced), they're fun, they have their own set of interesting characters and have more worthy (or not) rewards. Handsome Jack is the best part of the game, he's an egomaniacal and delusional jerk with funny rants. The game now has humor, but its not over the top and the game still takes itself somewhat seriously.

Weapon skill system was replaced with Badass points, which slightly increase your stats and guns are shooting more or less where you're aiming them at. I've played the game as Salvador with Pistol only build. The levels are more memorable now than the ones from previous game (like, I only remember the Fyrestone and thats it)

This is probably the best Borderlands game out of all of them, it has a decent story, characters and gameplay.

Its a survival-horror loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's novels, specifically The Shadow over Innsmouth. You take the role of Jack Walters, a detective who was approached by a man, looking for a young fella who's allegedly missing. He was last seen in the town on Innsmouth and Jack, tempted by the money, takes the risk and heads there.

The main story was inspired by The Shadow over Innsmouth with some tidbits taken from other Lovecraft's novels. Characters are fine and sort of memorable. Game's story is good IMO, especially for a Lovecraft-inspired story, but as for the game itself, its not perfect, because it suffers from being a total jankfest.

There's no HUD, there's a body part health system and you have different healing items for different types of damage. If you're not careful enough, you can get your morale damaged, which causes different sorts of side effects, from blured vision, shaking hands, Jack talking to himself and suicide (or falling in despair). Gunplay is okay, but there's too much shooting in the game and enemy AI can be stupid sometimes. And there are puzzles.

Unlike other games Lovecraftian games, I think this one nails the atmosphere of Innsmouth and other places, its grim and dirty, everyone looks like a mutant and they nobody welcomes the strangers, like Jack. And the soundtrack adds to the atmosphere as well. Overall, if you don't mind the jank, maybe you'll enjoy the game (I certainly did).

Before Call of Duty was a AAA-slop, it was a World War II shooter, which was a successor to Medal of Honor series and was made by its MoH's original developers. You have three different campaigns: American, British and Soviet, with different missions to accomplish.

The plot isn't special (other than Soviet campaign shamelessly ripping off a terribly inaccurate Enemy at the Gates movie), you're playing as one of the soldiers from one of three Allies faction and kill Nazis, while doing some other stuff, like blowing up things or stealing the intelligence. The combat is satisfying (especially with those sound effects), the missions are fun, the soundtrack is very "20th century WW2 movie"-like. Unlike in modern CoD, you heal with regular medkits and you have no attachments to your guns.

If you're looking for a simple action FPS about WW2, you should give CoD a try, just don't play it on Veteran difficulty.

Unlike previous three (or four, if you count United Offensive as its own game) games, this one does what devs have always wanted to make: same kind of game, but about modern conflicts with a better story.

You're playing (mostly) as John "Soap" McTavish, a SAS operative, who eventually gets involved into a conflict with Russian separatists who are trying to revive the Soviet Union, specifically their leader, Imran Zakhaev. There's also a campaign about American troops in unnamed Arabian country with a dictator (who's working with separatists) and your task is to bring him to justice. There's not much to the story, but it gets expanded in sequels (which I haven't played)

The gunplay is satisfying, missions are diverse and the soundtrack, which is heavily inspired by Hanz Zimmer, fits the game pretty well.

If you're looking for Hollywood action movie embedded into a videogame, Modern Warfare (classic) subseries is good to go and again, don't play on Veteran difficulty.

Call of Duty about WW2, again, except its nothing like any other WW2 game at the time.

You're either playing as an American killing Japanese Nazis or as a Soviet killing German Nazis. Shooting Nazis is always satisfying (now mixed with gore) and the combat in the game is well made, but unlike in predecessors, the atmosphere in World at War is brutal (this is how the war should be portrayed). The whole charade is accompanied with very atmospheric (or chilling) orchestra music, occasionally mixed with metal (or in some cases, rave)

The main highlight of World at War is not even in its horrific campaign or multiplayer (either a deathmatch or co-op campaign), but in its Nazi Zombies mode. After completing the game, you unlock the secret mission called "Nacht der Untoten", in which you fight endless hordes of zombified nazis. Originally made as a fun easter egg, it became the most popular mode in the franchise. Also it got expanded with a few more maps.

For me, its hands down the best WW2 shooter out there. Don't play on Veteran difficulty. You will not survive.

Before Black Ops turned into something unrecognisable, it used to be a good Cold War-era shooter (with anachronistic guns), in which you take the role of SOG/CIA agent Alex Mason, who's tortured in order to get the meaning of numbers repeating in his head. The missions of Black Ops are Mason's flashbacks (sometimes unreliable) which eventually lead to the answer.

Unlike previous CoD games (on PC at least, we never got Call of Duty 3 on PC), it has a bit more focus on the story, since you see the cutscenes a bit more often than in previous games, instead of the briefings. The story is a bit of a mess that only makes sense only after finishing the game, but its good nonetheless. Cutscenes are directed pretty nicely and the voice acting is also good (not that it was bad in previous games). It got more popularity thanks to its multiplayer and Zombies.

Good action game, don't play it on Veteran.

Never heard about Counter-Strike's singleplayer campaign? Neither did I, until I tried it for myself. You play as the operative in one of the countries in order to stop the acts of terrorism. The plot isn't really there, you just get briefed and sent to the mission.

Honestly, its average at best. The game has two main issues in my opinion: it runs on GoldSrc and the combat hasn't changed at all. Its literally "an average antiterrorist singleplayer campaign" with Counter-Strike's gunplay and Half-Life 1 enemy AI (with all its downsides). It has the potential, but it has been wasted. If it was running on Source (or even on the same engine as Call of Duty games) and had better combat, it would've been a little more better to play.

Now in 2025, even a phone can run Crysis XD. Jokes aside, its one of those "Hollywood sci-fi action movie turned into a game" type of game. And it has a story, though its not really complex or something:

North Korean military evacuated everyone on the island and keeps the researchers hostage. The US, who has access to cutting-edge nanotechnologies, sends the best boys to rescue them, but as your team was landing, one of the mates was taken by unknown thing and you almost got killed by it, your task now is to regroup and pursue the task. I'm not gonna spoil the rest of the game though.

Because its a science fiction, the protagonist, Nomad, is wearing an advanced nanosuit with abilites like invisibilty, armor (a default one), strength and speed. The game is kinda unforgiving if you're trying to go gunblazing (especially on the hardest difficulty), since you're alone against a bunch of Koreans, but thats where your nanosuit comes in handy. The game looks gorgeous even to this day, not only the tropics look nicely with such graphical fidelity, but snowy levels as well.

Its a good game to spend your evenings on if you've got nothing to play.

Its a classic FPS and despite its aged (and charming) graphics, its one of the best FPS games I've ever played.

The story (which is only briefly mentioned in the manual) is literally this: your ass got kicked to the Mars, because you refused to do war crimes and the facility that experimented with teleportations got invaded by demons.

You spend entirety of the game shooting demons in scientific waste facilites, research facilities, Hell and Earth. Thats it. You have a small variety of weapons (but you don't really need more than that anyway), diverse cast of demon foes and MIDI renditions of heavy metal music. The levels are well designed (with a few exceptions), they give you enough guns, ammo, secrets and demons to shoot in maps with different layouts

Its by no means a perfect game. It doesn't have a Super Shotgun yet and a few of first levels of the final episode "Thy Flesh Consumed" are the worst, they're poorly balanced and hard to beat. Rest of the maps of this episode are fairly hard though. If you like boomer shooter, but haven't played Doom for whatever reason, just do it.

Its a reboot of the classic FPS with nice graphics and its a pretty good one.

The story is still simple, but its exists within a game now. You wake up from the sarcophagus, kill some demons and some dude in a body of a robot tells you to disable the portal to Hell.

You spend entirety of the game shooting demons in scientific facilites in Mars and in Hell, with occasional short cutscenes. Thats it. You have a small variety of weapons (now with upgrades to them and to your cool ass Praetor Suit), diverse cast of demon foes and distorted metal music (which even became its own style, an "argent-metal"). The levels are well designed, they give you enough guns, ammo, secrets (easy to find this time), upgrades and demons to shoot in maps with different layouts

Compared to the original, it feels short (probably because there are less levels, but they're bigger in size), its a bit slower and lacks modding support, but its a really good boomer shooter.

Its another classic FPS and one of the good games that was made on Build Engine.

You play as Duke Nukem, who got kidnapped by aliens and kicked ass, came back to Earth only to realise it was invaded by babe-stealing aliens, who also shot your ride. Your goal is to kill alien bastards and save the world (and babes)

Despite being another boomer shooter, its nothing like Doom. You can interact with stuff (including giving money to strippers or taking a piss in the bathroom), there are more "weird" weapons (like 2 different rocket launchers, freezethrower and shrinker) and Duke talks. Enemy variety doesn't feel that diverse like in Doom, but its good for what it is. First and last episodes are set on Earth with more or less grounded places like strip clubs, restaurants, streets of LA and so on. Second episode takes place in the Alien Moon base instead

I don't like it as much as I like Doom, but its a pretty decent game. Fuck Randy.

Its definitely a far cry from anything else in the series, since its more of a descendant of Crysis, except you don't have a nanosuit and you have to rely on your ballistic vest and bushes.

In Far Cry, you play as Jack Carver, ex-military, now a boat charter, who got ambushed after taking his journalist client to the destination. He manages to escape and find a gear that some merc has left, including a phone, on which scientist named Doyle contacts with Jack and offers him a help in escaping the isles in exchange for help.

Unlike the rest of Far Cry games, its linear and more leaned towards sci-fi. The combat is fine, but often feels unforgiving, because of enemy AI and damage output. Stealth (aka hiding in bushes and using MP5SD) helps. The game is difficult even on easiest difficulty, so don't go for Realistic difficulty on the first play. Also it looked pretty good at the time, but the graphics haven't aged that well, compared to Crysis or next Far Cry games.

It might not be the best game, but I have a nostalgia bias and I really like this game despite its balancing issues.

This is where the series starts taking its shape. The big open world with side missions, charismatic (or at least cool) antagonist, patrolling goons and gross healing animations are there.

You take the role of the mercenary, who was sent to kill the Jackal, a dangerous arms dealer who supplies both side of the conflict in the civil war somewhere in the Africa. During your trip, you get bitten by a malaria mosquito and you collapse, then wake up in the hotel room, where the Jackal considers you already dead and leaves. After that the conflict between two faction arises and you have to get out in order to kill the Jackal.

Some parts of the game aged well, like the lonely atmosphere, gunplay, small details like shootable branches, the way fire works in the game, bullet penetration, etc, it just feels immersive. What haven't aged well are lackluster side missions (and lack of any sorts of side activities), malaria and reappearing enemies at the roadblocks. I'm fine with the weapon degradation though (but if you don't like that, you can always find some diamonds and buy a new gun in the gun shop). At least the easy difficulty doesn't feel hard.

Far Cry 2 is as rough as the diamonds in the game itself and I guess thats why I prefer it over other Far Cry games.

Far Cry 3 may be similar to its predecessor in its core, but it does a lot of things differently. The story is now about a rich kid Jason, who got abducted for the ransom after a skydiving in a random spot on the map. His friends faced the same fate. Jason manages to escape, but his brother Grant dies during the escape. He gets saved by a man called Dennis, who wants Jason to join the resistance against pirates and Jason accepts the deal, since he gets a chance to save his friends and avenge for his brother.

Not a fan of Far Cry 3's story, but can I see the improvements over Far Cry 2 (at least when it comes to gameplay): it has more activities, animals are potential threat now, roadblocks has been removed and there's more focus on the story now. And there are things that fans have poked fun of for years, like towers (until Far Cry 5 was released), outposts and funny shit Vaas (the secondary antagonist) says. In addition to improvements, there's a crafting system and skill tree, because the RPGs are kinda popular now and they wanna do the same shit too. And QTEs.

It was fun playing for the first time, but the story didn't really click me until somewhere in the middle or later. Not something I would replay anyway, mostly because of the grind.

Its a standalone DLC for Far Cry 3, where you play as Rex Power Colt, a supersoldier in a post-apocalyptic "VHS cyberpunk" world, where everything feels like 80s cheesy B-tier action movie. The story begins with Colt and his buddy Spider arriving on the unnamed island to investigate a rogue Colonel Sloan. Sloan appears, kills Spider and you get knocked out. You get saved by Sloan's assistant Dr. Darling, who betrays him and wants to help you in killing him.

Basically, the plot sucks (on purpose), but gameplay fucks. You have a few guns from 80s action movies (and a few originals) and a bunch of bad guys to kill with a kickass synthwave music in the background. The game also makes a lot of dumb jokes and makes fun of some stuff like endless tutorial pop-ups or "computer games bad". There are also a bunch of silly stuff that I'm not gonna spoil, you should see that for yourself.

Its not really a typical Far Cry (its more closer to the original game by Crytek), but a "dumb shooter", but its a really fun one. The only problem is that its short.

The last good game in the series, unfortunately.

Straight to the game's story: the game starts with a cutscene, where interviewed people of Hope County are talking about the dangerous Christian cult "Project at Eden's Gate", founded by a man called Joseph Seed, that took over the place. Then it switches to a police squad arriving next to the church of the cult on a helicopter. There are a lot of armed people there and nobody welcomes you or your squad, but they don't open fire yet. You (the Deputy) and your buddies enter the church to arrest their leader for kidnapping with intent of harm. You arrest him and take him to the helicopter, then as the pilot starts rising, cultists start to attack the chopper, causing the hard crash. You manage to escape for a while and meet one of your buddies. You two take the car and get away from the cultists tailing you, until you crash again, but into the water. You get saved by one of the resistance members and start helping them in order to bring Joseph Seed to justice.

The gunplay is good (as always), there are more activities now, like saving hostages, destroying convoys, fishing, challenges and more side quests. Villains are more or less charismatic (especially Joseph and to some extent John). The game has tons of music, from plain soundtrack, songs written for the game with lyrics and vocals (I'm a sucker for those XD) and a bunch of licensed music, imagine my reaction when I've heard We'll Meet Again somewhere in the distance (and in the credits).

Also the game has companions now. Technically, the series started having companions since Far Cry 4, but I haven't played it. Cheeseburger (the bear) is cute, but I picked Adelaide most of the time, not because she's a horny MILF (she's taken anyway), but because she arrives on a helicopter, which I always borrow (as well as Adelaide, because I'm not an asshole). There's also the ability to play the game in co-op mode.

The story is decent, but the progression feels off. John's region was peak, Jacob's region was good, but forced missions with him were somewhat cheesy for reasons. Faith's region felt hollow, compared to previous two and the finale where you have to fight Joseph felt underwhelming. Unlike the rest of Far Cry games, in here our protagonist is just some random ass Deputy with no personality or even emotionless voiceovers (most likely done due to the focus on co-op).

There's also an Arcade Mode, which takes advantage of Far Cry 5's Level Editor and gives the players an easy access to maps with pure action (or stealth), but here's the catch, its online only, you can't play it offline, despite having a solo play option. If it wasn't for already mentioned negative aspects of Far Cry 5, it could've been my favorite Far Cry game, but negative stuff aside, it was a pretty fun game to play.

In my opinion, one of the best FPS in existence. You take the role of Point Man, the operative at F.E.A.R., in order to find and neutralize Paxton Fettel, a rogue psychic who controls the army of clone soldiers and killed a bunch of people in Armacham Technology Corporation facility. The story isn't complex, but starts making more sense if you listen to answering machines and get the info from the laptops.

The combat is tense and fast which could've been a huge issue, if it wasn't for Point Man's quick reflexes (basically a slow-mo), which is really helpful when there's a lot of soldiers. Soldiers themselves have a good AI behind them, they react to player's actions like throwing a grenade, flanking, killing their buddies, using a slow-mo or just simply turning on a flashlight.

The game gives you enough resources to survive the encounters with the replica soldiers, so its not that bad. Besides the slow-mo itself, there's an additional eyecandy, which is a destruction, like oversized bullet holes on walls or thrashed office complexes after a firefight. The game was clearly inspired by John Woo movies (and The Matrix), so besides the slow-mo and destruction, you can also use the akimbo pistols or kick the shit out of enemies (either doing a side kick, a bicycle kick or a sweeping kick).

Not sure if its just me, but I don't find the horror elements scary, though I appreciate that for horror elements, Monolith Productions took the inspiration from J-Horror movies (because they're weebs), like The Ring (a Japanese movie specifically, though the creepy little girl from the game was inspired by onryo in general, not just Sadako), Ju-On or Dark Water, instead of copying horror movies that were popular in the west at the time. This inspiration can even be heard in game's ambient music.

If you're a fan of John Woo (or media inspired by him, like The Matrix or Max Payne), J-Horror or FPS genre as a whole, maybe you should give F.E.A.R. a try?

A second top-tier FPS in the row! You play as Gordon Freeman, an MIT-grad with a PhD in theoretical physics who works in Black Mesa Research Facility. Despite being late, you put on the hazard suit before participating in an experiment with a crystal from another dimension. Everything goes wrong and aliens start the invasion, since the experiment opened a portal. Your goal is to reach the Lambda Complex to stop the alien invasion.

For 1998, it was a revolutionary game, the graphics was good at the time and the game has a narrative in form of NPCs talking to you and enviromental storytelling, instead of the cutscenes. The combat is good, guns feel good to shoot from, enemies are varying from jarheads cleaning up the mess by killing everyone to invasive species from other dimension. The soundtrack is also a good thing about this game, its pretty unique and atmospheric, sometimes catchy or just straight up epic. It was the era of CD's, so no more MIDIs or MODs (though I am sucker for latter).

There aren't that many bad things I could say about this game, other than two useless guns of alien origin and On The Rail chapter (IMO Valve suck at vehicle chapters), otherwise it would've been the perfect game for me.

Half-Life has two things that keeps the game afloat: the multiplayer and mod support. Multiplayer is just a simple deathmatch and its pretty fun: its boom-shooty, but not as fast paced as Quake, which makes it easy to just enjoy the game with other people. Over the years, Half-Life has received tons of different mods, mostly revolving around Black Mesa and Half-Life universe, they differ in quality, but people mostly remember mods such as Sweet Half-Life, Point of View, Echoes or Field Intensity.

If you're into FPS genre, I highly recommend playing Half-Life (or at least its remake, Black Mesa, if you can't stand cheesy scientist screams or dated graphics).

Its an expansion pack for Half-Life, originally developed for a Dreamcast port that was later released on PC instead. This time you take the role of Barney Calhoun, a security guard who does his routine job, until Resonance Cascade happens and the elevator that Barney was in falls down. Unlike Gordon's role, all Barney wants is to escape the Black Mesa with other scientists.

Its not something remarkable, its just "more Half-Life", other than that you can't use HEV chargers and have to resort to ballistic vests and helmets. Unfortunately, the soundtrack is a lackluster, since it just reuses the music from Half-Life: Opposing Force (which doesn't fit the atmosphere of Blue Shift). The Half-Life community has a divisive opinion about this expansion, but I really like it.

Another Half-Life expansion pack that switches sides. This time, you play as HECU marine Adrian Shephard. He and his squad were sent to Black Mesa, but unfortunately for his squad, his ride was shot down by Xen aliens. They survive the hard crash, but not the assault, except for Shephard, who was saved by his brother in arms, then by a science team. Soon, his goal switches from cleaning up the mess to evacutation.

The expansion pack introduces a few new weapons, ropes and the new enemy type, the Race X, who appears in the late stage of alien invasion, before Gordon Freeman has stopped it. Expansion pack suffers from a lack of proper balance on Hard diffuclty, since there wasn't always enough ammo or HP, so I can't really recommend playing it on Hard. The final bossfight was as underwhelming as Borderlands' boss (which is not a coincidence, since both Opposing Force and Borderlands were developed by Gearbox Software, and they probably reused the concept of Opposing Force's boss for Borderlands)

I didn't enjoy Opposing Force as much as Blue Shift, though the fans actually prefer Opposing Force, some even consider it better than Half-Life itself.

After the events of Half-Life, Gordon wakes up in the train arriving in City 17, a dystopian city under the rule of the Combine, a interspecies alien empire that took over Earth under mere 7 hours. With the help of his old buddy Barney Calhoun, who works at Combine's Civil Protection as a double agent for resistance, Gordon manages to escape from the policemen until he gets ambushed in a tight corridor. He gets saved by a girl named Alyx, who takes Gordon to the safehouse, where he gets to wear his old trusty and modified HEV suit. Now he has to reach Black Mesa East, but unfortunately the attempt at teleporting Gordon has failed and he has to reach there on foot.

The sequel gives you completely different arsenal and the enemies are mostly consisting of Combine police officers and soldiers, in some cases alien bugs, headcrabs and zombies. The highlight of the game is the iconic Gravity Gun that lets you utilize, innovative for the time, physics system to pick the objects and throw them at enemies at the high velocity. The soundtrack is as good as in previous game.

Levels no longer consist of facility complexes, but an Eastern European city and its outskirts, but unfortunately (for me at least), the game has two chapters involving vehicles and they're as uninteresting as in the first game (at least they are when you're trying to beat the game for the second or third time. For the first time, they were awesome).

I liked the lore, which is surprisingly rich, thanks to small details and cut content that players are taking for granted (its not like Half-Life has a real canonicity anyway and its not my words, but Mark Laidlaw's, who was a writer for Half-Life and its sequel), as well as the dystopian atmosphere of City 17, but unfortunately, I can't put the sequel and its additional episodes at the same spot as Half-Life, because despite having a better story and lore, the gameplay didn't click.

Its a sci-fi game, in which you play as the Master Chief, a super soldier of UNSC, who's fighting against an alien faction called The Covenant. The ship you woke up in, Pillar of Autumn gets invaded and heavily destroyed by The Covenant and the crew's only choice is to evacuate to the nearby ringworld. After the hard crash, in which you (and your AI companion Cortana) are the only survivor from this crash and your goal is to find and help the remaining crew and continue investigating the Halo in order to stop The Convenant.

As much as it was an impressive game for the Xbox user, for a PC audience (at least for me and the rest of Easter Bloc) it wasn't something as special, though it does have big levels and nice graphics. The story is okay and the combat is pretty good, it has well directed cutscenes and good orchestral music (and latter is gonna be so overused in a lot of games since).

I don't have much to say about the game, to be honest, its forgettable even, but it was a good experience nonetheless. Sadly, you can't play the original version without resorting to piracy.

The plot of the game is simple, a group of survivors in a zombie apocalypse are trying to find some help and get out of there.

Its a co-op shooter first, so you should better play with people you know first (or random people if you have no friends, but its not always a good experience). The characters you're playing as are exactly the same in terms of gameplay, but they're charismatic and have their own personality traits and dialogues between each other. The gunplay is as good and the enemies are not just hordes of zombies, but special infected as well, who have no personality, but differ in gameplay.

When I said that you should play with friends, I mean it. Not only its more fun that way, but also because of the game's feature called Director, which adds or reduces amount of zombies and loot depending on the progress you and your teammates have made. Of course, you can play with bots, but if you're gonna play past Medium difficulty, its gonna be pretty hard.

Besides the usual Campaign mode, there's a Versus mode, where people can play as special infected as well and they have to kill all the survivors. Community of Versus is toxic, so I wouldn't recommend into getting to it. Since Left 4 Dead 2 has received the updates, it also merges Left 4 Dead into itself, so you can play all the chapters of Left 4 Dead in the sequel. Oh, and there's also a Steam Workshop support with the different mods to play with (mostly reskins, but there are rebalancing mods and custom maps as well).

There's not a lot I could say about Left 4 Dead 2 either, it has a simple but good story, interesting lore, a bunch of memorable characters and good levels to beat. Its a really nice game to play with your friends (or with random people if you manage to find someone who's not gonna troll you)

You take the role of Cate Archer, the UNITY agent, who's tired from doing boring spy jobs, but unfortunately for her, the more exciting and dangerous operative jobs are only handled to men. Suddenly, within a period of 10 days, 7 agents turned up dead by a man called Dmitry Volkov, who's regal finale is a red lily next to the corpse, and intelligence says that the organisation called H.A.R.M. might be involved. UNITY had no choice, but call Cate, as she's the only available agent at the moment who's willing to take the risks.

The 1960s aesthetics of NOLF are pretty cool, the story is fine and has a few twists. The gameplay is fairly challenging (I've played the game on Hard difficulty) and the devs definitely learned from mistakes they did in Shogo. Though the gunplay isn't great (more or less accurate guns don't deal enough damage and guns like AK47 has terrible accuracy), it can be compensated either with different bullet types that deals more damage or with stealthy approach. The game has a variety of gadgets disguised as woman's every-day items that you have to use in order to complete the objective and gather additional intelligence. The soundtrack is pretty good, the main theme from the intro is just something else, man, its epic, its catchy and fits the game's aesthetics very well.

No One Lives Forever is, unfortunately, a truest abandonware. Warner Bros doesn't give a fuck about NOLF, because Nightdive Studios offered them money for the IP license and WB didn't had to do anything, but they refused and thats a huge shame on them (as well as for closure of Monolith Productions).

Just grab and play it, Warner Bros wouldn't probably even sue you (don't quote me on that) if you'll download the game for free, because they clearly don't even want money from NOLF.

Its a weird sandbox type of game, where radical extremist groups ruin your day, while all you're trying to do is to vote for your favorite candidate, go to work or ask people to sign your petition. The game doesn't restrict you when it comes to violence, because "its as violent as you are", but you can also beat it without killing anyone.

The graphics are ugly, voicelines are somewhat cheesy and everything is a satire on American culture. The combat is okay, soundtrack mostly consists of relaxing music (with a few metal songs, corny Christian or Muslim song or Stars Stripes)

Its a reasonable game to play if you want to unwind, though I wouldn't recommend the rest of the games in the series (other than Brain Damaged, which is a satirical boomer shooter): Postal and Postal: Redux are about mindless killing, Postal 2: Cockscrew Rulez is a terrible expansion made for a local Russian market, Postal 3 is bad, Postal 4 is "Postal 3, but its American".

You play as Domasi Tawodi (or Tommy), a Native American who wants to leave the reservation, but after an argument with his girlfriend who refuses to leave and fight with two drunkards, everyone gets abducted by aliens. Before aliens could kill you and use your body as a resource, resistance has helped you escape and all you gotta do is to save your girlfriend (and everyone else) and escape.

The combat is really good, guns are gross to look at, but satisfying to shoot from and the enemies are well balanced. Prey has a few gimmicks like portals, wallwalks and they're pretty cool. Another thing about Prey, you can't die, because you get teleported to the spirit world and after replenting your HP and "mana" (to use for a Spirit Walk, so you can basically separate your soul from your body), you return back to the weird alien space station.

Its a really good game that you can't buy anymore (unless you're an Xbox user), so the only way to get the game as a PC user is to pirate it.

Its another classic FPS by id Software with little to no plot: the humanity experimented with teleportation, causing Lovecraftian aliens to invade the Earth, so you, Ranger, have to teleport to the different places to find the source of the invasion.

The combat is pretty good, but unfortunately, shooting bad guys in Quake doesn't feel as satisfying for me as it was in Doom (although the enemy design is pretty unique), mostly because of the lack of kickass music in the background and some levels being kinda infuriating. All you have as a background music are ambient works written by Nine Inch Nails specifically for the game. The levels are often hit or miss and they vary from gothic castles to scientific facilities (and everything is brown)

If you like boomer shooters, just give it a try. There's a shareware version with the first episode of Quake that you can play for free (but it doesn't have a soundtrack at all).

Its a sequel that has nothing to do with the original. The Earth is now invaded by Stroggs, alien race that makes gross human cyborgs and you're one of the marines that was sent to the Strogg base in order to weaken their defenses and let the other to push through

Because its an id Software's game, the combat is pretty good, the levels are bigger (although some of them might be sloggy), the arsenal is slightly more different and the enemies are completely different. The soundtrack written by Sonic Mayhem (who will later write bangers for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided) just rocks, its something that would kinda benefit the first game (just like it benefitted Doom).

The fanbase has mixed opinions about this game, either because its nothing like Quake (which is correct lmao) or because they're not familiar with the sequel at all. I personally prefer it over the original.

In Shogo, you take the role of Sanjuro, the commander of UCA who's tasked to deal with the rebel group called The Fallen that caused the war on the planet Cronus for the precious resource called kato.

The game is heavily inspired by anime like Appleseed, Patlabor, Gundam and Robotech, it even has its own silly opening with some obscure Japanese song at devs at Monolith Productions managed to get a license for. Writing and voice acting is so cheesy, its charming (and the cat mission, IYKYK).

The combat on MCA (mecha) is pretty good, as long as you don't step on the vehicles and keep the distance between yourself and other vehicles (because they explode, it deals a lot of splash damage and because you also have explosive weapons). The combat on foot is hectic and you get ambushed pretty often, there are barely any medkits, but you can replentish your HP by doing critical hits.

Despite being a jankfest that was critically acclaimed, but failed to sell well (because of the game being self-published and barely marketed, and Half-Life being released soon), Shogo walked, so F.E.A.R. and No One Lives Forever could run (and they both were planned to be a spiritual successor to Shogo). And even years after Shogo's release, its developers and a small fan base still like this weird game.

Shogo was even referenced in F.E.A.R. with a secret room that has a radio playing Free Cronus station, a whiteboard with a cowboy and the opening theme of the game playing on the radio (which actually introduced me to the game in the first place).

And honestly, I like this game too, its one of the first games before Half-Life that introduced a proper narrative in the game and its fun. There's also a fan-made mod that manages to fix some gameplay issues to make the game more fun.

Its a direct sequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and its the last entry in the original trilogy. You take the role of Major Degtyaryov, a SSU (Security Service of Ukraine) agent in undercover as he's investigating crashed helicopters that were sent as a part of the Operation Fairway.

The trilogy is set in alternative early 2010s, where the second explosion on Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant happened and caused a lot of anomalous formations within a perimeter of the Exclusion Zone, where everyone brave, greedy or desperate were going for "easy money", as the riches from the outside world and various scientists were interested in properties of the artifacts from the Zone (but you don't see anyone hunting for artifacts, because of time constraints during game development).

The gameplay in the trilogy is not exactly like everything else (the closest thing to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. are probably Far Cry games), its not really a cookie cutter shooter, because there's an ongoing story, different characters and the semi-open world you can roam in without restrictions (at least most of the time, until you reach the point of no return). Its not an RPG either, where you could put your skill points on skills and perks, but you do have a simple economy, factions and side quests. Neither its a survival horror, the only survival elements in the game are poorly implemented hunger in previous two games (it works as intended in Call of Pripyat), inventory system with a limitation on how much stuff you can carry in weight and the only horror moments in the game are abandoned labs with rare and dangerous mutants.

Unlike previous games in the trilogy, this game is the most polished one, the combat doesn't feel incredibly janky or unfair (and there's not much of it), there are plenty of interesting side quests to complete, it has all the good stuff from Clear Sky like artifact hunting, blowouts (kinda like a radioactive storm or something like that) or technicians that will repair your gear for money, and the random stalkers have their schedule: they get up, travel, hunt artifacts or just chilling at the campfire and come back to the hub area, instead of staying in the same spot 24/7.

Ambients are pretty atmospheric and the combat music is a banger (so are the outro and credits songs). With all its polishness, the game suffers from one big issue, its pretty short. Your goal is mostly looking for the crashed helicopters and helping out your military bros later in the game, so its advisable to do side missions (and probably join Duty or Freedom factions if you happen to like one of two).

If you want to start with the series properly, you should give Call of Pripyat a try, since in my opinion, standalone mods like Anomaly or GAMMA are too much of a spoil for new players.

Its a prequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. You play as mercenary Scar, who managed to survive the blowout after a failed bodyguard job for scientists. He gets saved by members of the secretive Clear Sky faction, who are trying to study the Zone. After doing another errand, Scar manages to survive the blowout for the second time, but he gets told that he's most likely not gonna survive for the third time. Since Scar owes Clear Sky much, he's just being their errand boy in stopping a stalker named Strelok, who allegedly triggers the Blowout, due to his interference into the center of the Zone.

The gameplay in Clear Sky is mediocre at best, you take a lot of damage, due to poor weapon accuracy from your side and busted bleeding mechanics. And you have to shoot the bad guys a lot, especially if you're participating in Faction Wars. Also the enemies are more likely to hide in the cover during firefights. If there's one thing that Clear Sky does better than other two games in the trilogy are the graphics, because the game looks pretty.

The combat is also bad, because your weapons are pretty inaccurate and the game really pushes you into grinding money for those weapon upgrades. And you really have to grind, because the economics in Clear Sky is one of those bad things about the game, since you don't get a lot of money from quests.

I wouldn't recommend playing the game, unless you really insist on doing so. I mean, the game has Mixed reviews on Steam for a reason.

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, you play as an amnesiac stalker called The Marked One (because of his tattoo on his arm) who survived the hard crash in a "corpse truck" ride and was saved by a random stalker who was just looking for a loot. The Marked One's PDA has the only task written on it: Kill Strelok. Figuring out that it was probably his task that you he couldn't finish, he decides to pursue it.

The combat is pretty janky, but the devs at GSC Game World actually tried to make a proper ballistics, while everyone else went for hitscans instead. Also the atmosphere of the Zone was (and still) pretty unique, compared to anything else released before, its kinda depressive and gritty with a sense of loneliness.

The graphics look photorealistic, thanks to relying on textures made out of the real photos and some shader work. The music in the game are mostly depressing ambients that blend in well with the game. There are also guitar songs that random stalkers can play at the campfire.

Its actually a miracle that the game was released, got a fan base both locally and worldwide, and even got two sequels (one technically is a prequel), since the development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was hell, devs were too ambitious and for years they were adding features and gimmicks, but not the story itself. A lot of thing had to be cut because of that.

Another problem that a lot of non-Ukrainian and non-Russian players will face (other than lack of polish) is translation, since not every line of dialogue was dubbed and there's no official subtitle support. If you want to try the game for yourself, you can either play the game as is (or at least with a subtitle mod) or you can install Zone Reclamation Project to make the game a little bit better.

Yes, Unreal is a game and its the first game to be made on Unreal Engine. You play as the sole survivor on the Vortex Rikers prison ship that did a hard crash on Na Pali planet and got ambushed by alien race Skaarj. But you're not free yet, you also have to escape the planet itself (and probably kill a ton of alien bastards).

Unreal is a boomer shooter, so the plot doesn't matter much, you just kill a lot of bad guys and proceed to the next room. Except the bad guys in Unreal have a good AI, some will utilize their shield fields, some will dodge your projectiles, some will just shoot rockets at you because they're tanky. The game has a unique-looking arsenal with an alternative mode.

Levels in Unreal are kinda big and they're accompanied by a banger soundtrack (its a MOD music btw), but unfortunately, there's too many of them, so its kinda a drag for 10 hours (15, if you complete the mediocre Return to Na Pali expansion pack as well).

Unfortunately, despite pushing Unreal Engine to other developers and giving Epic Games money, Epic Games themselves reject Unreal, since the games of this franchise are impossible to buy now, but they for whatever reason decided to let the people behind OldUnreal forums to host and maintain the game for free. Couldn't they just make everything free on Steam and GOG in the first place? Anyway, I think they did that now because of the backlash they got from the fans.

Yes, the game looks exactly like on the cover art. Its loosely based on the first 5 chapters of a Belgian comic of the same name.

The game starts with a murder of the president William Sheridan, who was killed by a person looking exactly like the protagonist of the game, allegedly known as Steve Rowland. You wake up wounded on the beach coast with the amnesia and taken to the safety by a random woman. Soon you get ambushed and you have to get out with a fight and figure out your identity.

The artstyle of the game is great, it really looks like a comic, not only in the way how NPCs, items and levels looks, but it also includes onomatopeia, comic frame shaking from explosion or a new frame popping up when you're doing headshots or doing some plot important stuff. The soundtrack is another good thing about the game, it gives off this spy movie vibe.

Since the game is based on a comic, a lot of stuff had to be changed to fit the gameplay. This also means that the game ends with a cliffhanger, because in 2003, the comic wasn't finished yet and unfortunately there was no proper sequel that would finish the story of the game, at least you can start reading the comic and finish it, while also getting more chapters.

If you're into cel-shaded graphics in videogames or just like FPS genre, give XIII (Classic, not the Remake) a try. Its also available on 6th gen consoles (except Dreamcast).