We’ve all got gaps in our gaming history that need to be filled. I certainly haven’t played every game ever, and neither have you. It can be hard to find the time and money to snag and play older and important games, but every now and then there are sales that make it that much easier to catch up on your backlog. GOG, a PC storefront that sells DRM-free games, is holding a sale for what it’s calling “renowned” games that includes some great and foundational titles, as well as some overlooked gems. All of them are well worth picking up if you’ve got the chance and the means.
Here’s what you can snag during GOG’s Renowned Series promotion.
Wolfenstein
In the 2010s, it became really cool to punch Nazis again, which happens when you have people boldly claiming Nazism and adopting fascist rhetoric for the first time in decades. At around the same time, Machinegames developed and released multiple installments in a rebooted Wolfenstein series that is, at the very least, interesting. The series’ longtime protagonist is more explicitly played as a once-disabled, Jewish and Polish-American soldier in the war against the Nazis than in earlier games. After losing the war and winding up in vegetative state in a hospital for several years, BJ finally stirs just in time to do something about the Nazis’ hold on the world.
B.J is immensely layered in these games, and the series not only touches on his own interiority and various identities, but those of his allies, including his wife Anya,a guy who might just be Jimi Hendrix, and eventually B.J’s own parents. Machinegames titles also boast top-notch cutscene direction and performances from everyone involved, lending a filmic quality and level of prestige to the game in between its gnarly gunfights. The New Order keeps things relatively simple and punchy, but eventually the sequels begin to include supersuits and advanced tools and weaponry that complicate matters and simultaneously turn B.J into Billy The Butcher. They’re a fun and occasionally heady time, and you can pick up Wolfenstein: The New Order and The Old Blood in Wolfenstein: The Two Pack for $US6, as well as The New Colossus for another $US6.
Tomb Raider
Before we had Uncharted, Lara Croft was gaming’s foremost treasure hunter and problematic disruptor of sacred and indigenous resting places. And she is incredible: her fit is always on point, she comes strapped with dual pistols anywhere and everywhere she goes, and she’s capable of like a six-foot vertical leap from a standing position. Before the modern reboots turned her into a reluctant hero who’s endlessly savaged by supernatural forces and at least one bear, she was the quintessential badass in games, a term I’ve tired of but which feels remarkably apt for Lara. Multiple Tomb Raider titles are on sale right now and I honestly don’t know where to tell you to begin. If you want the classics, you can pick up the remastered trilogy of the first three games for $US22.49. If you want something more brutal and realistic that still feels like a fun romp, pick up the 2013 reboot for $US4. I get those prices are wildly different, but they’re also pretty distinct reads on the same character and series, so go digging and see what you find and like.
Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
Bear with me here: Kane & Lynch 2 is a bad time. It’s a game possessed by ugliness. At a time when developers were racing to put out the most aesthetically pleasing titles with the most polished and realistic in-game models, IO Interactive turned that realism on its head and threw it in everyone’s face. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is the product of that: a third-person shooter with a found footage aesthetic, pixelated nudity and brutality, a neverending stream of foul language, and two rotting old dudes at the center of it all. It’s a remarkably unsubtle meditation on violence that almost feels like an alternate take on the director Harmony Korrine’s recent film, Aggro Dr1ft. Kane & Lynch 2 is not for everyone, but it’s also one of the most remarkably disruptive games to emerge from an otherwise pristine era and you can have it for just over $US4.
Deus Ex
First-person RPGs with an emphasis on stealth and choices in the layout of the world are my shit. Otherwise known as immersive sims, these represent the pinnacle of what games can be to me, and even the ones that don’t entirely set out to be immersive sims share a lot of DNA with them! Deus Ex is one such immersive sim set in 2052 in a vision of America that’s been beset by an epidemic and huge disparities between classes. Flip some numbers around there, and Deus Ex could feasibly (and alarmingly) take place next year. Besides its prescient qualities, Deus Ex is also just one of the most preeminent examples of an immersive sim in the medium. Famously, you could scale a wall in the game by sticking mines to it, jumping on them, and then repeating the process all the way up. If that doesn’t sound like the most ambitious and asinine way of solving a problem, I don’t know what does. You too can climb a mine-laden wall by snagging Deus Ex GOTY Edition for $US2.79. Alternatively you can pick up the most recent installments, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, for $US3 and $US4.49, respectively.
Baldur’s Gate
Baldur’s Gate 3 was the biggest game of last year but I’m sure most of you already know that and have exhausted that game by now. If you were left curious about the series’ beginnings, the first two games are currently on sale. Be warned, they are a fair bit older than the most recent title, having been released on either side of the turn of the century. CRPGs of the time are, in a word, thornier than they tend to be now, and due to that, tons of folks have a hard time going back. However, the Baldur’s Gate series is legendary, boasting three foundation-setting mainline installments that are all acclaimed for their own merits. It really can’t hurt to pick up the enhanced editions of the first two Baldur’s Gate titles, which are going for about $US5 and $US3 apiece right now, and see what’s up for yourself.
Hotline Miami
In the early 2010s, Hotline Miami’s hazy and digitized violence made a profound impact on the industry. At the time, developers seemed to be wrestling with the inherent violence of combat in games, as well as the necessity of it. A top-down, twin-stick shooter, Hotline Miami places you in the shoes and mask of a killer known simply as Jacket. At night, he talks to the personified masks he wears during his rampages, which represent the fractured segments of his own psyche constantly wrestling with one another. By day, he embodies them, takes anonymous phone calls, and slays his way through gangs, mafiosos, and then some.
All the while, the player has little choice but to complete the missions as they are laid out in front of them. Maybe it felt bad, or maybe it didn’t, but interrogating which of those feelings Hotline Miami elicits is the broader point of the game, which sets this violence against the backdrop of Miami in the late 1980s. Most folks assume that the game, like some of its ilk, tries to guilt you, but I don’t think it ever becomes patronizing. It is aware of the satisfying loop of fast-paced action that it creates, and assumes some level of responsibility and shared blame due to its participation in the cycle of violence endemic to games. If you want a truly unforgettable experience with a seminal game of the 2010s indie boom, pick up Hotline Miami for $US2.49.
Little Nightmares
It is September, which means we’re all just counting down the days till Halloween, and so why not get ahead on some horror titles by picking up Little Nightmares. The series is as popular as ever, with a third title on the way from Supermassive (Until Dawn) and a devout following that love its toylike aesthetic and the surreal nightmares that pursue the player’s through its various horrific vignettes. They are perhaps the most approachable horror games out there right now because they are, at their essence, mostly just platformers with some puzzles mixed in. They’re not entirely for me, but I can’t deny that it sufficiently conjures upa menacing and disquieting aura thanks to its visual direction and higher-than-average production quality for a title of its size and stature. The third game will surely be huge when it comes out in 2025, but in 2024, you can and should dive into both Little Nightmares and its immediate sequel, which are on sale for about $US5 and $US10, respectively.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Everyone knows about Metal Gear Solid, but not nearly as many have played and/or experienced Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which is criminal. Revengeance lets you play as the franchise’s resident cyborg ninja Raiden and delivers frenetic and gratuitous hack-and-slash action from the acclaimed developers over at Platinum. The team was clearly well aware of the property they were diving into because Revengeance features many of Metal Gear’s baffling idiosyncrasies and hallmarks, like giant robots funded by the US government, corrupt politicians, and nanomachines! This time it’s just grafted onto the most extra game ever which makes Revengeance just one of the most honest installments in the larger Metal Gear franchise. You can dismember enemies and rip out their cyber spines in glorious fashion by getting Metal Gear Rising Revengeance for $US18.
Doom 3
Doom 3 is widely considered the black sheep of the series, which means I must obviously mount its defense. It is not the high-octane hitscan first-person shooter that its predecessors were, nor is the over-the-top gorefest that the recent installments have become. It’s something else altogether, and that’s why it is worthy of a reappraisal. A moodier first-person survival horror game, Doom 3 is just different. That is it’s only real crime. You fight a number of the same demons, but in different lighting and at a different speed, which was revelatory, as well as controversial, at the time it was released (2005). It is suffused with tension much like ripping through a gauntlet in Doom Eternal on very little HP, but imagine always being on your backfoot. People are so used to the Doom games operating in one way, but Doom 3 dared to dream a little bigger.
I understand that it’s not for everyone, but just because it isn’t doesn’t mean it can’t be for you. I didn’t know I would like Doom at all until I eventually picked up the 2016 reboot. You won’t know that Doom 3 isn’t for you until you give it a shot for yourself. For just $US4, you can pick up the most distinct installment in the Doom franchise, and trust me, Doom 3 is worth it.
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