Heading into the Big MT - a world of mad science and even madder science...

The Good
-Characters are obviously the star of the show. A genocidal toaster, clean freak sink, the 5 (6 really) main scientists... exceptional, punchy writing.
-OWB is the DLC that ties all the others together most strongly. It sets up the other 3 very well and I got a chuckle every time Elijah is mentioned (have fun in that vault buddy)
-Stronggg foreshadowing of Ulysses. Wanted to hear a bit more though about what he was up to
-New guns are cool... for Energy weapons users!!! Not so much for me

The Bad
-The typical fallout issue of a lot of quests being too thinly-veiled fetch quests
-Roboscorpions are verrrry tanky for gun builds. The other enemies have a good lethality to them but also aren't too hard to kill. The scorpions had me running as often as fighting, just to save on bullets..
-The Scientist brains are great, absolutely hilarious, but a bit underutilized. Or more, are too packed in? You can do like 90% of their content in your first conversation with them. The intro with them needs to be shorter, then spread out a bit more over the DLC. Even if its just one more meeting with them for extra exposition before the finale.

The Meh
-The world map has some cool bits to it but ultimately is ruined buildings on more ruined buildings. The interior maps are pretty samey too.

The Hmmm
-Why do you have to destroy Moebius at the end? Did I miss a dialogue or sidequest somehow?

A hilarious and fun romp through the mad science that has always been in the background of Fallout but never quite front and center - plus its usual splash of genuine horror at just how fucked up everything is in this wasteland. A good story (with an interesting 'twist' ending) with great characters and some worthwhile sidequests.

Warhammer 40K: Gladius - Relics of War is a 4X game with a large emphasis on extermination because, as the saying goes, in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. Diplomacy is completely absent and the map is filled with aliens who exhibit different degrees of hostility. It's impossible to win by researching technology or hoarding art pieces either.
One would think that would make the game shallow, but not really. Combat is nearly omnipresent and matches are remarkably short for a 4X game so there's always something to do and factions have a lot of variety to them since it's a 40K game and there are tons of lore to draw inspiration from.
In terms of presentation Gladius is decent, the map kind of looks like a tabletop game even though it isn't based on the real Warhammer 40K tabletop at all. Sound design and animations are alright too, but I would like if there was more art in general, the menus and UI have a very bland utilitarian presentation in general and I sorta expect Warhammer stuff to have little skulls on everything.
My biggest issue with the game is the DLC model, you are constantly reminded of the factions and units you don't have yet and it gets annoying to bump into red tooltips reading "buy X DLC to unlock" in the technology tree. That stuff takes me out of the experience. At least the DLC is actual content for the game like new factions.
Overall, Gladius - Relics of War is pretty good for a 4X game, the factions are varied and fleshed out, the matches have little downtime and it's not yet another cashgrab licensed game.

i discovered a picture of a missing kid on a milk carton. in the living quarters of a small yacht, next to its decaying captain, i found an image of a creature. nearby on the beach, i made camp. as night fell, a group of tall, pale men emerged from the forest and stared. their silhouettes melted into the trees. in the morning, i found a hole. curiosity wore me down until darkness fell again, and i couldn't stave it off anymore, so i ventured inside. the creature was there at the bottom, screaming. i only needed a glimpse to turn tail, to run. guided only by torchlight, i sprinted through the forest as those pale visitors chased me from that hole. all i could see was the brush rushing by, and the leaves, and the fire, and the blurs of relentless tall bodies. i turned and swung. a man caught fire. i kept running. not even my camp on that beach was safe anymore. into the water. into the waves. onto the yacht. i slept next to the dead body. in the morning i looked out at the sunrise, and at the shore. nothing felt safe anymore. i don't want to think about what happened to that kid.

the forest is filled with these moments, these micro stories formed through the melding of scripted events and dynamic game systems. the behavior of the cannibals of the peninsula is incredibly unpredictable - a search party might observe you at night, seemingly observing, scouting, only to lead a full-on assault to your camp a few in-game hours later. you might fight off a group, landing a few arrows in a lone survivor who scampers off into the woods, back to their camp, then returns much later with reinforcements, still bearing those arrows. paint yourself red, and the cannibals will kneel in some sort of primal reverence or learned fear of you. some scrounge through the dirt and infight. some patrol what they see as holy trees. some tower above the rest, serve as nomadic warriors.

and then there are the mutants. the creatures. the twists of countless arms and legs, skin grafted over mouths, tumor-like growths of flesh, far too many eyes. they'll visit you too. they're named after children.

a vast, intertwining cave system winds through the earth beneath the primal, natural greens of the forest. a giant pit craters the center of the peninsula. dark, alien metal veins the sediment. crosses everywhere. ancient human remains. remnants of something unhuman. you'll find traces of both personal belongings and horrific, esoteric horrors while exploring this landscape. it's a slow burn of storytelling, all hinting at something else, something more. why is there footage of a helicopter on a video camera? where did these documents come from? what is sahara? who is matthew cross? what is that horrible throbbing hum, that black pyramid? this isn't just a forest. these aren't just cannibals. these horrors were already too much to bear, but you have to go deeper. you have to find your son.

i traverse the pit. i navigate what is only known as the 'hell caves.' i find a door. i find the red hallway. i discover the truth.

actual peak.

This game should be the poster child of a game ‘getting in the way of itself’. What I mean by that is, the actual combat encounters and card based gameplay is top tier and genuinely so enjoyable. I loved setting up a round to just sweep through the enemies while constantly having my attacks refunded - so satisfying when it all just works.

The flipside on this is that between these great missions that have you doing a cary of objectives and countering many different enemy types, is a terrible cringe inducing Disney Channel Show for tweens.

It honestly felt like they couldn’t work out the demographic for this game, as part of it feels like aimed at older people who like slower strategy games, and the other part feels like it was made for kids who grew up on Iron Man firing off constant zingers for a couple movies in a row.

As I found out in my Need for Speed review, I really have less patience for this kind of dialogue and game setup than what I thought, and ultimately it marred my experience and interrupted the flow of the game enough to make me shelve it.

My advice, play this muted and go watch youtube while you spam through the dialogue between the excellent missions and gameplay.

A definite improvement over the first entry, for two main reasons:

1) You can jump now, allowing you to avoid the spider hazards that plagued the first game.

2) Loot boxes have been replaced by a shop that costs very little to refresh, making unlocking cars fairly easy.

My previous assessment of this game’s writing still holds up. Seemingly based on a middle-schooler's idea of what's cool and funny, Borderlands 2 is a cringey, deeply embarrassing time capsule of my tastes at age 13. It's not all bad, it made me crack a smile once or twice, but it definitely misses more than it hits. Every time they say the word “badass” in this game I can see those fucking sunglasses in my mind’s eye.

It's a joy to play, though. This is the only looter shooter I could ever get into, where each drop is so radically different from whatever you're currently using that you’ll never get bored. Every weapon in this game looks and functions like a child's drawing of a firearm, and I mean this as a compliment. These delightful cartoon guns are mixed with a handful of interesting skill trees and a variety of enemy types to make for some pretty damn fun combat. The bones of this game are solid enough that I can forgive the unlistenable dialogue.

This game rules but the main story is ASS, possibly the worst RGG has made. Which is a real shame as a followup to Judgement, what I'd consider to be the best written game in the series. Or at least the one with the best pacing. On the other end of the spectrum; Lost Judgement's story doesnt execute anything well.

The game effectively reaches it's climax at Chapter7.... of 13 lol. After this point the story becomes reminiscent of the earlier Yakuza titles in the worst possible way. Things just start happening - Go to X. Now go talk to Y in a different city. Oh shit its person Z, time for a 20 minute infodump of things you pieced together 3 hours ago. This continues all the way till the end where you're told "maybe sometimes being a serial killer is justifed..." Great game for attack on titan fans!

Im not kidding when I say the sidestories (both the main overarching one & 4minute jokey ones) are written better.
On that note: Side content this time around is great, some of the best in the series even! Combat is also the best the Dragon Engine has to offer.

If youre playing these games in release order you know what youre in for by now - I had fun with it and you likely will too. But the difference in quality between the main story and everything else is extremely apparent.

My point of reference for the Elder Scrolls was Skyrim because that's the game I played when I was a teen and it's also the game everyone around my age, give or take 10 years, played when they were teens because Bethesda won't make another one and just keeps re-releasing the fifth installment in the series.
While Morrowind is significantly more complex, I don't think it's any more difficult and I would even dare say it's rather accessible all things considered. It's not hard to steamroll all challenges the game throws at you after the introduction which is great because levitating around dropping skeletons on people is a ton of fun.
Morrowind gives a new meaning to the word freedom in comparison to later installments and now I understand why some people complain about streamlining. Other mechanics have become more obtuse funnily enough, such as the UI.
Another aspect that people lament about newer installments is the quality of the writing and that one is also legitimate. Morrowind has an alien world with a unique culture and the story actually has interesting characters and such. Some of them have 6 lines total but that's all they needed to become iconic.
On a different note, some aspects about the game are not as nice. I enjoy the lack of quest markers because you can actually get lost and discover new things on the road to your destination, but when you really want to find something NPC indications are often lacking and that can be really frustrating before you get some form of advanced navigation.
I'm also not a fan of the stat growth system. It basically makes it so you have to grind non major/minor skills to get the optimal level ups and I think I'd rather play the game normally so I think it's ok if you mod that out to always give you +5s. One could also argue the game is not difficult enough to warrant that but it's still kind of a bummer to have to deal with that.
Speaking of mods, the game is also prone to bugging out but thankfully there's Open Morrowind if you want a smooth vanilla or even modded experience.
In conclusion, Morrowind is truly a game like no other. If you can get past the first couple hours when your character is slow as a snail, fails every cast and can't hit the broad side of a barn then the game becomes a lot of fun.
It's a shame Bethesda will never make another game as good as this and, even if they did, they would add some barbaric monetization to it.