Marvel's Spider-Man was one of the swan songs of the PS4 generation, alongside TLOUp2 and Ghost of Tsushima. It was the first of these three to drop, and while the PS5 would not be released until a few years later, this was the beginning of the end so to speak.

It came about via a special partnership between Sony Interactive Entertainment and Insomniac Studios -- the kind of business deal that is not at all alien/bizarre in the realm of console exclusives. By the time of Spider-Man PS4, the team at insomniac studios were at a bit of a rough spot in terms of recent video game releases.

Ratchet and Clank petered out at the tail-end of the PS3 generation, and the recent reboot tie-in game to the film for Ratchet and Clank 1 was also met with middling reception. Sunset Overdrive, their game before that, was met with good reviews but released to an underwhelming sales performance.

Needless to say, in comparison to their roots as a PS2/3 powerhouse, releasing Ratchet and Clank and Resistance games like nobody's business, Insomniac was somewhat of a shell of their former selves. But! They were not left in the dust.

Sony Entertainment was aware of the extreme technical prowess of the team at Insomniac. Ratchet and Clank's remastered game might have been the same as its early-2000s counterpart, but the physics engine and graphical presentation of the game was simply astonishing. It laid the groundwork for eventual games like R+C: Rift Apart, and of course, Spider-Man PS4.

So, out of a bevy of candidates, Sony finally decided to give the task of developing a brand-new Spider-Man game to Insomniac. Prior to this game's release, the videogame side of Spidey's collection of media products was seriously lacking. I know that there's hundreds of thousands of people online who have an undying (and frankly nostalgia-blinded) love for games like Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and even Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions... but c'mon yall. Most of those games are tie-in slop that could've been bundled with a happy meal. Spider-Man, until 2018, never had a Batman: Arkham-CIty-Esque experience where a dev team created an entirely new and CLASSIC universe for one of comic book's most beloved superheroes.

So, when the game released in 2018, practically everybody loved this thing. It was the first step Insomniac took towards developing this Spider-Man PS4 universe, and what a first step it was. Featuring a basic, predictable, but CLASSIC narrative, a beautiful rendition of Manhattan, and graphics that were jaw-dropping, Spider-Man PS4 embodied the fantasy of swinging through New York as Spidey better than any game before it... and in my opinion after it too.

This game is great. The combat is fun, punchy, and responsive, and the gadget system is perhaps a little overpowered but fun as hell to use. Mission design is similarly hit or miss at certain points in the game, with the MJ stealth sections being unfortunately quite boring.

Also, the pacing of certain missions even as Spider-Man himself were boring. Parts of the game where you had to "investigate" were long and uneventful, whereas the missions where you get to kick villain ass were comparatively 10x more fun and interesting.

So what content did it offer other than a classic Spider-Man story? Well, perhaps due to it being an open-world game, it's overworld content. Collectibles, crime encounters, enemy bases, and different types of trials make up this game's side content, alongside one (kinda lame) side quest featuring Tombstone of all villains.

While this side content might get repetitive once you reach the last few enemy bases and crime encounters, the path to 100%ing Spider-Man PS4 is very, VERY easy. This allows for the broader video game experience to be very fun. Overall, this game seeks to provide players with just that. Fun. Not an amazing story, not a depressing narrative that makes you rethink everything you know in life, not the most hardcore technical gameplay mechanics in the world... it's just sheer, accessible, fun. And considering this game's lack of disappointing elements (since it was the very first game in this series, expecting perfection is a little ridiculous), it ends up being just a great time all around.

If only the follow-up games to this one were as good. I don't even remotely think SMPS4 is amazing, but it is great, and that's something SM2 and SMMM cannot say about themselves.

Broken Steel marks the endgame for me in the Fo3 part of my TTW runs... and as such, I LOVE this DLC for its challenge.

When it released though, not as many people were singing this DLC for its rewarding gameplay as much as they were DECRYING IT for featuring a new ending to the base game of Fo3 that allowed gamers to continue playing after the credits.

And yeah, I agree... paywalling a better ending than the terrible one we got with Fo3 is kinda lame. But at least nowadays you can find this thing bundled with the maingame of Fo3 for dirt-cheap prices.

So what exactly is the meat and potatoes of Broken Steel? Well, the post-main-story draw of it all. Broken Steel picks up where the main story left off, and sees players taking on the very last bit of Enclave forces left in the capital wasteland. Featuring several new locations, like the Adams AFB, the mobile base crawler, and my favorite location, the presidential subway, Broken Steel offers even the toughest lone wanderers serious challenge.

This is brought about via several new enemy types, the most prominent of which being Enclave Hellfire Troopers (who wear the best armor in the game), Feral Ghoul Reavers (who are bullet-spongey, massively-high DPS monsters), and Super Mutant Overlords (with the highest HP of any non-behemoth super mutant, equipped most commonly with the new tri-beam laser rifle).

These enemies, on top of seriously challenging gauntlets of combat like Old Olney Powerworks, make Broken Steel feel like the hardest part of Fo3. While it lacks any significant gameplay additions such as a choice-based story like The Pitt, or an entirely new explorable location like Point Lookout, Broken Steel makes up for these shortcomings by being just FUN.

But that kind of substance can only last so long before you start to realize the cracks underneath. Broken Steel is fun, yes, but those aforementioned enemy types spawn WAY TOO OFTEN even if you haven't started the DLC/are the recommended level for it. On top of this, Broken Steel's scummy handling of adding a post-game isn't the best look. Also, the convenience of this DLC does not last long. The combat encounters are, to tell the truth, samey across the entire time you play this thing. But being able to test out Vengeance (the gatling laser) in brand-new power armor in an all-out war against the Enclave in the Adams AFB is an experience I won't soon forget.

The Pitt isn't necessarily an underrated gem of the Bethesda DLC canon, as tons of people sing praises towards this add-on's excellent handling of atmosphere and location-crafting.

So I caution myself before I tell people that this thing is an overlooked gem. In truth, The Pitt is a good DLC. Almost bordering on great even, but after multiple playthroughs I am starting to get just a LIIIITTLE exhausted with this thing lol.

But first, I have to clarify that I am absolutely in love with post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh as a location and the lore behind the slaver boss Asher. Locations such as the steelyard, the main factory, the bridge leading into The Pitt, and Haven are unforgettable. Seriously, I believe that the best part of this DLC is simply walking through it all.

The actual gameplay side of things is where this thing tends to fall apart. If you look at the narrative's sequence of events from a bird's-eye-view, you can start to realize just how... bare-bones this DLC's plot really is. In an attempt to pad-out the runtime of this DLC, BGS introduced the aforementioned location of the Steelyard.

The Steelyard is a point of contention for Fallout fans. Some love the rewards it gives players for dilligently collecting all steel ingots, while others find it boring and a slog to get through.

I tended to fall into the camp of the former. But after playing this DLC for like... the seventh time? I am SICK and TIRED OF IT! lol

The gear is cool to have, and in every TTW playthrough I make it a point to collect as much unique pieces of gear as possible, but I have rarely, if ever, used the weapons from The Pitt back in the maingame. Maybe besides the auto-axe that ignores DT and DR. But the armor, and the guns? Kinda useless.

But when you're in this DLC, it's so much fun. The location of The Pitt is second to Point Lookout as my favorite in-game location within Fo3, and its strides in creating atmosphere cannot be ignored. But as for a very, VERY basic sequence-of-events in the narrative and an annoying steelyard to scour, The Pitt ends up just as a good DLC.

To this day, Operation Anchorage remains as one of Bethesda's most mediocre DLCs. Which is weird to me, because I hardly consider it to be forgettable.

I'll chalk that up to the artstyle though. Operation Anchorage, in contrast to the base game of FO3, is a DLC that solely aims to be a first-person-shooter, not some RPG hybrid. And how does that end up affecting the experience of playing through the whole thing?

Well, on an original FO3 copy on XBox 360, prolly not too fun lol. Every single time I have played this thing it has been as part of TTW, the total conversion mod for FNV coded to include FO3... aka, the definitive way of playing it. With QoL mods and certain modernization add-ons like weapon inertia, smoother aiming, and more, this DLC is at the very least... okay.

There's not much at all to write home about for OA from a gameplay perspective. All objectives amount to killing a bunch of dudes, pressing a key input on an object and... well, actually, that's it lol. The real reason I play through this thing EVERY TIME in a TTW playthrough is for that sweet loot at the end.

In the original release of FO3, OA featured a bugged suit of T-51b power armor that had infinite durability. This pretty much made you invincible on lower difficulties like normal... and lord above I would be lying if I said I didn't appreciate that this swift cut to endgame gear exists. I usually hit this DLC up even before I get to GNR, which REALLY bungles up gameplay progression for this game!

But who cares. It's a single player affair... I'll do what I want. Oh, and the gauss rifle is cool too. At the end of the day, OA is an expansion I play for 90 mins on autopilot that I end up liking it more than disliking it. But I cannot front... the mission design in this DLC is a joke.

Fallout: New Vegas is one of the peaks of modern RPG design from the 21st century. Along with The Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3, this game is one of the best possible video game experiences you can have.

It all started from a seriously special development partnership. Obsidian Entertainment, who in 2009 were known for such titles as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, and Neverwinter Nights 2, were more than just a small dev company with only a few games to their name. It was comprised of industry veterans along with new faces hungry to show their worth in the world of game development.

Figures such as Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer, and JE Sawyer made up some of the more recognizable people in the company. These three all collectively worked on CLASSICS like Icewind Dale I and II, Planescape: Torment, and of course... Fallout 1 and 2. If you know anything about CRPGs, you'd know that these games are the CREAM of the crop when it comes to non-Bioware stuff.

Needless to say, when it came to Fallout these guys knew what they were doing. So, shortly after Fo3's release, the company approached Bethesda with a business proposition: within a short development period, Obsidian Entertainment would deliver a brand-new Fallout game that returned to the west coast original identity of the series, with little, if any, needed work from Bethesda other than greenlighting certain executive decisions. They would be using the same engine and mostly the same assets from Fo3, which would make development speedy, and considering the reputation Obsidian and its employees had, they would be sure to deliver a truly fantastic RPG experience.

Well, if by appreciation for their craft or for the undeniably massive mountain of cash that awaited Bethesda should they release a new Fallout game hot off the hype of Fallout 3, the parent company of BGS agreed. Fallout: New Vegas was given a development window of just 18 months, which was a frame of time the workers at Obsidian agreed to wholeheartedly. Being former Interplay devs, this was nothin' but another crunch to get through, something they were all well aware of and could handle.

So, at the end of 18 months without an ask for an extension on dev time, they delivered their product and promised to support it with patches and additonal downloadable content for the following couple of years. But on release, this thing was kind of polarizing.

You see, tons of people who bought this game were most likely big Fallout 3 fans, and the game they ended up experiencing was much, MUCH different in tone and atmosphere from that game. Functionally, it remained the same but with an added hardcore mode and the return of traits. The leveling system was pretty much the same, but the quest design and locational nature of New Vegas's map was new... and intimidating.

On top of this, New Vegas released with a SHIT ton of bugs. Bugs that still persist even to this day... and lots of crashes. These technical issues most likely came from the short frame of time of 18 months, but they were lessened dramatically both by official patches and fan-made content. Nowadays, with the right guide, New Vegas is practically (almost) bug-free.

Reception to the game by critics were generally positive. While some praised the game endlessly for its narrative design that heavily allowed player choice and multiple routes to completion of a given objective, others lambasted it for an admittedly poor graphical presentation and a slew of seriously game-breaking glitches. Fans were similarly split -- those who started with 3 found it way more open-ended, and for some that was a bad thing, and for others it opened up a new level of gameplay they weren't familiar with before.

But for classic fans of the franchise? This was the most fresh breath of air they've likely ever inhaled. Here was a game that paid homage to the classic era of Fallout, re-introducing such iconic factions as the NCR and fan-favorite characters like Marcus BACK to the forefront of Fallout! For almost all of them, this game was a slam-dunk.

Since then, this game has received a ridiculous amount of praise. Like, to the point where some people swear by this game and hate other people who do not like it as much as them. I am someone who loves every Fallout game, yes, even Fallout 4, so I cannot really jive with these guys at all. I think every Fallout game has its own strength, but at the end of the day it's obvious to me that this is my very favorite.

New Vegas, once you patch it up with fanmade mods, becomes one of gaming's most unforgettable experiences. Truly, I cannot name another game where the variability in the choices you can make is similar in quantity. New Vegas kills it in terms of making the player feel absolutely one with the world around them, this game's sense of immersion that's offered up through sheer quality in its writing department is second to none. To this day, New Vegas is the only game where it feels like I am being sucked into a virtual realm. From the first step you take outside of Goodsprings to the doors of the Lucky 38, you feel like you're really there.

For this reason, that it is the ultimate escapist's video game, New Vegas is to me my favorite video game. Every time I do a playthrough of this thing, I am wrapped entirely in its narrative just due to the fact that I get to choose how it progresses. In some stroke of design genius, Obsidian was able to create one of gaming's most unique open-ended main quests ever.

But that does not mean it isn't without its faults. Trust me, I love this thing to death, but some ideas do not sit with me well. I think the most glaring of issues is it's overworld design.

Do NOT get me wrong, I love the world of New Vegas and its factions, but the actual map design is very... basic. When you size it up to Fallout 3, it is obvious that certain cutbacks were made. Some locations, mostly caves and ruins, are incredibly, unbelievably basic. Which is unfortunate because they take up the most of the map, more than any other type of location. And areas like Westside or even Freeside feel so obviously unfinished that their appearance right next to the strip is a sore one.

The surrounding city of New Vegas, as in, the general outskirts, is also hilariously barren. Like, the fiends and some factories and office buildings is all you're getting. This area also features some of the most bare-bones quest in the entire series. NCR Sharecropper farms and some of the westside quests in general are just... bland. As all hell. Despite its bad main story, I cannot really think of a bland quest in fo3. By comparison, New Vegas has PLENTY.

But where the main world of this game falters, it picks up insanely strongly in its DLC offerings, of which I feel include some of the best video game experiences available. But I will talk about those once I get to each DLC individually.

Overall, New Vegas is an amazing video game despite everything. While in its vanilla state it is riddled with technical issues, looks incredibly dated, and has arguably the worst overworld in the Fallout series, New Vegas counteracts and wipes out all of these negatives entirely by having gaming's best open-ended quest system. It truly is an achievement of the ages.

Fallout 3 single-handedly revitalized one of video games' (at the time) most underrated RPG franchisese ever.

And for some reason, a lot of people hate it nowadays. How did we get to this point, though?

Well, losing faith in Bethesda Game Studios is arguably the biggest explanation behind people having a... recently newfound dislike against this release. The lack of RPG mechanics, stat management that's deeper than HP/AP, a less-important SPECIAL system, an easier/less tactile game overall... these are all totally valid things to dislike. For many, they are concessions, things lost in the exchange between having a new fallout yet having it be made by a game studio that had started showing intent to appeal to the widest audience possible.

On the No Mutants Allowed forum, the first-ever Fallout-centric fansite, thousands of fans of the first two entries into the series were pissed the-heck off. Yet for some reason, I cannot wholly understand why.

BGS wasn't some sort of faux-RPG-company when they announced their acquisition of the Fallout brand. Morrowind was a widely beloved game at the time! And it is also by no means a beginner-friendly RPG... incorrect handling of character builds can mean the end of a run in that game. And Oblivion, while certainly including a rather... bizarre leveling system, it's stat-boost-at-level-up system that forced players to fit into their chosen class at the start of the game wasn't anything like Skyrim's extreme open-endedness. So what gives? I dunno... I do not have an answer for that. Guess just oldheads getting mad at change.

What about the content of this game and the reaction it received at release?

Well, thankfully for myself and millions of other gamers (15 million to be exact), Fallout 3 ended up being an absolutely phenomenal video game. In terms of exploration, atmosphere, lore, player experience, and its perk system, there was so much to love about this game. In tons of ways, Fallout 3 is the quintessential beginner's RPG. It's this and Skyrim, folks!

But that doesn't mean it wasn't without criticism. For one, many people lambasted the horrificly basic main story of Fo3... while no Fallout game really featured a drop-dead tearjerking narrative by the time of 3's release, the lack of multiple-solutions to main quests, or just quests in general, ruffled the feathers of many. The absence of Tim Cain's design philosophy is incredibly apparent with this game!

But does that bother me? Not really, at all, actually. If you take this game and its brother, Fallout: New Vegas side by side, you start to see where both of these games had their strongest sides show. Fallout 3, as I previously have mentioned, features one of video games's most transportive, unfriendly, dour, depressing, and immersive overworlds. The Capital Wasteland, for lack of a better description, is terrifying.

And it may be because I have lived in DC for quite a bit at one point in my life, but seeing the city proper of DC and the broader Maryland/NoVa area interpreted in retrofuturist post-apocalyptic fashion was jaw-dropping. Sure, hate this game all you want for its lack of open-ended quest solutions and janky gunplay, but Fallout 3 handled the transition from 2D into 3D so faithfully and expertly that it's ridiculous if you choose to ignore this accomplishment.

With Fallout 3, Bethesda proved they were (at the time) the masters of creating video game open worlds. I mean, the four-track-run of Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim is pretty much unbeatable. Out of all these games though, my favorite world remains to be the Capital Wasteland.

And even in Fallout, as much as I love my New Vegas and Fo2 California, The Capital Wasteland, to me, is the pinnacle of the series. Exploration, man. It's what makes Bethesda games... Bethesda games. And on top of an innovative perk system that brought the wittiness and unique nature of the Fallout series into 3D, unforgettable goofiness, and post-apocalpytic antics that have yet to replicated, Fallout 3 is a masterpiece. One of Bethesda's very best...

Thankfully, unlike Far Harbor, Nuka World released in a functional state. This didn't do much to fix the already-present issues within the core game of Fo4, though...

Nuka-World marked the very end of DLC support for FO4, and it was billed as the most expansive, nutty, and fantastical addition to the game yet. And for the most part, it delivered on that front! But by the time you get to this DLC at the tail-end of the playthrough, you're sick and tired of the looty-shooty adventure of FO4. And here, nothing new is added to the core gameplay of FO4 besides new and interesting locations to shoot new and interesting enemies in. The main story is a joke, the raider factions are unfortunately underdeveloped... but the real draw of this DLC is the world.

Nuka World is unlike anything else in Bethesda's catalogue. The distinct and dense sections of the theme park are fucking fantastic... I love the galactic zone, the wonderland area, and the zoo part. But as I said, these areas are the exact same gameplay affair you've BEEN having in FO4.

There is one distinct addition it provides to the base game, however. And that is the option to... actually be evil! That's too little too late though!

By the time you can even make your way through NW, chances are you've already beaten the main quest, which has zero options for the player who wants to destroy everybody. This makes playing NW feel kind of counter-intuitive, as if you decide to bring the NW raiders into the commonwealth, your allied faction will just hate you. So even in this regard, NW kinda falls flat.

The actual exploration of the DLC is fun though.

I do not really know who this DLC was made for.

Vault-Tec Workshop released as an automatron-level addon for FO4, as it did have a main quest, but the content wasn't nearly as comparable to something like Far Harbor. Still, this DLC was cool enough... until you had to actually invest time into playing it.

Has anyone ever genuinely made a fully-fledged vault out of this expansion without mods? If so, I salute you, as VTW showcases the settlement building system at its absolute worst... ELECTRICITY!

Conduits, connectors, and generators having to be placed outside of a vault interior has got to be one of the dumbest and most contrived things to include in a DLC all about making... ENCLOSED INTERIORS!!!

Why couldn't this DLC come with some sort of "fix the vault generator" to allow for infinite power without the need for connectors? It's infuriating to have to painstakingly place 500+ connectors just to get an entire vault to have working electricity.

It ruins the experience, unironically. But at least you get a shit ton of resources when you scrap the depths of Vault 88.

A nothing burger of a DLC.

The conveyor belts and Minecraft redstone-esque machinery is boring. I don't care. The power armor displays are cool though

Ugh