CryoStrider
2001
Before I even say anything, let's just take a moment to appreciate the name "Max Payne". I don't think I could've come up with something cheesier if I tried, and I fucking LOVE it. This game is just a perfect combination of so many different elements, from atmospheric film noir to John Woo & Matrix inspired gun-fu and even a bit of Norse mythology, and it executes almost everything flawlessly. It's just an incredible stroke of genius in so many different ways.
Pros:
• Superb gameplay, infinitely replayable just due to how amazingly fun and frenetic the game and its mechanics are. Enemy encounters feel like combat puzzles, where you are given many different tools to solve a given problem, and it's up to you to map out the environment and figure out how to best approach the situation at hand.
• The game is oozing with style, with great visuals for the time that have actually aged pretty well due to the amazing art direction, a dark and gritty atmosphere, over-the-top particle effects, nice attention to detail, and interactive environments.
• Intriguing storyline with a simple but engaging plot and memorable characters.
• Exceptionally great writing, almost every line in this game feels incredibly rich and well thought out, and they really add to Max as a character.
• Charmingly cheesy and tongue-in-cheek, which adds tons of personality to the game. It manages to juggle and balance a mature tone with a lot of lovable goofiness.
• The Graphic Novels are a very smart and unique way of allowing the game to have a rich narrative while at the same time keeping the focus mostly on gameplay due to being easily skippable and not bombarding you with cutscenes that disrupt your experience every 30 seconds (cough cough Max Payne 3 cough cough).
Cons:
• Doesn't work well in modern systems right out of the box, you need to manually download and install an unofficial patch before playing.
• I find the soundtrack to be mostly generic and forgettable outside of the main theme.
• Overall difficulty is just a bit too much. The game can be very unfair and frustrating at times due to cheap enemy placement, nanosecond reaction times, inaccurate/inconsistent weapons, and the way adaptive difficulty works. Also, and this is a way bigger deal than it sounds, but the way getting up after shootdodging works is really clunky. The game forces you to get up right away and you can't stay on the ground to finish off enemies you haven't killed yet, and the time it takes for Max to get up can easily get you killed in the harder difficulties.
• Nightmare sequences are interesting in concept, but not great in execution. They are too slow, drag on for far too long, require some frustrating platforming, and ultimately just feel out of place in an adrenaline-fueled game like this.
Max Payne is an absolutely unforgettable experience, and one of my favorite games of all time. It saddens me that it doesn't get talked about very often, since it most definitely deserves more recognition than it gets. It doesn't matter how many times I play it, I just can't ever get enough of it. It's a timeless masterpiece that I'll continue to go back to and replay indefinitely.
Pros:
• Superb gameplay, infinitely replayable just due to how amazingly fun and frenetic the game and its mechanics are. Enemy encounters feel like combat puzzles, where you are given many different tools to solve a given problem, and it's up to you to map out the environment and figure out how to best approach the situation at hand.
• The game is oozing with style, with great visuals for the time that have actually aged pretty well due to the amazing art direction, a dark and gritty atmosphere, over-the-top particle effects, nice attention to detail, and interactive environments.
• Intriguing storyline with a simple but engaging plot and memorable characters.
• Exceptionally great writing, almost every line in this game feels incredibly rich and well thought out, and they really add to Max as a character.
• Charmingly cheesy and tongue-in-cheek, which adds tons of personality to the game. It manages to juggle and balance a mature tone with a lot of lovable goofiness.
• The Graphic Novels are a very smart and unique way of allowing the game to have a rich narrative while at the same time keeping the focus mostly on gameplay due to being easily skippable and not bombarding you with cutscenes that disrupt your experience every 30 seconds (cough cough Max Payne 3 cough cough).
Cons:
• Doesn't work well in modern systems right out of the box, you need to manually download and install an unofficial patch before playing.
• I find the soundtrack to be mostly generic and forgettable outside of the main theme.
• Overall difficulty is just a bit too much. The game can be very unfair and frustrating at times due to cheap enemy placement, nanosecond reaction times, inaccurate/inconsistent weapons, and the way adaptive difficulty works. Also, and this is a way bigger deal than it sounds, but the way getting up after shootdodging works is really clunky. The game forces you to get up right away and you can't stay on the ground to finish off enemies you haven't killed yet, and the time it takes for Max to get up can easily get you killed in the harder difficulties.
• Nightmare sequences are interesting in concept, but not great in execution. They are too slow, drag on for far too long, require some frustrating platforming, and ultimately just feel out of place in an adrenaline-fueled game like this.
Max Payne is an absolutely unforgettable experience, and one of my favorite games of all time. It saddens me that it doesn't get talked about very often, since it most definitely deserves more recognition than it gets. It doesn't matter how many times I play it, I just can't ever get enough of it. It's a timeless masterpiece that I'll continue to go back to and replay indefinitely.
I feel really, really bad by doing this. Look, I love the first game, it's probably my favorite indie game of all time, but this? What the hell, Dennaton?
I find Hotline Miami 2 to be a very unenjoyable experience, and the main reason for that has to be the level design. This game basically consists of ridiculously open football field sized buildings made entirely out of glass that are packed with dogs, fat dudes, and gun-wielding enemies that react to you in a nanosecond and kill you off-screen. This game is fucking hard, but not in a good, fun way like the first game. It's hard in a frustrating, bullshitty way.
In Hotline Miami 1, when you died, 90% of the time it was totally your fault. This time around though, 90% of your deaths are due to the god awful level design or to some cheap glitch. Hope you like doing nothing but using guns to try and snipe off-screen enemies two miles away while constantly holding shift for the entirety of the game, something that contrasts greatly with how you could almost exclusively use melee weapons to complete most levels in Hotline Miami 1 (with the exception of quickly picking up a gun to kill fat guys or enemies in inaccessible areas). The fact is, there are less ways to get through each level compared to HM1 since the level design often forces you to play in a specific way only. The game barely ever allows for creative strategies. The first game encouraged you to be reckless, it told you it was okay to fail, but this game forces you to be slow and methodical, which just feels like the antithesis to what Hotline Miami should be about. Something else that contributes to the levels being poorly designed is readability, which can often be abysmal. Sometimes it's very hard to differentiate between what you can be shot through and what is proper cover. Honestly, most stages feel like they were ripped out of some hardmode fangame: they're poorly designed and unfairly hard.
On the technical side of things, this game is an absolute mess. Hotline Miami 1 wasn't exactly polished but, in my experience, I've encountered far more glitches with this game that often got me killed, and the fact that a single floor in HM2 can take several minutes to get through just makes dying to a cheap glitch MUCH more frustrating than when it happened in the first game. The enemies react more like robots than ever, like how common it is for them to witness dozens of their buddies dying right in front of them and not react at all, as well as hearing gunshots going off right beside them and not get alerted. There are some "special" enemies like the dogs and the prisoners that run at a supersonic speed to try to strangle you that can just materialize through doors, and if you are even near a door when one of them is chasing you have absolutely zero chances of surviving. Also, HM2 has a lot of input lag by default because turning VSync off in-game doesn't work, you're gonna have to do it manually through your graphics card's control panel. Wish I knew this earlier, because I played through the entire game (INCLUDING HARD MODE) with that horrible input lag at first.
The game carries something that was a minor annoyance in the first game and turns it into a major one: there's no way to know what weapon you'll get from a pile of guns. Since the best strategy to kill enemies in this fucking game is to show yourself for a second to lure them to a corner, you'll just end up with dozens of weapons stacked on top of each other, and then you'll try to pick up one of them to kill that fat guy that is running towards you and you'll just die horribly because you picked up a gun with no bullets or a melee weapon.
Another thing that heavily frustrates me is how you are now unable to get points by knocking enemies down, unlike the first game. It's absolutely infuriating to accidentally knock over a large group of enemies now, since HM2 has excruciatingly long animations for executions and no way to cancel them, so knocking enemies over can easily make you lose you combo or even get you killed. Thanks to this mechanic I never even try to go for highscores here, which is something I loved doing in HM1.
And then there's hard mode. I'm willing to believe this is just a sick practical joke implemented by Dennaton to laugh at our faces. It's pretty much impossible to finish the game on it without cheaply dying at least a couple hundred times. Forcing myself to beat Hotline Miami 2 on hard mode was one of the worst experiences of my life, not even joking. I got no gratification or feeling of accomplishment from it, just a feeling of "thank god that's over."
Now, some people might appeal to the braindead """argument""" of "you're just bad at the game" while ignoring all of my points entirely. My dude, just check my Steam stats for both this game and the first. I got all the achievements, which means I finished the game on hard mode, and I'm able to get an S ranking on most stages with relative ease, so these opinions are coming from someone who's very experienced with both Hotline Miami games and probably much better than you are. I don't wanna come off as being arrogant here, but some people are just unbelievably dense and can't provide a single counter-point to refute me outside of that.
One thing I feel like could have been done to improve the game quite a bit would be the implementation of a system where, after you beat the level for the first time using the character that's supposed to be there for the story, you could choose any other character when you play that level again, like in the LEGO games. Maybe let you play as Jacket (with all the original masks) and maybe even Biker. From a story perspective that wouldn't make sense of course, but why should that matter? Fun/replayability/variety should be the priority here.
Now, for some actual positives. The soundtrack is absolutely incredible, as expected. Go and listen to Roller Mobster, The Way Home, Le Perv, In The Face of Evil, Bloodline... Hell, just listen to the entire damn thing. Graphics also look fantastic. Very stylized like the first game while managing to look much smoother and being able to pack much more detail into every level. Only problem is, that detail can sometimes make enemies harder to see, and there were times when I died to an enemy that was behind foliage or something like that, but again, that's more of a problem with the level design than anything else. Animations are also pretty good and generally smoother than the first game. And finally, I actually think they did a pretty good job with writing an interesting story, deepening the lore, and tying everything together with the first game, but (without spoiling anything) the ending just felt like a lazy cop-out.
So, in conclusion, if you're a HUGE fan of Hotline Miami 1 you might want to grab this for the story, but if you're just looking for some reckless, fast-paced and fun gameplay you're better off playing through the first game again.
I find Hotline Miami 2 to be a very unenjoyable experience, and the main reason for that has to be the level design. This game basically consists of ridiculously open football field sized buildings made entirely out of glass that are packed with dogs, fat dudes, and gun-wielding enemies that react to you in a nanosecond and kill you off-screen. This game is fucking hard, but not in a good, fun way like the first game. It's hard in a frustrating, bullshitty way.
In Hotline Miami 1, when you died, 90% of the time it was totally your fault. This time around though, 90% of your deaths are due to the god awful level design or to some cheap glitch. Hope you like doing nothing but using guns to try and snipe off-screen enemies two miles away while constantly holding shift for the entirety of the game, something that contrasts greatly with how you could almost exclusively use melee weapons to complete most levels in Hotline Miami 1 (with the exception of quickly picking up a gun to kill fat guys or enemies in inaccessible areas). The fact is, there are less ways to get through each level compared to HM1 since the level design often forces you to play in a specific way only. The game barely ever allows for creative strategies. The first game encouraged you to be reckless, it told you it was okay to fail, but this game forces you to be slow and methodical, which just feels like the antithesis to what Hotline Miami should be about. Something else that contributes to the levels being poorly designed is readability, which can often be abysmal. Sometimes it's very hard to differentiate between what you can be shot through and what is proper cover. Honestly, most stages feel like they were ripped out of some hardmode fangame: they're poorly designed and unfairly hard.
On the technical side of things, this game is an absolute mess. Hotline Miami 1 wasn't exactly polished but, in my experience, I've encountered far more glitches with this game that often got me killed, and the fact that a single floor in HM2 can take several minutes to get through just makes dying to a cheap glitch MUCH more frustrating than when it happened in the first game. The enemies react more like robots than ever, like how common it is for them to witness dozens of their buddies dying right in front of them and not react at all, as well as hearing gunshots going off right beside them and not get alerted. There are some "special" enemies like the dogs and the prisoners that run at a supersonic speed to try to strangle you that can just materialize through doors, and if you are even near a door when one of them is chasing you have absolutely zero chances of surviving. Also, HM2 has a lot of input lag by default because turning VSync off in-game doesn't work, you're gonna have to do it manually through your graphics card's control panel. Wish I knew this earlier, because I played through the entire game (INCLUDING HARD MODE) with that horrible input lag at first.
The game carries something that was a minor annoyance in the first game and turns it into a major one: there's no way to know what weapon you'll get from a pile of guns. Since the best strategy to kill enemies in this fucking game is to show yourself for a second to lure them to a corner, you'll just end up with dozens of weapons stacked on top of each other, and then you'll try to pick up one of them to kill that fat guy that is running towards you and you'll just die horribly because you picked up a gun with no bullets or a melee weapon.
Another thing that heavily frustrates me is how you are now unable to get points by knocking enemies down, unlike the first game. It's absolutely infuriating to accidentally knock over a large group of enemies now, since HM2 has excruciatingly long animations for executions and no way to cancel them, so knocking enemies over can easily make you lose you combo or even get you killed. Thanks to this mechanic I never even try to go for highscores here, which is something I loved doing in HM1.
And then there's hard mode. I'm willing to believe this is just a sick practical joke implemented by Dennaton to laugh at our faces. It's pretty much impossible to finish the game on it without cheaply dying at least a couple hundred times. Forcing myself to beat Hotline Miami 2 on hard mode was one of the worst experiences of my life, not even joking. I got no gratification or feeling of accomplishment from it, just a feeling of "thank god that's over."
Now, some people might appeal to the braindead """argument""" of "you're just bad at the game" while ignoring all of my points entirely. My dude, just check my Steam stats for both this game and the first. I got all the achievements, which means I finished the game on hard mode, and I'm able to get an S ranking on most stages with relative ease, so these opinions are coming from someone who's very experienced with both Hotline Miami games and probably much better than you are. I don't wanna come off as being arrogant here, but some people are just unbelievably dense and can't provide a single counter-point to refute me outside of that.
One thing I feel like could have been done to improve the game quite a bit would be the implementation of a system where, after you beat the level for the first time using the character that's supposed to be there for the story, you could choose any other character when you play that level again, like in the LEGO games. Maybe let you play as Jacket (with all the original masks) and maybe even Biker. From a story perspective that wouldn't make sense of course, but why should that matter? Fun/replayability/variety should be the priority here.
Now, for some actual positives. The soundtrack is absolutely incredible, as expected. Go and listen to Roller Mobster, The Way Home, Le Perv, In The Face of Evil, Bloodline... Hell, just listen to the entire damn thing. Graphics also look fantastic. Very stylized like the first game while managing to look much smoother and being able to pack much more detail into every level. Only problem is, that detail can sometimes make enemies harder to see, and there were times when I died to an enemy that was behind foliage or something like that, but again, that's more of a problem with the level design than anything else. Animations are also pretty good and generally smoother than the first game. And finally, I actually think they did a pretty good job with writing an interesting story, deepening the lore, and tying everything together with the first game, but (without spoiling anything) the ending just felt like a lazy cop-out.
So, in conclusion, if you're a HUGE fan of Hotline Miami 1 you might want to grab this for the story, but if you're just looking for some reckless, fast-paced and fun gameplay you're better off playing through the first game again.
2012
I love this game to death. It's without a doubt one of my absolute favorite indie games of all time.
The gameplay is extremely frenetic and adrenaline-fueled, and manages to release that dopamine on your brain like nothing else. Very few games out there can beat the euphoric feeling of accomplishment that this game gives you after completing a stage, getting an achievement, getting a high score, or pulling off some crazy strategy that seemed impossible at first.
Like anything else though, it's not perfect. The game can be fairly inconsistent with how enemies behave, and sometimes it seems like surviving comes down to luck. The game seems to have some weird behaviors and bugs every now and then, and it can really screw you over. It's usually not a big problem though, considering how short levels are and how easy it is to replay a floor again after dying.
The incredible soundtrack is a stand-out feature of Hotline Miami, and is definitely one of the main reasons as to why it's such a unique, captivating, and memorable experience. The only problem with it is that it can be a little repetitive, since some stages share the same tracks.
Hotline Miami is a game that managed to take more than 70 hours of my life at the time of writing despite having a very short campaign, because I just keep coming back to it all the time due to how incredibly fun it is, which is something I'll probably keep doing for a very long time.
The gameplay is extremely frenetic and adrenaline-fueled, and manages to release that dopamine on your brain like nothing else. Very few games out there can beat the euphoric feeling of accomplishment that this game gives you after completing a stage, getting an achievement, getting a high score, or pulling off some crazy strategy that seemed impossible at first.
Like anything else though, it's not perfect. The game can be fairly inconsistent with how enemies behave, and sometimes it seems like surviving comes down to luck. The game seems to have some weird behaviors and bugs every now and then, and it can really screw you over. It's usually not a big problem though, considering how short levels are and how easy it is to replay a floor again after dying.
The incredible soundtrack is a stand-out feature of Hotline Miami, and is definitely one of the main reasons as to why it's such a unique, captivating, and memorable experience. The only problem with it is that it can be a little repetitive, since some stages share the same tracks.
Hotline Miami is a game that managed to take more than 70 hours of my life at the time of writing despite having a very short campaign, because I just keep coming back to it all the time due to how incredibly fun it is, which is something I'll probably keep doing for a very long time.
2004
Half-Life 2 is a pretty decent game and I do recommend it, but I'm not writing this review just to blindly praise it. Even though it IS good and revolutionized the industry at the time in terms of graphics, physics, and interactibility, I still think it's fairly overrated and does have quite a few problems. This is not the best, most perfect game to ever be created in the history of anything ever like a lot of people seem to think. Everyone has already talked about what makes this game good, so if you wanna hear about that just go to pretty much any other review of it. I'm rather going to do something different with this one and list some flaws:
• It's very gimmicky and tries to be a lot of genres in the same game, but not all of them succeed. Some chapters like Water Hazard and Highway 17 just drag on for far too long and end up feeling like filler.
• The AI seems like a real downgrade from Half-Life 1. Fighting the Combine soldiers definitely doesn't feel as fun as fighting the HECU Marines. Watch this video to have a better understanding of what I mean. In my experience they just kinda ran at me in a straight line, one by one, with no self-preservation in mind, which made the whole combat sandbox extremely boring.
• Also, the fucking resistance members. They tend to be real dumbasses who most of the time don't last a minute during battles and just die by the dozens, and before that happens they're still annoying as hell and block the player's movement a lot because they cling to Gordon way too much and just keep getting in doorways and it's usually a real hassle to get them to let you through. Antlions do the exact same thing, sometimes I just ended up having to kill them to even be able to walk.
• The game has definitely not aged well in terms of aesthetics and art style. It goes for a sort of "realistic" look, which ALWAYS ages like milk. Some places can look pretty dull due to blocky geometry, low res textures and bland color palettes. The lighting is also often really bland, which is generally one of the biggest factors that determines if a game will age well or not. Even HL1 had some environments that looked more interesting. I just found the setting to be a little bit blander overall compared to the first game. I much preferred to fight my way through the Black Mesa Facility compared to the places in HL2. Ravenholm still holds up and is probably my favorite place in the entire game and the Citadel is also pretty nice and atmospheric, but most of everything else just feels kind of uninspired.
• The level design is just straight-up inferior. Gone is the tight and strategic level design of the original, which was replaced by areas that are far too open, empty and uninteresting.
• The game focuses way too much on showing off its physics, which just ends up making it feel like a dated tech demo instead of an actual video-game.
• Waaay too many cutscenes. The way the story flows in HL2 just doesn't work very well with a silent protagonist like Gordon, since it feels very weird to just be standing still during the many sequences where the characters dump exposition and you say absolutely nothing. "Black Mesa East" is a perfect example of this, and chapters like it are really bad for replayability. I'm not suggesting that Gordon should turn into a voiced protagonist, but rather that they should put less of an emphasis on standing in one place while NPCs dump the narrative on you and focus more on gameplay and game flow and deliver the story through different means.
• The weapons aren't as interesting as in the first game, they feel somewhat boring and generic. Where are the satchel charges and the tripmines? I also really miss the alien stuff like the Hivehand and the Snarks, and the experimental sci-fi weapons like the Tau Cannon (which is now attached to the car instead of being portable) and the Gluon Gun.
• Enemy variety is lacking. Where are the Bullsquids, the Houndeyes, and the Icthyosaurs? The new zombie types are nice, but they don't really make up for the lack of the other enemies.
• The combat doesn't feel all that good or impactful. For starters, where's the gore? Enemies exploded into a million pieces in the original if you dealt enough damage, but now the gore is completely gone for the Combine soldiers. Enemy ragdolls usually just fall to the ground in a very unsatisfying way, most weapons sound anemic and severely lack punch and the enemies barely even react to getting shot.
• Speaking of bad combat, fighting the Striders is not fun at all and it's usually just a total pain. I mean, hell, it takes SEVEN rockets to bring them down. Difficulty in general is somewhat inconsistent, I found the game to be ridiculously easy for the most part, but then at the final chapters during the battles at City 17 against the Combine and the Striders it just becomes frustratingly hard (I don't know though, maybe I'm just bad).
• Continuing upon the last point, the game is made fairly easy by the fact that doing horrible during a gunfight and losing a lot of health doesn't really have a lot of consequences. Those little supply crates that are everywhere are programmed to always give the player exactly what they need, and even if you take those out of the question there's still plenty of health around to get you going. It's just really unbalanced.
• Similar to the way health works, I really hate the way the game handles ammo. Your ammo cap for each weapon is severely limited and you'll find yourself running out of ammo extremely fast. Thing is, the game throws so much ammo at your face everywhere you go that it's not even funny. And that's basically the way the game works, you'll use all of the ammo for a weapon in a single fight and you'll get all of it back a minute later, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
• Very small point, but the whole "auxiliary power" mechanic is pretty stupid. Why would the sprint function, the flashlight and the oxygen supply come from the same source? It's just annoying. Also a very petty complaint, but the crosshair is terrible. It's ridiculously small and gets lost very easily when you put it against bright backgrounds.
• Sucks how you can't shoot friendly NPCs anymore. That really added to the immersion and to the moral ambiguity in the first game, but now you're just hailed as a Messiah who can do no wrong and if you try to shoot anyone your bullets just go right through and they completely ignore it.
So yeah, Half-Life 2 does a lot of things right, but it also does a LOT of things wrong. I still enjoy playing it after quite a few playthroughs and I'd say it's a very good game which I do still recommend, even if it is pretty overrated. I really just don't feel like it lives up to the original, which makes me a bit disappointed.
• It's very gimmicky and tries to be a lot of genres in the same game, but not all of them succeed. Some chapters like Water Hazard and Highway 17 just drag on for far too long and end up feeling like filler.
• The AI seems like a real downgrade from Half-Life 1. Fighting the Combine soldiers definitely doesn't feel as fun as fighting the HECU Marines. Watch this video to have a better understanding of what I mean. In my experience they just kinda ran at me in a straight line, one by one, with no self-preservation in mind, which made the whole combat sandbox extremely boring.
• Also, the fucking resistance members. They tend to be real dumbasses who most of the time don't last a minute during battles and just die by the dozens, and before that happens they're still annoying as hell and block the player's movement a lot because they cling to Gordon way too much and just keep getting in doorways and it's usually a real hassle to get them to let you through. Antlions do the exact same thing, sometimes I just ended up having to kill them to even be able to walk.
• The game has definitely not aged well in terms of aesthetics and art style. It goes for a sort of "realistic" look, which ALWAYS ages like milk. Some places can look pretty dull due to blocky geometry, low res textures and bland color palettes. The lighting is also often really bland, which is generally one of the biggest factors that determines if a game will age well or not. Even HL1 had some environments that looked more interesting. I just found the setting to be a little bit blander overall compared to the first game. I much preferred to fight my way through the Black Mesa Facility compared to the places in HL2. Ravenholm still holds up and is probably my favorite place in the entire game and the Citadel is also pretty nice and atmospheric, but most of everything else just feels kind of uninspired.
• The level design is just straight-up inferior. Gone is the tight and strategic level design of the original, which was replaced by areas that are far too open, empty and uninteresting.
• The game focuses way too much on showing off its physics, which just ends up making it feel like a dated tech demo instead of an actual video-game.
• Waaay too many cutscenes. The way the story flows in HL2 just doesn't work very well with a silent protagonist like Gordon, since it feels very weird to just be standing still during the many sequences where the characters dump exposition and you say absolutely nothing. "Black Mesa East" is a perfect example of this, and chapters like it are really bad for replayability. I'm not suggesting that Gordon should turn into a voiced protagonist, but rather that they should put less of an emphasis on standing in one place while NPCs dump the narrative on you and focus more on gameplay and game flow and deliver the story through different means.
• The weapons aren't as interesting as in the first game, they feel somewhat boring and generic. Where are the satchel charges and the tripmines? I also really miss the alien stuff like the Hivehand and the Snarks, and the experimental sci-fi weapons like the Tau Cannon (which is now attached to the car instead of being portable) and the Gluon Gun.
• Enemy variety is lacking. Where are the Bullsquids, the Houndeyes, and the Icthyosaurs? The new zombie types are nice, but they don't really make up for the lack of the other enemies.
• The combat doesn't feel all that good or impactful. For starters, where's the gore? Enemies exploded into a million pieces in the original if you dealt enough damage, but now the gore is completely gone for the Combine soldiers. Enemy ragdolls usually just fall to the ground in a very unsatisfying way, most weapons sound anemic and severely lack punch and the enemies barely even react to getting shot.
• Speaking of bad combat, fighting the Striders is not fun at all and it's usually just a total pain. I mean, hell, it takes SEVEN rockets to bring them down. Difficulty in general is somewhat inconsistent, I found the game to be ridiculously easy for the most part, but then at the final chapters during the battles at City 17 against the Combine and the Striders it just becomes frustratingly hard (I don't know though, maybe I'm just bad).
• Continuing upon the last point, the game is made fairly easy by the fact that doing horrible during a gunfight and losing a lot of health doesn't really have a lot of consequences. Those little supply crates that are everywhere are programmed to always give the player exactly what they need, and even if you take those out of the question there's still plenty of health around to get you going. It's just really unbalanced.
• Similar to the way health works, I really hate the way the game handles ammo. Your ammo cap for each weapon is severely limited and you'll find yourself running out of ammo extremely fast. Thing is, the game throws so much ammo at your face everywhere you go that it's not even funny. And that's basically the way the game works, you'll use all of the ammo for a weapon in a single fight and you'll get all of it back a minute later, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
• Very small point, but the whole "auxiliary power" mechanic is pretty stupid. Why would the sprint function, the flashlight and the oxygen supply come from the same source? It's just annoying. Also a very petty complaint, but the crosshair is terrible. It's ridiculously small and gets lost very easily when you put it against bright backgrounds.
• Sucks how you can't shoot friendly NPCs anymore. That really added to the immersion and to the moral ambiguity in the first game, but now you're just hailed as a Messiah who can do no wrong and if you try to shoot anyone your bullets just go right through and they completely ignore it.
So yeah, Half-Life 2 does a lot of things right, but it also does a LOT of things wrong. I still enjoy playing it after quite a few playthroughs and I'd say it's a very good game which I do still recommend, even if it is pretty overrated. I really just don't feel like it lives up to the original, which makes me a bit disappointed.
Meh.
If you're planning on playing Blue Shift keep in mind that it's fairly short and shouldn't take more than 2h30m (which is expected since this is just an expansion pack, but it's still shorter than Opposing Force). That's about how long it took me, and that's considering I got stuck in a few puzzles where I just couldn't figure what the hell I was supposed to do, one of them due to the awful scientist AI that refused to trigger a scripted event until I gave up and tried again the next day. Besides all of that, a lot of segments can be quite boring and uneventful. The ending fight sequence for example is really underwhelming, and there are many sections of the game where you have to stand around while an NPC talks, like Black Mesa East in HL2.
One thing that I really liked about Blue Shift was its version of Xen. It greatly expanded upon the original, which was pretty garbage. It actually feels like a real place with thought put behind it now, and it was probably the most interesting part of the entire expansion.
Still, it's probably the weakest Half-Life game overall, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. I guess I do recommend it if you've finished HL1 and just want more of the same, although a bit of a watered down version of it. Also, I'd probably advise to play Blue Shift before Opposing Force, since I feel like a lot of my disappointment came from the fact that OF is just a much better experience.
If you're planning on playing Blue Shift keep in mind that it's fairly short and shouldn't take more than 2h30m (which is expected since this is just an expansion pack, but it's still shorter than Opposing Force). That's about how long it took me, and that's considering I got stuck in a few puzzles where I just couldn't figure what the hell I was supposed to do, one of them due to the awful scientist AI that refused to trigger a scripted event until I gave up and tried again the next day. Besides all of that, a lot of segments can be quite boring and uneventful. The ending fight sequence for example is really underwhelming, and there are many sections of the game where you have to stand around while an NPC talks, like Black Mesa East in HL2.
One thing that I really liked about Blue Shift was its version of Xen. It greatly expanded upon the original, which was pretty garbage. It actually feels like a real place with thought put behind it now, and it was probably the most interesting part of the entire expansion.
Still, it's probably the weakest Half-Life game overall, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. I guess I do recommend it if you've finished HL1 and just want more of the same, although a bit of a watered down version of it. Also, I'd probably advise to play Blue Shift before Opposing Force, since I feel like a lot of my disappointment came from the fact that OF is just a much better experience.
2008
Abysmal writing, terrible gameplay, black and white morality, and severe lack of depth makes this into one of the weakest entries in the Fallout franchise. The story is awful and has almost no involvement from the player himself, since your dad is the actual protagonist of the game making all the decisions. Almost all characters are extremely one-dimensional and forgettable. Factions are also very one-dimensional, the BoS is presented as the Hollywood good guys trying to help everyone out while the Enclave are the generic bad guys. There's no nuance whatsoever.
Something that frustrates me about this game is the worldbuilding, or lack thereof. It's absolute garbage. Even basic things like how there are no farms, no trade routes, no explanations to how people get electricity, nothing. Why would they build a town around a fucking nuke? I can understand religious fanatics doing that, but why are normal people going along with it despite perfectly understanding how utterly retarded that is? Two-century old food scavenged from a pre-war supermarket is still edible, and seems to be the main source of sustenance for people. The game feels like it takes place 20 years after the war, not 200. Why is the east coast so undeveloped after all this time? Fallout 1 is set about 84 years after the war and its world was leaps and bounds more developed than what we can see in Fallout 3, and then you look at Fallout 2 with places like Vault City and you can't help but be entirely confused at how everyone in FO3 is a scavenger living in absolute misery. Are the residents of D.C. just imbeciles? Where the hell is civilization?
Still on the topic of worldbuilding, it's extremely disappointing to see just how creatively bankrupt Bethesda was when developing their take on the universe. Moving the setting to the east coast could have been one of the most interesting things about this game, but of course, it ended up being completely wasted potential. Bethesda does almost nothing to expand or advance the lore of the universe, and everything just feels stale, recycled, and uninspired as a result. This video explains what I mean pretty well.
The game also holds your hand as much as it can, assuring that none of your actions can have any long-lasting consequences, which is one of the many things that make this game lack depth. I absolutely hate the concept of essential NPCs and quest markers. I'm not sure if Bethesda did this in an effort to appeal to its bottom-feeder fanbase or if it was because of sheer incompetence to develop an RPG. Probably a mixture of both. And holy fuck, don't get me started on the wretched hellspawn that is the Gamebryo engine and Bethesda's ineptitude to optimize and work with it.
Credit where credit is due, though: the game has a pretty decent atmosphere. It's not hard to get lost in its world, since it has somewhat of a stark beauty to it (well, at least if you use mods to remove the disgusting puke-green filter). The sound design is also pretty nice for the most part (minus the guns, which sound like garbage), and I really like both the ambient tracks and the music selections on the radio. And, as much as I hate how the game holds the player's hand by leveling everything alongside them (ensuring that there is a very weak sense of progression throughout), I have to admit I really like the overall game world and design, and the game definitely rewards exploration. Also, and this is the best thing about Fallout 3 by far: New Vegas wouldn't exist without it. Of course, it's a double-edged sword since Obsidian was forced to use its god-awful engine to develop NV, but it's better to have a great game on a crappy engine than to not have that game at all. That's pretty much it, though.
Fallout 3 isn't the worst game ever made, nor is it the worst entry in the mainline franchise (that title would probably go to Fallout 4). I think it has some redeemable qualities like the game world and atmosphere, but I don't think those are nearly enough to make up for the great number of faults the game has. Overall, I think it fails as a shooter, as an RPG, and as a Fallout game.
Something that frustrates me about this game is the worldbuilding, or lack thereof. It's absolute garbage. Even basic things like how there are no farms, no trade routes, no explanations to how people get electricity, nothing. Why would they build a town around a fucking nuke? I can understand religious fanatics doing that, but why are normal people going along with it despite perfectly understanding how utterly retarded that is? Two-century old food scavenged from a pre-war supermarket is still edible, and seems to be the main source of sustenance for people. The game feels like it takes place 20 years after the war, not 200. Why is the east coast so undeveloped after all this time? Fallout 1 is set about 84 years after the war and its world was leaps and bounds more developed than what we can see in Fallout 3, and then you look at Fallout 2 with places like Vault City and you can't help but be entirely confused at how everyone in FO3 is a scavenger living in absolute misery. Are the residents of D.C. just imbeciles? Where the hell is civilization?
Still on the topic of worldbuilding, it's extremely disappointing to see just how creatively bankrupt Bethesda was when developing their take on the universe. Moving the setting to the east coast could have been one of the most interesting things about this game, but of course, it ended up being completely wasted potential. Bethesda does almost nothing to expand or advance the lore of the universe, and everything just feels stale, recycled, and uninspired as a result. This video explains what I mean pretty well.
The game also holds your hand as much as it can, assuring that none of your actions can have any long-lasting consequences, which is one of the many things that make this game lack depth. I absolutely hate the concept of essential NPCs and quest markers. I'm not sure if Bethesda did this in an effort to appeal to its bottom-feeder fanbase or if it was because of sheer incompetence to develop an RPG. Probably a mixture of both. And holy fuck, don't get me started on the wretched hellspawn that is the Gamebryo engine and Bethesda's ineptitude to optimize and work with it.
Credit where credit is due, though: the game has a pretty decent atmosphere. It's not hard to get lost in its world, since it has somewhat of a stark beauty to it (well, at least if you use mods to remove the disgusting puke-green filter). The sound design is also pretty nice for the most part (minus the guns, which sound like garbage), and I really like both the ambient tracks and the music selections on the radio. And, as much as I hate how the game holds the player's hand by leveling everything alongside them (ensuring that there is a very weak sense of progression throughout), I have to admit I really like the overall game world and design, and the game definitely rewards exploration. Also, and this is the best thing about Fallout 3 by far: New Vegas wouldn't exist without it. Of course, it's a double-edged sword since Obsidian was forced to use its god-awful engine to develop NV, but it's better to have a great game on a crappy engine than to not have that game at all. That's pretty much it, though.
Fallout 3 isn't the worst game ever made, nor is it the worst entry in the mainline franchise (that title would probably go to Fallout 4). I think it has some redeemable qualities like the game world and atmosphere, but I don't think those are nearly enough to make up for the great number of faults the game has. Overall, I think it fails as a shooter, as an RPG, and as a Fallout game.
The most overrated game of ALL goddamn time.
Skyrim is my least favorite game in the mainline TES franchise, and cements my loss of hope for the future of the series. "Wide as an ocean, but deep as a puddle" is a cliché, but it perfectly describes this game. It is often referred to as "baby's first RPG" for a reason, after all. I'm going to try to give a list of my reasons for disliking this game as much as I do:
• Completely forgettable and uninteresting story. Even the staunchest of Bethesda fanboys usually agrees that the overall writing and narrative are some of Skyrim's weakest aspects.
• Boring, unmemorable, and one-dimensional NPCs and dialogue, accompanied by some of the blandest voice acting in the history of video-games. There are almost no characters in this game who are truly interesting to talk to.
• Repetitive, shallow, unbalanced, and badly designed gameplay and mechanics, with extremely simplistic RPG elements. No classes, no attributes, complete removal of various skills from other TES games, etc.
• The prime example of how to NOT do a perk system in an RPG, since a lot of perks just give passive percentage increases to the effectiveness of skills instead of being something unique that actually changes how you play.
• Continues to butcher or completely remove a lot of customization options and some of the best mechanics from earlier games, like the clothing/armor layers, various weapon types, spells like Levitation and Mark/Recall, Spellmaking, and Enchanting.
• Frustratingly boring copy and paste level design. Dungeon crawling in this game is the bane of my existence.
• Severely dumbed down compared to prior entries, always doing everything in its power to hold the player's hand and ensure that they won't fail at anything, coupled with lazy quest design that usually just boils down to navigating corridor-like interiors and following a floating quest marker. Essential NPCs and easily available fast travel continue to be terrible additions that ruin the immersion and the general experience since Oblivion.
• Nonexistent depth in the faction system (because god forbid not being able to join every single faction in the game during a single playthrough or requiring something like skills with magic to become the fucking Arch-Mage in the College of Winterhold, right?).
• Badly executed and inconsistent power-fantasy, the world revolves around the player and it's almost always trying its hardest to make you feel like the "badass of prophecy" even at the very beginning of the game without you really doing anything to earn it, while at the same time having a bunch of NPCs that treat you like a nobody even when you're already a very famous and high level Dragonborn who has completed most of the game's quests. Terrible sense of progression.
• Inexcusably buggy without mods. An absolute technical mess that seems like it was made by complete amateurs. You can't even play the game with VSync turned off at high framerates without it having a seizure. Gamebryo (or "Creation Engine" as they call it now) is a pathetic excuse for an engine.
Yeah, sorry, but I really, REALLY don't like this game. Its only redeemable qualities are the soundtrack and the modding community (and that's literally the only reason why I have so much playtime in this, because I really enjoy modding it into a completely unrecognizable game). There's nothing that this game does that other games don't do a thousand times better. Almost everything in Skyrim is a massive step backwards from what was already present in the previous TES games. It's one of the prime examples of braindead lowest common denominator RPGs, just like everything that Bethesda has put out after Morrowind, and is one of the main contributors to the dumbing down and loss of quality that the genre has been suffering from for many years now. I despise this game's impact on the industry with a burning passion. Seriously, just go play any other Elder Scrolls game instead.
Skyrim is my least favorite game in the mainline TES franchise, and cements my loss of hope for the future of the series. "Wide as an ocean, but deep as a puddle" is a cliché, but it perfectly describes this game. It is often referred to as "baby's first RPG" for a reason, after all. I'm going to try to give a list of my reasons for disliking this game as much as I do:
• Completely forgettable and uninteresting story. Even the staunchest of Bethesda fanboys usually agrees that the overall writing and narrative are some of Skyrim's weakest aspects.
• Boring, unmemorable, and one-dimensional NPCs and dialogue, accompanied by some of the blandest voice acting in the history of video-games. There are almost no characters in this game who are truly interesting to talk to.
• Repetitive, shallow, unbalanced, and badly designed gameplay and mechanics, with extremely simplistic RPG elements. No classes, no attributes, complete removal of various skills from other TES games, etc.
• The prime example of how to NOT do a perk system in an RPG, since a lot of perks just give passive percentage increases to the effectiveness of skills instead of being something unique that actually changes how you play.
• Continues to butcher or completely remove a lot of customization options and some of the best mechanics from earlier games, like the clothing/armor layers, various weapon types, spells like Levitation and Mark/Recall, Spellmaking, and Enchanting.
• Frustratingly boring copy and paste level design. Dungeon crawling in this game is the bane of my existence.
• Severely dumbed down compared to prior entries, always doing everything in its power to hold the player's hand and ensure that they won't fail at anything, coupled with lazy quest design that usually just boils down to navigating corridor-like interiors and following a floating quest marker. Essential NPCs and easily available fast travel continue to be terrible additions that ruin the immersion and the general experience since Oblivion.
• Nonexistent depth in the faction system (because god forbid not being able to join every single faction in the game during a single playthrough or requiring something like skills with magic to become the fucking Arch-Mage in the College of Winterhold, right?).
• Badly executed and inconsistent power-fantasy, the world revolves around the player and it's almost always trying its hardest to make you feel like the "badass of prophecy" even at the very beginning of the game without you really doing anything to earn it, while at the same time having a bunch of NPCs that treat you like a nobody even when you're already a very famous and high level Dragonborn who has completed most of the game's quests. Terrible sense of progression.
• Inexcusably buggy without mods. An absolute technical mess that seems like it was made by complete amateurs. You can't even play the game with VSync turned off at high framerates without it having a seizure. Gamebryo (or "Creation Engine" as they call it now) is a pathetic excuse for an engine.
Yeah, sorry, but I really, REALLY don't like this game. Its only redeemable qualities are the soundtrack and the modding community (and that's literally the only reason why I have so much playtime in this, because I really enjoy modding it into a completely unrecognizable game). There's nothing that this game does that other games don't do a thousand times better. Almost everything in Skyrim is a massive step backwards from what was already present in the previous TES games. It's one of the prime examples of braindead lowest common denominator RPGs, just like everything that Bethesda has put out after Morrowind, and is one of the main contributors to the dumbing down and loss of quality that the genre has been suffering from for many years now. I despise this game's impact on the industry with a burning passion. Seriously, just go play any other Elder Scrolls game instead.
Easily one of my favorite games of all time. Never have I seen a game with this unparalleled level of immersion, where it's so incredibly easy to completely lose yourself in its world, which is accomplished due to a mixture of a sublime sense of progression and pacing, rewarding exploration, inventive lore, a great soundtrack, absorbing mechanics that make you pay attention to dialogue and use your wits to traverse the map and complete your objectives instead of mindlessly following a quest marker, and beautifully creative alien landscapes and architecture that give the game a unique identity and atmosphere.
The game has a fascinatingly weird world, and it does a superb job of fleshing out the lore, politics, conflicts, and culture of the Dunmer people. It is by far the best game in the series in terms of worldbuilding, and it has the best main questline in any TES game. Everything about its universe is very experimental, surreal, and "out-there", and it's a shame that Bethesda abandoned this philosophy in later titles, since this is one of the best things about the game, and all of it really helps to immerse the player in the amazingly interesting and strange place that is Morrowind.
The game can be quite unforgiving and doesn't do a lot of hand-holding, but that's part of what makes it so special. Its mechanics have a lot of depth to them, and allow for a lot of experimentation and player freedom (I think this video does a great job of exemplifying this). I absolutely love the RPG elements, which I think are the perfect balance between complexity/depth and not being too unwieldy like Daggerfall when it comes to the stats, skills, attributes and so on, alongside the layered clothing system, which all make building and progressing your character one of the most engaging things about the game. I also love the amazing systems in place with almost infinite possibilities like Enchanting and Spellmaking, as overpowered as those can be.
Now, despite all the great things about it, it's far from perfect. The game hasn't aged well, both graphically and gameplay wise. If you're coming from Skyrim or Oblivion, it's almost certain you're gonna have a hard time learning the game's ropes, especially the archaic combat system. The leveling system can be quite tedious and grindy if you're looking to min/max and build your character in the most optimal way. The game is REALLY unbalanced and some aspects of it can be really frustrating while others are far too easy, since there are many exploits that the player can abuse to break the game. Also, even though the soundtrack is one of the game's strongest aspects, it can sometimes be fairly repetitive due to a relatively small quantity of tracks.
Most NPCs in the game are fairly generic due to copy-pasted lines, and basically just serve as lore vending machines. The wiki-style dialogue system makes it nearly impossible to role-play your character through dialogue choices in the same way that you would in other RPGs, so you shouldn't go in looking for that experience. You play a game like Morrowind to feel completely immersed in it's rich fantasy world, learning about its history, exploring and adventuring, joining different guilds, building your character, experimenting with the mechanics, becoming more and more powerful, etc. Just like any of the other TES games, you shouldn't really go in looking for a story with lots of different moral choices and branching paths, since that's just not the point of the game.
Let me also just take a moment to give potential new players two important tips to avoid frustration. First, make sure to only use weapons that your character specializes in, in other words, don't try to use the crappy Iron Dagger that you get at the start if you didn't pick Short Blade as a skill when creating your character. Instead, do some quests in Seyda Neen to get some gold since they usually don't involve any combat, talk to Caius Cosades in Balmora to get some more starter money, and then use that cash to buy some decent gear that your character can actually use. Second, you need to keep in mind that, unlike Skyrim, Fatigue is an important mechanic in this game. If your Fatigue is low when you enter combat, your character is much more likely to miss their attacks, and running and jumping everywhere will quickly deplete it. So, try to carry some Restore Fatigue potions with you, and if you see an enemy ahead try to either start walking slowly to regenerate a bit, or just rest for an hour in-game, which will completely refill your bar.
I would also definitely recommend installing OpenMW and following this guide to enjoy an enhanced, stable, and mostly bug-free version of the vanilla game on modern systems.
With all of that said, Morrowind is a masterpiece, albeit a very flawed one. If you persevere through all of its problems, what awaits you is one of the most incredibly engrossing and rewarding experiences you will ever have in an RPG.
The game has a fascinatingly weird world, and it does a superb job of fleshing out the lore, politics, conflicts, and culture of the Dunmer people. It is by far the best game in the series in terms of worldbuilding, and it has the best main questline in any TES game. Everything about its universe is very experimental, surreal, and "out-there", and it's a shame that Bethesda abandoned this philosophy in later titles, since this is one of the best things about the game, and all of it really helps to immerse the player in the amazingly interesting and strange place that is Morrowind.
The game can be quite unforgiving and doesn't do a lot of hand-holding, but that's part of what makes it so special. Its mechanics have a lot of depth to them, and allow for a lot of experimentation and player freedom (I think this video does a great job of exemplifying this). I absolutely love the RPG elements, which I think are the perfect balance between complexity/depth and not being too unwieldy like Daggerfall when it comes to the stats, skills, attributes and so on, alongside the layered clothing system, which all make building and progressing your character one of the most engaging things about the game. I also love the amazing systems in place with almost infinite possibilities like Enchanting and Spellmaking, as overpowered as those can be.
Now, despite all the great things about it, it's far from perfect. The game hasn't aged well, both graphically and gameplay wise. If you're coming from Skyrim or Oblivion, it's almost certain you're gonna have a hard time learning the game's ropes, especially the archaic combat system. The leveling system can be quite tedious and grindy if you're looking to min/max and build your character in the most optimal way. The game is REALLY unbalanced and some aspects of it can be really frustrating while others are far too easy, since there are many exploits that the player can abuse to break the game. Also, even though the soundtrack is one of the game's strongest aspects, it can sometimes be fairly repetitive due to a relatively small quantity of tracks.
Most NPCs in the game are fairly generic due to copy-pasted lines, and basically just serve as lore vending machines. The wiki-style dialogue system makes it nearly impossible to role-play your character through dialogue choices in the same way that you would in other RPGs, so you shouldn't go in looking for that experience. You play a game like Morrowind to feel completely immersed in it's rich fantasy world, learning about its history, exploring and adventuring, joining different guilds, building your character, experimenting with the mechanics, becoming more and more powerful, etc. Just like any of the other TES games, you shouldn't really go in looking for a story with lots of different moral choices and branching paths, since that's just not the point of the game.
Let me also just take a moment to give potential new players two important tips to avoid frustration. First, make sure to only use weapons that your character specializes in, in other words, don't try to use the crappy Iron Dagger that you get at the start if you didn't pick Short Blade as a skill when creating your character. Instead, do some quests in Seyda Neen to get some gold since they usually don't involve any combat, talk to Caius Cosades in Balmora to get some more starter money, and then use that cash to buy some decent gear that your character can actually use. Second, you need to keep in mind that, unlike Skyrim, Fatigue is an important mechanic in this game. If your Fatigue is low when you enter combat, your character is much more likely to miss their attacks, and running and jumping everywhere will quickly deplete it. So, try to carry some Restore Fatigue potions with you, and if you see an enemy ahead try to either start walking slowly to regenerate a bit, or just rest for an hour in-game, which will completely refill your bar.
I would also definitely recommend installing OpenMW and following this guide to enjoy an enhanced, stable, and mostly bug-free version of the vanilla game on modern systems.
With all of that said, Morrowind is a masterpiece, albeit a very flawed one. If you persevere through all of its problems, what awaits you is one of the most incredibly engrossing and rewarding experiences you will ever have in an RPG.
2010
New Vegas is absolutely phenomenal. It has an amazing amount of depth and some of the best writing and world-building I've ever seen in any piece of media. It's the gold-standard on how to handle different factions and political/philosophical ideologies in a video-game. This is what every RPG should strive to be. Honestly, I think this might be my favorite game of all time.
What is there to say about New Vegas that hasn't been repeated a million times already? It's a fantastic role-playing experience, being designed from the ground up to grant the player the ability to engage with it in the most extreme of gameplay scenarios and still be able to complete it. Do you want to play as a sociopathic and unintelligent brute who just goes around murdering everybody with a sledgehammer? You can do that. Do you want to play as a charismatic diplomat who solves every issue in a pacifist manner? Also entirely possible. Almost every quest or obstacle in the game provides the player with multiple options and solutions, which makes New Vegas one of the most replayable games out there.
It's not perfect by any means, though. The game is pretty buggy and unstable without mods to patch it, the visuals are an absolute eyesore (even for the time it came out), the game world/map is kind of barren and uninteresting, much of the content in the game feels underdeveloped (like the whole Legion route) which is an obvious byproduct of its rushed development, enemy AI is straight up garbage, and the gunplay and overall gameplay is far from being the best (especially without mods like JSawyer to make the game more challenging and interesting), but it definitely makes up for it in every other area. The narrative, characters, and role-playing possibilities are all masterfully done, and that's what really matters when it comes to RPGs after all.
As a side note, I would HIGHLY recommend anyone playing the game nowadays to follow the Viva New Vegas guide, whether you're a veteran or a new player. It is simply essential to install the mods listed there if you want to have a stable, balanced, and fun experience.
Sadly, it's extremely unlikely that we'll ever see any future Fallout games even come close to the quality of New Vegas in the hands of Bethesda. Well, doesn't change the fact that this is a masterpiece and everyone who is into RPGs should play it. This is the real Fallout 3.
What is there to say about New Vegas that hasn't been repeated a million times already? It's a fantastic role-playing experience, being designed from the ground up to grant the player the ability to engage with it in the most extreme of gameplay scenarios and still be able to complete it. Do you want to play as a sociopathic and unintelligent brute who just goes around murdering everybody with a sledgehammer? You can do that. Do you want to play as a charismatic diplomat who solves every issue in a pacifist manner? Also entirely possible. Almost every quest or obstacle in the game provides the player with multiple options and solutions, which makes New Vegas one of the most replayable games out there.
It's not perfect by any means, though. The game is pretty buggy and unstable without mods to patch it, the visuals are an absolute eyesore (even for the time it came out), the game world/map is kind of barren and uninteresting, much of the content in the game feels underdeveloped (like the whole Legion route) which is an obvious byproduct of its rushed development, enemy AI is straight up garbage, and the gunplay and overall gameplay is far from being the best (especially without mods like JSawyer to make the game more challenging and interesting), but it definitely makes up for it in every other area. The narrative, characters, and role-playing possibilities are all masterfully done, and that's what really matters when it comes to RPGs after all.
As a side note, I would HIGHLY recommend anyone playing the game nowadays to follow the Viva New Vegas guide, whether you're a veteran or a new player. It is simply essential to install the mods listed there if you want to have a stable, balanced, and fun experience.
Sadly, it's extremely unlikely that we'll ever see any future Fallout games even come close to the quality of New Vegas in the hands of Bethesda. Well, doesn't change the fact that this is a masterpiece and everyone who is into RPGs should play it. This is the real Fallout 3.