I think when you're faced with your own imminent death, you default to either spilling everything you wanted to say but couldn't for some reason or other, or you hold conversations as normally as you possibly can, under the circumstances. Both are because you're afraid of what comes after, and the chance that you'll never get to do either of them again. There is unique intimacy in sending your friends "the lighting down here is awful" and getting various responses of "yep" "yeah dude" "i can't even see the fucking keyboard" etc.

See you soon.

Closer to the original HL than Opposing Force, which I personally like. It's not very memorable though, the encounter design definitely tries its best to mimic what Valve were going for.... sometimes that shines through, fighting the military in this is great, but the encounters don't have that same kind of "oompf" to them that they do as Freeman.

There isn't that encounter where you reach the surface and it's absolute hell on earth before you immediately get forced back inside. There's no Surface Tension. Instead there's a lot of.... creeping through the dank sublevels. It's another kind of atmosphere, it works in its own right, but it's kind of just a reminder of what this was going to be before it became what it is.

Much more relevant if you don't have a way to play Damacy and/or We <3 Katamari. It's fine, good, Katamari is just good at a base level, but it's hard to get excited when it's (mostly) an HD compilation of We <3 Katamari levels with some Damacy and Beautiful thrown in. Would very much suggest playing them individually if you can.

Emulated this on RPCS3. The pre-rendered videos play at a weird stutter-y frame rate and walking around the menu areas is a bit stutter-y too, but the levels are perfect.

To love Musou games is to love the mythological and silly nature it injects into its subject matter. It's lovely.

I don't think there's anyone in the world who loves these games for the way they feel or the gameplay systems or anything like that. It's about The Romance of Three Kingdoms being taken to an absurd and camp-y conclusion. It's in the retelling of a massive historical event in such a fun and loving way. It sparked my interest in ROT3K and I've loved this game for all of my life. It's got tens of characters with their own individual sets of "campaigns", with later levels wildly varying from other characters, because they delve into hypothetical rather than following the actual historical outcome. It has a (relatively) extensive section dedicated to a timeline of the era and reasonably descriptive biographies for every character in the game, even secondary general/lieutenants/etc. It just wants you to laugh and have fun with it, and maybe learn something if you find anything in it interesting.
<3

They made a real mistake in giving you (random outsider) so much agency in the setting, the RPG nature of You Must Make The Choice that is expected, I suppose.

Joshua Graham is the carrier. That's all that really needs to be said about him.

The tribal politics and situation... It's weird and murky, the post-apocalyptic tribal concept is something Fallout tries to handle that interests me greatly, but it's really weird here, because of what I said before about the RPG Choice thing. You have all the agency, and the tribes themselves don't really get any kind of say, you're talking to the other two outsiders (to the individual tribes, not outsiders to the whole tribe culture like you) the entire time about decisions they're making for the tribes. It doesn't feel that great. It's not intentionally bad, knowing Obsidian, just... another thing that goes in the pile of shortcomings through circumstances surrounding the development of New Vegas.

Other notes:
They double down on highlighting that the Legion (and its influence) are nothing but evil.
It's pretty, and that's not a joke. It looks relatively pretty, at least in comparison to the Mojave (which is also good looking honestly, just not pretty).
Cazadors unnecessary.

Played on Linux through Proton 6.16-GE-1. Mods in Use: NVSE, NVAC, NV Stutter Remover, 4GB Patch, MTUI.

Unlike anything else I've experienced in a Fallout game. Exercise in oppressive and haunting atmosphere. Elijah's voice in the hologram, the ambient audio of door-knocking/footsteps in specific areas, the Sierra Madre towering over you with that red sky. The Cloud, the way it looks.

Dog. Dean Domino. Father Elijah. Christine. Vera. Sinclair. Aside from the atmosphere, it works best when you're dealing with the characters, or being given bits of information about characters who now only exist through memories. Or holograms of themselves. He'll sing on that stage until the end of time, just like she wanders the halls.

Played on Linux through Proton 6.16-GE-1. Mods in Use: NVSE, NVAC, NV Stutter Remover, 4GB Patch, MTUI.

PR2 was the place to be in 2008, 2009, 2010. Seriously, this game at its height was frequently peaking 2000 or more players, it wasn't uncommon that you would have to sit at the login screen spamming the shit out of it, hoping someone logged off one of the servers at the same time you were hoping to log in.

All other Platform Racing games failed. Why? Platform Racing 1: bad netcode, too primitive. Platform Racing 3: website exclusivity (on a flash game, lol), bad netcode. This leaves Platform Racing 2 in a sweet spot. People would play this shit endlessly, you could not escape the existence of this game on Kongregate. It deserved it, really. The crown jewel, though? Including a level editor. It was a well of endless content. People would make competitive maps, troll maps, casual silly maps, narrative maps (with VERY good art), it was an expressive tool way beyond what I imagine Jiggmin thought people use it for. And it was awesome. And I miss it.

Kongregate shut down most of its forums last year, and almost every chatroom was killed at the same time. Its golden era is long over, and it is fading from relevancy, only existing as a corporate shell of itself. One day it will be gone, just like one day the guy maintaining the remaining server(s) for PR2 will be gone, and all that we'll have left is our memories. It's sad, but they were good times. I miss you.