Halo 3 is just phenomenal. It's a perfect finale to the first trilogy in the gigantic Halo saga and a sendoff to Bungie's legacy for creating the greatest FPS trilogy of all time. This was the first FPS I got invested in when I got my Xbox 360 for Christmas in 2013. I've played the game multiple times since and it still absolutely holds up, both singleplayer AND multiplayer. The majestic soundtrack, the large settings you're dropped into leave a world that I wouldn't forget anytime soon, the game's atmosphere for the campaign is very engaging. The gunplay and movement is Halo 1 and 2's strengths brought to their max. We get a healthy sandbox with multiple options for what you can find, and every gun has a satisfying firing. My favorite is the Shotgun. Halo 3's shotgun is one of my favorite weapons in all of gaming. The incredible BANG that goes off when you fire it absolutely obliterates whatever you're shooting. Halo 3 has a ton of personal value to me and I just love the game a lot. I recommend this to anyone into video games. Play Halo 3. The Master Chief Collection is on sale often and is generally very cheap.

Brutal Doom offers a modern overhaul to the classic Doom playstyle with lots of mobility and a metric truckload of new weapons to pick up and blast with. An honestly overwhelming amount since you will almost run out of keybinds for some of them. The excessive gore and genuinely unbearable voicelines can be cringe-enducing at times but I mostly ignore it since the new additions on to the familiar style of Doom leave a fun game to play behind despite how insufferable the man behind it is. I'd recommend this game/mod if you're very into Doom/other boomer shooters.

It's Doom. It's DOOM. It's THE violent shooter game. Despite coming out in 1993, almost 30 years ago, the game is actually fun to play (if you can avoid the full keyboard controls without a mouse). There is a small but memorable weapon pool tied with a simple movement system that keeps you speedy where you need to be so that shooting demons is reliable, effective, and most importantly - fun! The secrets in this game are ridiculous, and there is always something to dig up and uncover to help you out. The soundtrack is iconic, and the game as a whole just warrants so much sheer respect for the quality it offers on its own and the immense influence it would go on to leave on the industry. The only thing I feel has really aged besides some of the graphics are the level designs. Most of the levels feel like linear closed hallways with a few puzzles, and the later games would go on to make levels more interesting. I cannot bring up Doom without talking about mods but that would leave me here all day, but that is its' own essay. Just play this game, and then the rest of the series.

Sonic 1 is a bit strange. It's one of the most iconic and influential video games of all time, and was important back in the day and even in 2022 was still getting port releases and I think will get ported for many years to come. In my opinion the game has frankly aged like milk. The first zone, Green Hill, is fantastic. Now, Sonic 1 isn't speed focused like the the rest of the series (mostly) is. Sonic 1 is primarily a platformer meant to be taken slow for the most part with specific sections letting you go fast once you're able to have the knowledge and control familiarity of the stages. However, there are some obstacles that are straight up stop-and-go like the platforms in Spring Yard and Labyrinth. On that note, Marble Zone just sucks. It has absolutely no speed and is just strictly platforming, and the platforming itself is just not fun. Spring Yard Zone brings back a bit of the speed, and then it immediately gets thrown in the trash with Labyrinth Zone, one of the most infamous levels in Sonic history and people outside of Sonic might even know it. It is THE underwater level in a game that grinds your momentum to a halt. It is just not a fun level in a game to play. Fortunately after that we get Starlight Zone which has a similar momentum to Spring Yard Zone but with nice and relaxing music. Scrap Brain Zone, the final level zone, is ok. Final levels in Sonic game do a good job overall cranking up the difficulty but this mostly comes with constant stop-and-go platforming and falling to your death. The last act is actually Labyrinth Zone Act 4, and it is just as bad as the others. The final boss is just ok. The game ends with Eggman running away to fight another day and Sonic returning to his home after freeing a bunch of animals. I can't really recommend Sonic 1 since I just don't think it's a very fun game to play and has aged poorly. Play it if you want to see where the series started. It gets much better.

Sonic Adventure is a very important and influential game in the Hedgehog's history and holds strong nostalgic value for others and myself, but I think the game mostly doesn't hold up very well. I find Big's gameplay straight up terrible. Gamma's stages are forgettable and easy. Amy is a slower, less fun Sonic. Tails is just Sonic's levels but with flying over everything, also very easy. Knuckles' levels are actually kinda fun, and Sonic's levels are mostly solid, and even though he has by far the most focus on stage total for the game, he's only like 30-40% of the whole game and in order to get to the good final boss, you have to trudge through the rest of the game. The graphical presentation direction is pretty good in terms of the places you get to go, from Red Mountain, to the Egg Carrier, to Windy Valley, and the color holds up well but the game as a whole I find to be pretty ugly, and that's just an unfortunate side effect of the age of the game as an early 3D platformer title. I just can't see this anywhere in the discussion as "best 3D sonic game" due to the multiple shortcomings despite the fun and enjoyable bits. The music hasn't aged poorly at all and lots of tracks I could pick up and listen to at any time. I cautiously recommend the game to Sonic newcomers and give a slightly stronger recommendation to those who like Sonic but haven't played this title yet. Warning on the PC version, the image just isn't good. The visual updates from the Dreamcast are rather poor and mess up the lighting in multiple scenes. I can only recommend a playthough of this with some mods.

(Multiplayer)
The game is fun as hell. If COD does anything right, it's maintaining a fun and addictive gameplay loop of getting kills, dying, and getting more kills. I don't even play objective based game modes outside of the TDM variants and I still have a blast. The game doesn't get stale too often. I'm curious to see the eventual MWIII follow up in the next few years. I'm not one for the yearly COD releases since I hate unlocking all the weapons all over again. I recommend this game if you like COD but if you don't then I can't see you going crazy for this one. The UI is absolute garbage and I hope they change it

The game is fundamentally fun and interesting, but it's just not something I care about anymore. I was very into it in 2019-2020, but just fell off. The game got pretty stale and I'm not someone who has interest in climbing a ranked ladder. The monetization isn't too aggregious and the various operators offer healthy variety for long term play. Ubisoft's content flow has been just ok. They don't seem to have a ton of faith in the success of this game and hopefully we can get a proper sequel some point in the 2020s decade rather than an endless cycle of weak content updates. I say give it a shot, especially if you're already into shooters and are looking for something of a little different pace than the likes of Halo, Battlefield, or COD

What can be said about LoL. It's one of the most popular video games on the planet and I say for pretty good reason. The game is incredibly simple and only controlled with the mouse and a few keys, and the game has light yet appealing graphics that can run on pretty much any computer. There are over 150 playable characters with countless fun abilities and playstyles to try and build items around to let you dominate enemies in your own way. I started playing around May 2020 a little after the big pandemic and got pretty addicted to playing the game with my friends and occasionally by myself to get better. My champion pool lately consists of Xerath, Swain, Pantheon, and Mordekaiser, characters with huge potentials for carrying a team to victory.
What holds this game back is some technical issues with the client, poor balancing (not what you think), and general negative views on the company behind it. The game client can have regular connectivity issues, kicking you out of parties, loading in the game slowly or crashing sometimes. The balance I refer to and dislike for Riot Games is a ratio of new champions to reworks of existing ones. We pretty much get a 1:6 ratio of a rework of an existing character to brand new ones each year, and the new champions just get tiring. Most, if not all champs released in the past 3 years launch at incredibly overpowered states and either don't change to become weaker or get nerfed into oblivion. The alternative game modes have completely gone down the toilet. Even though they were before my time, I know about the likes of Star Guardian and Dominion, and the countless hours of fun players had with these modes that I will probably never ever get to experience. Despite this, League is a regular game I find myself playing since it's mechanically fun and pretty satisfying to win in. I can only hope that Riot will take some better steps in looking out for the game's community since League no doubt has one of the most dedicated fanbases in the industry. I recommend people play this game

On the other side of the SEGA Experimentation coin, we have the first storybook game that is just no good. The controls are the biggest exploding issue with the game, making you play a "3D platformer" with a motion controlled sideways wiimote that just stays uncomfortable across the whole journey. The presentation is the complete opposite, having a good variety of music and a ton of vocal tracks, most of which I enjoy, and a lot of visual variety in level types we rarely, if ever see in Sonic games usually. The mission structure just sucks with a bunch of annoying, unfun missions, and some nonsense ones that last less than 20 seconds. It's confusing too, not clearly showing you which missions are mandatory for story progression. The story itself is just ok, typical Sonic fare of trying to stop evil bad guy of the day. I can't recommend this game at all unless you're a very desperate Sonic fan who wants to play this for novelty sake.

I love God of War 2018. I got a PS4 in 2019 and picked up and put down GOW about 3 times. I got it as a gift on Steam in February 2022 when the game came out and once again dropped it. It wasn’t until October 2022 around the hype for the release of Ragnarok that I finally buckled and played God of War 2018. I normally play games casually with music or videos playing, but this was different. I had all sounds at max so I could listen to everything going on. All the dialogue, all the music, all the intensity of the action – I was so invested. The game kept me engaged consistently and I couldn’t put it down. The gorgeous graphics the PC port had, letting me run it at 1440p 60Hz, made for a game with outstanding presentation. The story was fantastic. We start with a Kratos and his son mourning over his dead wife as they burn her body and prepare to carry her ashes up to the highest mountain in the land to be spread in her honor, but the Journey ahead had more challenges than Kratos and Atreus could ever imagine encountering together. Baldur’s opening attack sets up Kratos’ character as a far more reserved fighter than we’ve seen before, trying to urge Baldur to stay away even after smacking him as Kratos didn’t want to fight him, but Baldur kept going and found out what happens when you try to brawl the Ghost of Sparta. The game’s overall adventure until each major story beat of introducing new characters or realms is pretty engaging thanks to the dialogue of Kratos, Atreus, and their eventual ally in Mimir. The combat the game offers is a little different than what I’m used to as a modern Doom fan, an over the shoulder hack and slash with incredibly intimate and brutally violent kills with the Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos. Of each of the realms you go to, I’d say Helheim was my favorite. Each time you go there in the story it felt like a properly important beat in the adventure as going to the frozen hell was the absolute worst outcome that we had to go through because that’s what the journey demanded of us. Atreus getting sick and needed the heart of the Keeper and getting knocked into there because of Atreus’ impulse and not listening to Kratos. The adventure continues after this and the next notable moment I want to mention is the final battle with Baldur. Baldur, son of Freya, is a monster filled with so much anger and hate thanks to his curse that he doesn’t care who he fights as long as it’s fighting someone. When Atreus’ cursed arrow returns Baldur to his mortal state and releases his power to be more complete, Baldur felt so alive to fight again and after the fight was ready to murder his mother as revenge for the normal life she robbed him of. The entire theme of the game’s story is that of family and familial relationships. From Kratos and Atreus, to Sindri and Brok, to Freya and Baldur. The first two groups are able to work through their problems and gain a better understanding of each other but Freya and Baldur’s relationship is too long gone. Baldur is ready to choke the life out of Freya and she is 100% ok with it, but right before she dies he’s grabbed by Kratos. Kratos is a man who kills to survive and protect the people he cares about. Not only did he care about Freya as she saved Atreus’ life and helped the two on their adventure, but he saw the awful monster that Baldur had become. Baldur killing his mother wouldn’t fix all the hate built up inside him, it would just burn hotter and destroy the world around him. Kratos has an incredibly powerful line of “The cycle ends here. We must be better than this.” and snaps Baldur’s neck. This genuinely brought tears to my eyes for a few reasons. First, Kratos is starting to come full circle in becoming a better god for both himself and his close friends and family as he sees the destruction Baldur could come to bring as mentioned previously. Second, I honestly started to build sympathy for Baldur as a character since despite his honestly terrible actions, he was still a man who had someone else’s will imposed on him in the form of his mother’s curse of immortality, so him finally being free then chosing a dark path was very sad. Lastly, the utter pain in Freya’s voice is heartbreaking. Even after everything that happened, she still loved Baldur as a mother, and a mother losing her child is just horrible and wrong. On this note, the performances in this game are fantastic despite the fairly small cast. Christopher Judge as Kratos deserves a special mention for the motion capture work and voice performance that is just incredibly imposing. This man IS Kratos. Motion capture has become pretty standard for many AAA big budget games and Sony did not spare expense when it comes to this. God of War 2018 raised the bar of high expectations for what video games can offer when it comes to a memorable cinematic experience. The game ends on a somber yet content note of Kratos and Atreus spreading Faye’s ashes across Jotunheim. After this, the rest of the game opens up to let you finish all the sidequests and Valkyrie hunts, and I did all of them, even Sigrun who is a very challenging boss that will test your combat to the maximum. I ended my 100% completion of the game on the Give Me Balance difficulty at around 40 hours, and it was well worth the time put in. The game is criticized for being too “cinematic” and changing too much from classic GOW, and while I agree with the cinematic complaints of fake gameplay and bad platforming on repeat playthroughs, I rarely found this breaking my immersion and enjoyment of the game on my playthrough. God of War 2018 will have a special place in my heart for a long time as the game that got me back into caring about Single Player games and the stories they can offer. This game gets my highest recommendation.

FNAF2 Is a pretty good follow up to FNAF1. There are more enemies and more mechanics, but the doors are gone. The game is remarkably less scary than the first FNAF and I the biggest reason is the lighting. FNAF2 is a pretty bright game and you're never in the dark or worried of what lurks beneath, especially with the flashlight. All of the animatronic designs moreso lead to good character models rather than monsters to be terrified of. The death animations and things you see are borderline cartoonish. The gameplay loop like FNAF1 is challenging and interesting at first but becomes almost mindlessly repetitive by the Night 3 and beyond. It's just vent check, hall check, music box, mask, repeat - until 6AM. Thanks to the music box mechanic, you're incentivized to NEVER look around the rest of the building. The first game had this issue but that was due to the power limitations. FNAF2 despite these complaints can actually be a fun play for your first run and taking a shot at the custom night options. This game's 10/20 mode cemented the series' legacy for insanely difficult final challenges for players to overcome. Some players like DJ Sterf have up to 4 hours of watchable guides on tackling this mode. FNAF2's legacy is pretty big for the franchise as I see it as the first extreme takeoff of popularity thanks to the likes of Markiplier, Game Theory, and the many other Lets Players and youtubers going after FNAF. FNAF2 left behind a good legacy with a decent game in its wake.

An unbelievably iconic game with an impact on the games industry and pop culture that nobody saw coming. Taking this game in context of everything FNAF has become, it's a very interesting title with how much people try to extract from it - be it lore or a general horror experience. Setting the hype for the franchise aside, FNAF 1 is a fairly unremarkable game. The setting is very scary - being a night security guard at a Chuck E' Cheese restaurant with disturbingly creepy looking animatronics that are roaming the building to kill you, and your only defense is a crappy camera system, backwards security blast doors, and a power system charged by 16 AAA batteries. I find the game to be really effective at scaring the player for the few times you play. Aside from the setting, the first jumpscares can definitely get you. Unfortunately, even after all my praise for the atmosphere, the game loses its' charm pretty quickly. The gameplay is very repetitive and honestly boring once you know how the game works. Just listen for movement and react accordingly. The power drains so fast that trying to actively look for and be 100% aware of the enemies is just not viable so you're left just staring at the ugly stretched image if you're playing on a screen above 1080p. The endgame of this is borderline luck based with how fast the animatronics react and move. I say give this game a shot purely for the status of it, but on its own it is just ok. Later games definitely have more engaging gameplay and this IS a video game after all.

For a game that's technically almost 9 years old, Mario Kart 8 holds up very well. The core racing is just very fun to play with the drifting and kart options. The additions made by the deluxe version on Switch in 2017 as well as including the Wii U DLC made this the definitive Mario Kart to be played by anyone who likes Kart racers or racing games period. It's still getting DLC to this day in the form of a bunch of new courses released over the next year. The performance on Switch is surprisingly good for the hardware - churning out a gorgeous art style at a solid resolution and framerate. Sadly, the game has largely run its' course for me personally since I've just played all it has to offer more than enough. I'd like a new engine, fully original courses, and different characters to play as, but given the DLC track, I don't expect a new Mario Kart until at least 2026. As of now, if you somehow haven't played the game, I recommend it - since it has plenty of content to offer newer players.

This game defined 2015 and 2016 for me. I put over 1,000 hours in it between those years, and it was basically the only game I played. The presentational charm makes the world feel like an R Rated Pixar movie from hell. Being Free to Play really helped get the game's audience to expand from the Valve crowd to pretty much anybody with a computer as this 2007 game is very easy to run even on weak hardware.
I've played all the classes extensively and find every one of them fun to play, and all offering playstyles for any FPS player out there. The microtransaction system is something that will turn off some players but I actually find it to be one of the healthiest in the industry. Tbe base game is free, has no ads, and all classes are unlocked with rewards dropping via achievements for classes or through playing the game and getting random drops of weapons or crates. Every weapon is a sidegrade, offering both positive attributes and negative drawbacks for usage. Everything else is 100% cosmetic for player customization and provides ZERO in game player advantages. You could never drop a dime on this game and still have fun and become extremely skilled at it. On top of this, player trading systems and the steam community market ensure that you'll never run out of cool and interesting items to check out and trade around to get something you've got your eye on. The weapon system alone has multiple rarities and properties that can more personalize your experience and ownership through skins, stranges, killstreaks, and more. Hats, jackets, shoes, shirts - there genuinely is something for everyone. Sadly, the positives end here. Valve has done a very poor job at maintaining this incredibly beloved game and community for the past 6 years and only in 2022 did they start really paying attention to player outcries of cheating and bot account abuse by releasing patches that hopefully fix the issue altogether one day, but this is unlikely. There haven't been any actual major content releases (cosmetics and weapons) since 2017 with the Jungle Inferno update and even that was pretty weak in comparison to the ones before. The days of Meet Your Medic, The Engineer Update, and Love & War are far long over, but the game still lives on through official servers and an undying community that I believe will last forever. TF2 holds an eternal place in .y heart that I think few other, if any multiplayer games will ever reach. I strongly recommend trying this game out and maybe you can get just as invested as I was.