Golly, what a hot take.

Yeah, no, Opposing Force is as good as everyone says. Even though the more military aesthetic didn't really get me excited when I started, I will admit it's charm did start to seep its way into me playing this expansion, to the point where there were moments that wowed me like in the original game. Sure, the original Half Life is nothing to shake a stick at, but this stand-alone expansion does everything right in a DLC; expands the world, adds new ideas and mechanics and improves on the core game in a way an update never would. I adored the sense of stress within these rooms, with a lot of this game being a glorious way to demonstrate that your level design can be simple yet effective. Sure, a lot of these corridors aren't anything to shake titties over, but paired with the fact I have 15% health, I am constatnly questioning if I should break a box or use it as cover with 10 Black Ops soldiers on one side and 4 giant monsters on the other, these corridors are packed with both chaotically challenging yet extremely fun and rewarding sequences. Seriously (outside of that immediately weak final boss), the last hour of this expansion really had me gripped and having a blast.

Speaking of combat, holy shit the weapons in this game are so goddamn good. From the alien superpowers, to the more standard guns, it feels like they took ideas from the first game and expanded on them, with me thinking of dynamic ways to take specific enemies down on the fly. It was really cool moment to see one of those One Eyed Fucks and debate if I should be using the mini-gun, the rocket launcher or even at times the pistol while the army dudes I have surrounding me deal with...everything else.

I should note though that not everything in this game is as could as I think it could have been, including...like, the whole core idea of the game. With the military aesthetic comes the option to have the army be a part of your team, and while that does drive the themes of the game home of isolation and helps with the feeling of unease, a lot of the time these army sections would end up with all of the army men I found dead in literal minutes. At best they took down a couple of enemies, spouted some useful dialogue on where to go next and unlocked doors, at worst they talked to me and then immediately died, which to me made them feel more like beefed up Scientists from the original game and less like extremely helpful companions.

And...yeah, you can REEEEALLY tell this is from 1999. Although the new widescreen really does look great, there are so many frustrating moments where I save, just to be stuck in an elevator, or stuck on a corner, or whatever in the fuck bug is at the start of Pit Worm's Nest which made me debate if my game was unplayable. I get it, it was the 90s, it's not like they had the modern conveniences of these problems being sorted, but it became really apparent that Gearbox had a less strict policy of bugs then Valve did in the original release...something I'm sure wont be a problem later in their career HEHEHE (I genuinely don't know if this is a problem later in their career).

But all in all...yeah, I gotta be honest, this DLC is up there for me. It's able to create something interesting while maintaining everything I loved about the original game. There are flaws, sure, but overal I left this excited about the rest of the expansions in the OG run of Half-Life, a feeling I'm sure will not be displaced!

Just one more puzzle before retirement...

For a goofy, free little overly smart parody of The Witness, this was pretty decent. Left me with a few chuckles, which at the end of the day is all it's supposed to do. There's some psuedo-intellectual stuff within it's voice recordings that made absolutly no sense in a way I found pretty entertaining, but for the most part the writing was pretty funny. The only thing that I just really didn't like is actually playing the puzzles. Like yeah, sure, it's supposed to be obtuse and silly, and in design it's not too bad, but the actual playing of it just feels super finicky and frustrating, especially when the only thing stopping you from getting a puzzle correct is an accidental bump of a wall causing your own circuit to just never work, which ESPECIALLY gets frustrating during the more 'video gamey' sections where accuracy is really important. Still, for what it's worth, I had fun.

...Spooooooky?

A really interesting and fun little ditty! It's clear this game, from the get go, is a love letter to every great indie horror in the last 20 years, from Amneisa, to SCP: Containment Breach, to even elements of Majoras Mask, this games main goal is to give you a good ole spook within this comedic yet very exciting and interesting world of Spookie's Mansion, constantly twisting and turning in a meticulous madhouse of various planes of existence. Each floor, while the gameplay stays the same, is brimming with creativity. Finding each new creature is as thrilling as the last, from mermaids to deer people to literal glitches, you can teel the people making this game LOVED horror and just wanted to see what they could add to the genre that would make for the most fun experience. It's a very humble and very charming game, simply at it's core at only a couple of hours (for me it was 5 but shush), with a very surprisng replay value that made me very excited to check out all the other content of Snooky's out there. I wanna be a kid again and look more into the lore because this already feels like it's gonna have the craziest lore from the get go.

I also loved the mechnic of stamina in this game. It's such a small detail but adds so much depth to this otherwise decent game, where being chased by these ghouls, ghosts and stupid fucking puppet things (seriously FUCK that) feels like a legit chase, having to time your stamina just right in order to escape the clutches of a monster, otherwise it's back to the start. It does honestly capture the intensity of going through this endless mansion and trying to find your way out, which is all the more fun when trying to get your own high score in endless mode.

That being said, I did have some minor gripes playing the game. After a while, and yes, I know this is the point and I JUST complimented the games mechanics right before, but within the story mode, the repetitive nature of the game did really start to bug me a little bit. Sure, this works in endless mode, but seeing the same places over and over again, it did feel like once I found the creature and got through it's creative and interesting section of the floor, it was just a mad dash to get to the end of the floor without dying, and that did get a little redundant once your at floor 700, at least in my opinion. What I would have loved is if these floors instead all felt like an extension of the creatures world, making the inclusion of other creatures feel all the more scary and interesting, as now they have to play in the world of say, a water floor, or a maze floor, or a big ass Resident Evil style mansion floor. And hey, maybe that gets explored in the HD renovation, which I'll be trying to check out, but here it does feel a little tedious seeing the same floors over and over and over again.

Still, with those gripes in mind, it is legit insane to me that this is a free experience and not just a full fledged game. Out of all the interesting 2010s Mascot Horror games that came out, this one is by far the most interesting, unique and fun.

...but seriously fuck that puppet, goddAMN.

I feel like this game usually gets a bad rap in conversation with other Mario games or other platformers, and in all honesty I can see why. When you compare New Super Mario Bros. Wii to other platformers at the time, the game is very simple and plain. There isn't a whole lot here that other games haven't done, outside of how you use the Wii remote or the updated graphic qualities from the DS game. The story, like most Mario games, is no thrills, has no interesting ideas and is basically just yet another Peach rescue mission. The characters are basically interchangeable, which is a shame since having a Co-Op version of Super Mario Bros. 2 sounds fun as hell. The level designs are basically Nintendo making Mario Maker levels for their full priced game at the time. It's very, very, very easy, if you've played other Mario games, to look at this and not care. It's effectively the Foo Fighters of Mario: simple, to the point, no thrills, and just kind of a basic game.

And you'd think, with all those complaints, that I just wouldn't care, right?

Well, actually, I had a lot of fun!

See, here is the thing about video games for me. While the impact of better, more beautifully crafted video games make this feel very throw-away and plain, there is a simplistic beauty of this game, and it's one of the many reasons why I think it is a great game as well as kind of plain: it's just a Mario game. It takes the series right back to it's original intention, and creates a simple, fun, get to the end goal of interesting levels that I think makes for one of Nintendo's most refined games. Aside from the overly sensitive motion control shakes that sometimes occur, the controls are butter smooth. I feel like this kind of intuitive design in how this platformer feels to play makes this one of the most assessable video games in all of creation, letting anyone pick up, play, get frustrated but want to persevere in order to reach the goal, to get that last Star Coin, to find those cannons. Every level has a secret warp pipe that can get them coins, a Power Up, or a whole ass Star Coin, and you can feel the excitement that the developers had creating these little mini secrets in this game, just in love with the fact that this game is just simply fun. It's not just taking Mario back to it's roots in it's 2D aesthetic, but this intention is baked into the game itself; it's just a Mario game.

The music as well just adds such an upbeat personality to the game. I know it's a joke now how the turtles hit the goofy aah dance on the 'wah wah's on the music beat, but why add that if you didn't just love what you are creating? This music, while obviously not touching what came before or after, just has such a fun, lively and colorful groove to everything. I adore the melodies in World 2, the ominous Tower music, the rising tension of the Castle theme, the fact that these simple little melodies add so much happiness and joy, even in the most stressful situations. You can tell that these composers were doing a little boogie to this soundtrack when they added those little rhythmic background noises whenever you got Yoshi. Not a huge boogie, but a little boogie, and I find that lovely.

And the way it's fun just really tickles me. I would honestly consider these Power-Ups to be way more iconic then people want to admit, because these powers were built on one principle: fun. The Helicopter Mushroom feels so delightfully OP, but never in a "oh, well I'm just getting the Helicopter Mushroom and beating this game tonight" way. The Penguin suit has so much energy behind it. The Mini Mushroom, with it's slight glide, rushing on top of water, makes for some incredibly memorable moments that I feel could have been taken even further. Each of these powerups just feels so fun and exciting to use, and always feels like a slight cheat code when you get it, but it's baked into the game itself. The games challenges are baked into these power-ups, especially in the games final moments (FUCK 9-7 MAN) where it's all just up to the player. It's so fun.

And sure, it's simple, and my biggest complaints are with what the game didn't do as opposed to what it did. Because what it did do? Great fun, but dreaming of what could have also been done on top of that, as a Galaxy or a Sunshine or even a World did before obviously will lead to people saying that this is just a pretty boring release. And I don't think that's fair. Playing this game, I got reminded why I love these platformers, why I love coming home and turning on a console and trying my best to beat a level. Not because it's the most challenging thing in the world. Not because it's the most technical thing in the world. But because, at the end of the day, it's fun.

...but seriously, fuck 9-7 that level can suck my dense chode.

What a strange paradox of a game!

The entire time I felt frustrated, lost, confused, let-down, annoyed, so taken back to the level design, graphics and AI that I didn't play the game for weeks, the light and dark mechanic only sometimes worked among other things...and yet I still had a good time?

Sure, by todays edge, the original Thief game I think works as just that: the ORIGINAL Thief game. It's legacy and influence on gaming as we know it has made itself clear, and it's easy to see why when playing it. It's hard to find another game quite like this in 1999 for sure, and yes, it's very stupid to compare a game to modern playability because we are 22 years of technical advancement from this game, but there were times in this game that just HURT to play through. Like, what was Escape? WHAT WAS THAT???

Again, I have to say I still enjoyed the game, especially with the lore and story. It's clear the world of the game is something that wants to be fleshed out, but the overall foundation is great. The lore with the Hammerites and the more supernatural elements of the game (depsite being a pain in the ass to PLAY) was really REALLY cool, and the promise of a developed future with better gameplay makes me excited to play Thief 2 IMMEDIATLY. But for now...eh? This game ight.

You ever watch a movie when you were a kid and think "Man, I wanna play that game!", but when the console adaptation actually came out, it was absolute dogshit 90 percent of the time? Well, may I introduce this game.

Basically playing like a interactive Pixar film, this co-op platformer felt very genuine in its attempts to make a truly heartwarming, if not slightly clique, story of a divorcing couple and their daughter magically caught in a story of war mongering squirrels, space monkeys and talking books in a way that feel very classic Disney. Yes, it does fall into the troupes that nearly every lazy romantic comedy like this do, but within the interactive space, there is a real earnestness to the characters, and the arc of their (as the Book of Love says,) relationship being personified through working together and bonding as characters, but as players, working hand in hand with the co-operative gameplay. Little cheesy? Yes. Very cute? Extremely.

And speaking of the gameplay, when this game is running smooth, it is platforming gold, reminding me in the best way possible of the run n' jump greats such as 'Super Mario Galaxy', 'Crash Bandicoot 3' and even pieces of 'Rayman Legends', but in a fresh, 3D perspective that allows each level to breath and to be its own game on nearly every level. The levels are consistently experimenting with its style, mechanics and level design to create an experience I never felt bored with in the slightest. While each level kept me and my partner on my toes, and really felt like the team had a blast designing each little section to work co-operatively, even the small easter eggs where always fun to find and play around with, creating what's basically a little casual party game inside of this beautiful platformer. In short, it's the 'Super Mario Galaxy' 2 Player Mode I always dreamed of as a kid.

Aiding the fun is also a really great soundtrack from Gustaf Grefberg & Kristofer Eng, spanning multiple genres and styles while still meshing with the action playing inside of the game itself (including an extremely impressive music level where the singing attack inside of the game is in the same key AS THE SOUNDTRACK WHAT???). The voice acting as well, while at times can be a little...hammy to say the least, is serviceable enough to engage in a wholesome little love story. Joseph Balderrama does a great job of being able to bounce off of himself as both Cody and Dr. Hakim, creating a fun dynamic between those two characters in particular, and Clare Corbett painfully adorable voice as Rose makes the characters emotional stake all the more interesting. Plus, when the voice actors are paired with animation that looks this expressive, it's hard to hate on the polish at display.

...I said not hard, not impossible however.

While I do really really REALLY like this game overall, and the platforming was really damn fun, there are some really big issues that the game kinda sadly suffers from, making this game go from super fun to incredibly annoying in 3 seconds. First, this is a small nitpick, but Jesus Christ playing this through Origin was a pain in the ass. My biggest gripe is that playing this game online with a freind is a technical hassle at the best of times, from the lag that made certain sections borderline unplayable (Clockworks and Pirates Ahoy, I'm looking directly at you), to times where the games physics would become incredibly inconsistent for absolutely no reason. And running that through Origin? It's the fucking worst. Having to run through hoops and ladders trying to get my girlfriend to actually be in the game with me hurt my goddamn soul. And when your whole game is based soley around co-operation? The last thing you want is for actually getting them in a game to be a hassle.

Plus...yeah the game is incredibly cheesy. I know that I said it felt earnest and really beautiful and all of that, and it still is that, but when it's trying to go for something more comedic, it just doesn't really click with me. The humor just feels very stiff and corporate, and while there were a few jokes that made me laugh ("This is blackmail!" "No, this is therapy!"), overall I just wish the writing was better. Who knows, maybe the Dwayne the Rock Johnson film this game is apparently getting will fix those problems (it wont but I CAN DREAM DAMN IT).

But overall, I had a great time with this game. It's fun to play a fully fleshed out story and have it feel earned and integral to the gameplay, and while it does lack a LOT of polish in terms of online play, I still found myself having a lot of fun, even if the gamer rage coming from my girlfriend left me quivering in my boots. Fun times!