This I think might be the best adventure game ever made. What Cyan pulled off with Myst and Riven is nothing short of tremendous. There's no dying, no permanent fail state, no violence that occurs onscreen, and no HUD to speak of. There's nothing between you and the atmosphere of the world. And what a world it is! These graphics STILL look good, over twenty-five years after its initial release on the Mac. All the upcoming remake really needs to do is just polish up what's already here and put it in a higher resolution and it would still turn heads.

The story is equally compelling and remains mysterious even now. Be warned though, that it's told all through text. Make sure you can read cursive, or you might not be able to fully understand what's happening. And do not be afraid to use a walkthrough. Some editions of this game even included a hint book, because these are some of the trickiest logic puzzles ever put in an adventure game, but once you figure them out, it's simple. it's like they were built for inhabitants of the islands rather than for a game. Since you're an outsider, you have to learn all about the culture of Riven in order to complete the game, which requires you to be immersed in the world and the lore.

Truly, a gaming experience like no other. Make sure to take notes, and you'll find a desolate, contemplative experience like none other.

The 1990s had a strange growing pain thanks to the advent of the CD-ROM. From 1992 to about 1997, many thought that FMV was going to become the standard of video game storytelling. It made sense. After all, what worked for film would surely work for games. Sadly, in order for it to work, games would need the budget to hire actual actors and effects teams. With a budget of 4 million dollars, Wing Commander III is one of the few FMV games to have the budget to make this concept work. And the investment paid off, as it was the first game Electronic Arts published to sell over one million copies. With the likes of John Rhys-Davies, Malcolm McDowell, and Mark Hamill as protagonist Christopher Blair, the intergalactic conflict of the Confederation and the Kilrathi Empire holds up in a way that a lot of other game stories of the time do not. It also had the special effects to be on par with the science fiction TV shows at the time. Think Babylon Five, and you've got it.

A story only gets a game so far though, and thankfully, Wing Commander III is a fun dog fighter shooter experience. If you're gonna play this, I highly recommend playing with a flight stick. It adds to the immersion of flying a real space ship and really puts you in the mindset of flying an actual futuristic weapon of war. The game also has difficulty options that are robust, meaning if you're truly stuck, you can still muddle through, making it ideal for newcomers to this kind of game. With its special effects, choice-filled story, and twitchy action combat, Wing Commander III was the Mass Effect of its era. Unlike Mass Effect 3 however, this third entry in a science fiction game series has an ending that's worth something. Read the manual, dust off that USB flight stick you might have in the closet, and give this one a go. You won't regret it. Just make sure you stay away from the crappy 3DO and Playstation ports.

This game gets credit for being one of the first RPGs of all time to use graphics to depict the monsters and characters. Monumental leap forward for the genre, making killing monsters a breeze. Sadly, there's no real goal to work toward and no story to give reason for the monster slaying other than the reward of getting more loot and gold. There is no goal and no definite end. That might be okay for some, but not for me. I play Diablo for the story for instance. I need a little more than monster bashing, even if it's a "kill the evil wizard" story. Give it a go if you're interested in a piece of history. Otherwise, you have many other CRPGs available to you.

A pioneer in the adventure gaming genre. Inspired by William Crowther's trips exploring Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky (which is the largest cave system in the world), the game uses a text parser to control actions. It was ported to DOS by Microsoft and was the first game commercially available for the IBM PC at launch. As a result, it's one of the most important games in history.

It's also pretty decent to play. The puzzles are decent, and the text is well written enough. The problem is the key parse is very picky on what words it accepts. I died countless times trying to kill the Dwarfs before they killed me simply because I couldn't figure out how to use the axe in my inventory. Infocom would release Zork in 1980 and improve the parser, making these kinds of games far more playable. Its a little archaic, but the fundamentals are there and would go on to inspire many other games.

Since Diablo IV recently came out at the time of this writing, I think now might be a good time to write about Diablo III, since it's likely that other than patches, Blizzard is likely to stop active support of this game. And what a game it was. It was controversial almost from the word "go." It took over a decade for this game to be completed and saw multiple leads on Diablo II leave the company, along with the closure of Blizzard North.

When it finally arrived, it was one of the ugliest launches of its time. When you could even log on at all, there were tons of issues with balance and stability. Any other game would have died from such a hideous launch. To this day, having the game always online remains a sore spot for many. Nevertheless, Blizzard persisted, for better and for worse.

A lot of people hate Diablo's graphics. While I kind of liked the cartoony aesthetic compared to the first two, it was a far cry from the gothic terror the first game invoked. The story was a marked improvement in terms of presentation, integrating lore from the Diablo novels into the story, and garnishing the events with the CGI cutscenes Blizzard are now famous for. Unfortunately, the game ends quite abruptly, with not so much as an ending scene before it boots you back to the main menu, an indication of the labored development cycle
still evident even in the current version.

In terms of gameplay, the game changed things up by having persistent skills rather than skill points one would assign. Some personally didn't like the change, but I like not being punished for trying out things. At the same time, not being able to allocate points into stats hurt customizability longterm, in my opinion. That being said, the game got much faster than Diablo II, and lots of people really enjoy that aspect. What people did not enjoy was the auction house where you could buy in game items with real money, to the point where Blizzard scrapped it about a year after release. Drop rates at launch were terrible, and it was overall not a pleasant experience compared to Diablo II at launch.

If Blizzard had ended it here, then it would have gone down as financially successful but disappointing game for fans. Thankfully, Blizzard listened to fans and in 2014, released Reaper of Souls, an expansion pack that added many quality of life improvements that would ultimately save the legacy of this game. I would have given it a 4 out of 5 based on personal enjoyment, but with how it launched, the highest I can go is a 3.5. I'll be looking at Reaper of Souls next to see what it added.

What can I say about Sonic Adventure 2 that hasn't already been said? If you didn't own a Sega Genesis, there's a good chance that, until Sonic Frontiers came out, this was your first Sonic game. I know it was mine. That being said, I didn't own it until recently so I think I don't have any nostalgia blindness for it. This was probably the most bang for your buck you could get out of a lot of platformers back then. Six playable characters across three campaigns, tons of side missions to try, a surprisingly robust multiplayer, and a whole game of raising animals that in all honesty is better than the main game in a lot of ways.

It tried something different with the story at the time, and while it didn't succeed in some ways, it also was doing more than Mario was at the time. While I think I prefer Sonic Adventure 1's aesthetic and laid back nature, I can't deny that this is probably the most important Sonic game. Not the best Sonic game and incredibly flawed and hinted at Sonic's wasting illness that he would develop in the 2000s, but still a fun diversion. This game was the end of one era and the beginning of another. What a way to go out and enter at the same time.

Still working out my feelings on this game, so the star rating may change. I do know that this was a game of many firsts. It's often considered both the first World War II video game and the first stealth game. Hideo Kojima gets all the credit for inventing the stealth game, but Silas Warner, by himself, made the first stealth game a full six years before Metal Gear came out on the MSX.

The goal is to escape Castle Wolfenstein, preferably with the Nazi war plans. The castle is randomly generated when you hit new game, lending an arcade or Rogue-like aspect to it.

You can disguise yourself with an enemy uniform, sneak past the guards, blow open doors, or just shoot everything. There are a lot of different ways to accomplish your goal. The best part is if you're caught or die, the castle stays the same, so anyone you may have killed on the way stays dead. So even if some of the spawn points of the guards are blatantly unfair, you can still make progress. But SS guards can follow you and appear out of nowhere, so you have to stay on your toes, though you can stick them up and take the bulletproof vests they wear. This game actually has speech in it. The guards will shout German at you if they see you. And all of this from a game made in 1981 because Silas Warner saw Guns of Navarone and wanted to make something like it.

I'll admit the controls take some getting used to, but I think, as a historical artifact, it's worth at least a look. And who knows? You might end up finishing the whole thing in two sittings like I did.

(Edit: You know what? 4.5 stars)

Without question the best Fallout game. Takes everything that made the first two Fallout games great in terms of lore, worldbuilding, and such and combines it with the emergent gameplay that made Fallout 3 and Oblivion so addicting. The Mojave wasteland feels like a lived-in world, with people you will come to truly care about. Choosing a faction has real consequences, and heavy ramifications for what ending you will get. The game has plenty to keep you busy, with the main story being about 30 to 40 hours, though with DLC and side content, you could be playing this for a lot longer. The one problem that holds it back from true greatness is its age. Bethesda abandoned support of this game ages ago, and on modern systems, it does not want to cooperate. Even with patches and mods to help with the instability, it still crashed all the damn time for me. Maybe I'm just unlucky. Re-release this game and make it more stable, and this problem goes away.

Regardless, this might be the best game Bethesda ever releases, and if this is the last time some of the original team works on Fallout, then what a way to go out.

I'm a little conflicted on this one. It could have been amazing. The graphics are nice and clean. The feedback on the weapons feels good as well. On top of all that, it succeeds in capturing the oppressive atmosphere of the Alien films. Played with headphones, it can actually be kinda scary at times.

The problem is everything else. Every floor is a literal maze with no rhyme or reason. Everything looks exactly the same, with no guideposts to speak of. Opening the map tanks the frame rate. You are given absolutely no direction, and with levels this size, that's a problem. Changing floors also resets the map, meaning you have to fill it in again. It would have been all right in the days of Wolfenstein 3D, but Doom 2 was already out by the time this game's release.

So the game has no level design to speak of, and even then, you can be punished for making a wrong move. When an Alien dies, they leave a pool of acid that doesn't go away. That means you take damage when you step in it. Normally that isn't a problem, just go around the acid. But in certain areas, particularly in the air vents, you can't just go around, so you wind up taking unavoidable damage. You also have no recourse if you run out of ammo. You have no melee attack as the marine. This is absolutely inexcusable. Wolfenstein gave you a knife, Doom gave you a knuckleduster. Some people have argued that if you play it like a survival horror it makes sense. These people are wrong. System Shock also came out in 1994, and you could pick up melee weapons lying about. Resident Evil 1 started you with a knife. Even the progenitor of survival horror, Alone in the Dark, let you punch and kick enemies if you had no other recourse.

All in all, it's a great concept let down by numerous fundamental design flaws. Unavoidable damage, crappy level design, and blatantly unfair gameplay make this a relic best left in the past. Critics at the time loved it, and some people like it still. This is all cope for the fact that they purchased an Atari Jaguar. Fortunately, Rebellion Entertainment had another shot with the franchise, learned from their mistakes, and made a much better Aliens vs. Predator game on PC in 1999. Play that instead of this dinosaur of a game.

I am still thinking it over, but after completing this, I think Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze might be my new favorite platformer. Sharp level design with set pieces that make each level a spectacle to play as well as watch, a sensible difficulty curve that will really test your abilities, excellent graphics that create a real sense of place, and perhaps David Wise's finest soundtrack combine to create a platforming masterpiece that I won't soon forget. Now, if Retro could finish Metroid Prime 4 so they can finish out this Donkey Kong Country series, that would be fantastic. A complete and utter joy. Don't miss this one.