The game is great, it captures the feeling of Half-Life without really interfering that much with the original concept, the gunplay is astonishing, weapons feel as good as any other Valve-developed fps and the tweaks that have been made to some levels to put them on par with modern day standards aren't at all an hindrance to the experience, well, except for the new Xen. Aesthetically breathtaking but hardly fun to play the new Xen practically functions as an expansion to the base game, just not a really welcomed one. As much as I think the "old" Xen is not on the same level as the rest of the game, I, frankly, found it to be a quite fitting end to the Half-Life storyline, it was aetherial, aestethically different from any other outer space fantasy setting that existed at the time and short, in fact by then the game had already given all its potential so I think that the short duration of the old chapter was a far more fitting conclusion that the mind boggling three hours of asinine puzzles and beautiful yet boring landscapes of Black Mesa's Xen. Aside from the Xen another criticism I want to push is the fact that this game is really really dark compared to the original one, and I mean REALLY DARK, in all of the times I played the OG HL I've never used the torch so much as in this game. Sometimes ,even with maxed out lightness and my room in total darkness, I wasn't able to understand what the hell I was looking at. In conclusion, I think this reimagining of the Black Mesa's events is a great experience that any Half-Life fan can and will appreciate but can hardly replace the original game.

Shelved this one some years ago, recently picked it up again to play it with a bunch of friends as a way to stay in touch, since we all live in different cities now, and I got to say that this has been one hell of a fun time. Really articulate progression system, cool concept, thrilling exploration, a decent class system and a stupidly huge roster of weapons, monsters, npcs, events and unique items make this game vastly more profound and intriguing than most of its most renowned rivals. I really appreciated the freedom of approach the game gives you regarding difficulty, progression, bossfights and exploration. Even though the game it's pretty much endless at times it can get really boring, especially when you're almost forced to go and mine for hours and hours in need of new materials to create new items and repeat the cycle. Another thing I didn't really liked is the fact that little to no weapons can be upgraded, this means throwing your previous weapons away when you hit a new phase during your run and killing a bit the feeling of progression and bond you create with your tools and weapons.
Ultimately, a really great game that I stupidly put aside but that I finally managed to play. Can't wait for the final update so I have an excuse to play it again.

After 168 hours of playtime (the same amount of time it took to master and complete almost four times Dark Souls 3) I finally achieved everything I wanted to accomplish on the first playthrough of Elden Ring.

Even though I enjoyed it a lot I feel like the game has some issues that unfortunately affect the overall experience quite badly.
Most of the bosses are repeated several tenths of times (I think I've beaten something like 20 crucible knights both as bosses and regular enemies), some of them can be easily cheesed and I've noticed a big ramp up in difficulty towards the end where the game doesn't gradually increase the toughness of the enemies but just throws at you the most unfair, one-shotting, bullshitting bosses all at once.

The meta is fundamentally broken by the bleeding and freezing mechanics, especially in the multiplayer section where it isn't rare to find tank builds with tower shields and bleeding rapiers beating other players with much more complex or, on paper, stronger builds.

The exploration can be quite jarring at times because of the extreme repetition of certain areas or for the trivials methods of exploration intended by the developers.

On the other hand the gameplay feels amazing, apart from the problem which affects the buff mechanic, the fighting is the best as far as Soulsborne games go, every approach is viable, every weapon can be useful and the return of the dual wield mechanic from Dark Souls 2 combined with the brand new ashes of war makes you really want to experiment with the plethora of different equipments the game offers you and, consequently, with the different approaches every weapon can offer.

To wrap up, when I first booted up the game and for the first 20/30 hours I thought that this was not only the perfect souls game but MY personal definition of a perfect game, too bad that after stretching the play time for so long most of its flaws started to emerge.
Defineatly going for the 100% achievement-wise both on steam and when I'll eventually get it on PS4/5 but I don't think I will ever be able to master it to its fullest.
And of course I'm really looking forward for the DLC(s?) that I'm pretty sure will come out sooner or later.

I'll leave you for now Elden Ring but I'll be back someday.

P.S: Also, fuck Malenia.

Played with a little bit of a rush given that I wanted to finish it before Elden Ring came out.
Really really beautiful game, a lot of fun but also very frustrating at times given its steep learning curve which made me consider abandoning it, good thing that I didn't and now all I have are wonderful memories of a wonderful game.

Visually outstanding, a lot of fun mechanics, great plot and the overall avant-gardey aesthetics make this game one of the most uniques of its generation.

Totally gonna master this when I'll get my hand on a PS4 copy.