Everything about this game is just so forced. The city will be uNdErWaTeR! Why? Because it's cool I guess? Nothing about the in-game fiction or universe makes it necessary to be underwater; it practically never even matters in the game. What a waste of an interesting setting. How do we get the player to an underwater city in the middle of the ocean? Deus ex mechanical failure with a plane crash conveniently right at the entrance with the player conveniently surviving, and conveniently deciding to go down into a weird single-captivity bathysphere rather than wait for rescue? The entire game is like this. Contrivance upon railroaded contrivance that awkwardly yell "ISN'T THIS GAME SO COOL GAME PLAYER" until the designers must have realized they had forgotten to include any actual motivation for the player character to even be doing anything, so they slapped on a fucking eyeroll of a twist that made me want to punch the game in the throat. Plus it's just so damn boring. Enemies soak up damage like they're punching bags, and every single fight is the same. Oh sure, there are super powers, but they aren't any better at dealing with enemies than just shooting them. And often they're worse. The environments don't feel real. The sound is bad. The graphics are garish. The plot and characters are cringe, OMG, I almost forgot about a literal "they'll never catch on to my dastardly deeds muahaha (mustache twirl)" moment. It's such fucking garbage. It's as if the game was something totally different quite far into its development, and then Ken Levine was a high schooler who read Atlas Shrugged for the first time and decided to force that into the game and everyone had to scramble to try and make it all fit together. Oh that's exactly what happened? I was sold a spiritual successor to the System Shock games, and I got a dumb, flashy, self-important meta commentary with audio diaries and a 451 reference. Congrats Ken, you conned me out of $60 you fuck.
STALKER does one thing incredibly well: making the dreary, irradiated, anomalous world of the zone feel real. It does it so well, that I forgive it for everything else it does wrong. And there are many things it does wrong: glitched quests, bugged respawns, dialog loops, broken narratives, a rushed nigh-incomprehensible ending... things that would in any other game get me to lose interest and move on. But STALKER just lets me shrug off those issues, because it captures such a unique atmosphere and is incredibly satisfying to live through. The game absolutely nails the pacing. It's a slow burn that builds in tension and intensity the further you venture into the zone, all culminating in the delirious rush of seeing the Chernobyl sarcophagus for the first time; looming enormously over the fragmented battles being fought for it. That moment of eerie exhilaration (simultaneously terrifying and exciting), and other moments like it are what make STALKER special, because they don't feel forced, or cheap. The game earns those moments by building an atmosphere of authenticity, and it pays off. It's the best kind of game, even with its flaws.
For about the first 4 or 5 hours, this game is really great. It's tense, atmospheric, scary, interesting, well designed, fun to play... so why then did I stop playing and never finish it? Because I died. I was searching a room, when I heard something getting closer. I was in water and knew it could find me if I was in the water, so I tried jumping up onto something that was in front of me. But for some reason I couldn't. I tried jumping up onto another nearby object. Nope, can't do that either. I heard it getting closer. I was panicking trying to climb up onto ANY nearby object, that for mystical reasons were not scalable. And right as I was in the middle of yelling at my screen in frustration, it got me, and I was bumped back to the loading screen. Oh right, it's just a game. That's all that was ever going to happen. Reload. Oh there are strategically placed, specific boxes along the hallway that I'm supposed to jump onto. Because it's a game, and that's how the designers want me to play, I guess. I'll just jump onto them as they're conveniently placed. What is there to even be afraid of? I'm not hiding from an otherwordly entity, I'm solving a platform puzzle, because it's a game. Oh I ran out of boxes? I need to run and close the doors behind me? Well if that's what the designers want me to do, I have to do it. Hmm, there's a lot of scary sounds, and heart pumping, but I know that if I just run and close the doors I'll be fine because I'm not actually running away from anything, I'm just in an interactive cut scene, doing what the designers want me to do. Once the veil was pulled, I couldn't get back into it. Far too much of the game is built upon these arbitrary limitations to player agency, and once I saw the strings being pulled, it ceased to be scary and just became annoying.
While I often settle on other games being better for various reasons, this game, still, after 23 years, stands out to me as one of the best games ever. The look and feel of the game is very unique. I think it captures that original trilogy vibe better than any other game. From the dirty, boxy retro-looking tech, to the darker environments and emotional tones, to the eerie mysticism and weird characters, to the perfect use of sounds and score, it transports you into a last-ditch resistance against the desperate factions of the crumbling empire. It has awesome level design. The environments feel incredibly real, which is impressive for its time. Staring down into endless pits in enormous galactic warehouses is dizzying. Jumping across wide chasms on space stations and star destroyers is nerve-wracking. Deciphering a labyrinthine arrangement of areas in an outpost requires some dedicated thought. The game world comes alive as you solve the puzzles it presents, rather than feeling contrived and gamey. It's the first shooter that I encountered character building and a morality scale. As you progress through the game you learn and enhance various force abilities that can aid and alter your playstyle. It does this through a very clever mechanic of rewarding you with more powers if you discover more secrets in the game. Then, depending on your actions in the game, and which abilities you choose, the game goes in either a light side or dark side orientation with its narrative, having different mission events and different plotlines. And the gameplay itself is very fun. The shooting feel tactile and responsive, and the lightsaber is awesome. One thing I always appreciated is that the lightsaber is not an "I win weapon" in the game. Other weapons are still highly useful in various situations, and remain relevant for the entire game. Plus it has awful AWFUL 90s live action cutscenes, which are actually glorious. It's a rare game, which gets everything right.
Buried under piles and piles of bugs and the incomplete mess that is the game's duct-taped narrative is a truly brilliant idea about taking the concept of RPG character progression and examining it through an in-universe interpretation. It's a meta-commentary done right, and when exploring that the game does indeed shine. However, in all of the game's other forays, it really struggles. It suffers massively from having tons of things and ideas thrown in, but that are not implemented well or fully. Others have spoken about the rushed development, and it does indeed warrant mention, because there are large portions of the game that are unfinished or poorly completed. However, even the good parts of the game are awfully drab and joyless. It's clearly an intentional design of the game, and I get that, but I find it difficult to enjoy. The first KoTOR, while being much less nuanced, had more emotional resonance because I liked all the characters in some way or another, even the "bad" guys. KoTOR 2 had a lot of "deep", interesting characters, but I didn't really like any of them. The game goes out of its way to establish and present a very nihilistic worldview, and if you can get on board with that, then I think you will be on the side that appreciates it as a superior RPG and story. Personally I didn't, and so, despite being well-written, the game comes across as pretty ham-fistedly obnoxious in a "pretentious edgelord" sort of way: "there is no such thing as good, and even what we associate as being good is really just a matter of perspective. Maybe being bad is actually good." (takes a drag of a hand-rolled cigarette). Moral relativism becomes pretty absurd when presenting the Jedi practicing patience, self-discipline, sacrifice, and sustainability as equivalent to the Sith literally committing wanton genocide on multiple planets, but that's KoTOR 2's key tone in a nutshell. It is if nothing else, a very interesting game, in spite of its flaws.
oh FUCK I love cooking rice meals. I love telling my people to wake up, cook some rice meals, then plant more rice and harvest that rice...oh, time to eat a rice meal after all that work. FUCK YEAH THAT MEANS I GET TO COOK MORE RICE MEALS. Then I tell them to cook more rice meals and they get tired from cooking all those rice meals so it's time to eat another rice meal...ooooooohhh shit you know what time it is??? IT'S TIME TO COOK MORE RICE MEALS-oh darn, actually it's time to go to bed, but I'ma get a few late night rice meals in before passing out because I just LOVE IT SO MUCH. Then my people wake up and aw HELLLLLLLL yeahhhhhh let's cook up some RICE MEALS BAYBAYYYYYY. Oh cool a new person showed up, I wonder if they like cooking rice meals? HAHAHA of course they do, and even if they don't that's what they're going to be doing for the rest of their life. Exploring? Aint no one got time for that with all the rice meals that have to be cooked. Adventure? Bet your ass we're venturing to cook some rice meals so we can work to get the supplies to cook more rice meals. "Shouldn't we try doing something besides cooking rice meals?" Oh, fascinating question Einstein, why don't you think about it more in the CORPSE PILE AFTER I MURDER YOU. More rice meals for the rest of us. Man all that stress really works up an appetite; better eat a rice meal before bed. Now rest up. Those rice meals aren't going to cook themselves you know. Wake up and cook some more rice meals. DO YOU KNOW WE WOULD BE FUCKING DEAD IF NOT FOR OUR RICE MEALS? I don't CARE if it's a never ending cyclical hell of constantly cooking rice meals to be able to work for more rice meals that grotesquely mirrors the futility of modern existence. It's a cyclical hell of RICE MEALS and I FUCKING LOVE COOKING RICE MEALS. Rice meals. RICE MEALS. RICEMEALS. Or ice some eels. Worrisome eels. Murray's muse. Morris mules. More rise my ales...more...rise....males.......MORE RICE MEALS 10/10 epic sci-fi adventures
I got this game for $5 and still feel cheated. What this game's high rating 100% proves: we are suckers for variable-ratio reinforcement.
I used to believe that SS2 was the strictly better version of SS1, but having just replayed the original... I'm reevaluating that opinion. The first time I played System Shock, it was after the sequel had already endeared itself as my favorite game, and so I wanted to finally check out the game that started the legacy. I remember at the time that in spite of the wonky controls and the cramped screen, I was thoroughly impressed. "It's no SS2" I thought to myself. "But it's pretty good, I'm glad I played it once." And that was all I thought was warranted. However, with the enhanced edition providing mouselook control and full screen resolution, I decided to give it another go, 17 years after its original release. It's one of the best games ever. Absolutely. It is immersive, and action packed, and tense, and engaging, and terrifying, and smart, and, just really really fun. I decided to play it on the hard story mode with the 7 hour time limit (I made it! 6 hours and 36 minutes) and let me say: it is exhilarating running through a labyrinth of service panels blasting away cyborgs and mutants while hacking a locked door to get access to SHODANS computer nodes and then using stimulants to sprint down a hallway to preserve precious seconds that are mercilessly ticking away. I don't know of any other game that utilizes so many different game elements and ideas so well in establishing the atmosphere and setting of its own world. I used to think the sequel, but even SS2 lacks much of the elegance of SS1's design. It is equal parts action game, metroidvania game, puzzle game, platform game, and yet none of those different aspects feel forced or out of place. They all dynamically intertwine to bring your experiences on Citadel Station to life. I also love in the original how deliciously bad SHODAN is. It truly feels like an over-powering, uncompromising inhuman threat. When she foils your plans and mocks you for it, man, it stings. But it makes beating her glorious.
I had a blast playing Stellaris for the first 4 months or so. I was so impressed by the base game that I bought all the DLC available at the time. It was a sleek, interesting, divergent, and satisfying 4x of the mid-weight variety. In my opinion: just about perfect, and filling a niche that I feel is underrepresented (space 4x). I started playing post 2.0, so I read at the time that a lot of people were upset about the strategic changes that had been made to the game, and while I understood the complaints, I found the hyperlane system + the upgradable warp mechanisms to be very strategically engaging and fun to play around. However, I now fully understand how those that loved 1.9 must have felt, once the developers rolled out the "economic overhaul". They took a game that I felt was almost a perfect weight for what it offered, and added incredibly cumbersome micromanagement and complexity without actually adding any gameplay depth to try and make it a "grand" 4x, and in the process broke the AI, broke the optimization, broke the UI, and broke my will to play the game. Worse, it became very clear that they rolled out updates and changes that coerced players into buying the latest DLC. (Oh sure, this particular resource and build path seems totally pointless.... unless you play the new faction that uses the resource and build path! Available as soon as you buy that new sweet sweet DLC!) The game also used to be quite streamlined and fast to play, and now it's a total grind. It is my opinion this was intentionally designed into the game to inflate their "hours played" numbers in order to manipulate algorithms tracking player interest. In short, the game used to be very fun, but now it's a mess, and I have no faith that the developers can clean it up. Their only interest seems to be selling the next DLC.
Things are... complicated between Wasteland 2 and me. I simultaneously couldn't stop playing it, and yet wanted to stop constantly. Some aspects of it are brilliant, and instantly brought back those long lost and yet oh-so-familiar tones I've missed since the original Fallout, while other aspects of it are just straight up trash. The good is so good that I want to ignore or overlook the bad. And the bad is just bad enough to question whether or not it's worth admiring the good. Overall I liked it, though I do wish they hadn't been so reverential to the first Wasteland. Being unfamiliar with the original game, so many of the characters, questlines, and plot hooks felt very undercooked, because the game expected me to just already be invested, and ultimately my squad didn't feel like much more than cardboard cutouts going for a ride. The game "tells" a lot, rather than showing, which is unfortunate because it is a very satisfying experience in the moments it decides to show rather than tell. Ultimately for me, it is the best successor to the original Fallout games that I've played, however I think the impression it leaves most is how much I would like to fire up the original again.
