I really wish I liked Fallout 2 more. With how much I liked Fallout and how much I've heard people jack off 2, I was expecting Fallout but even better. Instead I got a weird, edgy game where everyone's obsessed with references they couldn't possible get due to the year, some frustratingly unbalanced combat, an intense slog of a world, mostly useless and padded-out quests, and an incredibly unsatisfying ending. There were a few standout quests here and there, plus getting a car was a nice addition that made exploration and backtracking a little less frustrating, but I couldn't find much to praise. I guess the game just wasn't for me.

Simple, short, and sweet. Fallout is one of those games I've kept in the back of my mind for years. I've been a fan of the series since I played 3 and New Vegas as a child, but up until yesterday I had only given 1 and 2 a few chances, with me giving up on 2 for being confusing and 1 for getting screwed over by bad random encounters. A friend of mine played through the game recently and he wanted to watch me play so I decided to pop it on and I had a fantastic time. I really like how brief the game is, I was under the impression I would be spending 30+ hours just lost but the game felt a lot more intuitive than I expected (on top of my friend giving me pointers here and there as well).
The combat is really satisfying as the progression of gear felt nearly perfectly balanced with my crit build, plus getting access to the Alien Blaster made most of the late game fights comically quick. This gear progression was tied in very well with area progression as well as each of the locations had a nice gradual increase in enemy difficulty and quest rewards. I liked the quests a lot as well, they're all simple in an enjoyable way where you don't have to deal with any convoluted solutions (hell, by the end of the game I just shot or exploded my way through any problems). The stories surrounding these quests were nice and simple too and they did a good job at developing the people and the world around them.
My only gripes come from the game's age. Pixel hunting for items is obnoxious and eye-straining, some of the skills, while potentially nice from a roleplaying perspective, were completely useless, the companion AI was borderline disabled at times, and a lot of the UI was either not intuitive or not convenient to use. None of those issues really took me out of the game so I can't hold them against it that much.
Overall, I'm shocked at how much fun I had with Fallout. I'm FAR from an "old game bad" kind of person but I was expecting the game's age to really damper my experience. All in all, I'm happy I spent time playing this game and I'm excited to play Fallout 2.

The Surge was the very first souls-like I played from beginning to end, and between some specific areas taking me hours to get through (Central Production B mainly) and a few bosses kicking my ass, 2020 me managed to finish it and felt nothing but frustration. Come two and a half years later and I've played all the From-made Souls games as well as The Surge's highly improved and better sequel and I feel confident in my skills in the genre. I decided on a whim to load this game up to see how much better I might be and what could still cause me trouble despite my skill improvement over time.

To start off I just want to talk about my two biggest issues with the game, namely exploration and combat encounters. Central Production B and the Nucleus are some of the most frustratingly designed areas I've gone through in a game. They try to recreate DS1-style interconnectivity within themselves but all it does is leave two frustratingly muddled areas where it's hard to tell where you are since everything looks the same. On top of that, I don't think there's a single enemy, boss, or encounter I found fun to take out. Most of the enemies are plain and boring but a few standouts (hammer and twin-rigged guys in CPB, crystal turret things in Nucleus) made me pissed off more times than I'd like to admit on this playthrough. The vast majority of my deaths came from enemies stunlocking me since it happens a ton. The bosses aren't interesting in the slightest to me, with most of them being waaaay too easy compared to the tedious journey to get to them. It's unfortunate to me that the two things this Souls-like does poor are my two favorite things about the genre.

Now for the good. The limb targeting system is insanely cool, it's a smart mechanic for taking out enemies while also making grinding not completely tedious. I found it most useful when facing robot enemies since it takes out their main way to cause you the most trouble, but getting a unique weapon and new gearsets from enemies by chopping them up is such a satisfying mechanic. It gets even better when you realize that every time you do a finisher and chop off an enemy's limb, the amount of scrap you get is multiplied further and further, with the more finishers done increasing the multiplier. When you have a build set up where your energy is constantly high so you can always do finishers, the combat can be really gratifying.

I think this game is okay. The Walk in the Park DLC is really fun, the park is well designed in terms of interconnectivity and the enemy encounters are mostly fair. I didn't enjoy the The Good, The Bad, and the Augmented DLC but if you end up liking the combat, it could be fun to play in short bursts. Overall I'd just say skip this one and play its sequel. Surge 2 does soooo much better and I remember having way fewer complaints by the end of the game than I did with this one. If you do play this game, one massive recommendation I'd give is to abuse the hell out of the sprint attack, especially with a one-handed weapon. The vast majority of enemies can't do shit to deal with it being spammed but those that can are typically slow enough where you can just time the attack. It's a shame this game isn't better, there's some things to like here, but your time is spent better elsewhere.

Decent little beat 'em up, I absolutely adored this game when I was younger but I always got stuck toward the end and I never knew what to do. Now as an adult, I can see the issues much more clearly - enemy Pokemon deal way more damage than you do. The EX mode battle royales are extremely frustrating for this exact reason and the only way I've found that beats them consistently is to get a ton of Pokemon with the move Cross Chop and be very careful about when you use the attack. This means grinding out the cave level over and over with hopes of getting as many Machamp as possible and praying they have the attack, otherwise you'll be grinding the hell out of levels for money to try and roll the move (most likely unsuccessfully). Everything up to the EX ranks is pretty fun, if not incredibly simple, but the game completely halts being fun at the end.

So far, Melos Han-Tani is 0 for 2 in terms of making an experience enjoyable to me. Between All Our Asias and this, I'm questioning if I'm missing something with their work or if it just isn't for me. Unlike All Our Asias, however, Anodyne does have some actual merit and points of quality to it. The music is sublime, varying from extremely cozy to having the ability to instill some strong discomfort. If there's one thing to take from this game, it's that you should listen to the OST. The artwork is also fantastic, with most of the areas being really pretty, some of the more thematic areas working really well visually, and the enemies being well designed on a visual sense. Past that, there really isn't anything I found enjoyable or worth caring about.

Most of the game is just spent meandering around, trying to find where to go next. An adventure game with a more free progression system isn't a bad thing, but when you need exactly one card left and the one card missing is in an area that's disconnected from the main map, it's really frustrating to deal with. On top of that, you really need to get the wide and extend upgrades for your weapons early just to make the game easier, but there's no way to know they even exist in the first place nor where they could be. Combat was frustrating, never hard but it feels terrible to fight anything and it almost always just ends up being a matter of spamming your attack until they die, taking hits in the process (which doesn't matter since save points that heal you are all over the place). In between the meandering exploration and floundering combat is one of the worst platforming I've played in a little while. I can't think of a single area where I enjoyed the platforming puzzles. I don't understand how developers can make something like this and think it's fun or rewarding.

I'm gonna try Anodyne 2. Nitro Rad sold me on this game and while it unfortunately didn't end up hitting the mark for me, I'm praying 2 will. If it doesn't, I guess that just means I should avoid Han-Tani's games from now on since they aren't for me. I would just recommend listening to the music and watching a video going over what this game's about, it's more engaging and entertaining than actually playing it.

Extremely weak season, the changes to the map never felt substantial and I really don't like the chrome gimmick. The overall loot pool is fine other than the Cobra DMR which is one of the most busted weapons Epic has put into the game so far. It felt like they wanted to make this season partially focused on Halloween but the additions made with Fortnitemares were insignificant and wasted potential time for the map to develop. On top of all that, the performance has been atrocious and the game runs worse than it ever has for me. Overall, a filler season to get us to the next Chapter.

Very solid campaign, I really enjoyed how run and gun it felt for 90% of it compared to some of the other CoDs being mostly corridor shooters. The cast of characters is solid but a bit forgettable and the story was fine, but I was most surprised by how much I enjoyed the weapons. I tried a bit of zombies as well and while I enjoyed it, Zombies in Spaceland has too many moving parts for me too care much about it. Unfortunately I can't try the multiplayer due to servers on PC being completely dead (I sat for 30 minutes waiting for anyone to join my lobby and got nothing).