This game is truly incredible, my favorite of all time as of right now. The best way I'd describe it is that while the specific story it's telling is somewhat standard yet perfectly adequate, the way it tells that story is where it's truly master class. For 2004, this must've been unbelievable, but it's still highly impressive all these years later. Masterful at both visual storytelling and interactive storytelling.

It's an FPS campaign on a tier that I rarely see any competitors. The graphics are dated but visually this is still unbelievably gorgeous. The facial animations especially are very well-done. The voice acting, especially for characters like Breen and Alyx, is quite good. The level design and conveyance are spectacularly masterful, and the game combines its typical sci-fi action feel with a bit of horror-esque atmosphere at times to keep it more interesting. I love all the different weapons, and the game does well to cater to however you want to approach it. The game does a fantastic job of making a mostly linear campaign feel like you're traversing all through this sprawling landscape. And I love how it all looks, the aesthetic style of the game, while going for realism, has some great Eastern European settings and tone with some really picturesque locations and great designs. New mechanics and ideas are introduced at just the right pace, and there's just the right balance of old and new in each level so that there's not too much new things being thrown at you to overwhelm you, but not too much of the same that it all becomes monotonous.

Personally I feel the pacing is amazing in the game. There's plenty of variety in the gameplay, from survival horror and physics puzzles to vehicular segments and more stealth-based portions, and it balances long segments of the game where you get to breathe and sort of relax a little more with story beats and heightened action when the slow pacing feels like it might start to get boring. It feels like the pacing changes at the right moments to avoid the game becoming too laidback or too strenuous. It ties great into the story progression, allowing enough time for Gordon to be himself and not rushing through the plot points. Aside from me wanting the ending in the citadel to be a little more drawn out and challenging, I feel it's spaced out very well at a good length. Maybe there could've been slightly less vehicle stuff and a little more at the end in the citadel, but it's not too big of a problem and I still haven't played the episodes. And while I used to not care for the soundtrack, it's really grown on me.

There are some problems with the game. Your AI companions can get in the way, sometimes characters deliver their lines too early (and some other slight acting quirks that I'm sure were part of this being very new stuff to work with in game design at the time), occasionally it's unclear what to do, there are a few brief segments that become too suddenly hard (and it can be a bit easy sometimes), and some places and props look better than others, but overall I'd say most of the flaws are minor or understandable. The ending felt a bit anti-climactic, too easy and all of a sudden, but like I said I haven't played the follow-up episodes, so maybe that too will become more forgivable.

But in summary, Half Life 2 is a classic FPS that everyone should play. It's still very impressive all these years later and has aged very well. Through every single level I found myself aware of what the designers were trying to accomplish, and you could really feel the mastery of game design, progression, and innovation in visual interactive storytelling they wanted to get across. Go play it.

I beat this game on an iPhone a few years ago when I needed games to play while I commuted to work. People love to give the Sonic franchise crap, and for understandable reason, but I legitimately enjoy the originals, and even if they're silly and poorly designed I've even gotten some enjoyment out of some newer ones. I would've definitely been a SNES kid but the Sonic games knew how to take advantage of the Genesis hardware for a great look and sound. The iOS version saves after you beat each level, and I'm pretty sure that's not how the original version worked, but on the other hand I was playing on a touch screen. Also I didn't get the chaos emeralds but I didn't care enough to do so.

It's not as good as Mario's best. There are plenty of great ideas and great style and the game is very good, but it's not as well designed as most Mario platformers. And the end is a bit anti-climactic after all the crap I had to go through to get there. But for the most part it still holds up as a great classic.

I beat this game on an iPhone when I needed games to play on my commute to work a few years back. Just like I thought it would, to me it feels like an improvement over the original. The soundtrack is better, the flow is better, the finale (which took me quite some time on that touch interface) is better, etc. Aside from the Chemical Plant Zone boss where you keep falling through the floor most of the difficulty is fair and can be overcome through trial and error and learning. And compared to the underwhelming end of the previous game, this game's end stretch felt quite challenging and rewarding. If I could think of one issue I did feel like I could skim through some of the levels way easier than some of the original Sonic levels which means I may have missed more stuff by not taking as much time, and it also means some levels might be a bit too easy to get through, but that's more towards the beginning. But that also means that the game does a better job of emphasizing Sonic's fast flow.

So overall I think Sonic 2 builds well upon what the first game did.