This is a very good game, surprising how well it has aged. The guns feel weighty and powerful. The destructibility is incredible, something I was completely surprised by. The story is something I did not pay an iota of attention to. You're supposed to be a kind of spec ops guy who goes rogue? Not certain. All I really cared about was the gunplay. Which was pretty good! Good enough to go back and play? Maybe not. But I had a good time with it. I say that because, though probably among the best FPSs of its time, feels kinda bad to play now.

The fact that your screen goes blurry when you reload and that there's no proper aim-down sights but instead just a zoom in of holding it at your hip is annoying. Also the fact that every time you pull a gun out you have to do an animation. Nothing more infuriating than trying to swap to your shotgun because a guy is right on you and having to wait a second to finish fiddling with it.

Another issue is how often the game is just you spraying bullets into a guy who is standing still making the same flinching animation. A little tiring. Blowing the heads off of guys was fun but it could be very boring trying to take down a guy from far away with your AR. Still. despite all that, managed to have a fun time.

Each level is about an hour long which was perfect. No save states and some pretty unforgiving checkpoints makes it real annoying if you end up dying, which can easily happen on the later levels which was maddening. I also lost an hour's worth of gameplay because I forgot to save after mission end even though I made it back to the menu. Almost wanted to just delete the game after that. But had a great time completing an hour-long mission in the evening after work and then leaving the next mission for the next day, it was a good time! Would recommend if you're into older stuff.

A fairly solid action game! The story is entirely uninspired, at best uninteresting and at worst, tedious. But everything else about it was fairly good! It was generally fun to play. The combat isn't necessarily fast-paced as most modern shooters now of days, but a very fun lass frantic version of the classic id software FPS's. The vehicle combat was not as fun but it doesn't dominate the game, could've done without it though. Some impressive enemy AI in this. Enemies being downed but not killed, will literally crawl into cover and still try to kill you, enemies with shields providing cover for allies, some cool stuff! I also have to praise the art direction. There really was some very memorable sights in this game, like the hospital in the Dead City with blood streaming down the walls.

There were some cool level designs too, they way that some of the dungeons and missions were laid out were cool, and using main mission levels for sidequests but making you do it backwards or changed a little bit was a cool way to go about in when you're clearly like on a deadline and don't have the time to make new dungeons. I was kind of into it at the start but I got tired of it closer to the game's end, which, speaking of, was kind of underwhelming. Like obviously you didn't care about the Arks or whatever, so take it with a grain of salt, but it ends with you going into this place and then you set off the Arks and then the game ends. No confrontation with the chief bad guy or any final comeuppance. The last level in general was kinda lame. It was cool mowing down guys with the minigun they give you, but it was just reskinned mutants at the end, no like special boss or anything lol. Feels like they ran out of money at the end. Still, pretty fun!

Fun, but kind of an afterthought. The missions were fun enough, the enemies having jetpacks was a cool addition and I liked the environments a lot. The mission in the refinery was a fun one, and the temple was really really cool design choice. The sewer mission right before felt weirdly tough, and the mutant bash level sucked. And I have no clue what was going on with the Sarah character, kind of a weirdly written, her getting kidnapped and almost sacrifice was treated very flippantly, and then you kind of get rewarded with her at the end in the "trophy room"? Bizarre stuff. Still had fun though.

If you asked me what my favourite game of all time is, I'd probably tell you this. The gunfighting is fun, the story is excellent, it has some of the most memorable moments in gaming to me, like when you first get to Mexico or the ride back to reuniting with your family. It has such a killer soundtrack. And the game still looks great, 14 years later!

There's something about John Marston's story that is deeply personal to me, something that few games have been able to measure up to, including in the same very series, though I know that's an unpopular opinion.