Herodotus
1997
New Horizons helped keep a sense of normality when the world went crazy four years ago, and coming back to it now on a different platform is like being sent back in time before my dad had the cheek to get sick and pass away. New Horizons doesn't have the same nostalgia factor as Wild World or even New Leaf for me - but my God I can smell our garden in April 2020, I can hear Tiger King on in the background, I can't see my friends but I can tend to a real garden and a virtual island at the same time.
New Horizons is laden with a crafting system that sort of outstays its welcome, an apparent step back in villager interaction where you can start seeing repeating dialogue far quicker than previous entries, and an aggravating Nintendo sense of not being allowed to take things at the pace you WANT to take them. I should be allowed to skip the ridiculously lengthy tutorial section of the game if I previously had a save file on the system. This tutorial legitimately takes about five real life days to complete. I understand the concept of a game you pick up and play for just a bit at a time, but this is a full priced release, not a mobile game.
There is not enough content to justify the absolutely glacial progression and gameplay, especially compared to the offerings from Pocket Camp, a free mobile game. Even simple actions take a small animation to get through and often text that you've read dozens of times before, leading to mashing buttons to skip through them. This is sort of comparable to something like Red Dead Redemption 2's lengthy skinning, looting and cleaning animations - but at least in RDR2 there's something intricate and detailed to look at, while ACNH has a far simpler art style.
All of that in mind, though - there's such a genuine charm and addictiveness to New Horizons that I can't help but really enjoy it, flaws and all. Musically it's bouncy and memorable, the graphics are lovely to look at and the weird mix of realistic bugs and fish contrasted against the cartoony environments and characters works surprisingly well. Once you get out of that first week and the game opens up? It's good. It's very good. Not quite great, but I'm enjoying it nevertheless.
New Horizons is laden with a crafting system that sort of outstays its welcome, an apparent step back in villager interaction where you can start seeing repeating dialogue far quicker than previous entries, and an aggravating Nintendo sense of not being allowed to take things at the pace you WANT to take them. I should be allowed to skip the ridiculously lengthy tutorial section of the game if I previously had a save file on the system. This tutorial legitimately takes about five real life days to complete. I understand the concept of a game you pick up and play for just a bit at a time, but this is a full priced release, not a mobile game.
There is not enough content to justify the absolutely glacial progression and gameplay, especially compared to the offerings from Pocket Camp, a free mobile game. Even simple actions take a small animation to get through and often text that you've read dozens of times before, leading to mashing buttons to skip through them. This is sort of comparable to something like Red Dead Redemption 2's lengthy skinning, looting and cleaning animations - but at least in RDR2 there's something intricate and detailed to look at, while ACNH has a far simpler art style.
All of that in mind, though - there's such a genuine charm and addictiveness to New Horizons that I can't help but really enjoy it, flaws and all. Musically it's bouncy and memorable, the graphics are lovely to look at and the weird mix of realistic bugs and fish contrasted against the cartoony environments and characters works surprisingly well. Once you get out of that first week and the game opens up? It's good. It's very good. Not quite great, but I'm enjoying it nevertheless.
1999
2005
2019
2005
1983
2004
Garry's Mod was actually my introduction to Half-Life, as I'm sure is the case for plenty of kids. It was the Bananaphone video and then classics like Full Life Consequences that made me interested in it. GMod, as a platform, is perfect. It deserves a five star rating for longevity and content alone.
This game is the definition of "sandbox". You can call Grand Theft Auto an open world game where you can do anything, but you can't. You're constrained by what Rockstar will let you do - here, the sky is literally the limit. Scripts, models, sounds, maps... if it has been made in the public eye, it's probably in GMod in some form. I have fond, fond memories of just wasting hours in this game.
But I don't think I could go back to it now. I lack the imagination now, the "but what if..." aspect of interactivity. Something in modern game design has made me this way exclusively for this medium - I can still pull off all sorts of wild ideas in my head for other subjects but games tend to stump me. It feels like experimentation in a lot of games is unrewarded at best and punished at worst; but with GMod there isn't any reward beyond self-satisfaction, which I'm very fond of.
In the grand scheme of things, 123 hours really doesn't seem that much compared to other people's runtimes. It was the first game I owned on my own computer - and then I discovered I needed OTHER games to make this one work, since I got the Steam release and not the original sourcemod version. But GMod opened up an entire wealth of gaming history to me. This daft, "only as wild as you are" exercise of a game helped shape my taste to this very day.
This game is the definition of "sandbox". You can call Grand Theft Auto an open world game where you can do anything, but you can't. You're constrained by what Rockstar will let you do - here, the sky is literally the limit. Scripts, models, sounds, maps... if it has been made in the public eye, it's probably in GMod in some form. I have fond, fond memories of just wasting hours in this game.
But I don't think I could go back to it now. I lack the imagination now, the "but what if..." aspect of interactivity. Something in modern game design has made me this way exclusively for this medium - I can still pull off all sorts of wild ideas in my head for other subjects but games tend to stump me. It feels like experimentation in a lot of games is unrewarded at best and punished at worst; but with GMod there isn't any reward beyond self-satisfaction, which I'm very fond of.
In the grand scheme of things, 123 hours really doesn't seem that much compared to other people's runtimes. It was the first game I owned on my own computer - and then I discovered I needed OTHER games to make this one work, since I got the Steam release and not the original sourcemod version. But GMod opened up an entire wealth of gaming history to me. This daft, "only as wild as you are" exercise of a game helped shape my taste to this very day.
1985
1991