Grand Theft Auto is a top-down... thing. It's a driving game. A shooter. An early open world title. It sparked the beginning of a global phenomenon and helped raise what was once considered one of the greatest development studios in the world to prominence.

It's also crap. It's crap now and I can almost guarantee it was probably considered crap in '97, but I was but a wee lad in 1997 and was more concerned with trivial matters like being fed from a bottle and having my bottom cleaned - which is how I intend to go out in 2097, by the way.

GTA takes place across three cities: Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. If all of these sound familiar it's because they were done extremely well in 3D and do not work in a 2D environment. Repetitive missions, nightmarish cutscenes and an often confusing map layout lead to not a whole lot of fun. GTA is a curiosity. DMA Design used the British press so well to generate controversy and sales for a game that, to a modern audience, seems remarkably tame. The gore is cartoonish, the existence of a dedicated fart button is wild, and the driving... the driving is dogshit. The gameplay itself is actually insufferable.

Get me outta here. How about they do a game set in London in 1969 next?

This was my first experience with the original Half-Life and in 2008 I really didn't know what I was missing. Now that I do, I couldn't choose to play this over the original, especially not now that the 25th anniversary update exists.

Steam says I've put 85 hours into this and I think the game's developer console REALLY extends that playtime - I mention in a Steam review that I would just spawn NPCs and pin them to the walls of Black Mesa with the crossbow. That's psycho behaviour but damn if I didn't enjoy it at the time.

Nowadays though, it's far far inferior and it's hard to believe this was an actual Valve product that they no longer offer for sale.

Insufferably mediocre. Irritating characters, an ugly aesthetic, and gameplay so stripped back from its predecessors that you may as well be playing an entirely different series.

The plot is forgettable, with tired cliches and a sixth former's sense of political commentary awkwardly inserted between forced attempts at humour. Watch Dogs took itself too seriously. Watch Dogs 2 didn't often take itself seriously enough. This is a bizarre, Frankensteined bridge between the two and it never ever works in my opinion. I hate to refer to a game's dialogue as cringeworthy, but this really is some shite.

That said - the Legion idea is fascinating. Every NPC potentially being a playable character? The routine system? The permadeath mode? The actual city of London that's probably the most well-realised since The Getaway in 2002? Great ideas! Shame they're in Watch_Dogs: Legion. This might have killed the series, I reckon. I hope.

Seemed to pull a desperate nostalgia bait by bringing Aiden Pearce back for the DLC, but even he is a shadow of his former self. Funnily enough, I'm convinced that transplanting Aiden into London would have worked if the entire game were just like the original in terms of tone and gameplay.

Things I learned about Los Angeles from Ready or Not:

- Tech companies and paedophiles are always in cahoots

- Cryptofarmers are capable of Olympic-level feats of accuracy

- Everyone is a bastard and should be peppersprayed at random

- The post office is like taking a leisurely stroll through Fallujah

- Absolutely nowhere is safe

- Door jams are called George Ms

I want to love Ready or Not. There's a lot of stuff I just adore about it; how it looks, how the guns feel and sound, the interconnected plot and the labryinthine levels that reward exploration with environmental storytelling.

But the performance is woeful, the AI is frighteningly accurate and some features simply do not work at the moment. This is still an early access title to me, regardless of what the developers claim.

The world, despite being well-realised, is far too grimdark and edgy to take seriously. However, with that said, I did get the same "oh my God, what the fuck?" sensation I got from SWAT 4 years ago here a few times so that's to be applauded.

The visuals have this odd balance between being very appealing and deeply ugly, and it seems to depend entirely on lighting and which character model is on screen. More work needs done and please please please try to use more of your own assets and not depend on AI tools so much. You can easily tell what's been handmade and what hasn't, and the handmade artwork is far far superior. I don't even mind using AI prompts to give a rough suggestion as to what to make, just draw the final product yourselves!