first things first, obviously it's a live service game. it's got the shitty monetization practices we've all grown to abhor over the past decade. you will never see me defending that in particular.

but damn, it is honestly so fucking fun to go questing, exploring, and killing in fallout with your friends. i have tried and failed to find an MMO that kept my attention for more than a dozen hours or so. but this has been so fun to play, especially with friends. i'm 30 hours in, so maybe that will change as i play more, but for now, this is a solid experience if you love fallout.

i once read a steam review for this game that described it as a "glorified on-rails shooter". this particular reviewer wrote this statement with contempt, seemingly not realizing that on-rails shooters are fucking awesome. i mean, there's a reason there's always a couple in every arcade ever.

no, a open world, gunslinging cowboy adventure game this is not, but of course, that is what red dead redemption is for. now, it would be an absolute treat to have more games of that series' caliber, but i digress. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger instead offers a masterclass in themes and storytelling, rpg progression, and gunplay.

simply put, if you wanna be a cowboy, but don't wish to put in another 100+ hours for a rdr playthrough, check this game out. it comes on sale for dirt cheap extremely often on steam.

show me a fallout fan, and 4 times out of 5 i'll show you someone that hasn't played the classics. while fallout new vegas deserves all of its praise, fallout 4 is an amazing open world fps, and fallout 3 deserve to be taken out back and shot, it's important to remember what fallout was before bethesda took it and morphed it into something it wasn't.

truth be told, fallout is a bit clunky, but in the way that developers for pc games from the 90s couldn't make a halfway decent user interface to save their fucking life. once you manage to learn your way around it, you're presented with the horrifying reality that is a post nuclear world. the game's atmosphere is incredibly tense and stressful as you adventure and race against the clock before your entire vault dies of dehydration.

the gameplay is fairly standard as far as old iso-rpgs go, that is to say pretty good, just not groundbreaking. where the game really shines is it phenomenal world building and writing. it also features one of the best villain the series has had, a million times better than "somehow, the enclave returned".

if you're a fan of the bethesda fallout games, you owe it to yourself to at least try 1 and 2. they're not some old unfun relics of the olden days, they're genuinely great games and deserve to be played.

i really tried to love this game, in fact i was sure i was gonna love it. not only is it just my type of game, it's pretty highly rated as well. you start it, and it has so many cool features, like the extremely original hacking minigame, the motion sensor, the crafting, all pretty cool stuff that i was enjoying. but then you keep going, and you just get to a point where the game shifts back and forth between walking simulator, and waiting simulator.

nothing is scary or interesting about the xenomorph. they have some cool concepts for how it can stalk you, like when it hides in the ceiling and you have to look for its saliva, but most of the time it just waits for you to move half an inch, forcing you to go back into the same locker or under the same table, it walks around you, leaves, then you repeat the process until you get lucky and can move for more than 3 seconds, or just give up entirely.

if you want a game that actually encourages exploration, forces creative thinking, offers multiple options for any given problem, and does it all within a creepy environment, play Prey (2017).

(pasted from steam)

as of today (12/20/23), the game's playable beta branch is at version 0.99b, meaning the whole game is playable and the endings are achievable. do not listen to any of the reviews saying the game is never coming out. it makes me sad seeing the recent reviews stuck at "mixed" because people are mad the devs decided they want to work at their own pace, especially since they warn you about the time it will take in the early access info.

this game is a great rpg to play with friends. the exploration and combat are so fun and it feels great to diversify your build based on how your friends are building. theres no better time to start playing it than right now.

i would call this game a classic, but "timeless" isn't exactly the right fit. it has all the makings of a great game from the 90s and even throughout the 2000s, but the gaming landscape has just changed so much since those days, and it makes it impossible to come back to this if you weren't a devout fan of it as a kid. clunky controls, floaty movement, and adding a stupid unnecessary run button for some reason just makes it feel so dated to play.

this game deserves all the praise it gets from the people that do enjoy it. i am simply not one of those people these days. i did love it, once upon a time, but upon revisiting it in recent years and hoping i could feel the magic again, i was always left with disappointment. i am forever thankful for super metroid and how it inspired an entire genre, but it unfortunately isn't for me anymore.

tldr play symphony of the night. or metroid dread.