Casual MMO experience filled with humor and wackiness. Absolutely not to be taken seriously, this is a fine way to spend a few hours every week without demanding your life or your wallet. You can switch between classes at will, so there's nothing forcing you to choose a character path. The game currently takes up about 150 Megabytes of your disk space, which is incredible and I'm not sure how they manage to do it.

Maybe an ideal MMO to pick if, like me, you never stick around for long with any of them.

This is a fantastic game that is perhaps overshadowed by more illustrious releases around the same time. But Unreal is positively brimming with atmosphere and style, and it will keep you occupied for a fairly lengthy campaign. The weapon variety at display is impressive - the arsenal of Unreal Tournament isn't a huge jump from this game. The maps succeed in leading you on a proper journey across a diverse planet, and by the end you will feel like a proper hero to the poor aliens who hail you as a extraterrestrial messiah. The environments of Na Pali are often huge and imposing, even with graphics this old. If there's a flaw worth pointing out, it's that some enemies verge on being bullet sponges - Unreal chooses quality instead of quantity and faces you against nimble and durable targets. I regularly found myself circlestrafing to defeat Skaarj, who appear in increasingly tough varieties until the end of the game.
As far as I'm concerned, this deserves a spot right next to Half-Life as a classic worth coming back to. As a shooter it still feels unique.

Results:
- finished Hard difficulty on .226

Very promising but flawed start to a great series. You can see the developers experimenting here, not every level encourages stealth and sometimes it basically requires glitching the game to avoid killing a bunch of people. It's quite fun figuring out the ideal path, though. Highlight missions are "Lee Hong Assassination" and "Traditions of the Trade", the latter of which is set in a hotel and offers several ways to approach the target. Hitman games, I feel, operate best in public spaces where you can walk around in a suit and consider your way forward. These early installments still force you to navigate heavily guarded military locations, which are inevitably inferior experiences. Still, there's only 13 missions and the game does not overstay its welcome.

Results:
- finished twice on Hard difficulty

Unavoidable game of the the early 2000s. Bursting with ambition, but it's actually a lot of fun to this day. I spent much more time on this than I initially expected. The story missions tend to be overly disconnected compared to later installments, and the city environments are lacking, but there's something special in the mood achieved here. Despite the humor typical of the series, it feels nihilistic and cynical to the core. Also, the soundtrack is actually original, which is appreciated.

Results:
98% Completion

Possibly the best fantasy setting in any game.
The buggy janky mechanics fade into the background against the sheer unique brilliance of Dunmer culture, environment and history.

Results:
- finished the Main Quest in vanilla version once

If, like me, you're addicted to Diablo-likes and need another hit, this is a solid choice. Gameplay mechanics are very similar to Fate (2005) from the same developer, but combat is punchy and polished. Similarly to Fate, the plot is very generic and not worth mentioning. The visual style is cute and has aged well for the most part. Sadly there isn't much to stick around for after you beat the final boss - technically there is an infinite dungeon to explore and farm in, but I gave it up after a few floors of the same thing. Initially it might seem like there is a ton of loot variety, but I noticed very similar drops when playing with other characters.

Results:
Finished the campaign with Vanquisher, post-game is boring

With mods, this easily becomes the single best alternative to playing MC. Minetest is technically not a game, but a voxel engine which serves as a platform to make games. It's very simple to download fan projects right from the main menu and start playing them. The community is active and often creative - besides the expected imitations of MC survival mode (VoxeLibre, Mineclonia), there are linear games with stories or challenging puzzles. I expect the library of content will only continue to grow.

The Wolfenstein franchise doesn't evoke nearly as much love from the gaming public as Doom, but the underlying setting is, at least, pure classic. Nazis and occult phenomena have combined perfectly at least since Indiana Jones. I don't expect the theme to disappear any time soon.

RTCW is a childhood game I've finished so many times that I've lost count, so it's pretty hard to place it in its context. When compared to the deluge of quality FPS games of the early 2000s, this may not be some eternal classic of game design, but it's a solid campaign. The game almost feels like a transition from more traditional shooters to heavily scripted affairs that would become familiar in a few years (there are secrets to be found and nazi gold to be collected, among other things). The enemies will absolutely kick your ass and force you to make use of the quicksave key. Plus, I love the Quake 3 Engine.

Multiplayer is what cemented this game's status for years to come, but after the release of Enemy Territory it's essentially obsolete.