This is a significant jump in difficulty after the original three episodes. If you play on Ultra-Violence get ready to die quite a lot. Still, over time I've come to appreciate claustrophobic gauntlets like Romero's Perfect Hatred, somehow.

Results:
- pistolstarted every map on Hurt Me Plenty

One of the first games I owned for my home PC, I still have the box. Need to play this again.

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

Warrior Within is not as much of a perfectly paced experience as the first game, and the backtracking is occasionally repetitive. However, this is still a damn fine work and worth finishing. I wish the requirements for full completion were less esoteric, though.

Results:
I got the bad ending, I want to play this more.

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.

Easily the best of the computer HP games, I've played this many times and I still go back to it every now and then. Magic boarding school has never felt this atmospheric.

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

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.

2021

For 10 minutes of FPS, it's pretty cool.

Results:
Finished once on Normal difficulty