Might have actually been my most played GameCube game as a kid. The weird humour and just general insanity of it has always resonated with me. Super easy to pick up and play, with or without other people. Tons of variety. It certainly works better as an handheld game, but otherwise it’s kinda perfect.

Even though I loved it at the time, I probably took it for granted. You can never really know how valuable things like this will be (personally or monetarily) without the benefit of hindsight. Now, however, it’s one of my all-time favourites and I hold it close to my heart. One of the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever received.

While I click with the combat more in 5, I really miss the Resident Evil-lite level design and exploration of 1 & 3. Combine that with super deep combat and you get one of my favourite games. Also, me preferring the combat in 5 may simply be because the skill floor is lowered a bit in that one. Maybe if I put more time into learning this one I’d like it more.

I want to point out the story. Everyone knows how goofy these games are, but they’re genuinely well-written, too. They don’t spell too much out loud so you figure out a lot of finer details through implication and inference. This also leads to a surprising depth to the characteris. Good stuff.

My first run of Fallout was a bit of a mess; I enjoyed the game a decent amount, but often found myself hindered by my build, and questioning how much my build actually mattered for dialogue and checks.

For my second run, I came up with a much more effective build, and decided to do a sort of ‘casual speedrun’ using the knowledge I’d acquired on my first playthrough. As I rushed through settlements, completing as many quests as I could, as quickly as I could, I realised how great this game is.

When the game begins, you’re given a clear objective, you’re let loose into the world, and it’s totally up to you to figure out how to achieve that objective. In my second run rush, the game never steered me into playing a certain way. I did quests ‘out of order’ so to speak; I even completely ignored a major quest, and it still never stopped me or anything. Great stuff.

While I think I agree with the consensus that this game’s tone is preferable to the overtly comedic tone in Fallout 2, I did feel that Fallout 1’s writing was lacking in personality compared to 2. I value personality a lot, so without replaying both games, I can’t really say which has the better writing to me, but the discrepancy is worth noting.

It also has a great soundtrack. The amount of tracks is sparse, however—I would consider that pretty crippling, even if the overall quality of the music is this high.

I don’t think Fallout 1 is quite as good as everyone says it is, but I do like it a lot.

I kinda stink at fighting games, and I can’t play them at all anymore due to seizures, but when this came out and the mere thought of having to press more than one button at a time WASN’T enough to kill me, I had a great time with this game. I do miss the absurd complexity of the past games in the series, and a lot of the personality from those games has been lost as well, but Arc Sys have still managed to make something pretty compelling, and they’ve added a lot to it since launch. It was the only fighting game I bought at launch so getting to be part of the initial wave of everyone figuring things out is really special to me.

I don’t actually think this game is as great as people say it is, but it is one of my favourite games of all time.

It’s not very good as a shooter, or even as a RPG really (although I do miss the light role playing outside of conversations that was mostly abandoned after this one). For me it’s all about the setting and the atmosphere they’ve created, and how well they immerse you in it. It’s one of those universes that I really wanna be in for real. No other game has captured the feeling of being part of a really dense sci-fi universe for me. It’s so good.

Also one of my favourites. Does a lot of things better than 1. Everyone else has probably talked about all the things I love about the game in a more articulate manner than I could so I wanna share something I realised the last time I played this that I haven’t seen many other people mention.

I LOVE how simple the story is here. Almost immediately from the outset you know what your end goal is; the suicide mission. The entire game is building towards that goal, constantly reminding you of the severity of that mission. It’s really lean and very effective. It leaves things open for more intimate stories throughout the rest of the game, and it stresses the importance of the suicide mission. I love it, so.

One more thing; I genuinely like the mining mini game. It’s very therapeutic.

Here’s a cool video game hot take: I don’t love the RE2 remake. I like this one much MUCH more.

The level design and methodical exploration is near-perfect. The soundtrack is absolutely perfect. I love the tank controls. I love the fixed camera angles. I love the pre-rendered backgrounds. I love the zapping system (although, it is woefully underdeveloped). Force feed this shit to me. It’s so good.

Btw, this is another comfort game for me, which, like with Killer7, makes me very cool and worthy of praise.

This game has all the stuff I love about 1, particularly the comfort of the bad, embarrassing writing — now with an added, thick layer of teen angst — combined with a surprisingly fantastic combat system.

Square’s approach to real-time combat tends to be really unsatisfying imo, so I question how much of KHII’s combat is intentionally designed to be as good as it is, but everything clicks together so neatly that I’m inclined to believe it was intentional. It almost doesn’t feel like it was made by Square, as a result. The addition of Critical mode in this version of the game makes you realise how well thought out the combat is. It’s so good, I now feel that it’s the only way to play the game. The new optional content in the Final Mix version of this game is also amazing.

I’m not sure how I feel about the level design in this game compared to the first. On the one hand, KH1’s attempts at platforming and light puzzle solving are awful and not having to worry about that in 2 is nice. On the other hand, 2 doesn’t even try to be anything more than running through hallways. Progression in 2 is much more linear. Another case where 1 is maybe executed a little worse, but at least it was making an effort. Lastly, 2’s story is horribly paced. It starts off intriguing , meanders for a very long time, gets a bit more exciting in the middle, goes back to meandering, and then ends with one of my favourite climaxes in a video game. It almost rivals a Platinum games climax for me. It’s not enough to save the terrible pacing, though.

I do love this game, so.