Replayed for the first time since launch to see what the famous Updates were about. They must be good, people never stopped bringing them up every time Hello Games added a new type of fern.

All these years and the game is still an exercise in prefab asset tourism - once the novelty wears thin and the artifice sets in, you come to realise that all of the tension comes in the form of anticipating what colour the trees are going to be on the planet you're leisurely approaching. No Man's Sky does about as poor a job of conveying information to the player as Destiny 2. This thing is now a hulking behemoth of retrofitted mechanics that gracelessly clash together, and poorly explain themselves with a haphazard collage of tutorials and tooltips leaving the first thirty minutes of this game with the UI looking like fucking a ransom note. Way to make space travel feel like homework.

The game is rightly dubbed a spiritual successor to the Fallout series, but does so much of it better. At least when compared to recent Fallout games, that didn't reach the heights of New Vegas. It's a welcome change that a game of this type is rather short and with tightly contained areas which enabled the developers to put more effort into the details. Locations, their characters and their stories are all well written and worthwhile exploration. On the technical side the game sometimes feels rough around the edges, but more often than not I was really immersed in a wonderfully colorful sci-fi world.

Playing Hollow Knight and coming out of it saying: "Uh, yeah, it's like, Metroidvania Dark Souls dude." is a take so shallow that a mere glance at the store page's screenshots would prove that to be the case. Yet, after finishing the game it's also the most glowing compliment I can give it, as it marries the components of both styles in a remarkably elegant way.

The moment-to-moment gameplay is Castlevania, the environments Metroid, the level progression and music both at the same time! Add to that the atmosphere typical of a dying world, as well as elements like recovering lost resources after death, and you should already know where this sentence is heading.

The atmosphere of Hallownest is one of the densest, thickest and most engrossing you can find in gaming, where all characters, the warm and hospitable, the engimatic and elusive and the outright hostile, give the world a feeling of being lived in and a life and identity of its own. With the compliments out of the way, I would also like to vent about the size of the map. It is way too dang big, to the point where traversing it is a chore and I found myself constantly praying for quicker traversal tools.

Where the game should have taken less from Dark Souls is the main story (which is the only part of the plot I can discuss, having not bothered with the add-ons). That one is too much like FromSoft's seminal work. But we're getting into spoiler territory.

Another point of contention I have with Hollow Knight is its spells and nail techniques. The former feel a bit useless if you're willing to grow a spine and face the enemy head-on, locking eyes and unleashing a storm of attacks. Normal attacks that is. I rarely ever used the special nail techniques, since they are situational at best. Why would I want to charge up special moves when the additional effects they have aren't worth the effort compared to a simple string of normal attacks?

All things said, the game really is a cute little gem and i see why people like it so much, but it just didn't blow me away. I've seen a lot of (overblown) praise from my friend circle about this, so my expectations, as with any game which receives too much hype and acclaim, were somewhat let down. But it speaks volumes that a game I only played because it was in a bundle and gave me something to talk about with some nerdy girls at a party kept me going way after the day of that celebration.

Firewatch falls in the same traps as the usual “narrative” indie games /v/ has come to despise: Too much focus on the idea of the game than the actual execution of the gameplay itself. For once, Firewatch had potential and could’ve gone somewhere: in a large and wild area, colorful and lush, it could’ve found a way to be compelling, original and even touching. Unfortunately it turned out to be another mundane walking simulator with little to no gameplay just like Gone Home and/or Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. All you do is walk around with a walkie talkie, investigate random objects, and hear Delilah bitch at you. The story is typical indie game garbage and there is little to no character interaction outside of the walkie talkie. If I wanted to see the world of Firewatch and be amazed by the graphical details, then I would get out of the house and take a drive to the closest national park.

Undertale is one of the most popular games of the last decade. Some used to herald it as one of the greatest games ever made, back when it came out. I vividly remember a girl I was really into back then cosplaying Sans - but I didn't know who that was. For my whole life, it feels like the whole world has been talking about Undertale and stuff that has been inspired by it. So, I took the plunge myself. I wanted to know why Undertale was so... important.

And on one hand, I think it's easy to see why. It's an indie darling that is subversive, humorous in tone, satirical of RPG tropes and quick to push the boundaries of the fourth wall. Those things don't really sound like too big of a deal now, I don't think. But Undertale popularised a lot of these ideas in the mainstream, and I think that caught a lot of people off-guard. Undertale is creative with its postmodern relationship with the audience, as well as in its usage of contemporary humour. While not the first game to do so - a lot of the things I've just mentioned were done by Earthbound and Metal Gear Solid 2 a decade or so before the release of Undertale - its indie darling status as well as its genuine creativity brought it to the forefront. Undertale was many people's first experience with a postmodern meta-narrative integrated into a video game. It changed the tone around video games, and presented the idea of "video games as art" in a new way to a new audience.

So, I see the appeal there. Undertale isn't lacking in things to like. Its creative manipulation of traditional battle mechanics is very interesting, and so is its willingness to reach out the screen and make things specifically about the player.

In 2021, I still find that creativity compelling, and I think a lot of the work put into Undertale pays off. However, I think a lot of things now don't really work in its favour. I think the idea of sparing enemies, or having the death of an enemy taken seriously, is very, very cool on paper. But in practice, Undertale's usage of this system results in finding every way possible to not use the core combat mechanics. Thematically, this makes sense, but gameplay wise, I think it's a waste. The battle system is good - why can't I use it without punishment? You get locked out of the true ending if you kill even one thing. So why fight, ever? I think it's a fatal flaw of the system. Even in Genocide, the opposite occurs - why spare anything, ever? I don't think it works out. I wasn't satisfied sparing enemies, and killing them would've locked into the bad endings. So I'm stuck in an unsatisfying limbo if I want to get a nice ending. I don't think that's good game design, even if it thematically proves something. The bullet hell stuff is fun, though, and it shines through in the fight against Asgore especially. The creativity of the game really works out when it comes to making unique attack patterns to dodge - especially in bosses.

Another thing I thought was quite underwhelming was the writing. A lot of the humour in this game is VERY hit or miss. Sometimes, it makes me want to roll my eyes. Too much quirky randomness humour that feels very bland and dated. Sometimes, I chuckled quite a bit. I thought Sans was consistently pretty funny. Alongside this, though, I don't think the main plot of the game is very interesting, and I think a lot of the meta elements go to waste when it comes to Chara - or Will, in my case. At first, Frisk, the main character, is introduced with your name. However, it turns out that the character bearing your name was actually the first human to fall down. This holds potential meaning, and having the final boss say that they don't want you to leave them behind, to stop playing with them, is quite emotionally powerful, I think. However, I think it falls apart when you realise the first human to fall down is like, an entire character on their own. The only thing they really have in common with you is their name, and it doesn't loop back to the player - at least in the routes I played. It felt like an underdeveloped excuse to have the characters refer to me, the real person, instead of a grand plot development - even though the former would've been much more fitting, I feel. But again, apparently Genocide does something different, so I don't want to be too mean to this character.

This writing issue does extend to the gameplay, too. I thought the puzzles had potential to be fun - but every character in the game makes it their mission to tell you the solution to each and every puzzle in the game in some sort of ironic fashion. It was funny for a bit, but eventually it just got grating. Let me play your game, please! On top of it all, I think the message of the game ends up being kind of shallow in the end. Being friends with everyone solves everything. Always be determined to be as kind to people as you can be. Killing people is always bad and you shouldn't do it. I don't know, I guess that's fine. I didn't think it was all that interesting by the end, though - especially when the backstory of characters like Alphys and Asgore open up some pretty morally complex questions about accountability for horrible actions taken by them.

Despite everything I've said, I had fun. I chuckled a bit. The boss fights were fun. I stream a lot of the games I play to my friends, and it was entertaining to play it with them. The music was awesome, a lot of the visual setpieces were very memorable, and if nothing else, Sans is still funny. It was a pleasant experience, even if it definitely showed me how much I suck at bullet hells.

So, where does that leave us? Do I understand why Undertale is so revered? I think I do. It's a generally pleasant and upbeat experience that has a darker underbelly to be explored. It was a pioneer of modern metanarratives and satire in gaming. A cast of likable characters and iconic music only bolstered this.

But at least, speaking as an adult in 2021, back to myself starting in high school in 2015, I think time has changed. I think Undertale is something that I don't think I'll ever be able to connect to in the same way that its superfans did and still do.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you had to be there - and I wasn't.