Really incredible visuals for the PSX and a noticeable improvement in control and game feel over the original. In terms of the core gameplay everything's in place for a true timeless classic and the whole thing's dripping with charm and personality. Unfortunately, along with the visual and mechanical improvements, Spyro 2 brings a big heaping helping of mediocre-at-best minigame challenges, and unfortunately you're going to have to do a LOT of them if you want to finish the game, as just running through each level and grabbing whatever orbs you get for doing pretty basic run-throughs will only net you about half as many as are required to open the final boss's locked door. It's, frankly, a nightmare. Many of these challenges are poorly designed or not balanced properly, and even the best ones I would describe more as "acceptable" than as anything I'd really want to take a break from the core platforming to focus on. Personally, I already had to give this game a fair amount of rope to get into it due to the structural change of not allowing the player to complete each level to 100% on the first visit, and the fact that it wants me to play a bunch of unfun minigames in order to hit bare minimum completion is just a little too much, especially since it didn't tell me that until I was already at the end. If you're less minigame averse than I am, you'll probably have a great time with this one, but I just can't face the prospect of having to turn around and play a bunch of them before being let into the final boss when the reason I passed them by in the first place is because I wasn't enjoying them when they were interspersed into my runs through the earlier levels.

Peak autismcore gaming, build a gorgeous little miniature and watch all the little ant people walk around and ride the rides. This game is fantastic. In the modern day the way I recommend playing it is by picking up RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 and the OpenRCT2 sourceport, as well as a user-created campaign pack that recreates the original game's scenarios. Almost no change to the actual content and mechanics of the game, but lots of improvements made on the technical side of things to keep it running smoothly on modern systems.

A pretty charming attempt at translating the A Link to the Past formula into a Game Boy game, and full of really nice pixel art, but it's kind of just a pain in the ass a lot of the time. Boss designs are terminally unfun and are made worse by just how chatty they are, which is a bit of a recurring theme with elements like a long-winded text box popping up any time you touch a heavy object without the power bracelets equipped (even if you've already gotten them and have lifted said object in the past). It's neat, but far from the best the series has to offer.

Half-Life is undeniably a milestone in first person shooter design, a watershed moment in immersion and narrative for action-oriented games, and of course an extremely impressive display of technical prowess.

It's also a bit of a janky fucking mess lmao

There's a lot of real charm here, the game has a sense of style that you rarely got from anything chasing realism at the time, and frankly one you rarely get from anything chasing realism now, and there's definitely some stretches where the game is pitting you against really interesting enemies and it's great fun for a while. At the same time, in many places it overreaches what was really doable on this modified version of the Quake engine and ends up offering setpieces that range from interesting but unrefined, to simply unfun, to borderline unplayable. Eventually it started asking me to fight highly-mobile underwater enemies while harshly limiting the arsenal with which I could do so and I decided I'd had enough. The game had landed on "induce motion sickness" as its next gimmick and I just couldn't do it. I don't regret the time I spent with the game, though, it really is a fascinating piece of video game history and when it's firing on all cylinders it really is simply fantastic.

This one's an all-timer for sure. The groundbreaking rendering tech that allows the game to decrease texture and model detail the further a piece of geometry is from the camera is extremely impressive, allows for an altogether more cohesive-feeling set of environments than was generally possible on the PS1 up to this point, and results in an extremely charming claymation-like aesthetic which holds up fantastically well 25 years later. Movement takes some getting used to, but once you've got the feel for it, it's an absolute blast, and simply Feels Good in a way that few 3D platformers have matched. And structurally the game is intensely satisfying, particularly if you're going for 120% completion. Running through every level and completely cleaning it out of all valuables before moving on to the next scratches itches in my brain that I didn't even know were there before playing this game. It's a sheer delight from beginning to end, highly recommended to anyone who enjoys 3D platformers.