Sonic Mania is one of those games that earned audience praise immediately as the trailer came out. Pretty much everyone was happy about Sonic returning to form, and going back to his 2D roots. On top of that, Tails and Knuckles joined him and together they all made us forget about Sonic 4 collectively.

To say Mania is a love letter to the original trilogy is an understatement, but one that I absolutely have mixed feelings on. While I understand everyone getting excited about seeing Sonic go through the same iconic stages he did in the past, I wasn't exactly happy with it. Mostly this game felt like it was hitting the same beats and motions as if I was playing the older games, and not in a way I enjoyed. Once I hit Studiopolis I knew exactly what the problem was, and that was how stilted Mania felt to me compared to when it could do something original. Studiopolis is an absolute banger of a level, with theming, level design, and music. It really is just stunning how so different yet same Stuiopolis feels, and hit that exact wonder that I wanted to feel for this game. Sadly I can't really say the rest of the game follows suit to that, and by no means is it considerably a bad drop, just one that didn't appeal to me.

Along the way though, Mania absolutely crushed it with the 2 new additions to the Sonic formula, with Drop dash and the new special stages. Drop dash is an amazing addition, and something that helps keep the momentum of Sonic levels going when you feel you are about to lose them, which is both appealing to newcomers and veterans alike. Meanwhile, the new special stages are a fun take of Sonic CD's special levels, but far more tame and easier to manage. On top of that, Mania's special stages lend themselves well to revisits, as often the chaos emeralds take a while to get to full speed and thus makes them easier to capture.

Overall, Mania is just kinda inoffensive to it's audience. There is a glimmer of what we could have gotten with Studiopolis, but largely I felt wanting for more original stages and less revisiting the past. The new mechanics are a great addition, but they simply don't hold my attention to want to play this game more.

One of the best fighting games I've ever played. The GGPO netcode allows for smooth gameplay from the East Coast to Europe (and apparently America to Korea), great balancing, awesome and tight-knit community, and somehow managed to perfectly strike the balance between easy to learn, hard to master game mechanics with the time cancel stuff. Combos are super free form with the DTC and JTC mechanics, and the juggle point system incentivizes the player to try new things in their combos. The only real gripe I have with the game at this point is that there aren't too many characters out as of May 2021, although there are more to come.



another major gripe is that i suck and gat makes me cry

I have some amount of respect for Half-Life. The game's eye for set-pieces, and constant insistence on re-inventing itself, makes for a varied experience that seems ahead of its time in some ways. The game also did a lot for immersive storytelling in games, though this aspect of Half-Life comes across as very clunky nowadays when contrasted against what followed in its footsteps. I will also say that, despite the harsh words that are about to follow, I enjoyed playing through Half-Life quite a bit more than my rating indicates; I played through the game in the company of friends, and everyone gently mocking the game's failings throughout helped make for an enjoyable time.

The problem is, for all it managed to do for the medium Half-Life has sadly aged almost impressively horrendously. The opening couple hours, which play out almost as survival horror, manage to still capture some amount of the tension they likely had a couple decades ago, but almost everything after the point where soldiers start showing ends up being some brand of frustrating with awkward enemy placement, cheap deaths, and myriad moments where I had to look up what I was even meant to do. Following this downward trend in quality to its natural conclusion fighting the final boss was an intensely unpleasant experience, all to get an ending that for me fell flat on its face.

I also deeply disliked the quick-save/quick-load feature and how the game seems very much designed with it in mind. Maybe I just suck at FPSes but there are countless moments in this game that only really make sense in a world where you assume most players are actively using quick-saving. Actually using this feature though leads to what feels like a very disjointed experience, robbing you of any feeling of genuine accomplishment and making every moment of disaster only a button press away from having never happened. Talking to friends I get the impression that a lot of PC games of this era were designed with this style of play in mind, and wow do I not get on with it at all.