yeah this isn't doing anything for me. it's tedious, repetitive, frustrating--similar reasons why i'm not remotely interested in speedrunning. at first, i thought i was just really rusty at prey so i went back and played through the base game again, loved it to death, came back to this, and i hate it. it's not as if i have too much trouble staying alive, either--my runs usually end with around 30,000 arkane fun bucks, but good lord do i not want to keep repeating these same objectives in these same areas with these same enemies. actually scratch what i said about staying alive, because dealing with moonsharks is a ball busting experience, running around with a brain hemorrhage is aggravating considering i'm not keen on listening to an audio loop of porn moans, and the time limit is just completely antithetical to what immersive sims are all about: slow, methodical exploration.

props to arkane for a ballsy ass move in that this dlc isn't even the same fucking genre as the base game, but all mooncrash does is affirm how much i hate rougeanythings and how much i probably won't buy deathloop

Halo: Combat Evolved is a fun but flawed game that unfortunately shows its age in quite a few ways. This game shines brightest when it shows off its unique and incredible locations, each with their own incredible atmospheres, and ties it all together with its very interesting story. Unfortunately however this game is not always at its best. A good portion of the game is spent navigating tight corridors, often seeing the same rooms copy and pasted over and over again, and fighting the same bunch of enemies. Master chief is fun to control in combat, however a few controls feel a bit outdated or awkward, such as the vehicle controls and lack of a zoom button while shooting. This game also suffers from not really having a proper waypoint system. Despite all of the levels being pretty linear it's still very easy to get lost due to the often confusing and repetitive map design. Overall Halo's biggest problem is its repetitiveness. Whether it be enemies, weapons, or maps, after a certain point you'll start to feel like you're just doing the same thing over and over again. The story is definitely still interesting however and though repetitive it is fun. Despite its rough patches I'm very glad I completed this game and would still recommend checking it out.

DISCLAIMER: This review is not a review, it's a bumbling, messy rant I wrote at 2 AM. I apologize in advance for any grammar and spelling errors, as well as the occasional nonsensical sentence.

It has truly been some time since a game has so fully captured me to the degree that Little Big Planet has. There is something truly special about this game that is only shared with some of the best I’ve ever played, in fact, the last time a game was able to make me feel anything like this would have been my first playthrough of Super Mario Galaxy. I don’t Think I can ever truly, properly put it into words, but I'll certainly give it a try.

Before the actual review I’ll start by saying that I don’t have any nostalgia for this game, In fact, my first time ever playing would’ve been the day before writing this review. All of my opinions stem from very freshly playing through the game and experiencing everything it had to offer for myself.


This may be a fairly generic statement, but I think everyone can agree that today’s world has more than its fair share of misery. These past few months for me it's felt like on a global level there have been historical levels of suffering and wrongdoing happening all at once, and there is nothing I can do about it. When combined with the smaller stresses of simply living your life, it can be easy to accidentally start to live with a dark cloud over your head. This is not to say that I’m a miserable person or anything, It's just that I feel we sometimes forget how important it is to smile. I am of the opinion that we need more ways to spread positivity and happiness in the world, and that is exactly what Little Big Planet is. Little Big Planet completely counteracts everything negative I just mentioned on a personal level in nearly every way. It feels so purely created with the sole intention of bringing childlike joy and wonder to the faces of all who play it. From the animation to the music to the gameplay, everything feels so lovingly, passionately created to be the absolute best it can be. One of my favourite things about all forms of media, be it traditional books, comics, movies, tv, or games, is that they can give you such intense emotions that you would normally be unable to experience in ordinary life. Through Seething anger or incredible sadness, I’ve been affected by many of the things that I have watched, read, and played, but there is one thing even the best of movies and games are often not capable of, something that makes them truly stand out above the rest if they can accomplish it, and that's them being capable of transmitting pure, unfiltered joy to the same degree that they can other emotions. Throughout my whole playthrough, Little Big Planet had me grinning ear to ear. It's the first time in so long that I’ve been so completely invested in a game, that I’ve spent so much time in a game all at once, that I’ve been willing to give up doing anything else to actually find time to play, and since I’ve had my love for video games so overwhelmingly re-ignited like this. For all that alone, I will likely forever remember Little Big Planet and consider it one of the all time greats that I’ve played, But there is still so much more to discuss here.

Before even discussing the gameplay, there is so much to appreciate about Little Big Planet. Everything feels meticulously handcrafted, because it literally is. This game at its core is a level editor that all players have the ability to use, and the developers truly mastered everything about that level editor and managed to produce levels for the story mode that wouldn't feel out of place if they were found within a real, purely 2D triple A platformer. Within these levels there are representations of cultures from all over the world that are so obviously lovingly represented, and they have great humor to go along with them. This game genuinely made me laugh a few more times than I would have expected. The sackboy that you explore the Levels with is also an incredible addition to this game. Each sackboy exhibits so much personality and is so excellently animated. Something about their expressions just makes their emotions feel so real. The Developers really went above and beyond when it came to allowing players to fully express themselves without even speaking.

Speaking of player expression, the one part of this game that I’m really devastated I’ll never get to experience is the online. Exploring an infinite amount of community made levels with my friends and other people while being able to fully express myself and have fun at the same time seems like it would have been an absolute dream. I get hit by a little wave of sadness everytime see the crossed out online buttons on my screen, but even without them I had plenty to love about the game.

The campaign mode is spent helping numerous troubled characters throughout the earth in any way you can. Often just seeing how the developers had crafted characters and made them feel so alive through the crude level editor was enough to make me laugh, but it was also very charming. Every step of the way you are offered encouragement and witness so much creativity it's hard to not just constantly smile. Alongside just being fun to play through, these levels feel like they would be excellent inspiration for anyone who would have tried to truly dedicate themselves to the level creator as well.

In terms of actual gameplay, this is definitely the weakest part of the game, but still fun. It controls like a standard 2D platformer, with the sole issue being that sometimes sackboy feels a little bit slippery to control, putting you in the occasional situation that will feel a little unfair. Otherwise though the level design is so clever that the game never gets old. There are so many gameplay concepts and ideas featured within them I almost wish there were more levels so I could have seen them more fully explored. The game does get more difficult towards the end, but even with the slightly awkward controls I never felt it was too unfair, despite having to redo some levels a fair few times. What it really shows is that this game's potential for level design is more or less unlimited, something that would have made it all the more amazing when the servers were still up and running.

The music (partially composed by the guy who did spiderverse btw) was also a key factor to my enjoyment of this game. Almost every track is so uplifting and happy it felt like it was directly planting energy into my soul. Somehow these songs make me feel nostalgic despite having literally never heard them before yesterday. There are just so many different instruments and styles of music that all collide together in this game, making it one of my favourite gaming soundtracks of all time. Maybe I’m just weird but there were even 1 or 2 very oddly nice tracks that even made me tear up a bit.

In conclusion, Little Big Planet is just kind of a perfect video game to me. The combination of its endless creativity, interactive community, fun gameplay, and amazing music gives me the impression that it was lovingly created with the sole purpose of spreading Joy throughout the world, something we can always use more of. It's very rare that something is able to make me feel the childlike wonder I experienced while playing this game, and I'm so grateful I just randomly happened to check it out. Everything about it feels so human; you can clearly see the overwhelming passion behind the game poured into every nook and cranny within it, something I’ve only really been able to notice in a very small few of the best games I’ve played. In my opinion, more games should strive to be as joyous and as pleasant an experience as Little Big Planet. I definitely feel like this is a game everyone should try playing at least once in their lives, because if for some reason it strikes the same chord with you as it did with me, you’ll never regret it.

Perhaps I was too harsh on you.

I’ve long stood by the opinion that Half-Life 2 is a bad game. Upon revisiting it, it’s become clear to me that Half-Life 2 is not actually a bad game. Half-Life 2 isn’t a good game, and that’s an important distinction to make.

Half-Life 2 is a game defined by moments, by set pieces; the City 17 escape, piloting the airboat, driving down Highway 17, attacking the prison, rushing through the Citadel. What’s unfortunate, then, is largely how uninteresting most of these moments are. While it’s borderline impossible to downplay genuinely fun moments like sprinting along the rooftops while fleeing from the Combine or fighting off waves of zombies in Ravenholm, these moments don’t make up the bulk of the game. If you took a playthrough of Half-Life 2, exported every single frame, and averaged it out into a single screenshot, you’d wind up a photo of a dune buggy steering around runoff canals.

An inordinate amount of time is spent driving on empty roads, steering through identical-looking pipes and basins, walking along the world’s worst beach with nothing but miles of sand and an ocean you can’t swim in. It’s clear with the frequent stop-and-pop sections that interrupt these driving segments that Valve was trying — crunching, after the beta build leaked — to keep players engaged, but I don’t think they succeeded. To their credit, I suppose that this all feels more like the product of poor decision-making rather than them being forced to throw out their old work and start over from scratch, but that’s some faint fucking praise.

A few conversations with some friends of mine have revealed that, universally, we agree that the strongest thing Half-Life 2 has going for it is its aesthetic. Consider how you personally feel about Half-Life 2’s look and feel to determine whether this is a point of celebration or condemnation. Further, we all agreed that something about this particular aesthetic has been lost over the years since release; Garry’s Mod has diluted it heavily into something more funny than oppressive, whether that be through a variety of wacky game modes where Dr. Kleiner goes sledding and Barney sets up an illegal money printer, or through comedic, face-warping machinima like The Gmod Idiot Box and Half-Life: Full-Life Consequences. All of these are, in a way, Half-Life 2. And it’s no fault of Half-Life 2 that it’s difficult to take seriously in the year 2024 simply because of how its legacy has been warped by fans, but it’s borderline undeniable that these have all had an impact on lessening Half-Life 2’s, uh, impact.

Maybe that’s not entirely fair to Half-Life 2, but I’d counter that, apart from City 17 and the interior of the Citadel, the game is pretty generic. The incredibly long canal, highway, antlion cave, and prison assault sections are all as boring to look at as they are to play through, and they really don’t do a good job of delivering on the Combine-occupied hellscape that was promised when you got off of the tram.

As harsh as I’m being, though, I really don’t think all that poorly of Half-Life 2. It’s definitely a game that keeps souring on me the more time I spend away from it, giving me a chance to actually step back and reflect on the parts I didn’t mind in the moment but don’t care for at all in retrospect. I like the narrative they’ve got going on here. Dropping Gordon into the middle of City 17 without a fucking clue in the world why he’s there or what’s going on is an inspired choice, and it plays nicely into G-Man’s little tease about his employers looking for a soldier they can dump into the middle of an active warzone who’ll start blasting away without asking any questions. Similarly, the Combine that you square off against are stupid fodder who exist purely to get merked en masse, but they’re also a token occupation force comprised primarily of conscripted or traitorous humans wearing alien armor. Spinning blades and cars on winches in Ravenholm can be activated at will either to kill zombies or use the moving parts as platforms to reach other areas. There are quite a few moments where the gameplay exists in complete harmony with the world as it is established, and there are quite a few moments where Gordon Freeman has to stop what he's doing to jump up and down on a seesaw. Truly it is a land of contrasts.

What's here is neither particularly good nor particularly bad, and is in a way remarkable for having such a strong legacy despite standing on such weak legs. People say that you needed to be there when this came out to truly appreciate it, but I think that if something is actually good, then it remains good. There are a lot of games out there that are both far older and far better than Half-Life 2, so I don't adhere to the "poorly aged" argument when it seems significantly more likely that people were just so awed by the tech that they didn't notice the emaciated muscles hanging off of the Source Engine skeleton.

The greatest sin Half-Life 2 commits is making a sequel to Half-Life that's boring.

What a joke! I cannot comprehend how the developers so clearly have a sincere passion for Half-Life while simultaneously not understanding in the slightest what makes Half-Life what it is.

My disillusionment with the game set in the instant that I got into my first encounter with the HECU, who are so unbelievably obnoxious and focused on trial-and-error that the game stops for 30 minutes at a time every time you encounter them. Of course, this wouldn't be such a bad thing if they weren't the overwhelming majority in terms of enemy placement; once you first encounter a Marine the (genuinely very good) alien-fighting gunplay is sidelined up until you reach the very depths of the Lambda complex.

The HECU (while also obnoxiously and artificially difficult) are representative of Black Mesa's biggest flaw, and the most dire manner in which it fails to recreate what Half-Life is all about: rather than encouraging exploration, innovation and improvisation like every Half-Life game does, you're regulated to kneeling behind cover and using some of the most boring weapons in the game (namely the MP5 and shotgun) as you attempt to pick them off from a distance. Even the flow of using these weapons is neutered when compared to the original game, due to the MP5's magazine capacity, ammunition reserves and grenade stock being reduced to mere fractions of what they were, meaning that you can't even truly indulge in bombast without having to stop and reload or scavenge for ammo every minute or so. This problem also impacts the revolver and crossbow, genuinely fun weapons that lend themselves well to the long-distance based combat of the HECU: you're reduced to a measly three-or-two magazines in reserve for both of them, meaning you can carry a maximum of twenty-four and fifteen rounds apiece for them. I don't know if they were going for realism here or what, but tell me, do you play Half-Life for realistic portrayals of combat?

The gunplay is not alone in being completely representative of Black Mesa's disdain for exploration and player creativity: there are invisible walls and cheap mapping practices everywhere, determined to stomp out Half-Life's signature feeling of "what's up there? I wonder if I can get up there" at every possible corner. Some of my favorite examples were long-jumping off a floating island in Xen to land on one situated below, only to find that the developers had registered all long falls in Xen as falling into a bottomless pit and would force a reload upon landing... and feeling quite clever when I used satchel charges to bypass an explosive maze only to find that the map was designed to blow you up if the explosives blew up regardless of where you were on the map, even if you were well behind cover.

Speaking of Xen...! I don't know, it's beautiful and impressive and perhaps a step up from the original's from a certain perspective, but it's also not really anything we haven't seen before in a million other alien worlds from a million other science fiction stories. The Xen of Half-Life felt genuinely strange, incomprehensible and uncanny in a manner that not only acted in favor of the game's horror elements but also reinforced the notion that you are not welcome here, that this world was never meant for and never intended to pay host to those of your kind. Sure, we're treated to beautiful forests, swamps and factories, but... they're just that, things that I recognize, things that I've seen before, things that are familiar. It takes the alien out of "alien invasion."

Another thing that bothered me was the music. None of it was bad, I'd say, but none of it really felt like Half-Life to me. Half-Life's OST was dominated more than anything by droning guitar feedback, dark ambient soundscapes and industrial rhythms, the prevalence of which makes the heavy synths and pounding drums that much more impactful when they do show up. Not only does the Black Mesa OST sound much more like something you'd hear in a standard fare sci-fi FPS of the 2010s, it was more or less one Epic Videogame Song With Heavy Drum And Guitar And Synth after another - sometimes it worked for the moment (such as We've Got Hostiles, whose almost desert rock-styled riffage fit perfectly for the adrenaline rush of seeing the surface for the first time only amid a massive firefight) but most of the time I mostly either found the loud music irritating when it played during something as innocuous as exploring a reactor facility, or when I had to listen to it again, and again, and again as I reloaded save after save after save in one of the game's million-and-a-half HECU skirmishes.

It's a shame, because as I said in my intro it's clear that these developers love Half-Life. There's a lot of thought put into capturing the idiosyncrasies of 1998's portrayal of Black Mesa while also making them feel more lively and lived-in from a modern point of view. The moment-to-moment combat and "gun feel" is excellent when you're just fighting aliens, and the flow of the levels themselves is quick, breezy and natural... but because it all goes to hell whenever you get to Xen (the only completely original section of Black Mesa) it's clear that we can give credit to the fact that these are painstaking bit-for-bit recreations of Valve's innovations as opposed to something that the team can truly take credit for. Xen literally milks the same puzzle over and over and over again for the entirety of its 8-10 hour playtime, and only really bothers to introduce its trump card (which in fairness is cool as hell) during the last quarter of Interloper.

The Nihilanth fight, though? That shit fuckin' rules. It's just a shame that the game only finally realizes its potential during the literal final moments of the game.

Played on "hard" (eventually got so fed up with the very first tank fight and the Gonarch fight that I set it to normal until I'd killed those), completed in about 28 hours.

Still thinking a lot about how much Black Mesa's Xen feels like a complete disgusting counter to everything it's supposed to represent. How it feels much more like a portfolio-driven set of levels in terms of design rather than anything cohesive. How, despite being on a completely alien majestic world, the way you actually interact with said world is obscenely familiar, trivial. You do the same sort of puzzles you did in stuff like Office Complex or earlier. Even in space, you cannot escape 30+ minutes of connect power cord, walk to area, shoot 2-3 enemies, connect power cord. Xen is not Alien. It isn't an apotheosis either. You are empowered to enact a simulacra of other games instead, like later half-life games with the elevator and chase sequence. I do not hold Xen in HL1 in the highest regard possible (nor do I for HL1 much in general anymore, honestly :/), but it was at its core a fervent 'betrayal' of the familiar. It's reviled for this decision but it is altogether fitting, how platforming is a disgusting poor feeling challenge because, well, this planet was not built for the likes of you. You're simply fighting through a world that was never expecting you to be here. But in Black Mesa it doesn't even bother to truly be dangerous. Granted, that's true of Black Mesa in general the more I mull over it. There's a lot to dissect on how Marines function both as an aesthetic issue and a mechanical one here vs all of the other HL's enemies. In a way, Black Mesa is a betrayal in of itself to me because it seeks not to conserve any spirit of what it's remaking as much as it pushes it through a meat grinder (albeit, with soft hands working the parts, I won't say crowbar's effort was exactly soulless) of HL2 and later design. And to that it breaks down most of those foundations until you have something almost unrecognizable for those who played HL1 and Opposing Force in terms of feel and play and understanding. The aesthetic, on a technical and story lens, is conserved to some degree, in grander majesty. But at what cost?

shortly after prey released, raphaël colantonio (founder of arkane) left the studio, his words more or less "i want to make games but i feel like i'm just making products". i empathize. prey, a crown jewel of the immersive sim genre and a fascinating combination of player freedom with tight writing and attention to detail, was a commercial failure. prey was strangled by bethesda who refused to ship review copies and who stapled the completely unrelated 'prey' title onto what is ostensibly a something shock game all in order to hold onto their precious trademark, a spoil of war from human head studios. the game was rigged from the start.

immersive sims are tough to design. you've got to create level design that isn't some last of us cutscene hallway--you've got to allow for all sorts of playstyles, approaches, theories, and strategies... especially when you give the player some very, very interesting tools such as the gloo gun, that which is a metroidvania sequence breaker in handheld form. immersive sims generally have tight narratives (or, at least, strong worldbuilding). prey does both, of course--it's always interesting to discover every little story nestled in every little corner aboard talos 1, the stage for prey's play. but like i said, they're tough to design... so most studios don't bother. and who can blame them when gamers too seem to reject the genre, dishonored 2 a commercial failure, deus ex mankind divided a commercial failure (and square enix's meddling, like bethesda, sure didn't help). no, no, we want more slop. we want more movie games. etc, etc

despite me thinking this deserving of a near perfect score, i'm bothered that i don't feel enthusiastic writing this. i guess i'm down harder than i realized about the current state of the games industry, the current state of triple a. what is it about these games that just don't click with gamers? are they too hard? immersive sims are interesting in that, if you don't know what you're doing or don't make an effort to really understand the game, you're going to find yourself loading a save far too often. prey is merciless in this regard, and i speak to experience. my first playthrough found me desperately scrounging for ammunition and barely surviving encounters with anything. four years later, forgetting near everything, i was suddenly doing so. much. better.

why? well, i started actually scrounging all the trash i could, for one. i stopped breaking down weapons into spare parts--there's more than enough of those around the station. i started REALLY using the hell out of that wrench (don't underestimate it. i used it to the very, very end). but the most important thing i did was using the analyzing helmet tool that researches enemies and offers you advice, strengths, and weaknesses. holy hell, why did i never even bother with that before? enemies i remember giving my hell last time were cakewalks on this run. lord, over halfway through the game i felt like space jesus, undefeated.

awkward transition but there's definitely some negative aspects that hold prey back from being absolutely perfect. art aside, the bugs (when and rarely they appear) are rough. bodies disappearing or clipping through the ground, glitched objectives, flickering lighting, and invisible fire all add up to a laundry list of annoyances... but if you're not going for 100%, you probably won't stumble over many. prey's got an incredible introduction and charges full speed ahead with its first act, but loses steam around halfway when the environments start drying up in creativity and everything starts feeling samey and boring. it's like playing half life's residue processing but for ten hours. and without spoiling, the endings are suuuuper anticlimactic and sloppily rushed through. worse, there's no real good combat payoff before then, either. i was geared up for war, man.

i think my favorite part about the game is that, despite playing through massive runs, i could still definitely see myself going back for thirds in a few years and playing just a little differently. with as many options, styles, and tools the game hands you, it's a little impossible for anything but maybe the same story growing dull. that's the magic of an immersive sim.

I hope it's not actually just me when I say this, but I feel like every kid starts out their video game career by owning a few games and just playing the first few levels, starting a new game, and playing those levels again and again. Then one day someone asks "Why don't you try going farther in the game," and your little dum dum doo doo gooey child brain goes "That's an excellent query." Then you actually try to finish a game and when the end credits roll your mind is blown. Games have endings? They can be beaten? And I, wee little Joe-boi, have the power to beat a game? This was the game that blew my mind. Spyro: Year of the Dragon was the first game I ever beat. One of 2 games I beat before beating games became regular for me, the other game was Over The Hedge for the Xbox.

before i write on anything else, i want to give a round of applause to hitman: blood money's save system, that which may be the finest the stealth genre has seen and deserves to be seen again. depending on the chosen difficulty, hitman offers you a number of saves; normal is 7, hard is 3, and there's none at all waiting for you on professional. the magic of these saves is they absolutely can be used anywhere you like, just as you may with a quick save, but, because of their nature as an expendable commodity, you can't really... well, savescum. hitman takes the strength and safety of a save system that relies on player input but without cheesing the experience of allowing you to quick save after every small increment of progress (and i am completely guilty of this in other games). the player is thus encouraged to try various different angles to see what decision or string of decisions best deserve being executed and saved, and which ones are best... not. am i making sense? it just feels super impactful every time i specifically save because there's always something BIG i accomplished, and i take some comfort in pulling off all the right moves that mentally let me save and advance (unless i accidentally hit 'restart' and then lost my saves, lol. lol. lol).

anyway, yes, it is a stealth game, and it is completely unlike any other stealth series. there are those like thief and dishonored where sticking to the shadows is your best offense, deus ex and prey where revealing yourself to those perceived friendly is a deliberate choice, and alpha protocol or metal gear where the stealth sucks and i assume you're not playing for that. but anyway, it's hitman that handwaves all that and, instead, invites you to walk among others--to be IN sight and to BE seen--to blend in like a backstage chameleon. it's a system that does require discretion--cornering those you've decided to kill and ensuring their passing is seen by none but your own bald faced stare. and it frankly never gets old.

perhaps the worst thing about blood money is how disgustingly clunky it feels when first playing (and first returning for another replay). everything feels so goddamn stiff and sticky and the controls feel like your keyboard's turned into a chinese fingertrap. you think it'll get better after the tutorial, but it sucks even harder for the followup mission because your options feel real limited. but a light switch is pulled with the following missions, everything coming together harmoniously, and suddenly you're effortlessly navigating complex buildings stabbing and choking and piano wiring every sorry son of a bitch who foolishly came into work well dressed. seriously, i've gone through this whole thing three times and this same experience always happens, and i think it'll happen to you, too.

i'm still gushing, sorry. whenever you successfully finish a mission, you're presented with... a newspaper, acting as your stats screen. how you executed the victim to how many rounds you fired to what witnesses saw what and how close of a profile they can draft of you--all this information and more gets covered in a cute, typed up report surely striking fear into whoever still reads newspapers. it's ridiculously immersive, and it even ends up influencing my decision to replay a level over and over with different play styles just to see what they'll write. now, you do end up wishing the range of what's covered could be even wider and have more fluff text associated with it (and maybe less ridiculous lines like "police found bullet casings belonging to Customized Hitman Classic Silverballer That He Painted White"), but it's still pretty cool. and it's moreso just unfortunate the concept wasn't expanded on in the tm trilogy.

what else... you remember how i mentioned that hitman's a game that turns away from other stealth games to do its own thing? well, you totally can do that, but you can also play things out like garret or jc denton (except with a lot more coin throwing), or you can try going full psychopath no russian (and the newspapers will certainly note it). you can execute targets in a number of ways, and it never has to be part of a path intended by the devs, either. sometimes you really do just stuff a mine inside a briefcase suspiciously placed just enough for a guard to grab it and bring it back to the station where you've conveniently lured the target to right on time to hit the detonation and make it look as if you weren't involved at all.

music by jesper kyd's an amazing touch, too. it's all these sorts of themes bordering on tension, suspension, danger... from the npcs' point of view. for you, these suites are your theme songs, and they fit the job perfectly as you meticulously garrote one target after another with your clown suited hands. visuals are honestly pretty cool: there's a range of environments that 47 visits necessitating a lot of new and unique textures/models, and that comes with a distinct feeling in each new mission. my favorites ended up being a drug rehabilitation center nestled up on a foggy hill and a fancy ferry navigating the mississippi, and it's both just because... i dunno. those are just really cool environments for a video game.

the clunkiness i mentioned that happens in the beginning of the game isn't quite limited to that part, though. there's other weird, stupid things that can occur during gameplay, like whether or not you'll actually pull of a successful fiber wire because you'll feel like you really should've but it didn't happen. sometimes guards really, really let you get away with some shit but other times they'll be completely on you with little warning. i don't want to make it seem like this is always the case, and you do generally have a good feeling of whether you're blending in or not, but weird things can happen.

the upgrade system kind of sucks, too. general weapon variety is already a bit samey--i ended up just exclusively using the silverballer and w4000 sniper this run because i wasn't looking to get into big fights and that made the rest useless. the upgrades are basically a two way straight where you're either making your weapons super effective silently or super effective loud and disastrous, so it could've been nice to have a bit more flavor and variety there. you also are able to earn the real good stuff... real early. and it doesn't feel like you really worked up to them yet. also there's a hideout/gunrange and i'm not really sure why anyone would go to it

but there's a reason why i keep coming back to hitman blood money, and small clunkiness nor boring upgrades is going to stop me from revisiting the same locales and targets with different ideas and approaches every time. also, the reason i really come back is the killer ending, which, despite closing off kind of a dry story, ends up being crazy satisfying somehow. you'll just have to play it to understand how that's possible.

over a decade later and portal still endures as the single best example of a perfect game--not flawless, but perfect. a short length complements a novel concept, and rich ambience and dialogue elevates an arcadey game concept into artistry. not flawless in that bugs happen, in that the beginning is filled with a lot of waiting around, in that valve has attempted to murder their own mood by placing radios in every room, but portal regardless is larger than its weaknesses.

it's been so long that i can't really gush about the actual portal gameplay or the thick, sterile atmosphere because i gushed about 'em ten years ago, but there's other details i really enjoy this time around. i like that there's several puzzles with multiple solutions. i like that waiting around in certain rooms begets more interesting glados lines. i like the mechanical whirr all the cameras make as they reorient themselves and the dark ambient music creeping out of the background. what i like most is the game handing you a very normal cube with only a decal's difference and putting you in situations where it protects or aids you to get you attached to a box.

it's a shame the whole cake bit really went through the wash. chalk it up to an easily accessible and captivatingly memorable experience, i guess.