No amount of spoilers could really prepare me for how brilliant this campaign is. Way shorter than I expected (finished in under five hours) but every mission felt like a perfectly crafted fps level, and the gimmicks worked for me every single time. Would love to see Respawn really get the chance to build out a 10-15 hour campaign with the same bold level design that's present here. And even though the plot beats are really generic (bad guys have superweapon, go blow up superweapon) the world building and conflict going on the background is a really compelling anti-imperialist struggle. Again, would love to see more of that!

I think this is probably my ninth or tenth full replay of Dishonored? I've been doing one a year around November/December every year since it came out, first on Xbox 360 and this year for the first time on PC. Hit me last night I had basically memorized the entirety of the Golden Cat mission (both routes) and knocked it out extremely quickly. It ends up feeling kind of quaint now (both because of knowing it in and out and because of improvements made in Dishonored 2) but still has a really special place in my heart as the first immersive sim I ever got super into. And it still just feels incredible to play, the sandboxes are limited by the hardware at the time but are really fun to move around in. Doubt this game will ever get old for me.

Really wish I could have actually gotten into this game but I played the campaign and a couple hours of multiplayer and just never clicked with it. Partially my fault because I'm really bad at flight sims! But also partially the devs fault because the campaign is honestly pretty boring--level design is just "destroy x enemy fighters, blow up bigger target, rinse and repeat" and the writing isn't great. I do love that this game exists though, I think weirder Star Wars games is the right way to go and even if I'm bad at it I cannot deny how cool it feels to pilot an X-Wing. When everything lines up I did have really great moments with this thing and I bet people more into flight sims than I am probably really dig it. Classic case of "really cool, wish I was into, but ultimately not for me."

In a lot of wats Life is Strange 2 is an improvement over the original game. The writing clearly matured a lot, and is way more confident in its social commentary. Still, it didn't hit for me as hard as the original did--definitely a time/place thing (I was in the middle of experiencing something very similar to Max when the game came out). LiS 2 is still really emotionally resonant, all the big character beats work and it sticks the landing brilliantly. Also somehow makes its time skips really work, which is often a tough line to walk. Like when I finished the original LiS it made me really look forward to the studio's next project and like LiS 2 I'm taking my sweet time getting around to Tell Me Why!

Uniquely disappointing because it shows moments of brilliance (last half of episode one, Tempest sequence in episode two) but doesn't make them the focus of the game!!! Honestly would have been preferable if the plot had just been Chloe and Rachel falling in love, because those are the best parts and the only times it feels like the writers actually have a handle on the characters and why they're compelling. The rest of the game just feels like background noise and it doesn't even have decent puzzles like the first game to break it up.

Currently doing a long awaited co-op replay of the game with my best friend from high school on PC, and so far most of what I remember liking about it holds up really well. The writing is painfully 2009 dude-bro dogshit but it's the only Halo game to have such an amazing sense of atmosphere, and the music is easily the best in the franchise. Genuinely justifies itself as a spinoff because it doesn't just play like the mainline Master Chief games--if anything I wish they'd taken some of the stealth/open world ideas present here a little bit further, either in this game or a future one. Unfortunately it was just never meant to be and ODST remains the weirdest and most experimental the Halo franchise ever got and it's better for it.

For as solid as the campaign is, it's still disappointing to me as a follow up to ODST. Which maybe comes off as more negative than I mean it to be, because I do think Reach is one of the better games in the franchise. By far my favorite multiplayer--really strong maps and even now the armor abilities are a good compromise between traditional Halo gameplay and Reach's military shooter contemporaries. And despite what I said the campaign is still really fun to play and definitely has one of the better narratives in the series. Bungie was really firing on all cylinders by the end of their time on Halo and it shows with Reach and ODST.

I remember being super stoked for this game when it came out, got it the day it came out but wasn't allowed to play video games on school nights and had to wait until the weekend to start it. Genuinely one of the most painful things 15 year old me had experienced! One of my best high school memories is still having my friends over that weekend and passing the controller around as we played through the campaign, and even though the years in between have tarnished my opinion of the game I'll always have that. And I genuinely do think the part where you actually play the campaign is pretty good! The narrative choices are bad and the multiplayer is a big letdown but it was a solid first outing for 343 when it comes to level design and iterating on a classic franchise while still making it feel like Halo.