Everything I say here is also applicable to the original 2004 Monster Hunter PS2 game.

This game is the Dark Souls of hunting monsters. What? Are you expecting some kind of joke or meme? I'm being pretty serious. Monster Hunter has had many faces over the years, but most people will remember the deeply saturated, light-hearted trend that came with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and continued trough all Gen 4 (Which are usually the most played "old school" MH games) until Gen 5 that went for a more realistic apporach. But before that monster hunter games were more grim and opaque. Specially the Gen 1 ones, while all of Gen 2 and Monster Hunter Tri were still dark they tried to ease things up and those games are more "standard" MH games.

But Gen 1 is kinda wild, a lot of Gen 1 monsters like Cephadrome, Plesioth and Khezu are terrifying, most maps are eerie and creepy. It's true that even in Monster Hunter 1 you still had walking cats that cooked for you but there aren't many more things like that in that game. And speaking of cats, you didn't even have a palico with you during hunts, you were totally alone unless playing online.

Where I'm trying to get is that Monster Hunter 1, Monster Hunter G and Monster Hunter Freedom are games that make you small. You are just a little guy with a toy weapon that is trying its best to survive. The first gathering missions and the Velocidrome may be easy but the Yian Kut-Ku, the second large monster of the game is already a huge deal. Everything is oppresive, you get little money and you must stop at the farm after every mission to try to get some lost items back.

But that, at least for me, makes it all more appealing. The preparation before every hunt, learning every monster's weakness and patterns and memorizing all the gathering spots of every map makes victory feel all the more amazing.

In conclusion, Gen 1 is a different yet similar experience comapred to other games in the franchise. I don't actually think Monster Hunter Freedom is the Dark Souls of MH games but the similarities are there and Gen 1 Monster Hunter has a lot of similarities of what later Dark Souls would be praised for by most people.

It's a strange feeling when you don't enjoy a game highly regarded as one of the best of its kind. It's even stranger when I played the first one just fine, which is considered inferior to its succesor, and enjoyed it regardless. I thought TimeSplitters 2 would be just more fun shooting time with better graphics, sound, gameplay and imporvements overall.

But I couldn't do it. I gave this game so many oportunities, I forced myself to play it numerous times thinking to myself "Come on, it's short and everyone says it's good, just do it". But as I said I couldn't do it.

But why? Why did I enjoy the first, more archaic TimeSplitters more than the second one? For me at least, comes to the Goldeneye style aiming system which was the same for the first TS too so you must be thinking that I'm going insane. But the truth is that in the first game guns were more spammy, with higher rates of fire so aiming wasn't such a problem. Also TS 1 was simpler, you usually just ran to the end of a level and ran back to the beggining. TS 2 is similar in concept but there are more objectives to do, both main and secondary and little explaining on what to do most of the time. And finally, the worst for me, the quantity of enemies which I think in TS 2 is exagerated to the point that it's barely managable. Basically the awful aiming, slow weapons and overwhelming number of enemies made me want to quit.

You could say that all that whining like a baby was due to severe lack of hands, and I would agree but in the end video games are art, and art is subjective. You may like TS 2, and even I like TS 2, its charming aesthetics make me smile. But most important, video games are for having fun, and I wasn't having fun at all so I stopped playing.