Look I'd love to just write "we have Modern Warfare at home" and end it there, but no, Medal of Honor 2010 is waayyy worse.

Good things first: The score is actually great and I wish it was part of a better game. Same applies to the Linkin Park song used during the credits (what's up with Linkin Park being everywhere during the late 00s?). There's a single mission I enjoyed, and I guess the gunplay is occasionally serviceable, at least when it's not ruined by the weird mouse input.

Everything else is just varying degrees of awful. Unlike the long dead multi-player part, the campaign runs on Unreal Engine 3 and looks exactly like you'd expect a generic military fps in this engine to look: incredibly ugly, almost as ugly as the ui. The game's story is similarly generic and an incoherent mess filled with stereotypical characters.

As if all of that wasn't bad enough, the game is also very buggy. I'm not talking about the occasional animation bug or flickering texture, no, this game will force you to replay entire mission! Occasionally, your teammates will get stuck on level props and not move any further. Doesn't sound that bad when you consider how stupid their ai is, but once you reach the next scripted event, the game will not proceed since one of the NPCs needed to trigger the script is missing - you're stuck.

In a case like that, even loading a checkpoint won't work, since a lot of the time the NPC got stuck before the checkpoint save was created and will still be stuck upon reloading, somewhere in a now inaccessible part of the level. Just imagine having to constantly keep track of all the soldiers running around in Call of Duty, or Elizabeth in Bioshock, just in case they get stuck... I had to replay not one, but TWO missions because of this bug! Including the final fucking mission of the game in its entirety, since the script that didn't trigger was what was keeping me from the final cinematic and the end of the game!

It gets worse: the game's story has aged incredibly awful. This is a game that portrays the fucking War in Afghanistan as a noble cause fought by heroic US troops that they'd surely win, if it wasn't for those evil bureaucrats in Washington. The game has the audacity to make you conquer Bagram airbase during a mission, a place that would later be used as a prison, with the Red Cross reporting multiple human rights violations, including inmates being tortured. The devs couldn't have known how the overall situation in Afghanistan would ultimately develop, but the Bagram prison torture had already been reported on for years when the game came out in 2010. Reactions at the time of release were more focused on the fact that the multi-player let players play AS THE FUCKING TALIBAN, which I still cannot believe is something that made it into a commercially released game.

This game is a buggy, incoherent mess, dragged down even further by its absolutely tone deaf political messaging. Unless you want to see how bad it is for yourself, or you're looking into it for research purposes, I genuinely don't see a reason for anyone to play this.

Hades is a fantastic game, don't get me wrong. However, finishing it before the Hades 2 release (or at least playing up to the ending credits), I also saw some of the flaws in it.

While there is a wide variety of viable builds, some are just more efficient than others. Once I had finished a few runs and got closer to the ending, I found myself having to choose between established builds that work well but get boring over time, or more experimental builds that could potentially cost me the run in the last third. I found it hard to "trust the process" since some boons are just way too useful not to use all the time.

Again, this is a very specific criticism, and one I didn't have early one. The game's story progression does a wonderful job at always giving you new dialogue to listen to, even when you fail a run. In fact, the voice acting and story are simply incredible, even outside the context of the game's progression.

I also love the overall approach to Greek mythology and the colorful artstyle. Both Hades and the new God of War games have similar, often quite serious themes, but I enjoy how Hades still manages to embrace some of the more lighthearted aspects of the mythology.

Overall, Hades is an easy recommendation for anyone even remotely interested in roguelikes, action games, Greek myths, and/or bisexuality.

Fallout 1's age is hard to overlook. I couldn't even start the game at first and then once I got the game running in compatibility mode, selecting my monitor resolution would instantly crash the game. I won't blame the original devs for this, but I will criticize the now Microsoft owned Bethesda for marketing and selling a game in this state.

Luckily, there exists a mod that ports the entirety of Fallout 1 into 2, which I used for my playthrough. It includes a number of quality of life features, like having more than 10 save slots and easier inventory management. The ui is still not very intuitive and also fairly clunky, but you can get used to it, even though some elements must've already been confusing in 1997.

Fallout 1 shines when exploring the world. Everything feels cohesive, there's simply a great sense of place and realism. The wasteland feels brutal and the game mechanics emphasize that, although it certainly takes some getting used to. While the Bethesda games are always build so that a player going into the exact opposite direction of the main quest will stumble upon something interesting, players venturing into the wrong direction at the start of Fallout 1 will most likely be instakilled by a random encounter with super mutants.

Even later on and equipped with better gear, a single critical hit can instantly kill the player character. It's annoying, sure, but it also makes the world believable. The lack of quest direction works similarly: it's confusing when compared to later games, but then again, why would anyone know where to find a working water chip in a radioactive desert? The only time I was actually disappointed by the game's logic was when I encountered a second time limit, which unlike the earlier water chip deadline was hidden from the player.

While I did immensely enjoy the writing, characters, story, and possible quest outcomes, I found the combat pretty boring. It's turn based, but positioning is pretty much irrelevant since everyone uses ranged weapons anyway and there's no cover. All players can do is shoot at enemies and occasionally reload or use a stim pack. Other turn based RPGs offer deep mechanics and choices while Fallout 1's combat only made me wish for a speed up option.

All in all, playing through Fallout 1 was still a worthwhile experience. I don't think that I'll ever play it again, but getting to play it myself and finally see where the whole franchise started was great. Hopefully Bethesda will eventually release a version with better compatibility with modern systems, so others can experience the game without having to install mandatory mods.