One of the sadder things I’ve realised recently is that the original Fallout may not be as influential as much as it’s made it out to be, at least when it comes down to its mechanics. But I’m no real historian, and it may very well have changed the world of RPGs forever. Still, I don’t think it really matters because at the end of the day this is still a damn good game.

Four years ago I played this game for the first time and finished it in one sitting, and recently I ventured out to the wasteland once again. Shining blue spandex, bright hot sun, searching for a water chip; it all feels too familiar. Ah, that control scheme…it feels clunky but once you get the hang of its fits this game like a glove. Fast and snappy, perfect for that retro-future aesthetic. Still, I can’t deny I’ve ever particularly liked how this game’s combat is. Nothing horribly wrong with it, but often times it feels too static, like I’m playing a board game with a computer that’s determined to kill me. Probably what they were going for too.

Stopped by Shady Sands, and gave birth to a nation there. Went to Vault 15, and I saw ruins. Ran into the Khans, and slaughtered them all. Headed to Necropolis to give the mutants dirt naps, and saved my vault. Strolled into Junktown for the casino and killed the owner; I left as quietly as I came. Stopped by The Hub for the water, and stayed to help uncover the disgusting truth behind both the missing caravans and those delicious Iguana Bits. Ran into The Brotherhood of Steel; they told me to fuck off. I saved Los Angeles for last, and it was as much a shithole as I had expected.

After you get the water chip, the last half is really unsettling. You feel that there’s an imminent evil heading into this world as you encounter these monsters more and more. As you spend hours upon hours searching for a man you assume to be the devil himself, you grow accustomed to the hell that is this world. Despite being coddled at birth, you make this wasteland yours. And by the time meet the creator of this madness, it really just does feel like a Wednesday in this irradiated world. This game is absurdly funny, not only with its writing and critiques of American culture but right down to the game design itself with the funniest bit being that the thing you spent the last half searching for is just straight left. Haha, all that work for something so simple.

I hated the Overseer four years ago. Really thought of him as nothing more than an ungrateful speck of a man. But today, as I blew up that evil lair and saw everything that my actions wrought and how I changed this world forever, I stood in front of that cold metal door wearing dark green combat armor and a rocket launcher in hand. There, I saw myself. I saw a man in shining blue spandex walking up to someone he just doesn’t recognize anymore. He is confused now as I was in the beginning, he just doesn’t understand and I now realize where he’s coming from. I could hear the fear in his voice, fear of this horrible world that just sucks.


What if we ARE the only safe place in the world? You just gave us back all these lives…I can’t take the chance of losing them.

I’m sorry. You’re a hero…and you have to leave.


You walk alone. Into this heartless, cruel, unforgiving world. Shining blue spandex, bright hot sun, searching for a purpose. You found it one day, but long after your death, another evil arose. Don’t worry, another hero just like you saved us again.

The trouble with calling something “ahead of its time” is that it implies whatever made that something so special has become standard since its release. It’s easy to describe Fallout like that, or to say it’s “impressive for 1997” as if standards only ever improve over time, until you look around and realise how few RPGs since Fallout have even attempted to replicate what makes it such an excellent game, including its own sequels. Had they, it’s doubtful that Fallout would be subject to as many hyperbolic horror stories as it is today.

Among the most infamous and exaggerated of these is the time limit of Fallout’s main quest, which isn’t just arguably more generous than it should be even if you don’t choose to extend it, but also disappears halfway through anyhow. That makes it sound like a non-factor, but it’s an essential part of what makes Fallout a step above. No matter how generous it might be, the fact that it’s there at all creates a kind of congruence between player and protagonist that isn’t there in any other Fallout game, or many RPGs in general. Everything you do in Fallout is coloured by the underlying sense of urgency that it’s game over, literally and figuratively, if you spend too much time gallivanting about the wastes instead of on your core responsibility. The plights of Arroyo, Liam Neeson and Hoover Dam can wait until the Chosen One, Lone Wanderer and Courier feel like doing something about it, but unlike them, the world doesn’t revolve around the Vault Dweller. It probably doesn’t need to be said how much more synergistic this is with Fallout’s harsh setting than any its follow-ups, or how relieving it is when you finally get your hands on that water chip.

What this is indicative of is Fallout’s larger design philosophy – it isn’t afraid to let you make mistakes. Yes, you’re going to have a particularly hard time if you don’t dump points into your Agility, but why shouldn’t you? It makes sense that someone who isn’t quick on their feet shouldn’t be able to easily get by in such a hellish place. You feel the consequences of neglecting a particular S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat more palpably here than in any other Fallout bar 2, most famously with how low Intelligence makes every single conversation in the game more strained (to say the least).

This design extends beyond character building, too. Fallout trusts players to figure out for themselves which dialogue options are affected by a high speech skill, instead of highlighting them for you as all of the 3D games do. Choose your words poorly upon meeting someone for the first time and their opinion of you can be permanently dampened for the rest of the game, signalled to you organically with a change in their facial expression, potentially locking you out of quests or causing others in the locale to distrust you. If things go really south, no punches are pulled in terms of everybody being expendable – you can go as far as to kill children, and making a good first impression with even evil characters becomes an uphill battle if you do.

In general, I don’t think killing things in Fallout is anywhere near as much of a drag as it’s often made out to be either. Weighing up how much AP to spend on either moving to get to a more advantageous position and reduce the amount of actions enemies can potentially take, or on attacking them definitely gets the gears in your head turning to some extent. Damage sound effects in this series never sounded anywhere near as satisfying after ditching the thumps and thwacks of this and Fallout 2, which make for some nice feedback on attacks when taken in tandem with the wonderfully gory sprite work. Being able to destroy or pry open doors enables ways for you to creatively manoeuvre through combat encounters and lets you progress quests in ways that you can’t in later titles, plus the amount of different hit reactions for each part of each enemy’s body is also pretty novel. You won’t be making any Combo MADs out of this, but if you don’t get even a hint of enjoyment out of seeing somebody gently slide across half of Los Angeles after they’ve been smacked with a sledgehammer, I probably don’t trust you.

What I do trust is Fallout’s ability to engross me in its world every single time I play it. Listen to how haunting this is, and then be aware that every other track in the game is at least on par with it. The ambient clicking and clacking of now ancient wartime equipment, the cosy boxed-in presentation of the HUD and its descriptive flavour text in its bottom left, the freaky architecture with all its giant heads... they all combine to sell the feeling of really being there, rivalling the best of any other game that predicates itself on immersion. When you encounter a voiced character and the music cuts you know you’re in for a proper event, bolstered by across the board stellar performances from tons of classic 90s voice actors that utterly command your attention. Meeting the Master and hearing him jolt his way through his iconic monologue about the Unity is like one long lesson in why he ended up defining the guy-with-good-intentions-does-the-wrong-thing-for-the-right-reasons-and-also-you-can-talk-him-to-death archetype. No Fallout antagonist has come close ever since (as cool as Frank Horrigan might be), be it in terms of motivations, the lengths you have to go to convince him that he’s in the wrong, anything.

Fallout is a remarkably pure translation of vision to game, and as another comment on here points out, it’s simply not given its dues as often as it ought to be. Even with this proverbial Vault of text, I still haven’t touched on everything it does well – for one thing, I can’t believe the Tell Me About feature didn’t become standard in every RPG made after this game’s release – but I hope this does it some justice all the same. Do give it a chance at some point if you haven’t already, and don’t be put off by any claims of “jank” or “clunk” or whatever other nebulous jargon you could just as easily apply to any of its much more recent successors. I first played Fallout well over a decade after it came out after being introduced to the series with 3, and even as a kid, I never found myself wishing it was more like the modern RPGs I was accustomed to. Quite the opposite.

I wanted to cap this off with a twist on “you’re a hero and you have to leave,” Fallout being the hero, but my Int is too low to make it sound clever. In the interest of avoiding a critical miss, I present a rare but thematically appropriate Todd. Will trade for either 20 caps or an iguana on a stick.

“So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen”
~M.C. Escher

Mobile gamers are always looked down upon as the most pathetic gamers. They’re usually classed as fake gamers, usually playing Fortnite or plants vs zombies. Mobile gaming has always been looked down upon and yet console and pc gaming is held up in such a high regard. Of course this actually makes quite a lot of sense if you really think about it, mobile gaming as a whole has always been filled with terrible and poorly designed pieces of trash, but what hasn’t? Console gaming has definitely had its fair share of shovelware but yet unlike mobile, it never clouds some really special games. One of these special games that is usually clouded a lot is monument valley.

Monument valley begins with you controlling the character Ida as she goes on a quest to return the geometry she stole. She has to go through ‘monument valley’ a land that looks like something straight out of a M. C. Escher painting which only makes it even more intriguing. This leads me onto the gameplay of the game which you can probably guess:

It’s a puzzle game! Because everyone just loves a puzzle game on their mobile phone. But what makes this one so special? Well just like an Escher painting, the game allows you to almost interact with it and find a way to get Ida from one spot to the next, and make sure to get to the end. Simple right? The beautiful backgrounds are also what make this game in every single level they mix it up and this is only reinforced in the sequel. Yes they gave this game a sequel and I couldn’t be happier. The music is also super ambient and peaceful, almost putting you in that puzzle mood.

Finally, after returning every geometry, Ida returns to her true form and everything is restored. The ending isn’t the most exciting but it isn’t meant to be. It’s still absolutely beautiful and the game wants you to know that.

Honestly, I hold this game really close to my heart for many reasons. It’s one of the only games our family have truly bonded over, this and its sequel will always have great memories because of that and I’ll treasure the games forever. This might not be a masterpiece, but it’s certainly a hidden gem that should be given a lot more respect than it gets. So I push you to try this, I really do. Because you might just find one of the best puzzle games in the palm of your hand.

Beautiful ambience, great puzzles, poetic story, eye candy, shapes

Monument Valley contextualizes the impossible. It creates these headache-inducing optical illusions, and asks you to navigate them as if it were merely a street. It asks you to traverse something so fundamentally impossible, so intangible, unthinkable, and then it makes a sport out of it.

Monument Valley should feel like it's bending my mind, but it doesn't. It doesn't fabricate anything, instead it builds physical, real, tactile environments through mechanical interactions in ways only a video game can.

Very excited to return to this one in the future!!

Its 2013. My brother's Xbox 360 churns quietly. The disc spins at a comfortable pace. I know the door blocks out the noise, but I still put pillow along the bottom of the door. Blocking out any sound and light from escaping into the hall. Mom will leave her room at 10 pm or so to fall asleep watching tv, and the risk of her recognizing that I'm up past my bedtime is too high.

I smuggled a used copy of the Hitman collection from the local gaming store into our house, hiding it beneath my shirt as I walk in from a "bike ride." Mom hates gun games, but I've become fixated. I don't care for the bald man much, but I keep thinking about the puzzles I've seen on youtube. All the creative ways to eliminate your opponent.

I don't make it far into Hitman 2. I get impatient with the slow walking speed and get caught hundreds of times by indulging in the run button. The limited saves become agonizing, but I'm determined to earn the silent assassination rating. I complete all the St. Petersburg maps and two of the Japan maps. Its a nerve-wracking exercise and once I start marching towards a Japan castle with some not great racial depictions, I bail. I move onto Hitman Contracts.

But that's for a different review. Repeating all those patterns, tracking all those guard movements, late into the night? It sticks with you. I was stunned by how many rooms I instantly recognized. The snowy streets of Petersburg, the back of a transport truck, the estate. The feeling of little clockwork pieces moving on their routes around you.

For revisiting this, I wasn't interested in a challenge. I wanted to explore those memories. As such, almost the entire game was played with invisibility cheats onward.

What a strange experience it is, to wander through those little sandboxes without instantly getting shot by aggressive guards. If I'm in a hurry, I can rush past puzzles and aim directly for the map's targets. But its cozier to drift along the map at my own pace. Observe these little clockwork pieces arriving at their destination. Read signs at the Russia bus station. Wondering who had to design the computer screens and the graffiti art and all the tiles and models and everything outside and in-between.

The sense of humor that will carry the franchise forward builds on itself quickly. Assassinate a playboy in his jacuzzi and the five different bikini girls he's surrounded by pull out machine guns. Arrive in the location of your final target and he's left a plastic standee waiting for you. Most of the jokes lean into "foreigners, am I right?" but its a 00s-ism you kind of have to force yourself to swallow. There's something here. Something to build from. Something special

And there's just a beautiful feeling about perusing through these digital worlds and enjoying the craft of it without the stress of dodging bullets. Its clunky and fairly racist, but you can feel the experimental heart starting to form beneath the surface. Hitman is starting to become Hitman. And its a beautiful process to see.

When Warner Bros invested in IO Interactive in 2018, it was nothing short of a miracle. The episodic format of Hitman 2016, enforced by Square Enix, hurt game sales. IOI was on the verge of shutting down and numerous staff were let go. With the WB investment, the studio was saved. The success of Hitman 2 allowed IO to keep operating. When Warner cut ties in the following years, the studio was stable enough that they could release Hitman 3 on their own and collect the full profits. If it weren’t for those business deals, the huge scope of the Hitman trilogy would have sunk the IO ship.

When producing Hitman: Contracts for Eidos, the staff realized that the scope of their game couldn’t possibly meet their Eidos deadlines. So, they arranged a compromise. Contracts would be sort of a Hitman 2.5, remaking levels from Codename 47 into the new Hitman formula. This meant that part of the studio could be dedicated to reshape the direction of Contracts, while preparing for the next big entry.

Its hard to imagine any studio that has the ability to do… anything like that anymore. Game development has gotten so big and so ambitious, there’s no way to shift gears like that anymore. You have to stick with what you’ve made, it’s too expensive to change things up. The burden of smaller games on indies, all competing with each other to feed their own teams. I’m not saying I miss the good ol’ days of the 00s, god no. But ambition can be dangerous when its not tempered. Contracts could only be released in this specific era, when sequels were easier to make and every game wasn’t a complete company effort that could sink everyone if it didn’t go well. When media was allowed to grow an audience over time. Build a quiet little fanbase through word of mouth. Not sure how to get back to that.

In retrospect, Hitman 2 SA’s major flaw was level design. When I maneuvered through levels in invisible mode, I knew I was choosing not to engage with the game properly. But I was content to drift on through because it was more about capturing an atmosphere than anything else. Sometimes that’s what I need from my gaming vibes.

Instantly, Hitman Contracts doesn’t require me to go invisible to achieve my main goal. Vibes are immediate. Vibes are all-consuming. We’re swimming in delicious, delicious vibes.

Contracts begins in media res, with 47 recovering from a bloodshot wound in a hit gone wrong. He drifts in and out of consciousness, struggling to form coherent thoughts. The only thing 47 has to keep him company is memories. The world around him shifts and contorts from an empty hotel room into assassin jobs from his past. The door opens and 47 is thrust into the snowy tundra of another Russian hit job. Or some water drips from the ceiling and he remembers the pouring rain of Rotterdam. It’s a beautiful framing device to connect the different levels together. It’s oddly refreshing compared to the more interwoven narrative of modern games. It adds a dream-like quality to the entire game. I almost wish the levels placed an anachronistic hotel room in each level, just to add another dash of the surreal.

Accompanying the dream-like narrative is the visual design. Most of the levels are centered in the darkness of night. Neon signs wash over the streets, letting these bright colors reflect off 47’s bald cranium, lighting up the darkness. While Silent Assassin could be sparse and empty, there’s delightful detail in all the corners of the maps. I’m more inclined to explore all the different rooms. There’s so much care built into the world. Subtle details that add so much character. In the British manor, two guards appear to be watching porn together, sitting stoically in their chairs. In the seedy strip club, many of the bikers ignore the various sexual shenanigans around them to focus on the ongoing soccer match. It might not even be an intentional distinction, but that nuance is so especially funny a comparison to write for your levels. The whole game is grimy and gritty in such a satisfying fashion. When the game lets the light in, it’s always used to provide a new striking image. Drown a target in his shimmering pool or escape the white void of the experimental facility. The darkness might wear thin for some, but it helps set Contracts apart from the pack. Silent Assassin is a spy thriller. Blood Money is a stylish cel-shaded adventure. The modern games, Absolution included, delight in clashing its realistic design with its cartoonish undercurrent. Contracts is a neo-noir dreamscape and its all the better for it.

Building on all of that is just how much more refined the gameplay is. Even with the game’s overhaul, you can really tell how the team understood what did and didn’t work about Hitman 2 and how to move forward. Running doesn’t alert guards as frequently. Knocking out guards and stealing disguises is quicker and easier than before. And the variety of murder is so well-considered. Smuggle a gun in a target’s chicken order. Sneak upstairs and smother with a pillow, while he son dies via poison whiskey. There’s variety, there’s puzzle work, there’s challenge, there’s fun. It’s a delightful package.

In my youth, I skipped past this game very quickly to move onto Blood Money. I’m glad I returned to it with new eyes. Silent Assassin may be the start of what Hitman could be and Blood Money might be the magnum opus but Contracts? Contracts is something special. Its growing into what the franchise should be, while still distinct as its own thing. An incredible effort from an incredible team.

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.

While the latter games in this series are undeniably more polished experiences, Blood Money still manages to be a memorable time. Maybe it's the jank that makes me love this so much. There's something exhilarating about pushing people, and the melee combat--hilariously broken as it is--only adds to the amusement factor.

That might not seem like high praise, considering one man's trash is another man's treasure and vice versa. But even if you aren't a fan of just how 2006 the whole thing is, the variety on play here will keep you interested long before the credits start rolling. The Hitman series has almost always nailed level variety, and Blood Money is no exception.

But what I really love about this game is that the cheats that are secretly built into it are really, really stupid. If you want a good example of why, here's me beating the game in less than twenty minutes using nothing but cheats, and here's me doing the same thing but with slightly more attitude attached. This is more or less an excuse for me to shamelessly plug some of my "work," but even if you aren't trying to break the game in record times, it almost creates this sandbox within the already established sandbox. A couple of the cheats are broken: if you're playing past the 1.0 release, don't use Give All. Using it more than once causes your game to crash. And if you decide to use a weapon that's not in the level you're playing, you're probably going to crash, anyway. The timemultiplier cheat is funny because it breaks all of the animations, but it requires a key spammer if you're going to use it past a certain speed. Other than that, it's a bizarrely enjoyable experience for those of us who still think that cheating in games is the funniest thing.