First off.
Something I've learned from years of consuming game reviews and journalism is that the website rarely matters when it comes to the quality of the writing or critical opinion of a game review, instead it’s the writer that matters the most.
A lot of people like to make fun of reviews or compare reviews of old to newer stuff or compare the scores of 2 games that both released on the same day and point at how baffling it is that Call of war 47 got a 9 while Long Yell 8 got a 7 and a half, while totally ignoring everything else surrounding the context of the review in question.
They will use this as reasoning for why Reviews don’t matter or why outlets like IGN stink or that they should just disappear, and i don’t agree with that at all.
I believe writing about video games is extremely important, Reviews, Interviews, Opinion pieces, all of that is extremely important and I think contributes to healthy conversation in the video game sphere.
In recent years the public has instead embraced Youtube and online streamers/content creators to instead get there news and reviews about video games, and while even i prefer youtube video content I feel that’s just largely because the quality of the websites I really enjoyed got worse over time.with more intrusive ads writers that i enjoy’d reading moving on either to other sites or industries altogether.
So its 2026 and i ask myself the question of what it is i want to do, do i want to try and chase the Content Creator/Youtuber train? Sorta, but i hated the label of being a “Content Creator” i don’t want to create content for the sake of content.
I want to talk about video games though, writing is a really efficient form of talking about video games, do i want to be a games journalist? Sorta yes? But i dont like that label either and in the online sphere of talking about games the label “Games Journalist” is meme’d to hell and back.
So okay what do i do then? The answer i found for myself is that i take what i love about both Youtube content and Written games media content and fuse it together into the content i want to create for this blog, we loop back to what i said earlier “It’s the writer that matters the most”
The thing that makes Youtube reviews and content work so well is that once you find that youtuber you click with you 100% trust their reviews of games more than anything, and more importantly if they say something about a game that makes you go “wait a second this sounds good to me not bad?” then your learning how that youtubers taste in games equates to your own and thus you're able to make a more informed decision about whether or not you are interested in that given game.
This is something that’s a lot harder to take note of if you just consume written game reviews from branded websites like IGN or game informer, instead of the conversation being “oh BiscuitLord117 said he liked X game and gave it a 9/10 i like his reviews i think i will like this game” the conversation is “wow IGN gave Fantasy Realm XII a 6.5/10 IGN is lame they are wrong im gonna buy it anyway”
The culture and industry is just unfortunately built and established in such a way that unless a review is outright plagiarized from someone else no one really cares about who writes what article on a given website in a broader sense sure there's people like me that take note of who reviews what but maybe just due to how i grew up i feel like im the only one that does lol
Now i don’t think i can change anything about any of this, however what i can do is start this blog and write as many game reviews and game industry opinion pieces and random game idea articles as i can here and try as hard as i can to share it however i can, whether thats social media or my twitch streams to do what little bit i can to put out more positive conversational content about video games :)
So Hello, friendly reader my name is Hawkie!
i am a lifelong gamer that just loves to yap about video games.
I do stream on Twitch with a Vtuber model i’ve designed myself as i also am an artist, some people (my parents) might also call me a musician as i play a little bit of the guitar and drums.
However I wouldn't call myself any of those labels, I don't think I am a streamer, I don't think I am an artist they are things I do but they don’t define who I am.
Something i’ve always wanted to be though is a game reviewer, a games “Journalist” if you will it was always my dream job growing up and reading game informer magazines in the back of the car while my dad picked my mom up from work.
However as a homeschooled child that had this extremely niche interest I just never knew how to pursue it? Then comes along youtube but i lacked the hardware to even truely dabble with youtube until mid 2017 but then Twitch was blowing up so i focused more on streaming while attempting to do literally anything with Youtube and while i have put out a couple videos i just always felt really burnt out after finishing a project.
I don’t know if Youtube works for me, at least not as someone that is stuck doing everything myself due to not having the income to hire an editor or anything.
Which leads me here to the blog, to Hawkie’s Game Logs. I want to create written video game content that I would have wanted to read or enjoyed reading on websites like Game informer or Kotaku back in what I felt was the golden years of content on those websites.
So why does this need a long winded introduction? Because this is going to be a mildly filtered peek into my mind, I want all of my articles and written content to carry my personality into them, i think knowing the person behind the words is EXTREMELY important, especially when it comes to video game reviews.
Again it's the writer that matters most, 100 places could review a real time strategy game and give it a 6 or 7 but someone that breathes RTS games? They might find it a 10/10 GOTY, someone with thousands of hours into a genre will have a wildly different take on a game then someone with 10 hours.
A fan of a franchise will either be way more harsh or way more friendly towards a game that’s a part of their favorite franchise, which is why when i do write review content i want to have a section where i talk about my history with a game’s genre or franchise i want to include as much context as possible that influences how i feel about a game, hopefully without making it a slog to read or entirely going off the rails on some secondary background story that doesn’t matter.
So I hope that this introduction paints at least an introductory image of who I am and the things I like and what I think and how I feel about video games and the industry it’s spawned.
Because I love this shit, I love it so much that even if I have 1 or 5 consistent readers on this tiny sliver of the internet I will be happy!
Also i don’t know how evident this is but i don’t think im a good writer in the slightest, i don’t have a concept of how to write “properly”, i’ve never written papers for school my grammar might be awful so kindly overlook issues as i hopefully hone this craft over time.
Now then intro done what's next?:
My favorite games, this is gonna be a top 5 of sorts. This is by no means gonna be a definitive list of my favorite games of all time nor will they be in any specific order, but more so a look at my favorite games across a range of Genre’s.
With each game i will try to explain why i like it and what makes it so special to me and try to touch on how i like that game’s specific genre at the end I'll talk about some game genre’s I'm more lukewarm on or not very well versed in but honestly it’s only like 2 game genre’s which i will spoil right now!
I don’t like Real time Strategy or Puzzle games a ton, i don't know I bounce hard off RTS. I can't explain it and Puzzle games are extremely hit or miss, i love Tetris but I bounce off of the Witness after playing for like an hour.
Onto the list! first up we have...
1) The World Ends With You (Franchise) (Action JRPG)
Okay i lied The World Ends With You(TWEWY) series might be my favorite JRPG’s of all time, i saw TWEWY 1 had gotten a good review in game informer so i kinda just got it on a whim and i still remember booting it up for the first time and hearing that simple piano and weird electronic scratchy sounding main menu theme.
The games art style left an immediate impact, the character designs so stylish, it was all so distinctive you knew exactly what game you were looking at the second you saw an image from it i was 11 at the time i played it and that game and i don’t think i’ve ever had a more magical experience then i had starting TWEWY 1.
TWEWY 1’s gameplay might be one of the best unique gimmicky combat systems on the Nintendo DS, it was a pain in the ass to get used to, but immensely fun controlling the main character Neku on the bottom screen with touch commands and then hurriedly trying to input fighting game esque combos on the top screen to control the partner character
Neo TWEWY the second and of the time of writing might be the only other game we will ever get in this franchise I feel is the most criminally underrated JRPG of the past decade.
And i say this as a massive Trails of../Kiseki series fan.
Neo TWEWY managed to twist the concept of the first games combat of controlling both characters or a whole party if you will at once and chaining attacks between characters together, by making it so you literally controlled everyone at once.
Each character had a unique attack assigned to them, and depending on the most recent button you pressed or had held that character would be the one you controlled with movement while the others tried to stick near the lead character.
It sounds insane written out but when you play it it immediately makes sense and chaining attacks to build up your special gauge to unleash super strong attacks in quick zippy combat encounters never really got old throughout the game's runtime.
Especially since you were constantly switching up your attacks and levelling new moves every few fights.
I can’t say whether or not both games had a “Good” story, but i can tell you that i loved both games stories and the first game means a lot to me, growing up as an emotionally closed off homeschooled kid with no friends i quickly attached myself to the first game’s edgy protagonist Neku Sakuraba, a character that hated the world and those around him i was way too similar, so that games journey(slight spoilers) of Neku opening up to the world around him and making friends hit me really hard, because i saw a lot of myself in the character.
Which probably isn't a good thing but shrug i think I've turned out just fine xD
If any of that catches your interest then please check out NEO The world ends with you’s Demo on Steam/PlayStation/Switch and give the game a try you don’t need to have played the first game to enjoy it, and if you do want to experience the first game it has a Anime adaptation and has a “Final Mix” remaster version on the Nintendo switch though the gameplay is changed to fit and is based on the mobile phone version.
Cant speak for TWEWY1 final mix’s quality as a port but i vouch for both games and if TWEWY 3 ever gets announced you can believe that somewhere i am screaming in joy.
2) Xcom Enemy Unknown (Firaxis games) (Turn based Tactics)
I didn’t think I liked turn-based or strategy games of any kind growing up, I'd tried some but always bounced off until I discovered Xcom Enemy unknown when it got the cover of the February 2012 edition of Game Informer.
As was tradition for me growing up i scanned every page of game informer and i was captivated by the idea of playing this strategy game that i would control a small squad of soldiers in, instead of dealing with large armies i was responsible for this squad of soldiers i customized and named and i was immediately interested just on a whim really so when October came around i pre ordered it on steam and got Civ 5 for free (shoutout to old Steam pre order deals that was a wild time)
I hoped that the game ran on my not super great ‘gaming’ laptop at the time, and it ran! Surprisingly decently so i devoured that game.
I hoped going in i was gonna enjoy the squad based tactics and i was pretty much immediately hooked on the gameplay loop, for those unfamiliar the game starts with you sending a squad of 4 randomly generated soldiers on missions to deal with aliens invading earth.
I’d be really surprised if you’ve not played a single game inspired by XCOM’s mechanics.
So a quick and dirty description is you have 2 action points to move and shoot
or just shoot
or move and throw a grenade
It was the game that popularized having either full cover or half cover visualized by the shield on the cover in the environment when you hovered over it.
And most importantly if a soldier died that was it they were permanently dead you’d have to send a reserve soldier in the next mission.
It was a very simple loop, easy to digest, you slowly research more options for guns and equipment and armor, each upgrade felt meaningful.
There wasn't a lot of micromanagement and to this day is my favorite “Xcom-like” so to speak.
This is one of those genre’s where i LOVE the game but still comparatively to other genre’s is one i feel less qualified to speak on, since playing Xcom i would go on to try and play other Turn based tactic games namely Fire emblem, i also just picked up Final fantasy Tactics recently as well and currently playing that.
And i love those despite the only FE game i’ve finished being Three houses lol.
But yeah i consider Xcom Enemy Unknown even now a top tier experience, Extra shoutout to Xcom 2 a game that i have yet to finish because my first playthrough I made it to the final mission but no matter how i tackled it could not beat it :)
Still love Xcom 2 but im salty xD maybe one day i’ll get back to it and actually win a run.
3) GRID / Race Driver GRID (Racing)
I adore racing games they are one of my favorite comfy genre’s. I enjoy pretty much all types of them from Kart racers to racing sims.
I find the sweet spot of racing games to lie somewhere in between, simulator and arcade usually referred to as “Simcade” racers and i don’t think there’s a better example of simcade racers then Codemasters game releases during the Xbox 360 era my personal favorite being 2007’s GRID.
It’s honestly a pretty close tie between GRID or DiRT for which i enjoyed more but i think GRID edges out slightly over DiRT because i really enjoy the variety of cars ranging from Exotic street cars, Tuners, Touring cars, and open wheel vehicles.
I loved GRID’s take on a racing game career mode had you starting out as a driver for hire letting you choose between a handful of events as you saved up money to start your own race team hiring a teammate and participating in a decent variety of events, my memory of the game is a bit hazy as its been a long time since I've played it but i distinctly remember there being Drift events along with Races.
It also included a 24 hours at Le mans race which is one the most memorable event for me because i remember being really excited to start it and kinda scared because i wondered to myself “Was i really gonna have to race 24 hours?”
However once i started the race it turned out that it was only a 24 minute race but it still featured a dynamic time of day as the race progressed, for the time this game was released in it was extremely impressive. To this day i still call this (lovingly) the 24 minutes of le mans race
The track variety was very good for the time as well being one of the only racing games that I can think of to feature city based fantasy tracks like project gotham racing or NFS, and real world track locations like Le mans
For me there's a real satisfaction when it comes to playing games like this when you are being pushed to the edge of your ability, and the AI is just fast enough to challenge you but it doesn’t feel like they are artificially faster, you turn the corner going into the last lap in second place first is in sight. You just have to do one more lap without smashing face first into the wall, then suddenly first place spins out so you have to quickly avoid slamming into them and being dragged down into last.
There was a specific feel that GRID had for me where i found myself in moments like that more often than not, I remember Codemasters AI wrecking and spinning out, not extremely commonly but enough that it felt exciting and organic in the moment, Racing game AI can be very finicky and not fun to race against if they are too robotic and constantly stick to the racing line.
Codemasters games AI always felt like it had a good mix of organic imperfect racing mixed in there, but its been a good handful of years since i’ve really sank a big amount of time into one of there games. Perhaps thats something i could dig into more later for a standalone article.
That said back in 2022 Codemasters was bought by EA, and as of last year EA has stopped development of their WRC games(formerly DiRT Rally) more or less cancelled GRID after Grid legends underperformed and rebranded the remaining Codemasters studio to a generic EA studio label thus effectively killing the Codemasters Branding and legacy of games, as the remaining studio works on the licensed F1 racing games.
Which makes me really sad, back in the early 2000’s we had such a wide variety of racing games and extreme sports games and as AAA gaming slowly became more expensive with a perceived higher minimum standard for graphics we’ve seen less extreme sports and racing titles due to them never selling the millions required for these large publishers.
Codermasters felt like the last large ish company making racing games that wasn’t Forza or Gran turismo or a super hardcore PC Sim racer title, and with them gone there’s gonna be this GRID/DIRT sized hole in my gamer heart that i hope one day can be filled by the growing indie game scene.
4) Enter the Gungeon (Roguelite/Roguelike)
Roguelite/Roguelikes are an absolute obsession of mine, the concept of a game that is infinitely replayable with a core game loop designed to be played a near infinite amount of times with a near infinite amount of variety endlessly tickles the right part of my brain.
I’ve always considered the best Roguelite to be a game that manages to both be a good wind down game or a game you can sink hours into, something you could play for 30 minutes or 3 hours.
And i think Enter the Gungeon is my personal favorite for being my go to wind down game for years.
The game had a perfect balance of speed and chaos, where there wasn’t much downtime between rooms and the fights could be crazy but not overwhelmingly so.
See One of my dislikes about bullet hell style games is i don’t like being so overwhelmed that i can barely tell what's going on and thus having a hard time actually not getting hit and Gungeons pacing was just the right speed that i never felt too overstimulated with any of its encounters and if i got hit it was just my fault and not the games for overwhelming me too badly.
I also greatly enjoyed gungeons weapon variety, you had some generic weapons like just an AK-47 mixed in with weapons like a pistol that had a active reload system, or a warhammer 40k inspired rifle that fired LARGE bullets, or the pistol from Robocop.
Gungeons Parody humour was one of my favorite aspects of the game and discovering a new gun that i could recognize as being inspired by something else was a joy and the guns themselves set it apart from similar roguelites like the binding of isaac despite isaac technically being a much larger game with more content Gungeon holds a special place in my heart and im eagerly awaiting more info on Enter the Gungeon 2 which is going to have a 3D art style!?
Very excited to see what the team has been cooking with this game.
5) Star fox 64 (3D SHMUP)
I don’t know if you can remember your first experience with a video game, for me i was introduced to them at such a young age that my first video game was either Pilotwings 64 or Star fox 64.
Just between us im 99% sure it was pilotwings but I like to say Star fox 64 was my first video game as it’s also been my favorite for the longest time.
I return to star fox 64 to play through it once every so often and it’s never gotten old for me, it’s so bizarre because i don’t ever really consider myself a big fan of Shoot em ups.
Theres just something about star fox that i find endlessly endearing, it’s characters entertainingly memorable and the gameplay the right mixture of simple to pick up and play but having a high skill ceiling if you want to chase high scores.
Most shoot em ups/bullet hells tend to be highly overstimulating for me which turns me off from games of that type, but Star fox keeps things relatively tame in comparison which works to its benefit instead of the screen filling up with tons of bullets you fly through stages mostly dodging enemies or objects in the environment, shooting normal enemies down in just a couple hits with larger enemies taking more shoots to defeat making target prioritization something you pick up and get better at the more runs you play.
In general learning how the stages are laid out and slowly improving your score and ability to deal with the stage and its enemies/gimmicks is one of the most satisfying parts of star fox 64 for me
It tickles that same part of my brain that Roguelikes tickle except it manages to keep me engaged despite there not really being any differences in the stages run to run.
A full run of star fox 64 takes just a couple of hours start to finish making it a easy game to return too for another run when the mood strikes.
In the years since i feel star fox has been one of the worst managed nintendo IP’s next to F-Zero, out of the handful of sequels to have come out the only other game i feel that got closest to capturing SF64’s charm and style was Star fox command for the nintendo DS.
It was a really weird game having a strategic layer to the game where you tell your units where to fly and engage enemies in bite sized timed arena shooter encounters, but the game had SO MANY different story routes leading to some really silly endings including one where fox and falco repurpose there Arwings into F-zero style race vehicles.
The different story routes and endings is something I consider a large part of the charm of Star fox since SF64 had 3 different routes of levels and 2 different endings and no other game really tried to recapture that level of non linearity that SF64 had.
I’ve thought a lot about what would make for a good star fox game in recent years, and i think a star fox sequel that incorporates roguelike/lite elements, or the different story routes that star fox command had but made with more traditional SF64 style levels would work well just as core ideas for a star fox revival, one day i want to write an article that fleshes these ideas out more so that could quite possible come in the future.
Alas Star Fox appears to lay dormant after Star Fox Zero underperformed, maybe one day it will return with yet again another Star fox 64 remake xD
6) Mass Effect (Series) (Western RPG)
I have such a weird/funny history with Bioware RPG’s my first time ever seeing the bioware name was when i booted up Star wars Knights of the old republic for the first time, i started that game and i immediately hated it :)
It wasn’t what i expected at all but i was like 7 when that game came out and over time i grew to enjoy KOTOR and that games story and cast of characters (shoutout to HK-47 my favorite SW character ever written) but thats KOTOR whats that got to do with Mass effect?
Fast forward a few years, i think at this time ME 2 had been announced but was still a ways out, i grabbed Mass effect off the shelf at gamestop for 17$ used, i take it home i put the disc in and i play it …. I immediately hated it :)
Okay thats not entirely true i actually enjoyed the intro, but i spent a day playing it and i was just kinda confused, i was very impatient when playing games when i was younger i just wanted to run from point A to point B and complete the games.
So when i was locked into a section of the game that was more linear i enjoyed it alot, the second i was in a hub that didn’t really tell me where i go i was absolutely lost and just kinda gave up and returned the game.
Fast forward again to a couple weeks before ME2 launching and i pick up Mass effect again i give it another try, this time im locked in i can’t explain why or what changed but this time i played through the game and greatly enjoyed my time.
I didn’t really do much or any side content on my first playthrough the Mako sections didn’t interest me a ton but i fell in love with the world building and the cast of characters, when i got the Wrex confrontation in the games third act i learned why it was a bad idea to NOT put points into Paragon or Renegade :’)
Needless to say i lost Wrex in ME1, so i went into Mass effect 2 without him a couple weeks later which was such a fascinating experience that i will get into in a second because i need to mention.
When i went into ME2 i… Immediately hated it :)
Okay no not really but i was a little sad that the gameplay i had JUST gotten around to enjoying in ME1 was basically entirely rebuilt to play more like Gears of War which looking back is obviously the correct best choice just funny to me that looking back ME2 was exactly the game i would have enjoyed if THAT was my first game over ME1.
But anyway due to how i played games back then i had a very unique playthrough of the trilogy, i played through ME2 without wrex, originally EVERYONE died in the suicide mission including my shepard but before 3 came out i replayed that save to try and do better but because i rushed the game and didnt do all the side content i was kinda locked into an unoptimal ending where i still had some deaths including… Garrus 🙂
So i played ME3 without Wrex, or Garrus 10/10 i felt like my series playthrough was entirely unique to me because of that Bioware games and Mass Effect hold a special place in my heart maybe one day i will finally get to playing ME3 with its DLC and experience Wrex/Garrus’s story arcs xD
Because after that first playthrough i did nothing but play Mass effect 3’s excellent addictive Multiplayer mode, give me more horde modes with progression, i don’t need a full game built around this crazy multiplayer experience just give me something stupid and simple easy to play with friends that's replayable with lots of unlockables.
I am Commander Hawkie and this is my favorite Bioware series on the Citadel.
7) Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires (Button Masher? Action?)
For a long time i never really gave the Dynasty Warriors Franchise a fair try, i always read less then great things about the games, and letting very middling to low review scores give me this perception that the franchise was just mindless button mashy slop.
Then one day i gave the Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires demo a try on my PS3, this was i think a few months after playing Xcom for the first time i wasn’t sure what to expect but i immediately latched onto the games character creator and enjoyed the demo mission(s?) enough that i picked up the game for my birthday.
I immediately fell in love with specifically the Empires spin off series, due to its open ended campaigns with you aligning yourself with whichever factions you wanted and either taking them over or just dedicating yourself to one ruler.
It captured the same roleplaying segment of my brain that loved making characters and building stories for them in my head, and just sorta roleplaying the character in the campaigns.
I loved building a cast of create a characters and then running into them during the game at least i think one of these game had that happen? I don’t remember if it would take your CAC’s and then use them in the campaigns.
Either way back then i couldnt care less about the Dynasty warriors setting or knew anything about romance of the three kingdoms but since then i’ve heavily gotten into Dynasty warriors Origins and in the past couple weeks of writing this i now really like the Romance of the Three kingdoms setting and characters xD
And while i can’t really comment on if i was right for ignoring DW’s older games, i do think that Dynasty Warriors games released in recent years namely DW Origins and the Fire emblem spin offs are a lot more interesting and have more mechanically going on then JUST being mindless button mashers.
Origins specifically infuses this element of character action gameplay that i think redefines the entire franchise, but i will talk more about that in a future article :)
I hope to see the Empires spin off’s return in the near future, i would love to see a more RPG like take with the character creator returning hopefully this time featuring the level of depth as other Koei tecmo releases or even the same creator as Omega force’s Monster hunter spin off Wild Hearts.
In conclusion, give me more character creator roleplay sandbox style games pls :3
8) Soul Calibur 3 (series) (Fighting)
SPEAKING OF CHARACTER CREATORS,
Soul Calibur 3 is in my opinion one of if not the greatest single player fighting game of all time and everything released since this game has been a massive disappointment for me.
SC3’s Chronicles of the sword mode is one of the silliest additions to a fighting game in theory, like what do you mean we are gonna put a Fire emblem lite strategy mode featuring soul calibur fights to determine encounters?
It ended up being one of my favorite additions ever to a fighting game, a mode that centered solely on a created avatar featuring entirely unique fighting movesets not found on any of the games base character roster.
It blew my mind when i was younger and is probably the game that really unlocked the side of my brain that enjoys creating characters and giving them stories in my head and stuff.
Looking back i understand why its probably not feasible to create a gamemode similar to chronicles of the sword what with ballooning game dev times and budgets, adding a whole bunch of generic fighting styles for create a characters would be a nightmare for competitive balancing which is the main audience for fighting games.
But I feel that outside of maybe street fighter 6’s really cool world tour mode no game has ever really tried to create new game modes or features that tries to hook a more casual fighting game fan.
Back during the xbox 360 online gaming days i had a whole group of friends that would play soul calibur 4 with me and we would spend hours just making new silly characters to face each other with for hours we all sank probably hundreds of hours into the game over the course of a few months just making characters and fighting each other for fun, and i think its important to mention that not everyone that played in these game nights touched other fighting games, we convinced people to pick up the game and play with us just based off the character creator alone.
The only thing missing from SC4 5 and 6 for me has been the generic original fighting styles for create a characters i really wish they had leaned more into them in future games instead of cutting them entirely if competitive balancing was so important then just make them illegal to use for competitive modes?
I think if they had leaned into that and the RPG elements a little more mixed in with the core fighting game, gameplay we would see soul calibur standing next to tekken today instead of languishing in this limbo state of wondering if we will ever get another game.
9) MAG (FPS)
When i was thinking about what game i wanted to write about to represent the FPS genre i was really torn, i thought about COD 4: MW, i thought about BF Bad Company 2, i thought about Halo.
But then i remembered MAG, i don’t think there was ever a FPS more ahead of it’s time then MAG.
Developed by Socom dev Zipper interactive MAG was a Massive Multiplayer Online FPS, was it officially referred to as this? Idk but its what i call it because it does sorta have MMO elements more on that in a sec.
MAG Featured 256 player online matches on the PS3 back in 2010 in a time where the largest FPS player count on consoles was 64 players in killzone 2 or 24 players in battlefield.
MAG Attempted to create a sense of scale that surpassed battlefield attempting to put players into massive battles featuring 3 different factions that each had their own specific weapons and items.
Leading me into the first MMO ish element the faction system at the start you choose one of 3 factions for your character to join, each with a distinct theme and weapon selection.
Once you made this choice you we’re locked into that faction unless you payed for another character slot i think? Or if i remember you could change factions once you hit max level and reset your level COD prestige style. (I do not remember for sure how any of it works)
With that said, this game’s ambition was really limited by the hardware of the time the games advertised 256 player game mode was limited to one specific game mode which featured 2 teams one team defending a base in the center with another team attacking.
Now if i recall all variants of the maps for this made had the times divided into 3 or 4 groups attack/defending different directions of the base, so while it was 256 players due to map scale and being divided into groups it just ended up feeling like most other attack/defense style game modes with the player count being something more in the background as opposed to having a large impact on the way you played the game.
At least that was my experience most of the time based off of hazy memories from my time playing the game back throughout 2010-2012.
That said MAG was still something special, The gameplay was slower than its contemporaries at the time and that made it standout amongst the faster paced COD’s and its clones.
Dedicating yourself to one faction made you feel more attached to your wins and losses then other FPS games i can’t remember if there was like a meta game style war going on where it tracked faction wins or not but it would have been a game prime for a feature like that.
There’s a special magic that these large battlefield style games have that’s missing in the smaller more competitive environments of stuff like COD and Overwatch/Marvel Rivals.
The smaller more comp focused games are great and fine.
But they aren't MAG, there’s so much potential and fun to be had in the concept of a large scale FPS with dynamic moments you can’t have anywhere else that makes each match feel unique, i can’t accurately describe the fun you can have finding a spot to pick off the enemy from as they try to take one of your objectives guerilla warfare style moving to another spot and mowing down a squad.
I always thought that if given a second chance at life a MAG title built for PS4 or PS5 would be the kick in the butt the FPS genre needs to feel somewhat fresh again in the sea of overwatch clones and Battle royale games.
Alas sony seems content flushing money into the drain towards fruitless live service projects that are killed before they truly have a chance to live and banking on highly cinematic experiences that take 8 years to make.
10) Phantasy Star Universe (MMORPG)
I’m not sure if Phantasy Star Universe truly is a MMORPG or not, its certainly an online game you had to pay monthly to access but it also had a whole single player JRPG story mode.
It’s also certainly an online RPG with large player counts in the games hub zones, but the missions we’re 4-6 players at most.
Alas i am considering it an MMORPG because i had to pay for it monthly like it was one xD
I look back on this game either very fondly for the game itself, or like it was the worst experience of my life, which I absolutely did have the worst experiences ever in an online game, maybe one day i will share those stories in a written article but for now i will stick to looking back fondly on this game lol xD
This game was my first MMO and i still consider it one of the best MMO’s i’ve ever played for some admittedly very silly reasons,
1) The games action based gameplay while simple had enough going on that i felt like i could play how i wanted and my choices of weapons/special photon arts made me unique compared to other players.
2) Just enough outfit options that i could have a wardrobe of outfits that we’re uniquely mine, unless i choose to wear an overly expensive costume that signified i had enough meseta(in game currency) to buy it from another players player shop.
3) In game Casino with roulette/slots that you could use a casino only currency to bet with for some silly not terribly great casino exclusive items.
Reason 1 is arguably the most important to me, i feel a lot of other popular MMO rpg’s namely FF14 as thats the game i have the most experience with are very linear with the gameplay.
Like in FF14 classes are very pre defined, if you're a black mage you're basically just playing like every other black mage in the game, with the same ability rotation.
And that's fine if you find enjoyment in that.
For me I enjoy being unique in a MMO RPG that's a large part of the appeal if I'm playing a MMO RPG. I like being given options and choices that make me stand out from others in the game even if they are playing the same class/race combination.
And by nature of PSU being a action based game with a wide variety of weapon types i felt there was lots of ways i could be unique, even if its something small like whether or not i use a weapon loadout full of Double blades vs using Greatswords.
There was so much i enjoyed about the levelling experience in this game, the mission structure was fun exploring the different hub areas different missions could lead you too, there was a chance that whenever you finished a mission one of the players in your party would randomly obtain “The Right to a Free Rare mission” and it was such an exciting thing to see pop up at the end of the run cause it meant that you and your friends we’re about to jump into a special mission full of rare drops with the chance of getting a weapon/weapon blueprint worth lots of money and enemies that give bucket loads of XP
A Small detail that filled my Science fantasy loving heart with joy was that melee weapons(as well as your clothing armor!) had a special colored glow depending on what element it had it’s a small detail but as a nerd who has a deep love for star wars, seeing funny different colored glowing laser swords fills my heart with whimsy and joy.
I don’t know if this game has aged terribly great, the gameplay is absolutely janky and slow compared to any other action game standards but I truly think that adds to the charm.
Theres alot more i could talk about regarding this franchise like how the Western version of the game was horribly left behind the Japanese version in terms of content/updates, or how the game's successor PSO2 wasn’t available outside of japan for over half a decade and then when it was available outside of japan it was stuck to microsoft platforms until the games relaunch/rebranding as PSO 2 new genesis.
But i will end this segment with my fondest memory of PSU, i remember waking up one morning and logging into the game on the day of sonics birthday and finding the game’s lobbies not only decorated with sonic the hedgehog decor, but the games GM’s logged into the game as special sonic tails and knuckles avatars and ran around the game world as those characters joining player missions,
And i was lucky enough to have tails join my party, which appropriately they were using a one handed dagger with a special photon art that was basically the sonic spin dash attack xD
At the end of the mission they dropped some goodies and then left to join another party, it was such a fun whimsical experience and something that will always look back fondly on.
If you're at all interested in experiencing a little bit of what this game was like i highly recommend looking into the Playstation portable game Phantasy Star Portable 2, as once that came out it replaced PSU for me as it was basically a new singleplayer/multiplayer game made with assets from PSU including content items/weapons/maps from the japanese version of PSU.
Phantasy star universe also has a Private server called clementine that I messed around a little bit on in the past year.
Outro
*takes a deep breath* i made it xD
This uhh took a lot longer to write then i expected it too so if you’ve read this far thank you! I really hope that this has given you at least the shape of an idea about my taste in video games and a look into who I am and what this all means to me.
I don’t know if any of the individual segments of the games are super great on their own i tried to give decent info on the games themselves while mixing in my feelings on it or just talking about stories of my time with the games, it was a hard balance to keep especially since some games are more obscure then others, like most people know mass effect, but who really knows Phantasy star universe or MAG in the year of the big 26?
But I can promise that the writing will only get better from here, right? xD
Obviously the top 10 can’t cover every game genre, special shoutout to some games like, Armored Core, Skate/Tony Hawk Pro Skate, Rock Band/Guitar Hero, Devil May cry/God of war.
Perhaps i will pick some game genre’s to dive deeper into with dedicated articles, i have a lot of ideas for stuff to write about hopefully this will be the longest single post on the blog for a good while so they don’t take me weeks to write at a time lol
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