Role-Playing Games
Its a non-traditional RPG (since there's no combat), in which you play as a cop who got a job investigating the hanged man, but instead of doing so, he's been partying, doing drugs and drink a lot of booze, which caused him to forget quite a lot about himself and he's obviously drunk. Because of some bureaucratic issues related to the district you're in, its now a cross-precinct case and you got a partner from another precinct assigned, who will act as a voice of reason for your drunk and unstable mind (though you don't have to listen to him if you don't want to)
The gameplay is more closer to the point-and-click adventure, but with RPG elements thrown in to possibly open more dialogue options or determine how successful are your skillchecks (they might fail, even if its 97% or success with 3% chance). There's no combat system at all and every action that requires you to act physically is done through a dialogue menu. Your skills are not simply just skills, but their own characters in your head that will tell you that they're right.
The quailty of writing in the game is fantastic, the characters aren't just some soulless NPC, but the characters, with their own opinions and personality. Just because its an RPG with a lot of words, it doesn't mean it will throw a wall of text towards you. If you can read tweets in your fucking Twitter, you can read Disco Elysium's dialogues too, since the dialogue system was inspired by it (and Shadowrun). Also since the addition of The Final Cut update, each character has been voiced with more and better voice actors that fit the role perfectly.
Aside from main investigation, you can also do some side quests that may or may not be relevant to the case, but will reward the player either with XP points, money or item. And you will do them regardless, since investigation will take days and you'll have to get busy with something when there's nothing to do.
Disco Elysium takes place in a fictional world called Elysium, which is different from ours. They have radios, plastic cups and bags, and cars, but there's no television, computers are radio-based, guns are very outdated (due to anti-gun laws) and cars themselves look closer to something like Ford Model T. The game also has different terminology for things that we have IRL, like the car is now motor-carriage, graffiti is graffito, PTSD is Trauma-and-Stressor Disorder and so on.
Another thing that separates Disco Elysium from every other game is failure. Just because you can fail some skillchecks, it doesn't mean that you'll softlock yourself or cause a bad ending. Its either doesn't change the outcome (other than what NPC would say and its usually hilarious), makes you do something else to move forward or does something that you wouldn't have on your "perfect run".
The artstyle is great, its a mix of handpainted 2D backgrounds and 3D models with handpainted textures and they blend in very well. So is the soundtrack, written by Sea Power band, which perfectly nails the atmosphere of depressing post-war town of Revachol.
The game is often praised (or criticized, mostly by bigots or complete illiterates) for being political. I personally praise the politics in Disco Elysium, since its only loosely based on real events (instead of shoehorning the real politicians in the game or showing some kind of American or Soviet utopia), not one-sided and is not even central to the plot (since you have to investigate the hanged man after all). Some people offer mistreat the game for being pro-communistic, but its not true, each faction gets roasted equally for their flaws, including stagnation and doing nothing about the problems of Revachol, even the communists get roasted.
Its a great game that you shouldn't buy (unless piracy is not an option in your country), because the main developers were fired from their own company for questioning the suspicious financial fraud within the company.
Its a soft reboot of Fallout franchise that almost died after the bankruptcy of Interplay. You play as The Lone Wanderer, who was born in the Vault 101, built for protecting selected people against the threat of nuclear danger. As you grew up, your dad had to leave to finish his personal project with a noble goal, and it caused the chaos in the vault, since nobody is allowed to leave the vault. Since you're the suspect too, you have to leave and step into the wasteland of Washington, DC, full of raiders and mutants, to find your dad.
Unlike previous games, its in first person perspective, so a lot of stuff from isometric RPG had to be adapted for the first-person view and console market. Unless you're using VATS (which tries to somewhat mimic the combat of previous games), the Action Points are useless now. Traits (perks that you can choose during character creation) were removed, but Perks and Skills are still there, but some skills were removed, probably for balancing reasons or lack of purpose.
Because its a Bethesda RPG, there's more focus on the world building, instead of roleplaying and especially the player choice, but its not much of an issue in Fallout 3, as it is in their later games. However, Fallout 3 does a nice job of portraying retro-futuristic Washington after nuclear war (unlike Fallout 4 with retro-futuristic Boston).
The game managed to revive the franchise, introduce a lot of gamers to the franchise and produce sequels. It could've died and be fondly remembered only in Russian communities, since somehow the classic Fallout's were more popular there.
Its a nice game and probably my favorite 3D Fallout game, but its by no means my favorite of all time, since its not as significant like Deus Ex, it doesn't show anything groundbreaking, nor its a peak of its genre.
You play as The Sole Survivor, who was put into cryosleep in Vault 111, but unfortunately, they suddenly woke up locked in the chamber and had to witness the murder of his wife (or her husband) and a child being abducted. Some time later, the cryochamber opens and you have to get out of there and find your son somewhere in the post-apocalyptic Boston.
The gameplay of Fallout 4 was simplified: skills were merged with perks and they don't affect the efficiency of your weapons as much, the combat is more polished, but not the balancing, since some enemies are ridiculously tanky. The dialogues choice doesn't matter, since they were also simplified. The only new thing that Fallout 4 adds is the settlement building. There are also factions to choose, but they don't feel as serious as in something like Fallout: New Vegas, since The Institute is cartoonishly evil as the antagonist, The Minutemen are basically one/two-men army of you and Preston Garvey, The Railroad just exist and Brotherhood of Steel just want to kick some android ass and leave (basically, your typical dogmatic Brotherhood of Steel from the oldies, just more cartoonish).
The game feels very "cartoonish" (compared to previous games, excluding Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, which is not a good game) because of its goofy weapon design, colorful visuals, epic combat music and some ridiculous quests, which is kinda disappointing, considering that Fallout 3, and especially Fallout: New Vegas, did those things without looking to cartoony.
Also one small thing that have ruined my immersion in Fallout 4 specifically: despite the game being set in Boston, nobody from The Commonwealth speaks with its accent. Sure, there's a mod that "fixes" that, but its racist, sexist and "anti-woke" as fuck, so nope. They could've even get a singer from an obscure Boston band for Nuka-World raider radio with custom songs, but no, they got a New Yorker (even Harmonix added a bunch of local music from Boston to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, even a couple of song from their own bands, including Tribe, so why Bethesda couldn't just cast some obscure rock musician from Boston, like someone from Volcano Suns or basically any Rock'n'Roll Rumble participant? I mean, Emil Pagliarulo is Bostonian and he literally worked with two Tribe members at Looking Glass Studios (Eric and Terri Brosius) on Thief II: The Metal Age). Even a mod like Fallout: London has characters with British (obviously), German, French and Indian accents.
As a continuation of Fallout, well, its fun on the first playthrough, but overall disappointing, because it had a lot of potential to be a good game, but with the art direction and writing like this, its just not. Whenever I try playing it again, I get stuck at building settlements, because the main story is uninteresting as fuck, regardless of the faction I've chosen. Some people said the game is more fun with mods, but tbh, not even mods could fix my boredom.
You take the role of The Courier who was shot and had his package stolen, then saved by a robot and the local doctor, so you get up to figure out who killed you and finish the delivery.
Despite being based on Fallout 3, the game was not made by Bethesda and its gameplay is slightly different: they brought back Traits, reworked the way armor and damage works, replaced janky aiming with proper ADS, added gambling and reused lots of stuff from classic Fallouts, cancelled Fallout 3 (also known as Van Buren) and Fallout 3 (mostly assets and engine).
Story and writing-wise, its way better than any other Fallouts, factions are more or less fleshed out (except for Legion, a bunch of content related to them got cut due to time constraints), quests are fun and interesting (some aren't, but there aren't that many of those), you have proper dialogue options and skill/perk checks, and people in New Vegas could express their opinion on the world, factions and such.
The game does have a new content, obviously: you have a scaled down version of Las Vegas, a lot of interesting characters and small factions, a bunch of new guns and armor, a few more radios and fanservice, like Brotherhood of Steel, remnants of The Enclave and pop culture references (some of them are can be unlocked only with Wild Wasteland trait).
Fallout: New Vegas is objectively the best Fallout game, but not without caveats. The game runs poorly, it has a lot of bugs and terrible code that modders already have criticized and tried to fix, its very janky without some mods and, in my opinion, has a slightly bad pacing, because of that bad quest that makes you remember why you always stop playing the game, and there are a few of them (Come Fly With Me, because its an uninteresting fetch quests, and The House Always Wins/Render Unto Caesar/For the Republic, because you have to deal with the small factions that may pose a threat).
Its a really good game, but its pretty much a rough gem (even more rough than another my favorite jankfest like Deus Ex or System Shock) that I can't play without mods that would smooth out some edges and that I may abandon, because of the flaws in a few main quests, which to be honest, I could skip, but I don't want to kill space ghouls or pick the Yes-Man ending all the time. Hardcore fans (and especially very hardcore "non mutants") will chew me out, but I'd rather replay Fallout 3, sorry.
You play as The Fateless One, one of the soldiers who fought in the war against dark and edgy high elves that rebeled, named Tuatha, and died, until dwarves from the Well of Souls have revived you with their wonder technologies, not knowing that it worked after all. You wake up in the pile of corpses and have to get out of there. As you fight back from Tuatha troops that have invaded the Well and reach the exit, you face a giant troll under control of Tuatha troops and finish him off with an unknown power that you have. You get told to meet one of the fateweavers, that might tell you how the hell you ended up like this and what to do next.
Gameplay wise, its a long ass "single player MMORPG" with tons of side quests to complete, if you want to have a good gear. It also plays kinda like your typical Skyrim (roam around the open world, do the quests, maybe even start crafting your own gear or potions), but also isn't, since everything is more action-oriented, in third person view, stealth-archer build sucks and its not janky.
Story is fine and the game has a bunch of lore, which most of the players would probably ignore or forget. The gameplay is pretty fun, the fights can get repetitive, but it has some really satisfying melee combat and if you don't like your current build, you can visit a fateweaver and reset all your skill points and put them on something else. Skills are useful for their purposes (and Persuasion is probably the least useful one, but again, Charisma in Bethesda games sucked too)
The artstyle is colorful (which is fine for a fantasy game anyway) and the environments of areas like Odarath look gorgeous. The gear like swords, armor or faeblades look really nice and enemy design is great as well. The soundtrack of the game can be described as "fairy tale-like", like everything else in the game
Its one of those hidden gems that not many people have played, but there it is, and I actually prefer it over Skyrim (which I found to be boring to play, since the storyline was not interesting at all). The original release (which I have played) is impossible to buy, but there's a remaster with slightly improved textures, better balancing over the original, has all the DLCs included and new post-endgame content added.
In Oblivion, you take the role of the prisoner, who was mistakenly put in a decoy cell with a secret exit. The Emperor and his guards come in and tells you not to follow, except you do. And as you follow them, you get some gear and help protecting The Emperor. Since he knows that he will die, he grants you his Amulet of Kings and tells you to visit one of his best soldiers with this amulet, and close shut the jaws of Oblivion.
Story of the game is good and its rich with lore, like NPCs telling you about something or someone, and it also has lots of in-game books with some lore in it too (some books were repurposed from Morrowind).
When it comes to the gameplay itself, its weird. You have different skills that may be useful and you level them up by doing some stuff over and over (which can be abused). The combat system in itself is fine, but because of the broken leveling system (and its on a default difficulty), its hard to fight since enemies are tanky and you don't deal enough damage. I was in this situation, because despite leveling up the blades, I had to use magic pretty often to deal enough damage. There are bunch of interesting quests that you can complete too, so at least it isn't boring.
The music of Oblivion is iconic (and that peaceful song from the game even became some sort of meme), though it gets pretty repetitive to hear it all the time. Voicelines are also iconic, they have became the meme as well. Not to diss on voice actors, of course, they did a great job at voicing all the characters and I kinda like the campyness of the voicelines (not because they're bad, but because there are only a few slightly overacting voice actors for entire game).
I was never a fan of The Elder Scrolls, but Oblivion clicked for some reason, it wasn't too confusing or too boring and I had fun playing the game.