I recently replayed Q2 and I found it… decent. Alright but not amazing in basically all respects. Just like I remembered it. I hate the fact that enemies have collision until their dying animation is finished, that was a constant annoyance. Quake 1 got it right, so I haven’t got a clue why they screwed it up in the sequel.

Oblivion, on paper, is an objectively better RPG that is truer to the Elder Scrolls formula than Skyrim

Hard disagree on that one. It’s truer to the Morrowind formula, but Morrowind itself was a radical departure from the previous TES games’ design philosophy. And I despise Oblivion precisely because of that, because it slavishly apes Morrowind’s formula without really understanding what made it tick. I’ll spare you the diatribe. Morrowind was a great triumph but also a turning point for Bethesda. Up until that point, they used to make varied games. Ever since they found success with Morrowind, they’ve stopped trying to innovate and improve and have just been remaking the same game over and over with a slightly different coat of paint each time.

I really dislike Niko as a character due to that hypocrisy, but it’s 100% intentional. The guy he’s trying to find throughout the game calls him out on it when they finally meet. I’m unsure if deliberately making the protagonist unlikable is artsy or pretentious.

My main issue with IV is that the driving camera is too damn low. My abiding memory of IV’s gameplay is having to constantly manually adjust the camera while driving, otherwise I’d crash into obstacles my own car obscured from view. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking when they made that or how it got past the first round of playtesting.