I appreciate the feedback, and I can definitely see how a lot of the games I consider “mid” would still be a lot of fun for other. Ultimately there will be a lot personal preference involved with any kind of review, so what you’re reading here is just me as an amateur writer trying to articulate my personal views.

I use a scoring system because I find it a useful shorthand to summarise my overall thoughts on a game. The limited scale is because there are 8-10/10 games which are a class above the games I intend to cover in this series (e.g. Doom, System Shock, Elden Ring) while 1-3/10 would be those which I don’t enjoy, are completely broken or are morally reprehensible (e.g. visual novels, predatory monetisation, NFT games). I personally find it more interesting trying to explain my views of these “mid” games than those at either end of the scale.

The Force Engine seems like a good alternative for experiencing the game on a modern platform. It’s an open source engine that adds a few new features, like mid level saving https://theforceengine.github.io/