I have a confession to make, and it's one I've been circling around since I started this blog. There are games I love that I would never recommend to you. Not because I'm ashamed of them, and not because I've stopped loving them, but because I've finally learned the difference between a personal favorite and a recommendation. They are not the same thing. They never were. I just spent decades pretending otherwise.
This is a hard distinction to make, especially when you've built a life around games. We want our love to mean something. We want the things that moved us to move other people too. When someone asks what they should play, we reach for the games that changed us — not because they're the right answer, but because they're the honest one. The problem is that honest isn't the same as helpful. And the older I get, the more I realize that loving a game and recommending a game are two completely different acts.
The Games That Made Us Who We Are
Let me start with the personal side, because that's where the confusion begins. Every player has a private canon — the games that shaped them, that arrived at the exact right moment, that still feel like parts of their identity. These aren't necessarily the best games they've ever played. They're the games that mattered most.
For me, that list includes some genuinely great titles. Chrono Trigger. Metal Gear Solid. Resident Evil. But it also includes games that don't hold up the way I remember them. An obscure PS1 RPG that I loved because it was the first time I'd seen a story about a villain protagonist. A clunky action game that I played during a difficult summer and that got me through something. A licensed title that was objectively mediocre but that I rented three weekends in a row because I was obsessed with the source material.
These games are personal favorites. They're woven into the fabric of who I am. I can tell you exactly where I was when I played them, what was happening in my life, why they landed the way they did. But none of that has anything to do with whether you should play them in 2026. My context is not your context. My history is not your recommendation.
What a Recommendation Actually Requires
A recommendation is a different kind of act. When I recommend a game to you, I'm not telling you what shaped me. I'm telling you what I think will work for you — right now, in your life, with your time and your taste and your patience. That's a much harder thing to do, because it requires me to step outside my own history and think about the game as it actually is, not as I remember it.
A good recommendation asks questions. How much time does this person have? What do they enjoy? What frustrates them? Are they a patient player or a restless one? Do they care about story, or systems, or atmosphere, or all three? What have they already played, and what are they tired of? You can't answer those questions from inside your own nostalgia. You have to be honest about the game as it exists now, in the hands of someone who doesn't share your history.
This is why I write the way I do on this blog. When I review a retro game, I'm not asking whether it's a personal favorite. I'm asking whether it holds up enough to be worth your time. Those are different questions, and they have different answers. A game can be a personal favorite and a bad recommendation. A game can be a great recommendation and a personal blind spot. Both things can be true at once.
The Moment I Learned the Difference
There was a specific moment when this distinction clicked for me, and I want to tell you about it because I think it's the clearest example I have.
A few years ago, a friend asked me what he should play next. He had a PS5, a Switch, and limited patience for games that didn't respect his time. He'd just finished a modern action game and wanted something with a strong story. I thought about it, and my first instinct was to recommend Xenogears — one of my favorite games of all time, a PS1 JRPG with a story so ambitious it still feels ahead of its time.
Then I stopped myself. I thought about what Xenogears actually asks from a player in 2026. The clunky platforming sections. The random encounters. The pacing of the second disc. The fact that large parts of the story are delivered through text screens and pacing choices that felt daring in 1998 but feel punishing now. I love Xenogears. I will always love Xenogears. But I didn't recommend it to my friend.
Instead, I recommended a game I respect but don't love as deeply — a modern title with a strong narrative, a tight runtime, and a pace that suits an adult with a busy schedule. He played it. He enjoyed it. And I sat with the realization that I'd finally learned to separate my love from my advice.
Why This Matters More as an Adult
When I was younger, I recommended everything I loved. I wanted everyone to experience what I'd experienced, to feel what I'd felt. If someone didn't like a game I'd recommended, I took it personally, as if they'd rejected a piece of my identity. That's a teenager's mistake, and I made it constantly.
As an adult, I understand that my relationship with a game is unique to me. It's built on a thousand small factors — when I played it, who I was then, what I needed at that moment. None of that transfers. When I recommend a game now, I'm not sharing my history. I'm making a prediction about someone else's future. That prediction requires honesty, not love.
This matters because adult time is scarce. If I recommend a game to you and you spend ten hours on it before realizing it's not for you, those are ten hours you don't get back. That's not a small thing. It's a real cost. And recommending a game from the heart, without thinking about whether it actually fits, is a way of spending someone else's time without their permission.
How I Tell the Difference Now
So how do I separate a personal favorite from a recommendation? It's not a perfect system, but I've developed a few questions I ask myself.
The first question is simple: would this game work for someone who doesn't share my history? If the answer depends on nostalgia, on having played it at the right age, on a specific kind of patience that I built up over years — then it's probably a personal favorite, not a recommendation.
The second question is harder: what would I warn them about? Every game has flaws. Every recommendation comes with caveats. If I find myself hiding the flaws, or downplaying them, or saying "well, you just have to get past the first ten hours" — that's a sign I'm letting love cloud my judgment. A recommendation should be honest about what it's asking for.
The third question is the most telling: would I recommend this to a stranger? Not a friend who shares my interests, not someone who already knows my taste, but a stranger whose time matters as much as mine. If I wouldn't make that recommendation to a stranger, then maybe what I'm offering isn't a recommendation at all. Maybe it's a memory I'm trying to share.
The Honest Take
Here's where I land on all of this, after years of thinking about it. The difference between a personal favorite and a recommendation isn't a judgment on the game. It's a judgment on the relationship — mine and yours.
A personal favorite is a game I'll defend for the rest of my life, not because it's perfect, but because it's mine. It's part of my history. It's one of the reasons I became the player I am. I will love it forever, and I will never apologize for that love.
A recommendation is something else entirely. It's a game I believe can stand on its own, in 2026, in the hands of someone who doesn't care about my history. It's a game I can vouch for honestly, flaws and all, without needing to explain why it matters to me personally.
Some games are both. Some games are one and not the other. And the only way to tell the difference is to be honest — with yourself, with the game, and with the person on the other side of the question.
A game doesn't stay good just because you loved it first. But a personal favorite doesn't have to be good to be loved. That's the part we forget. We can love a game without recommending it, and we can recommend a game without loving it. Both things are possible. Both things are honest. And the older I get, the more I think that honesty is the only real gift a player can offer another player.
I love Xenogears. I don't recommend it. I recommend Hades. I don't love it the same way. That's not a contradiction. It's just the truth about what it means to love games and respect time at the same time.
And on a quiet night, when the house is dark and the coffee is strong, I'll still load up Xenogears and sit with it for an hour, just to hear the music and remember who I was. That's not a recommendation. That's a homecoming. And some things are better as homecomings than as advice.