MGS2 is a hard title to write about because there are already like, several 800 page essays about the game and its themes on this site alone, I’m not even factoring in video essays and other sites and articles. So why am I writing this regardless? Well, the answer is quite simple, I can’t get this game off my mind even a week after playing it, and as possibly redundant this review could be, I need to get it out there.
Playing MGS2 for the first time, after seeing a playthrough in my earlier teens and wanting to try it myself for nearly half a decade, was cathartic. I could not be more glad that I finally got to try this. While I was pretty terrible at the stealth gameplay even on the lowest difficulty, just the satisfaction of making progress and exploring every little nook and cranny of the Big Shell made it for me. While it doesn’t have the heavy winter night atmosphere of Shadow Moses that defined the previous game, Big Shell is beautiful in its quaintness. It’s simple but has effective coloring and theming, and honestly how could anyone hate the almost tranquill outside areas with the bright skies, blue oceans, and crying seagulls?
I mentioned that I watched a full playthrough of this game several years ago, and I actually revisited it recently to see if it held up. While I still enjoyed it, it felt surreal seeing that even in 2018 many people didn’t like or respect the direction that MGS2 took with its heavier reliance on themes than sensibility. “Overshot” was the description that hit me the most. While, sure, there are things about this game that are fucking ridiculous (honestly despite my high praise for this game I do have choice words about the Liquid hand thing), I think the absurdity was intentional and defines MGS2. It’s not for everyone, which I understand, but it seems that even just a couple years ago 2 was given a lot of shit for its direction, whereas now I feel that it’s almost universally praised as a masterpiece.
Lastly what I wanted to touch up on was how much I despise the nihilistic circlejerk that surrounds this game’s final codec call. While in the moment it can be crushing and feel like something to make the player feel used, it’s like people completely ignored everything that happened after the final boss. Or even in the codec call itself, where Raiden pretty much says “nah, I’m good” despite everything he’s been told trying to devalue him and dispose of him after his “purpose” has been fulfilled. Both of Snake’s speeches afterwards are the icing on the cake. Honestly during the rewatch of them I did shed a few tears, it hits a lot harder when I’ve given more thought into it and it's an uplifting message that leaves the story on a high note after the brutality of the final codec. Snake essentially goes “hey, there’s a lot going on and misinformation will spread, but don’t freak out yet, you’re your own person and you get to decide what you do or don’t believe in,” how you could see all that and then only hyperfixate on “kojima predicted the internet and AI lol!” is not only ignorant, but blatantly disrespectful to everything else going on. There’s more meaning to MGS2 and its main gimmick was not just “predicting the future.” It’s about individuality and finding what we believe in. Becoming nihilistic and focusing on all the bad in the world is exactly what the GW wants you to think. Why can't some recognize that?
It was nice finally going through this amazing, amazing game firsthand. I’m taking a bit of a break before I tackle 3 because I wanted to dedicate more time to thinking about this game. It’s something that I don’t think will ever leave my mind anytime soon. There’s a lot I didn’t cover here, and it’s simply because many people have already said it or I don’t even know where to begin in wording it, but I am totally up for discussion if you’d like to ask.
Thank you for reading, and a happy new year.
Choose your own legacy.
It’s for you to decide.
it's up to you.

The most refined version of Football Manager on this current game engine.

It is the best game to play if you want to play as a football manager. The graphics are much better than last year, with more realistic animation and gameplay. Plus, it feels faster too. The new additions such as to the set-pieces was much needed and it works fantastic.

My only drawback is in some of the UI and licensing. I feel like Football Manager has grown so much in the past decade that it really should start acquiring licensing and they should start to remedy skins that have quality of life improvements to their UI.

Overall, I love FM and I'll continue to pour many hours onto this. Slightly anxious that my laptop won't be able to handle FM25 but we'll see then.

I feel like in the 2010s we were all playing stuff like this and being very smug about it, but by 2019 (and especially now), that kind of "clever mechanic + an art style + game feel" style of game, had started to feel a bit quaint and dated.

I dunno, this is ok. It's unique looking and the jazz sound design has its appeal.

I completed "Disc 1" and I'm not sure if there's more to it. The ending menu made it look like there were more "Albums" to unlock, but pressing play on the main menu just starts the game all over? Probably won't go back to it to figure it out tbh.

I loved this game, the entire thing is just self-indulgent fun with masterfully-crafted levels that make you feel like a speedrunner. Some lines were cring but it knows what it is & while nothing to write home about, it wraps up nicely and has it's moments, plus the gameloop is too fun for me to care. also it's OST is just great. I will one day return to get all red dev times and attempt the rush modes, but for now i'm extremely happy with my time with this game. and yes this game is the alt universe where spike spiegel ended up in heaven. Red best girl.

The main issue with Alan Wake, still, is that he's a pretty naff writer. Sure I wasn't expecting to be playing Thomas Ligotti Remastered, but this dude's schlocky narration just about dampens any tension otherwise well established when the world goes dark and strange.
As with Deadly Premonition, I enjoyed the overt Twin-Peaksian influence particularly on the setting. I only wish it strived for that level of eccentricity. Most of the characters play it straight, the only exception being Alan's buddy, Barry, who often veers into Disney sidekick territory. The supernatural forces at large feel ominous but the samey evil townsfolk feel disconnected from the actual goings on (also in the same way later editions of Deadly Premonition has thrown in baddies as an afterthought). The combat is also incredibly repetitive: most of the main game just has Alan running through samey drabs of woods and warehouses firing away at the same 3 or 4 guys.
However, as the remaster also includes the two extra 'specials,' I would like to mention that they add significantly to the otherwise underwhelming final act of the main game. Whilst narratively unadventurous, the specials' combat and level design are actually even more varied and interesting - making unique use of floating word barriers (the writer making his words a reality, get it?) and one particularly Silent-Hill-esque level set on a town sized ferris wheel.
Speaking of Silent Hill, as I always fucking do, Alan Wake has similar issues to that of the post Team Silent games, mainly in its lack of character, tension and pacing.
Despite that, this game is not quite as constricted to being a horror game, and probably should have ditched most of the combat sequences in favour of the investigative mystery thriller segments it usually PEAKS in.
Not as unique or groundbreaking as its long legacy would have you believe, but usually pretty fun.

This game is more movie than game in it's story telling. In a weird way though it is almost fitting that a pseudo mindbending video game about a horror novel author's manuscript was actually a film the entire time.

I am exaggerating, there are obviously the obligatory zombie-, but not actually a zombie, okay maybe they are just a zombie, but with an extra shield mechanic -shooter sections. There are also some decent, often optional "walking sim" parts with additional world building, lore or foreshadowing of the story. The game is serviceable just not for me, I am hating a bit, because I am honestly always disappointed when I choose to play a Video Game instead of watching a Film or a TV Show and then I feel like I would have gotten the same x10 out of rewatching a Lynch (or Nolan, he might unironically enjoy this) flick while playing a mindless zombie shooter on the side.
Like, my favourite part in the first chapter was some silly and short Twilight Zone -eseque video you can watch on a TV in the game. Why am I even playing a game at that that point I have to ask myself?

Starting off with the nod: "Stephen King once wrote that 'Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear." and after that immediately tutorialising how to break and defeat the first "Nightmare" you encounter, and thereby lessening the potential fear of the unknown a player could experience and contradictong that corny opening monologue is baffeling to me.
The animations, sound design and fx alone convey perfectly well that the lamp has an effect on the enemy, figuring that out by yourself would work perfectly fine in a nightmare mystery setting. Why are games this inconfindent in themselves and the player that tjey feel the need to take this small and kind of intriguing revelation away?

"For a moment the repressive feeling from the nightmare I had on the ferry returns" a near comical jumpscare flashes for half a second. The shortness, randomness and how on the nose the attempt at connecting Alan's narrated thoughts to the players emotions were, made this moment kinda silly to me. These Jumpscares keep coming throughout the game and keep getting longer, showing the player more information. And idk, to me that is honestly, at least in theory, an interesting concept to excuse the use of jumpscares, by the nature of the scare getting longer the jump would slowly cease to exist. But they don't really, there is still epileptic ass editing in those moments to compensate for the length I guess. So, to me at least, this minor recurring flash of imagery, which I'm wasting way too much time on in this review, is only an annoying, tension wasting horror gimmick that is halting the gameplay instead of the intriguing, itself slowly revealing narrative exposition it could have been.

Alan Wake gives me confidence to be a writer myself, a profession not even included in the top five artistic delusions I have, but this game bumped it up a bit. The writing in Alan's manuscripts is mediocre at best, there is no way this guy is such a legend that a small town has a life-sized cardboard cutout of him in a Bar.
Damn, is he supposed to be a mediocre cardboard cut out of an author and that is a blatan admission of that? But man self-awareness wouldn't make it any better.
In one of the manuscripts it says "..to describe the dark presence as intelligent would have implied human qualities on something decidedly inhuman" all this sentence is giving me is the implications that intelligence is a quality exclusive to humans. And thats just arrogant human exceptionalism in my book.

I dropped this game after like six+, kinda slogging hours and turned on Twin Peaks instead. If there is some plot-twist that nullifies my complaints about the story related stuff or the game somehow gets way more interesting, I honestly don't really care enough to sit through even a playthrough of it to find out and I did genuinely try that a couple days after, but then again choose to watch something else instead. [Played like a month ago, but I'll log it with todays date for visibility or some shit, idk if that is how it works]

was talking it over with a friend and we agreed that one of the smartest things this game does is to entirely elide questions of depiction and gratuitousness re: sexual assault and abuse by unfolding the violence almost entirely through threat, metaphor, and implication. the looming possibility is signalled by the very first interaction even, the encounter of our favorite skinny, vulnerable teenage girl Heather Mason with a bulking, growly strange man stalking her. the eventual unraveling of the "God" plotline obviously also scans as about sexual trauma, the violative experience of unwanted procreation without the explicit need for an assaulting figure (which of course ties into the parody of the Virgin Birth, again, not subtle but appreciated), and the central dynamic between Heather and men is defined by distrust, fear, and manipulation (the memo you read where even her benevolent father and blankfaced video game Good Dad Harry Mason confesses to wanting to murder Heather as a child is heartbreaking), while her relationship to the only other woman in the cast is defined by outright hostility engendered by their equally understandable if slightly manichean responses to unbelievable pain and suffering at the hands of a patriarchal and matriarchal figure, respectively. to really hammer it home the game pens you in to dark, cramped, filthy spaces right from the start, barely ever giving you an overworld to interact with: Heather Mason is not her father or James Sunderland, she's a 17 year old girl, railroaded through the terrifying world that the men of the series navigate more freely (this is also reflected in the games lack of traditional Silent Hill branching endings, at least on a first playthrough). maybe there's nothing interesting or new left to say about these games but i loved this so much i wanted to at least put something here to commemorate it