Beat em ups are great!!! I sure love 'em... So Streets of Rage 4! I have always heard that the previous SoR games were legendary for the genre but I've never actually played them yet - but if they're as good as SOR4 I get it.

You play as one of 4 (5 later on) members of the team who helped bring down the "Evil Mr. X" from the previous games - now 20 years later (I believe this is the distance between SOR3 and 4?) his kids Mr. and Ms. Y are developing a mind control weapon to take over the city! Pretty stupid plot obviously but its a beat em up so who cares? I do think the characters are actually done pretty well - everyone gets at least a few scenes to show how cool and heroic they are and most of the major antagonists have oodles of charisma and are fun to fight (a few become good guys later too!). So nothing amazing going on here like Scott Pilgrim but quite good. The story plays out over 12 levels and they all have a pretty good aesthetic though there are a few standouts - the initial streets and alleyways, an underground lab area, going up the skyrise, fighting on a plane... Each of these also has some type of hindrance or mechanic to them as well + a new enemy to take advantage of them. Electrical wires, slippery floors, explosive barrels left about, plenty of neat ideas to keep the beating feeling fresh.

Gameplay is standard beat-em-up but a bit slower than I tend to like. You have to double tap to start running and your lateral movement is GLACIALLY paced which can make some fights awkward. This is more balanced of course because moving in the Z axis means it is a lot easier to dodge attacks from your enemies though it also caused me to miss a number of times as I wasn't quiiiite sure where my fist would end up and that on top of the slow movement caused the game to drag a bit though. The combos and abilities also seemed a bit more straightforward compared to other beat em ups - You have a short attack and a long attack + a special button and it felt like there was some combo list that I didn't have access to? I would do cool moves from time to time but had no real idea how I managed to do that lol. So I do wish the game was more clear in how it controlled. Returning to the special attacks though: there's a great layer of strategy there as their special move has a good deal of I-frames + drains your health. Doesn't sound too great right? But Streets of Rage 4 just decided to steal Bloodborne's Rally system and it is GREAT! It lets you trade some potential HP later to protect yourself now and encourages you to go on the offensive ASAP once you're out of the shit to get your lost health back. I mean the rally system in general is just a great mechanic so I can't blame them for lifting it.


All this said let's get to Streets of Rage 4's greatest strengths: the art style and the music. In a genre with some colossal titans in both categories (Scott Pilgrim + Castle Crashers) SOR4 stands among them - if not above them. The characters and levels are all hand drawn and they are friggin' gorgeous. Every animation flows into the rest and each is oozing with style and quality. The music is some of the most hoppin' shit I've heard in so long, basically every track is a 9/10 at minimum. Listening to the OST as I type this out is a treat.

Streets of Rage 4 has a super style to it and while I do think the gameplay is great, some elements of it are not to my preference which held it back a bit. Also I do think there is a bit of dearth to its content - most of its playable characters are old sprites rather than actual new characters + no ng+ + no real stats or progression type system that many newer beat em ups have do detract a BIT from the game. This however is one of the games this year I do wish I could spend more time with... maybe next year!

Well.. Not great! Super good music though... and the visuals are very nice... and it certainly builds up tension well... AND THEN IT ENDS. Well no, it has one mediocre jump-scare then a walking section THEN it ends with some text-on-page. Then it's over for real! And you'll be wondering the whole time if it's trying to fake you out... it isn't - it's over. Promise.

So yeah Paratopic is a game with PS1 graphics about some weird narrative shit going down with possibly multiple characters in multiple timelines that intersect... somehow? Someway? Who gives a shit it isn't a real story or theme to be found anywhere here. It's cool ass visuals and music in a nothingburger of two neat scenes. I mean actually there are several solid parts of building up unease and dread but the game doesn't capitalize on those at all except once really. And this is I think my issue with Observation from last year - an almost complete lack of any attention to detail or explanation. Not ANSWERS per se, but EXPLANATION. What's the difference? I'm making up my definitions here but I think answers are the media going "And here's exactly what is going on, minus maybe one or two things for a sequel" - explanations are evidence/facts the audience can put together to make a THEORY of what is happening, hopefully many theories, but none of them with any real confirmation. Not that I mind answers of course (hi Resident Evil!!) but I do need to have some kind of idea of what the fuck is going on, even if there's no actual concrete anything to hold onto.

There are some great parts of Paratopic I don't really want or need to be explained - what was that thing we found in the woods? What do the VCR tapes do, and why are some people able to 'use' them? What greater meaning is there behind the different protagonists? However there's a lot I DO want to know - why is this story told out of order? (we don't know, basically nothing is revealed of any kind of plot or information because of the order) Who even ARE these people? (we learn basically nothing about any of them, or even necessarily that they are different people or how to tell them apart) How did we get here and where do they end up because of what happens in the story? (there is basically no PLOT whatsoever leading these characters from A to B to C. We don't even know who is going where or when!)

Now, is this style of... storytelling... bad? Absolutely not. In a weird way it is very charming and if you go in knowing that none of this will make a damn bit of sense ever then I imagine it would be a fun roller coaster ride. But after playing some damn good horror stuff the past month this kind of weird pointless shit is losing a lot of its charm. If it ever had any.

4~5 years after purchasing this and feeling it stare at me guiltily from my library... Damn solid game actually! A bit by the numbers, but it actually remembers to MAKE something of its plot, characters and themes (oh hi there Paratopic didn't mean to DUNK on you from over there) so that's very much in its favor..

So you're a lady (I forgot her name already) who has seemingly been separated from her son (...I forgot his name too?!) in a recently closed Amusement Park. What a dunce am I right?? Well things get creepier from there as things go from unfortunate to REAL bad REAL quick as the young mother makes her way on the rides of this place to try and figure out what the heck happened to them both... It's a pretty neat premise actually - you are chasing your child, so obviously any ridiculously scary thing in your way that any regular human being would take one look at and say "Well fuck that I'm out!", she is going to keep going. And in the early game you do actually see your son hop on each ride, which is why you end up going on them all - a slow water ride turned into a ghost story telling, a mini-car spin ride stalked by a giant scarecrow monster, bumper cars, etc... And that is essentially "The game" - you go to a part of the park, read some lore drops on notes, find the ride, get the SPOOKS and then move onto the next spot. The game is only 1.5~2 hours so it very much does not overstay its welcome and reaches its "point" pretty quick and I do think it is a quite good premise. Is it basically just ripping off Silent Hill 2 but about a lady and her kid vs. a man and his wife? Yes, but now I can actually appreciate the... homage?

As we're moving through this spooksville town we get lots of lore about how the place may have been INTENTIONALLY built on an Evil parcel of land to do... bad things... and that lots of bad stuff happened here, including the death of the father/husband of our main protagonists. Neat! We also learn that maybe our PC isn't the best of moms, which leads to a reaaaaaaallly good ending that leads into some proper adult horror shit - what if you have kids... and end up deeply hating and resenting them? What then?

So yeah, the game is a literal and figurative spooky theme park for you to walk through and get a neat story told to you and some right proper spooks with a genuinely twisted yet quite open ending. I dig it!

Dusk is a Right Proper old school shooter in the vein of Doom, Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem but Dusk is the continuation and perhaps even revival of that genre of 3D shooter. I personally don't have much experience with it, I played a bit of Doom and DN when I was younger but not too much - though last year I did try out the enjoyable-but-not-excellent Ion Maiden which is pretty similar to this game. The basics of the genre are thus - you will pick up a variety of weapons while moving through short enclosed levels (usually 5-15m a pop) taking out enemies with your arsenal while solving either very simple puzzles or finding keys that will allow you to progress. This is very action-oriented however: your movement speed is FAST and your enemies are numerous and you are expected to be nearly constantly fighting as the levels go on. Even in the short levels of around 5 minutes you can expect to kill at least 150-200 enemies in that time frame so "action packed" is definitely an appropriate term for these games.

Dusk itself however has something to it however that I was drawn to and immensely enjoyed - a SUPERB aesthetic and premise to its world. The game is set in the eponymous town of "Dusk" (a feature it wlll share with game 39, oddly enough...) and you are a denizen who has witnessed a new cult pop up in the town and turn folk legit crazy - oh yeah and monsters are here now too! The game is broken up into three campaigns of your character slowly getting to the bottom of what exactly happened here and what might be able to stop it. First up is the farmlands - this is the town itself and the surrounding lands + some mines and small industrial plants where you see a lot of folks have gone crazy and become twisted by some dark force: I REALLY like Chapter 1 because it sets the tone so damn well and you feel pretty scared of what you're up against with the atmosphere of a haunted and dying rural area you fight through. Chapter 2 however things take something of a dive - this is you moving through the military base and through the nearby Big City where it becomes more and more clear that the government/corporation in charge here started "digging too deep" and found something they should not have... The theme here isn't nearly as strong as chapter 1 and the level design takes a heck of a nose dive. The previous campaigns failings are okay though because Chapter 3 comes to the FUCKIN RESCUE! We're down in the deeps and we get to see what eldritch abominations have been twisting the very land and we meet up with the narrator who has been whispering to us the whole game - some weirdo named Kevin..?? Nah, it's Nyarlthorep!! Fuck yeah Lovecraft.

So while the story and atmosphere is quite good the gameplay is quite solid as well. You've got 10~ish weapons to play with who all feel somewhat different and none of them reload: this is GoGoGo the game okay? Just kill shit and keep moving. And while shooting isn't really my genre and I can't say this game really changed my mind about the style of game it was more than good enough to keep me rolling through to the end. I mean really any game with dual shotguns + a supershotgun is going to be A-Okay in my book alright? The enemies have a nice variety to them and you get to know their various quirks quite well by the end of the game. At the beginning they start off as regular folks or slightly twisted versions of such - they do veer off straight into the monstrous and insane as the game progresses and it feels quite natural as you get good at killing the enemies a new warped creation will show its ugly face.

But its not all positive - the level design in a lot of this game is... FRUSTRATING. Remember Chapter 2 being annoying? Yeah, it's because for like half the damn levels I spent more than half of my time in it looking for the EXIT!! I would kill everyone, flip a switch, get the popup that a door was open somewhere, and thenhave to go over the entire damn thing with a fine tooth comb looking for the way out. And then I did this like... 3 levels in a row? I nearly took a break after the second one but I knew I had to soldier on... so I'm curious if there were different designers or something in Ch. 2? I don't recall having the issue at all in either of the other two campaigns so it was especially annoying to run into it so consistently in the middle of things which kinda broke the pacing of the game.

All in all it was an exciting horror/action shooter which is a genre I'm not often in to but for Spookstober I thought I'd sit down and blitz through the rest of the game. The evolving mood and threat your facing is almost Bloodborne-esque and I love that and each level is soaked with atmosphere. As the game progresses you feel significantly more powerful even as your foes level up as well. There's some bosses but they were all pretty meh but the FEEL of flying through a level fighting off monsters with my dual shotguns never really stayed past its welcome.

The horror classic- Silent Hill 2! Spookstober rolls on as I played what is arguably the greatest horror game of all time... how does it hold up? Pretty okay!

It's tough to judge this one fairly because I am already pretty familiar with the game, having seen many MANY people on the internet discuss its intricacies to death. I was aware of the big 'twists' for the story, I've seen the enemies and themes dissected a dozen times, I've seen many of the cutscenes and enemy types... but honestly I still really really liked it!

The game itself is solidly barebones - you've got your standard survival horror bits of collecting health packs and a few weapons and scrounging for bullets to take down some supernatural baddies while you attempt to explore a place/solve some puzzles. Resident Evil~y right? Well yes, but the moment-to-moment kinda sucks where Resident Evil does not. The camera attempts to be a "movable" fixed camera and it is... offensive in many places, functional in others. There were MANY hallways where I literally cannot see a whole foot in front of me because the camera WILL NOT FLIP AROUND ME. And there's enemies here, I know there are! The radio crackling to life around enemies is a fucking genius idea and I technically had it 10 years ago but whatever. Anyway camera aside the shooting is basic as hell as are all the weapons but 1 (Buster sword! That you can't really use because it's too big - perfect lol) but they ultimately get the job done. There are some puzzles as well and I don't recall having too much difficulty with them and while I DID enjoy the brain-teaser-ness of them, I do think I like the RE style puzzles of weird/creepy aesthetics and progression gating, though at least backtracking Silent Hill 2 is at a minimum unlike RE.

But the gameplay isn't what were here for right? Nah man, we're here for that STORY! James Sunderland is real sad because his wife died 3 years ago (or was it a week ago..??) but he received a mysterious letter from her! She's waiting for him in their "special place" at Silent Hill... so James goes back and meets a few other crazies who are also called to this place for reasons that slowly become apparent as you meet them again and again on your journey. Each of the folks you bump into have various sad stories that evolve and relate to James' own, with lots of neat revelations about the town along the way but no REAL answers are provided in any of the endings. I'm told the other Silent Hill games have explicit references to cults and such who operate in Silent Hill but this game stays away from that almost entirely - and I kinda like it actually? The focus is on James and his loss - and it works damn damn well.

Lastly we'll cover the 'art' of the game - it looks pretty great actually. Unfortunately there's not a whole lot of the town to cover, you basically go from apartment to hopital to a crypt thing then to the final area of the game. Running around Silent Hill proper and seeing lots of little places to explore would've been a lot cooler I think but I imagine they had a shoestring budget to work with so this is what we got. The music and monster noises are perfectly creepy and somber the entire time. Enemies look gross and weird and of course Pyramidhead (overused now, but that's not this game's fault!) is a fearsome foe.

All in all this is an excellent horror game focused more on grief and sorrow rather than monsters going BLAHGHHFHH at you. James' tale and the stories of the other characters are moving and heartbreaking and the dialogue while sometimes a bit stilted is always heartfelt. Even more than 15 years later and already knowing much of the beats of the game I still dearly enjoyed it.

Dead Space 3 is the conclusion of the series, now defunct due to the closing of the studio after the game's release because it didn't hit sales targets.. damn, it was that bad?! Nah, EA is just expected insane sales. But how is the game itself???

I have only recently gotten fully into the Dead Space series as of last year (see my 2 reviews of Dead Space 1 and 2) however things I always read about the series was how it took a SHARP dive off a cliff in the third entry, so that's what I was expecting walking in and... it was pretty good? I think I say this mostly because I knew to keep my expectations low but the things that people say sucked in this game DO suck - but frankly aren't present that much.

So yes, there are human enemies now! This isn't quite so weird as the ENTIRE franchise we've known that there is a human faction out there (the religious nuts) who are going to be opposed to us and while they've never been involved in gameplay segments they have attacked us in cutscenes I believe in both games? Certainly in the second game they were a major antagonist.. However they're not in the game very often until near the end and I didn't find them annoying to fight. By that point the horror and tension are already cut pretty thoroughly so I don't think it damages the game in that sense. In general there's much more of a bent towards action over horror even over the second game which is pretty unfortunate, and I do think the new enemy types feed into that. There are some new gameplay sections that are kinda boring and overused - the winches on the ice planet aren't terribly original or fun and just as you're about getting "done" with them they stop.... until the last bit of the game when they come back with a vengeance! And then they get pretty tiresome.

Speaking of disappointments though - wow the story is pretty garbage in this one. The game of course dumps us right into the action of Issac still being a hot mess and being sad that Ellie left him (...were they together at the end of DS2? Was I supposed to assume that just because they were a man and a woman who talked to each other in a video game?). Isaac also is much more of a disaster as a person and spends the entire game being a shit to everyone but has a nice moment at the end with Ellie showing his 'growth' over the series but it frankly comes pretty fast.. The antagonist is done by the inestimable Simon Templeman who can DO NO WRONG but man he is given shit in this game to work with. He's the boiler-plate crazy religious fanatic who always gets away and ALWAYS monologues at our heroes rather than just fucking shooting them (3 times in this game I believe) and his motivations could have had some weight to them if the writers worked a bit harder but they fucked up and he's just a weird crazy person with a cool voice. There's a very interesting point he raises near the end of the game - since the markers were found Earth and we know that markers drive psychological and physical growth... isn't it very possible that humanity was made what it was by the marker?? This would be a great point to follow up on - too bad it isn't!! Oh, and literally the worst part of this game - there is a love triangle with Ellie's new boyfriend that dominates the story in the first two thirds of the game??? And sweet jesus it is fucking terrible. Ellie's new boyfriend is a captain in the Earth navy trying to 'save' Isaac and acts like a petulant child in EVERY interaction with him because he's threatened by Isaac and Ellie's former relationship? Why the fuck do we or they care about this right now? The galaxy and entire human race are facing extinction how does the game expect us to be interested in this???? EVERY time this is brought up (half the scenes in the first section of the game) I groaned audibly at how bad it was.

So the good stuff: gameplay is pretty much a clone of Dead Space 2 and is still great to play. There's an added mechanic of building our own weapons now and splitting the resources into more generic categories rather than items directly which lets you customize your loadouts a great deal which I thought was pretty cool - my shotgun rocket launcher with stasis bullets helped carry me through the second half of the game NGL. This also is another of the changes that reduces the "survival" bits to this survival horror series but frankly the second game was generous as hell with its resources too so I'm not sure this minor step in continuing it really ruins anything. What this game also does still extremely well is setting a proper mood - at least for the first two Acts of the game. Act 1 isn't even on the planet in all of the marketing - there's a bit on a colony Isaac is hiding out on that kicks off the plot proper and shows off human enemies (boring!) but very soon we get to space and IT. IS. GREAT. You're in orbit around the planet which you'll head down to for Act 2 + 3 and there's a wreckage of a whole fleet out here - and you need to visit various ships to get them working so you can get down to your objective on the planet. There's lots of Zero G sections here which I LOVE (that 100% have the Alien theme) as you're floating around in near silence occassionally popping some enemies and just feeling a great mood of loneliness but also dash of wonder and it is just great. You're also trudging through busted up old star ships and isn't that really where Dead Space does its best work? Act 2 you're on the frozen planet which is proper spooky and the white of snow contrasts very nicely with all the horror around it and it makes liberal use of whiteouts that abruptly end to show you some fuckin cool vistas.

Unfortunately, Act 2 is where the game kinda stumbles and keeps stumbling. The outdoor planet sections drag on for too long and the bad story bits are concentrated here pretty strongly. There's a whole gaggle of side characters who come along with Isaac and Ellie but other than Carver and Capt. Who-Gives-A-Shit they have basically no characterization and when they DO die it is almost always pretty abrupt and I have to ask if we're supposed to care at all? And then Act 3 has a neat science lab which unfortunately ALSO outstays its welcome by a half but then we go to a sweet underground Alien city (oh hi at the mountains of madness!) which is a solid ending bit but the parts before it draaaaaaaag.

Okay last bit - CARVER. This game is designed with a co-op campaign and I see very clearly that was their intent - and BOY did they fuck up the single player campaign. Carver is basically NOT in the game except for some cutscenes - he just walks off screen as the scenes end and PRESUMABLY he's somewhere out there helping out buts its just like a weird ghost character? Also in the last Act he shows up WAY more often and I'm really curious if I would like him a lot more if he was actually.. ya know... there? I was half expecting him to be a hallucination of Isaac's honestly!

Overall I am glad that my expectations for this game were set QUITE low - I do think it is ultimately a pretty good game, the gameplay is solid (until the bullet-sponge enemies attack you from every angle at the last couple hours...) and the changes to resource management gives an interesting change to the core loop. The atmosphere is really well done for most of the game and is exceptional for small but significant parts of it. The story and characters are... a hot mess I guess, but the ending itself is solid and fine horror trilogy send off for our boy - Isaac Clarke.

The third elder scrolls game! I finnnnnally got into it, 15-odd years after trying it! I played the game on PC and it is modded a moderate (eheh) amount so let that be said - no normal first playthrough bullshit for me. I first played the game at a friends place and he showed me his insanely OP Khajit wizard who could fly everywhere and fireball shit and I thought "man this is cool and nuts and I have no idea what is going on". I first played the series proper on my Xbox 360 with the release of Oblivion which I thought was pretty awesome, then of course loved Skyrim because who didn't and mods are amazing.

I first REALLY tried to get into Morrowind 7~8 years ago but bounced off of it repeatedly due to some design issues: not only is the game old it is clunky as shit. It came out only a year before Vampire the Masquerade and it is a hot mess compared to that game. Melee attacks rarely hit your enemies at the start of the game, mana is very limited and spells frequently fail, you can only see like 50ft ahead of you at all times because of the memory constraints of the Xbox, there's a million people to talk to but they only respond to keywords rather than have real conversations with you unlike other RPGs so it is kinda hard to give a proper shit about stories/characters because they 99% just exposit dialogue at you.. Okay so mods were able to fix a LOT of these issues for me but this last one. With mods I could actually see a good distance away to spot landmarks and get the lay of the land, cast a few spells and just wait a bit for mana to come back and level up, changed the to-hit formulas so I could actually HIT things... 'twas nice! I made actual progress during play and I was able to ease myself into the world a bit even if its cheating. PC gaming is just great.

I played a proper Paladin of the Empire who, as a dark elf, was sent back to her parents homeland to try and figure out what was going on with the secret Dunmer cults. I played her because I'm on a bit of a "melee fighter w/healing & utility" kick right now + I thought that would be a solid character to actually try and follow the main quest to completion! I did not succeed at that goal because I hit a REAL boring wall of trying to get people to like me and not kill a bunch of guards to get someone out of prison... Which I think is bugged? I can't sneak in, I can't persuade anyone to let me in... So I just have to kill a bunch of guards? Ehhhhh. But I did play a chunk of the game (nearly 40 hours) with a bunch of other quests finished so I do feel pretty good at having my feelings on the game locked down. While overall I did really like the world and many of the quests the mechanics and workings of the dialogue system are genuinely bad. Like I know dialogue trees were pretty old even when this game was release but they WORK. It is having a conversation and a real chance to ROLE-PLAY in the sense other than just deciding what things you say "yes" to or whether you steal shit or not and that is pretty lacking in this game though in fairness it kinda always is in the Elder Scrolls series. I really like the setting of setting up the Dunmer and their weird yet magical yet even more fucked up all at once society. They're chafing under the rule of the Empire and have historically very much been their own people (Yay freedom good!) but also are big believers in slavery and the Dunmer supremacy over the other races, beastfolk especially (freedom... not so good?). This along with the "Ashlanders", the dunmer who said "fuck all this" to the empire and the Houses that allied with them and just went to the uninhabitable parts of the island of Morrowind who hate everybody. The main bad guy is essentially somebody who just wants the Dark Elves to be their own people again! So yeah, this is a damn solid setup for political drama and tension between our main factions and I dig it. Just the actual 'moment to moment' of the story and dialogue with characters is lacking and that's usually my bread and butter in RPGs - character! I can't say I really remember a SINGLE particular moment between my character and another, positive or negative. Except maybe when I made fun of Dagoth Ur and he sent a bunch of power devils after me...? Good times.

So yeah, the game mechanics are clunky and it looks ugly and while it has good writing - said writing is DUMPED on you in the most inelegant and awkward way possible that prevents you from actually connecting to a single damn person in this world. The leveling system is weird and requires manipulation to properly function while progress comes in big stops and starts. But past that is a great setting, superb atmosphere as you roam the hills and crags, creative and fantastic art styles for the enemies, characters and locations - a magical place where you always are curious about what else you might find over that next weird hill in the distance..

Probably a mushroom tree and a cliff racer.

Final Grade: A-

P.S. Even I've heard of Cliff Racers, apparently the most annoying/frustrating enemy in the game... I had no actual problem with them? They died pretty fast, though they do have a very weird shriek...

P.P.S. This game was composed by Jeremy Soule, and after replaying KOTOR & NWN that he also did - holy fuck this dude just writes the same song over and over!! At least 5 times during the game I'd hear a song and say to myself: "Did I accidentally put in a KOTOR music mod?" Arrest this man for plagiarism.

THPS is a heck of a nostalgic trip that recreates at least part of the magic of my early teenage years.. I do miss out on the old friends who I used to play these games with the most but the rest of it FEELS intact?

The game itself is pretty simple, you can perform various skater tricks for points while on a short timed course of various (real?) skater parks around the USA. Each game starts with a level you have to complete various challenges on before moving onto the next. There's 8/9 levels in each so not a whole ton of content if you're good at the game but as someone who took a minute to get some of the old muscle memory back it felt like a solid offering especially having both the first and second game together in a single package. The soundtrack is a huge part of the game with some solid rock hits from the early aughts/very late 90s and listening to Powerman 5000 while grinding down rails nearly sent me back to South Amherst hahaha...

Overall there's not a whole ton to say about the game? It's pure mechanics and nostalgia and while the skating always feels pretty good and combos are satisfying to pull off for high scores it's just not the type of game to set my toe a tappin anymore. There's online multiplayer but who do I even know who would join me for it? Randos? No thanks!

Final Control DLC that merges together the REMEDYVERSEEEEEEEE and will give us closure on shit???

Nah not really.

This DLC set up is pretty damn flimsy - the elevator at the end of the main hub is dark for some reason? Then we get flashes of Alan Wake writing a story and we're off to the races! Of course we've heard plenty about Wake in this game so we know the deal - shit went down in Bright Falls and there are some shadowy entities and of course the Bureau is interested in that. However it seems a new part of the bureau is unearthed and they were VERY interested in what happened in the town and excavated whole chunks of it just like Ordinary... unlike Ordinary however and how it ties to Jesse I'm really not sure what this means for the characters/story rather than the player? Like I'm super excited that the end of the DLC is straight up "There will be a new AW/Ctrl game in a couple years as a new incident is clearly brewing in Bright Falls"but what does this mean for our story going forward? Does this DLC really DO anything other than have some cool levels + telling us to get ready for a new game down the line? Is that worth the money or time?

...I'm not really sure?

What this DLC did well - bringing back all the Darkness enemies and themes from Alan Wake with a creepy as hell new boss/enemy type that is unkillable with all my badass powers and makes me AFRAID of dark areas! That is a damn neat take on things as Jesse is a legit superhero and it is tough to make the player feel vulnerable in that state but they managed it! The new enemy is really damn creepy and while there are DEFINITELY too many fights with it (and in fact the whole damn DLC is just chasing it around until you corner it) each one on its own was quite good. There's a new horde mode + boss rush that gives a new costume and I am a sucker for dress up in my games obviously. The level design is also top-notch still of course and the game's standard art style of 'stark lighting meets insane geometry' is still 11/10.

There's honestly not a ton to say about this DLC and that leaves me pretty meh on it. I've spent a year after finishing Control + Alan Wake being HYPED at the two worlds colliding and our protagonists getting to interact in some way and .... nothing really happens at all? I just complained about this in the Foundation DLC review YESTERDAY but this clearly falls flatly in the 'useless DLC' column story-wise. The devs at Remedy know they can't put anything meaningful in it because otherwise AW2/Ctrl2 players will just be confused as to what the fuck is going on so nothing can really happen! It is great to hear Alan Wake's story ramblings again don't get me wrong but I was really hoping for more from all of this build up.

The Foundation is the first Control DLC that released several months ago but I am now finally getting around to as all of the DLC is now out! The DLC takes part in... the Foundation, the bottom levels of the Oldest House which you visit briefly in the main campaign to meet with Ahti the All-Powerful-Janitor. As you wander into this new area you learn more about the beginnings of the FBC and how their initial explorations into The Oldest House went (spoiler alert - real bad) and how The Board became a more distinct entity that influenced the Bureau and their relationship with the directorship and the mysterious Former...

So all of that sounds awesome right? And it is pretty good! But ultimately not super satisfying? We get lots of hints that the Board is even more manipulative of the Bureau than we already knew they were which is cool and we learn about their connection to the Astral Plane but nothing is really DONE about it other than Jesse letting us know "She's onto them!" which its like... Duh? We learn a bit more about the early Bureau and how they made their first forays into the house which killed a lot of their people and how Darling's predecessor locked himself into the Foundation for... what exactly? We never learn or even get real hints about what is down there that he finds so fascinating or what he finds to be directly threatening about the board or why he's wary of them. Ultimately this is the fine line of all DLC - how do you have enough happen for it to be relevant to the player and feel meaningful WITHOUT confusing the shit out of regular fans who boot up Control 2 and are like "yo WHEN did all this shit happen?!" and unfortunately Foundation falls off that line into the irrelevancy side.

All that said the good parts of Control is still very much here - the art direction is still absolutely stellar with some stark red sand and white stone all over the place and mysteeeerious light sources projected through small apertures making everything lit VERY dramatically (perhaps a bit too much..?) and it all looks exceptional. The combat is still solid but I'm still mostly just hurling things telekinetically while hovering over chaotic battlefields and having a pretty dope-ass time with it. Scattered about are lots of little notes and audio logs detailing the workings of the bureau and they're all still some combination of creepy/funny/intriguing. DLC itself lasts a few hours and also gives us a bit of closure on where Marshall went off to but she gets a pretty meh send-off for a character who we are CONSTANTLY told she's a badass... she literally does nothing badass that we see..?

All in all The Foundation is a decent enough expansion to Control that offers more of what we love even if there's not a whoooole lot of substance to chew on. We get no real conversations with any NPCs other than Emily who just spouts exposition about the story and there's no meaningful move forward in the main plot of the game - nothing more about the Hiss, about Hedron, or about Dylan. Just a little sidetrip to an ancient part of the Bureau and fighting some more red dudes. Damn that 80's movie sidequest though is great hahahaha... On to Alan Wake!

Alan Wake's American Nightmare is a standalone DLC from a year or so after Alan Wake came out and dang - the game looks a LOT better! The graphics are significantly improved and there's a much greater diversity in the art style as well though it is not quite as strong as the origianl game. The gameplay also is very much the same (use your flashlight to weaken monsters, shoot them with your totally normal pair of guns) but feels a lot tighter. Remedy was so pleased with the upgraded gameplay that they even have a "horde" mode extra of sorts to test your mettle in though who shows up to Alan Wake looking for more GAMEPLAY is a strange cookie in my opinion.

So American Nightmare picks up a bit past the ending of the original Alan Wake. There's a mysterious dream being wearing Alan's face called Mr. Scratch and Alan himself is sorta stuck in the dream world and not in the mountain town he was at previously... how exactly he ends up in the American Southwest I've no damn idea but the location is certainly infused into every visual detail of the game just as the New England vibe was set into the first game. Alan does battle with Mr. Scratch over a small town that is overrun by his 'dark' servants though we're not given much in the way of details where the hell everyone IS in this town... AW games are supposed to feel surreal/dreamlike though and this game has that in spades. You move through 3 different levels that are all pretty cool but unfortunately underutilized while tracking down what Mr. Scratch is up to. You then get to do a refresh of each level THREE times until the end which is a biiiiit tiresome but at least the character's are aware of it - one of the NPCs in the first level has all of the McGuffin's gathered for you as soon as you arrive hahaha...

Alan is his usual charming self and the actor is still top notch however this leads to one of the game's bigger problems - the voice acting for the other characters in the game is TERRIBLE. Normally this isn't too big of a deal as old video games + terrible acting = classic, it just doesn't work for this game because Wake's actor is solid and this game isn't even old! We knew better by 2012 dammit! Also one of the coolest things about Alan Wake was all the documents you uncovered which gave you some spooky glimpses at the things you were going to run into later and while these documents remain they're mostly just about random shit related to Alan's life this time rather than helping to evoke an aura of dread. The first Alan Wake game is a solid horror + action game with good scares and a great story and this is just... a decent expansion on the action? It DOES give us SOME resolution to the end of Alan Wake however: we are shown a video at the end of Alan reuiniting with his wife and he explains that while this may not be now - it will happen one day at least!

Most DLC are truncated and ultimately unsatisfying portions of their main game counterparts and American Nightmare does very little to disprove that notion. The gameplay and looks receive a significant bump but the writing and story are not there to match. Thankfully the AWE expansion for Control is on its way to set things right....

Oh hey this is our first DLC review! I've decided to just go for it with every chunky DLC review that's more than a couple hours/not baked entirely into the main campaign so we will start with Pillars 2's first DLC - The Beast of Winter

This DLC 'starts' insanely early in the game right after you leave Port Maje, Pillars 2's tutorial island, with a letter from the DLCs new companion ... Vatnir (I had to look up his name) ... who asks you to come by his little Glacier home of weirdos and devotees and... do something? I don't actually remember what the letter says because you get the letter at level 5 or 6 and the quest for it is LEVEL 15. Meaning there are like at least 15 hours between when this thing starts and when you actually start it? Kind of stupid but here we are I guess.

As you get to this 'island' in the southern part of the Deadfire you see it is a proper iceberg basically with Snow Elves living on it. This is a great idea since we see very little of them in either Pillars game and this DLC has a good amount of reactivity with Ydwin, the resident Snow Elf companion from the base game. Ydwin is a 'sidekick' in the main game which means she does not get her own quest and only a bit of dialogue so this is a nice bump for her that I hope is a thing going forward in future DLC (spoiler alert - it isn't). She has a lot of interactions with other elves on this island and we get to see multiple perspectives on what individuals from that culture think. The primary gist of the expansion is that there is an undead dragon who is roaming the island who has apparently stolen something of Rymrgand's and you have to stop it or it will destroy the whole of the Deadfire! So this sounds like good stakes of course but honestly the game does very little to properly set it up. We do not see the glacier grow at all during the quest, Rym doesn't even make this specific threat, and the other gods don't interject at all so seemingly they don't think it is a big deal. Also we see the same portal to Rymrgand's world in the first game and while it is alluded to that this may one day end the world we're never really given reason to believe this is an immediate threat which kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the whole story here...

But looking past all of that - the meat of actual DLC is quite good. We kick off by being introduced to these elf weirdos who don't mind dying (a great twist on a world where people know their souls will just come back again later anyway) and then we meet Vatnir - a grim doomsayer leading this group on a slowly expanding iceberg in a tropical sea. Then a zombie dragon shows up! A straight up Dracolich too - bound her soul to a vessel, is a bitchin' mage. She's quite a fight and I had to spend a few tries getting her down but eventually did, only to see her get shot up into the air when she died! That's a very neat hook into your story... then we talk more to Vatnir and find out he's basically just a wimp with a high Charisma stat - his whole schtick and personality are bullshit. We force him to come along with us to journey to Rym's realm to find out what the heck is going on with this dragon - where we meet up with said surly God who tells us that we need to get this item back from the Dragon BECAUSE.... I don't remember. Rym wants us to? So then you go through some of the old souls that are still hanging around Rym's realm and get a bit more info on the metaphysics of the Pillars universe (the difference between Rym's BEYOND and the Wheel) and get to see some neat parts of Pillars history - The fall of Ukaizo, meeting an Inquisitor of Thaos' (with some neat callbacks to what you did to him), and then seeing the Godhammer and meeting Waidwen which was actually pretty awesome. With Waidwen there's some bits to it where you go in the moments before, during and after the Hammer goes off and you have to put him back together. You also get some of his Sad Backstory and relationship with Eothas which is actually pretty interesting stuff, seeing how both of them felt about the "Crusade" they led and what they were trying to do.

More boss battles ensue and Rym tries to double cross you - do you accept having to come back here as a guardian when you die, or remain trapped here forever? You can beat him in a fight and you get sent back but not without a parting question "Why are you such a jerk?"

"It is in my nature"

An interesting response from an artificial being... And that's all from the Beast Of Winter.

The story then is overall pretty solid - not great in terms of stakes but going through the motions has some neat revelations and character moments. Vatnir is so-so other than his interesting curveball when you learn his true personality but honestly you get little out of him other than mewling, even when he comes face to face with his 'father' Rymrgand which SHOULD be a good emotional punch but isssss not? It seems to be setting up for more but only time will tell if it properly pays off. Gameplay wise we get some decent fights and a few attempts at puzzles which I was not wild about. I actually got terribly bored of one map and had to stop playing for a few days hahaha... I liked the bits however with Waidwen and I almost missed them!

All in all this is a decent enough expansion on Pillars 2 that is ultimately just a bit too thin. We don't go super indepth with lore, the new character is fine but not great, the boss battles are cool but basically just two phases of the same fight (Dracoliches are awesome and underused so I will not terribly complain I guess) and its overarching narrative doesn't ever seem to lead to anything lasting in the game. It's a neat side diversion but nothing more. White March this is 100% NOT.

Siege of Dragonspear is technically just a big X-pac for Baldur's Gate 1 which I finished on the Switch earlier this year - however it is QUITE big and if we're going to include Throne of Bhaal in the reviews (and you bet your butt we are), then Siege gets its day in the limelight as well... though I'm not sure that is much in its favor to be reviewed on its own, rather than merely a part of BG1...

Dragonspear was made 15 years after BG1 and is made by a different developer (Beamdog, made up of a lot of ex-BioWare folks in fairness) but tries to make the feel as close to the original series as possible in spirit, though it does its best to serve as a bridge between BG1 and 2 in pretty much every way.

Like 2, Dragonspear's characters are much more fleshed out and talkative about their opinions and quests. Many of the characters from 1 return, especially if they will be back in a bigger way in 2 or if we never hear from them in 2 - Dragonspear tries to 'close the loop' as it were on what their characters were up to while the Bhaalspawn was hoofing it around Atkathla. Overall the characters in Dragonspear are quite good - Jaheira and Khalid actually show affection for each other, Safana gets a bit of cleverness and wit added to her usual schtick of "I use my sexuality 100% of the time" and we even see Imoen training as a mage! Pretty cool actually. I do have a beef though - this would be a great time to flesh out Imoen even more as a character but instead the game goes in the complete opposite direction, making her not a party member for essentially the entire game! Kinda bullshit, makes it harder to care about her in BG2 if you didn't already...? Like what even is the point of going to get her if you barely know her? I'm sure they had their reasons but it just doesn't sit too well with me..

Combat-wise Dragonspear uses the development of computer tech in the past decade+ to great effect. There are SEVERAL enormous battles that take place in this, including two full-on siege battles if you so choose that are epic as hell to look at, if not a complete clusterfuck.. The switch version can BARELY handle these by the way, hahaha... Also there are two sections in Baldur's Gate where it actually FEELS like you're in a GIANT ASS CITY, which is a great feeling that many RPGs fall flat on. Getting to see the throngs of people squished into the city due to the actions of Caelar's crusade is a fantastic touch.

Speaking of the story - it is... pretty good? Not superb, but good. Caelar Argent is an Aasimar knight and she is on a MISSION: to invade the nine hells and get back lost souls! Pretty righteous and awesome right? Now of course you might think "why would anyone want to stop this? She's automatically the good guy!", well, you are given several good lines at calling this out - invading hell is straight up insane, there are TONS of devils and you're fighting them on your home turf. Sure you might save a few, but how many more would you lose? It's madness to try, and that's why you need to stop her! Of course the game gives you a better reason - she attacks you and Imoen in the middle of the night and makes it personal! We later learn she was not trying to kill you but rather capture you for your blood, but still it is damn stupid to pick a fight with you. Don't worry though, we've got a whole other 2 games of people trying... Anyway - you later learn that Caelar is actually only in this for one man: her uncle, who took her place in the hells after she accidentally got herself locked up as an arrogant child. A pretty touching story honestly, and gives her some nicely needed depth as an antagonist though I do wish you could do a little more with it, the game ends like 10 minutes after this revelation...After this, Irenicus frames you for murder and you beat feet out of Baldur's Gate to... BG2!!

Overall I do think Siege of Dragonspear is a pretty solid addition to the BG saga, albeit not really a necessary one. The combat sections are pretty solid, the characters are decent enough, and the story is good for what it is, but it doesn't really feel complete as a whole. The story beats are pretty short, and the areas you wander and explore are quite limited past their immediate quest functions. It all LOOKS great and sounds great but feels, ultimately, just a bit hollow. Probably why Beamdog never got another shot at the series.

Darkest Dungeon is a rogue-like RPG about your attempts at bashing your head in (or rather, your employee's heads in) against the onslaught of a nascent and indescribable horror bent on destroying the world - and it might be your fault..? This game is a Lovecraftian horror through and through.

The game begins with you receiving a letter from a distant uncle of yours who tells you of a fine manor that is in your family's estate that has fallen to ruin and monstrosity - and if you can undo your ancestors mistake you might be able to make a pretty penny at the same time. As you arrive with just a few guards you are ambushed and must make your way to the relative safety of town. Once there, you begin planning your assaults on the nearby dens of monsters, human or otherwise. You yourself do not do battle, but rather you hire heroes every week to do the fighting for you - you just organize the raids and choose the targets. While functionally you do control what all the heroes are up to, this provides a nice narrative weight to the fact that you are often deliberately using up newcomers and the broken folks who come to you for help in your quest to make progress in The Darkest Dungeon. Because yeah that title? It's the final dungeon of the game and it is visible and attainable from literally the first week in the game! It is suicide to go there without being prepared of course...

So gameplay-wise, this is a fucking solid turn based RPG. You control 4 different heroes (of about a dozen+ classes) in each 'raid' and you walk through the dungeons finding loot and occassionally finding bosses. Each mission has a set parameter of what to accomplish while delving into the dungeon: destroy 3 shrines, kill the boss, explore all the rooms, etc. There are also multiple dungeons to go through, each with different musical and artistic themes, enemies and particular challenges. Also as your characters level up the strength of the missions also raises to provide new challenges, and this keeps things feelings pretty fresh for 30~odd hours it took me to beat it, up until the end anyway. Speaking of art design: hell's bells this game looks and sounds amazing. There's a very gritty cartoony style to everything that makes it look dirty and beaten down, like this is all centuries old and you're just a tiny little gnat in the scheme of things. The enemies are grotesque and what we learn of them is often a horrifying look into your ancestors actions, it seems in fact that he is responsible for most of the heinous things you have to defeat! The 'twist' at the end of him being the herald of the Heart of Darkness is pretty well telegraphed hahaha... The final dungeon as well is just a revelation. It begins with creepy geometric halls and descends into the literal bowels of a growing monstrosity, a city of flesh of bone and madness. I'm fucking stealing the shit out of it for my Pathfinder campaign!! Thanks DD.

So there are a lot of mechanics that prevent you from progressing too quickly - characters develop positive and negative quirks that are EXPENSIVE and time consuming to fix, stress is another hit point bar functionally that takes time and money to fix, they can contract diseases, etc. Unfortunately I didn't find this very fun so I modded the HECK out of this game and that might be a major part of why I loved it so much. I essentially ripped all of these annoying parts out of the game or I just made them much easier to get around, so I was able to keep a solid stable of about 10 characters essentially the whole game and not have to worry about finding replacements, which is kinda going against the spirit of the game? These characters are MEANT to be disposable to you, and in fact the story calls you out on doing just that in the ending (the Darkest Dungeon and the ending are fucking amazing by the way) which rang a touch hollow to me because of how I manipulated the game design. However, I DEFINITELY never would have seen the ending without such changes, so I guess it's a good thing I did? This leads to a small conundrum - do I rate the game for what I played it as, or what it was intended to be? I can respect what it was trying to do but I just can't enjoy it.

Darkest Dungeon is a game about beating you down, but also about rallying back from defeat to try and snatch away some small victory. It's dreary and somber in tone and art, but thrilling and exciting in its rewards as you march along its halls. It is perfectly Lovecraftian - you can fight these horrors but they are never beaten... only sleeping, until the time is right again.