82 hours in and I finally mastered one character 😎

But in all seriousness, this game is so fun. I'm not fighting games fan generally, but I happened to try this out and quickly got addicted. The combat is very fluid and the hits feel incredibly satisfying. Yes there's a learning curve, but its much easier than I thought it would be.

The community around this has also been very friendly and welcoming for a newbie like me!

I was reluctant to try this game because I don't care too much about the Marvel universe anymore and the vertical format turned me off at first, but I'm so glad I gave it a chance. This is my new favorite TCG, which is saying a lot because I was obsessed with Hearthstone and Runeterra. The games are the perfect length where I can hop on, play a few, and hop off. And the decks are easy to experiment with so I'm motivated to try new things. I hope they keep supporting this game for a long time because I'll continue to play it.

Remedy has to stop giving all their "good stories but half-baked gameplay" IPs to Microsoft because this game is just begging for an Alan Wake 2-tier sequel. There are a few moments where the otherwise standard (but very well-written) time travel plot veers ever so briefly into rad as hell territory, but those aspects of the narrative never get their proper moment in the sun and are largely left for us to speculate about. I would love to see what Sam Lake and his merry band of madlads cook up with those concepts now that the foundation of this world has been firmly established, but alas, Quantum Break is likely locked up in the Recycle Bin alongside Internet Explorer for the foreseeable future. Ah well, at least we've got legally distinct Tim(e) Breaker and Warlin Door now.

I'd give this a solid "check it out" even if I can only muster to rate it "good", because there's a wonderful sense of ambition on display here. Like, love it or hate it, you're not gonna find another game that plays full, live-action TV show episodes with dynamic content based on decisions you made in the gameplay segments in between its narrative chapters. Most people would call that very concept absurd just due to simple logistics, but Remedy will not be dissuaded by such mundane troubles. Sure, the episodes are shot like the digital display ads you might find in a dentist's office between fillings, but goddamn I'll give them props for going for it all the same.

Of course, it helps that Lance Reddick brings his best to every scene he's in, because that's just how he rolls. Rest in peace, man - gone too soon for real.

My wife and I are shelving this, not because we're sick of it after several weeks of constant play, but because we're so willing to sink more and more time into it. At some point I've gotta play other games!

Bolting a city-builder onto a roguelike superstructure is a clever concept, but it's not without risks. A single game of most city-builders is a long endeavor, often taking multiple days of play and feeling like a complete experience in and of itself. How then do you strike a balance where each game is lightweight enough to play multiple in succession, but they still retain the long-term experiential arc that's core to the city-builder genre?

Against the Storm manages this spectacularly, targeting each individual settlement somewhere between three to five hours, depending on the difficulty level and the player's experience. It ends up working out most of the time so that just as you get the highest level of technology up and running, it's time to start getting those last few Reputation points and finishing the settlement. It's just shy of rushed, the perfect amount of time to add the extra challenge of figuring out when to switch focus from sustainability to a sprint for the finish.

Because the player is doing many more cities from the gound up than they would in other city-builders, there's another risk that the play would grow stale. The game avoids this through several layers of clever randomization which combine to push different settlements in different directions. Each settlement is placed in one of a handful of different biomes with different resources readily available; you have a different subset of the five species in your settlement, each with their own strengths and desires; and most crucially, you can only choose from a limited set of building blueprints.

I think the building system is the most inspired part of this game. Most buildings exist to process raw materials into outputs. Each building has three recipes: for example, you can make flour out of grain, roots, or mushrooms. You can make biscuits out of flour plus herbs, berries, or roots. The core ingredients are always the same, but different buildings have more or less efficient recipes for different products, as well as different sets of recipes.

This simple concept causes an incredible amount of variety between runs. If you get a Rain Mill blueprint (excellent flour production but only poor recipes otherwise) you'll know you need to prioritize buildings that make baked goods. But if you get the Press (poor flour production but excellent oil), you'll be able to make a few biscuits but you shouldn't make it a pillar of your settlement. The ramifications ripple out to make each run feel genuinely unique and improvisational in a way even the best roguelikes often struggle to achieve.

The meta-progression helps with this. Each game exists as part of a larger-scale run called a "cycle", which will often contain six or more separate settlements, working towards a final extra-difficult settlement that unlocks the next difficulty level. The cycle system means that you're strongly motivated not to just give up on a settlement that isn't set up for your preferred strategy without damaging your larger-scale progress. Every settlement is important, so every strategy has to be considered.

ǝuoƃ ǝɹ,noʎ uǝɥʍ ɯᴉɥ ʇǝǝɯ llᴉʍ spuǝᴉɹɟ ɹnoʎ
uo noʎ pɐǝl oʇ lɐnʇᴉɹ ǝɥʇ sᴉ sᴉɥʇ

Alan Wake 2 is a miracle of a game: a 13 year old IP with a troubled development history, previously locked down by Microsoft but ostensibly the centerpiece of the connected universe that all Remedy games revolve around, finally gets a sequel in 2023 - and it fuckin' rules. And this is coming from someone who hates survival horror games.

I really don't have anything to add to the conversation that you haven't already heard. The story rips, the gameplay rips, Saga's Mind Place caseboard rips, the atmosphere and worldbuilding fuckin' rips, the performances across the whole cast all rip, the New Game+ mode that changes content of the story in a thematically appropriate way rips, the fact that almost every other game Remedy has ever made all the way back to Max Payne are all thematically and narratively relevant to the Alan Wake mythos rips, the mid-game, in-engine, totally missable Yötön Yö short film rips so goddamn hard. I haven't stopped listening to that Old Gods of Asgard album ever since I got ahold of it. When I was omega-tier sick, I had fever dreams about being lost in the Dark Place and finding manuscript pages. It was awesome.

There's no way in hell this can be anything less than Game of the Year for me. I am so, so invested in this world Remedy has created, and I'm going to immediately dive into Control and the other games I missed as soon as I get the chance. And for someone with a backlog as big as mine, there's truly no better accolade I can bestow upon a game than "caused a dramatic priority shift in the Up Next queue".

Looking forward to seeing what the madlads at Remedy cook up for us next.

ɹǝʌǝɹoɟ sdool ʇᴉ ʇɐɥʇ ʎɐs ǝɯos puɐ
pɐoɹ sᴉɥʇ 'ɹǝʌǝɹoɟ sdool ʇᴉ ʇɐɥʇ ʎɐs ǝɯos puɐ
ǝɯᴉʇ ʎɹǝʌǝ uo noʎ ǝsol ᴉ ʇɐɥʇ pɐoɹ sᴉɥʇ 'ɹǝʌǝɹoɟ sdool ʇᴉ ʇɐɥʇ ʎɐs ǝɯos puɐ

Long before I got to actually play any of these games, I remember seeing an image online of a bargain bin with an entire stack of used copies of Max Payne 3 being right in the middle of it, and because I was only vaguely familiar with the titular character's name at the time, it made me curious to see why that game in particular was apparently so controversial. As I became a bigger fan of the series by playing through and loving the first two games, my intrigue towards playing Max Payne 3 only grew due to how divisive it apparently was in the fanbase, but hearing about how the game was made by Rockstar this time around rather than Remedy gave me the feeling that the game was in good hands. While Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne improved on everything the previous game had established, Max Payne 3 ended up feeling like a total evolution of what made the series so special to me, as it struck a great balance between retaining the soul of the previous two games and revamping the gameplay and presentation in ways that ended up making this game my favorite in the trilogy.

One of the most noticeable and controversial additions to the gameplay in Max Payne 3 would be that of the cover system, and while I do kind of understand why people were coming from (especially with how the game industry was horrendously oversaturated with third-person cover shooters at the time), I felt that it ended up working alongside the John Woo-inspired bullet time and shootdodge mechanics that made the series iconic rather than against them. Thanks to the reduced amount of painkillers, weightier physics engine, and limited weapon slots that have a built-in risk-reward system, the gunfights in Max Payne 3 ended up being so much more dynamic, intense, and engaging than the ones in the previous two games, as you're given more freedom to approach each encounter while still being effectively punished for being too reckless or not having a plan. In both Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, I killed pretty much all of the enemies in my way by dodging to the side in slow motion and holding on R1 until they died, but here in Max Payne 3, I would pull off stunts like dive off of a railing, headshot as many enemies as possible before landing on the ground, staying on the ground to pick off anyone I missed, and then rolling into cover to blind fire at the new enemies arriving in the area, and having those strategies go well felt incredibly satisfying. Although you can find optional clues in each mission to help make sense of what's going on, a lot of the detective work and especially the platforming from the previous two games were toned down in favor of focusing on the shootouts and cutscenes, but since the moment-to-moment gameplay is so fun and rewarding to experiment with (especially thanks to how good these guns feel to handle and how cruel the violence ends up being), it doesn't end up feeling like a loss at all.

Even before I got the chance to actually play Max Payne 3, I was well aware of its visual style (so much so that I remember referencing it in at least one of my movie reviews), but I not only felt that it was a perfect fit for the story and its themes, but I also thought that it was even more appealing to my own tastes than the presentation of the rest of the series. If Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne took cues from the noir genre, then Max Payne 3 did the same with neo-noir, as the comic panel cutscenes and grimy New York apartments were replaced with a sun-baked, yet sleazy São Paulo setting, an incredible soundtrack by HEALTH, and a barrage of woozy, hyperactive flourishes that feel straight out of digital-era Tony Scott films like Man on Fire and Domino. Max was literally never able to catch a break in any of the three games, but what he goes through here in Max Payne 3 felt outright depressing, as his intense and debilitating addictions to alcohol and painkillers added another layer of tragedy to a story and plot that are significantly darker and bleaker than the first two games. The game starts with Payne hitting rock bottom before having him somehow ruin every worst case scenario he finds himself in, and as the twists and betrayals stack up on top of each other, the fog of failure and self-hatred that clouds his judgement thickens right alongside it. James McCaffrey's performances in Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne were already brilliant, but he absolutely nailed it here in Max Payne 3, as he conveys just how beaten-down, exhausted, and bitter Payne has become with every line. Max Payne 3 was a phenomenal conclusion to what is easily my favorite video game trilogy (although I'd still consider Metal Gear to be my favorite overall franchise in gaming), and since Rockstar's focus has shifted towards making open world games over the past decade, I can't imagine them making something like this ever again.

when I played Alan Wake the first time around, I immediately noticed the overt homage/pastiche of Twin Peaks on display, which was honestly the main motivation behind me checking out the game in the first place. this time around, I was floored from realizing how much inspiration Alan Wake also takes from House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, even going so far as to include music from that novel's official companion album). reading that book has been a truly illuminating experience for my extremely niche media taste - it's shown up in as a clear inspo in some of the weirdest and wildest places ever since I found out about it.

for this pre-Alan Wake II refresher playthrough, I went into the experience knowing a bit more about this game's troubled development, and, yeah, you can definitely see the corpse of a truly ambitious open world Deadly Premonition-like game just below the surface of the game we got. some people might dock points for that (something something "unfocused" something something "unfinished"), but I gotta admire the talent that goes into not only salvaging a project with that much ambition but also managing to deliver something so unique and atmospheric in the process. seriously, Alan Wake has some of the most stunning ambiance when you're running headfirst into the oppressively gloomy woods, the safety of the light just out of reach, the sentient darkness thundering louder the farther from the light you run... shit's tense, man, and the flashlight mechanics add a great level of anxiety on top of it all.

one of the things Alan Wake does so extremely right is that its primary collectibles, the manuscript pages, are just the game's written scenario in a jumbled order. going off the critical path might reward you with a vignette of what a side character is experiencing off-screen or maybe a snippet of what's about to unfold later in the episode. it keeps you on your toes and gives you a damn good reason for walking off into the spooky side areas full of ghouls ready to ambush you rather than sticking to the safety of the well-lit road.

I also really loved the remaster's addition of hidden QR codes, each of which links to different "visions" of Alan Wake from Alan Wake II as he prepares to write his return following his departure at the end of this game. it adds an extra layer of insane, nonlinear meta-narrative to an already swirling fever dream of a story filled with strange, disconnected elements - and, dear reader, that kind of thing is just the peanut butter to my jam.

yeah, I hear your criticisms, but I am unmoved: this game rocks because Remedy and Sam Lake know how to write cool stories that keep me engrossed and engaged, and sometimes, that's enough. the blinding light of the creative vision on display is enough to eliminate any shadows of imperfection for me. I mean, seriously, this remaster includes a commentary track mode from Sam Lake himself - when was the last time you played a videogame that included developer commentary? that's cool as hell.