Every so often a game comes out that breaks any potential score you give to it. A perfect score doesn’t cover everything because the game is so well realised that the marriage of story, execution, art direction etc come together in perfect harmony. The writers and designers understand the world so well and use it to delight and surprise you with additional content which feels excessive and lavish.

That game is Alan Wake 2, the last game that made me feel like this is Metal Gear Solid 3. I can’t give it any higher praise.

"And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/
And some say that it loops forever/
This road that I lose you on everytime/"

My Game of the year.

Experimental, layered, innovative, brilliant. Could only work as a video game and could only be done by Remedy.

bugs made me depressed and miserable because they completely halted my progress for 2 days but they’re fixed now and the ending was so good that I completely forgive them. BUT I don’t wanna see that bullshit in a game ever again I nearly took my god damn life.

Not controversial to say that writing in video games aren’t anything extraordinary barring a few cases, but this narrative had me clutching my balls from the prologue all the way through to the cliff hanger conclusion. What starts as a simple murder mystery, evolves into a huge multi media, genre spanning survival horror experience.

The combat is nothing special whatsoever but it does what it’s supposed to do and I have no gripes with it, the few boss fights are fun and I’m glad they’re centred around interesting mechanics rather than bullet sponges.

Alan’s scene writing gimmick is one of the most coolest video game mechanics I’ve ever seen, I never got bored of it once and it’s so intuitive. Thank u next gen

Visually one of the greatest games out rn. The dense forests or the noire stylised New York, it’s jaw dropping every time. Some of the best environmental story telling I’ve ever seen, every pixel was designed with love.

As a Norse mythology enjoyer I was very happy to see it be a central theme throughout the game, it’s in your face while subtle at the same time, they respect your intelligence. Small note I haven’t seen mentioned much, Remedy filling the game with Finnish culture is such a nice touch. Specifically having Ahti sing Yötôn Yõ, I haven’t been able to get the song out of my head all week.

Speaking of music… it’s huge in this game. Every chapter closes out with a song with relevant lyrics, sitting back for 2 minutes and digesting the chapter you just played while the lyrics make you rethink everything again is an amazing feeling.

There are so many brilliant characters here, Brightfalls and Watery are so alive. There’s not necessarily any side quests or real interactions with the majority of npcs, but these places fill really lived in. So much personality displayed in every corner. Ahti, Rosa, Odin, Tor, Mulligan, Thornton, Booker, Door, all beyond exceptional. And this is just the side characters… Wake is as you’d expect, but Saga is a really great addition to the game. I think her voice work is a little rough at times but the character is brilliant.

Giving the choice to switch between either character and play at our own pace after the introduction was a genius move, I personally played through all of Alan’s side and then came back for Saga, but you can go in whichever order you please.

There’s foreshadowing thrown in your face from the get go, things are constantly being revealed while asking more questions, while also wrapping everything up in a nice bow and at the same time, opening the door for another sequel. I’m super invested in Remedy’s universe and will definitely will be playing Control after.

I haven’t actually said much of substance since I think it’s best you play this as blind as you possibly can. There’s more I wanna say but it’s 6am, pls just play the game

What an awesome game! While I thought the first Alan Wake was fine combat aside, this is easily among the biggest jumps in quality I’ve seen for a game sequel. Shifting the genre to true survival horror (more akin to The Evil Within or recent RE remakes with gameplay) while still confidently maintaining its surreal David Lynch vibes is the coolest thing they could’ve done with the series, their execution is a dramatic improvement and you can really feel how passionate of a project it is. There can be a few bugs that may hinder it a bit though and wish there was just a bit more polish for the PS5 version, but hopefully those are ironed out over time. Definitely one of my top favorites this year

It's extremely difficult to explain exactly why Pathologic is so appealing in any sense, because without the context of having played it, writing down why you like it makes you seem like a masochist and this game a bizarre form of torture. Going into detail about how a good half of the game will be you in some variation of destitute, hungry, sick, constantly babysitting characters in a dice roll that goes increasingly out of your favor, etc. just makes me sound insane for not only playing it for hours on end, but loving it.

But I do love it specifically because of those aspects: the game is so cleverly written, with each character either knowing something that requires you to keep them alive just to help the others you do care for or simply liking them to begin with, just to constantly challenge to see how far you'll go to do so. Other games have attempted to make the player feel bad for doing things, whether it be in a plot sense or a gameplay segment: Pathologic is that entire segment, non-linear and completely up to your own discretion.

It simply puts you in situations you cannot control and DEMANDS that if you truly care about the people it has provided for you, then prove it: do things you wouldn't just to get ahead, be morally ambiguous, do something the truly desperate would do. Through that, it manages to make you feel the panic of the situation through how difficult and unwavering it is and how it will not hesitate to take away something you cared for, ESPECIALLY if you only put in the barest amount of effort in to protect it.

None of this is mentioning how good the characters, atmosphere, and general competency when it comes to presenting you this world and the people in it.

The only things stopping me from making it a perfect five is that the game is pretty buggy; every time I closed out of it, it would simply freeze and I would have to use task manager to end the process, and the fact the game is so experimental I can't see anyone except fringe weirdos enjoying it enough to finish it like I did. Other than that, I see no other word to use except masterpiece,

I honestly didn't expect any game in the Souls series to surpass Dark Souls for me in large part due to an awareness that the most compelling aspect of that game, its rich, deeply interwoven world that is so well realised that it sears every corner of its map into your memory, is something I wouldn't again find in quite that form in any of the other three Souls games.

Dark Souls III knows it can't really compete on those terms, so instead does something completely different. It accepts a more linear path, much more linear than any of the other three Souls games by a fair margin (though still with a great deal of exploration to engage in within each individual area, never sacrificing the sense of intrigue, mystery and discovery), and engages in this style with intent; Dark Souls III is the most narrative of the Souls games, taking you on various emotional and thematic arcs in your journey across this waning land, arcs that can only exist with as much potency as they do thanks to the game knowing the order everything will be seen in. Rather than trying to be what the other games are, Dark Souls III gets it is best to be something proudly distinct.

The obvious retort here is how can you say Dark Souls III is interested in being something distinct when it has such a deep attachment to the past, bringing back so many places and characters from former games, how can that be consistent with all these references that are littered everywhere. But again, just like with the game's more intense linearity, Dark Souls III ending up this way isn't due to being lazy or cashing in on the success of the Souls series, this is intentional. These references are serving a very particular effect. In its dying days this world is crashing in on itself, colliding with other worlds, time and space becoming unhinged as this age approaches its final moments, and these echoes of former games, so many of them off-putting or bizarrely, indescribably nonsensical, are the most unsettling way to make this felt. There are so many moments where these references put a smile on my face, only to be followed up with the feeling that it doesn't feel quite right, this sense of unease creeping up on me.

The feelings this game engenders are so intentional, and so powerful, and I think thematically it ends up being the richest, most fascinating entry in the series as a result.

Even beyond all of this, beyond all the ways the game's seeming weaknesses somehow act as marked strengths, and beyond the depth of emotion found within all of it, Dark Souls III is also just fun. It is the most refined of the four Souls games, learning a lot of lessons from what came before it. There's still some amount of arcane nonsense that is hard to ever really work out on your own, secrets within secrets, but importantly this stuff doesn't touch the actual mechanics of the game of the game so much anymore. In terms of understanding how to play the game Dark Souls III ends up being the most accessible of all the Souls games and is all the better for it, with a bunch of quality of life features present also that manage to make the game more pleasant to engage with without ever compromising the game's emotionality or sense of fascination.

Dark Souls III has easily the highest floor of the Souls games, with a level of consistency that is wildly unheard of in the series. Meanwhile the high-points for me rank as the very peak of the series partly due to the stellar art direction, partly due to the game taking Dark Souls' macro-world design and trying to apply it on a more micro-level to fit within this linear approach (everything about the design of the Cathedral's map is just a work of art), and partly because Dark Souls III's increased sense of narrative spreads to boss fights also making so many of the best fights into actual stories packed with emotion, awe and fascination, with the mechanics of these fights complimenting the stories being told so beautifully.

It's genuinely amazing to me how Dark Souls III manages to all at once iterate and develop on what came before it in a way that fully understands it could never exist without these earlier entries, whilst also keenly charging forth as something so different from these earlier entries, boldly and unapologetically.

Don't let the slightly garish Stranger Things packaging fool you. This hidden gem is a masterclass of minimalist interactive storytelling, where simple text adventure and trivial completion of instructions manage to evoke chilling psychological revelations. Without spoiling anything, I was thoroughly impressed by the writing, the gradual build up of narrative elements and maintaining such a creeping sense of dread with so little. It's the kind of horror I love.

Speaking of horror I love: Silent Hill. Townfall. I wasn't fully convinced when I saw No Code was at the helm of this new game; but playing Stories Untold, I'm reassured it's absolutely a perfect match. I cannot wait!