It has its issues, but Control feels absolutely unique in the current landscape of Triple AAA games. It takes queues from many greats, but imbues them with such... zaniness. And the best of all is that it simply doesn't give a single hoot whether your on board or not with its weirdness. It's a bombastic parade of juxtaposing ideas and themes that finds its sense of unity and purpose exactly through them. Things exist, things ARE only in relation to what surrounds them, and we exist as mere catalysts of this universal process. As long as there is a conscious, there will always exist a subconscious. One disappears, the other follows it immediately. For better or worse, this is what motivates every little design decision of the game.

Lucky for us, there's plenty more "better" than "worse".

An interesting experience to say the least, but one marred by quite a few issues regarding narrative and design -- the former admittedly my own fault, since I didn't know this was a direct sequel to the first Silent Hill, which I haven't played yet. After amending that, I'll surely give SH3 a retry. Only after that will I be comfortable giving it a rating.

But I do have to say: technically, it's virtually perfect, one of the most effective audiovisual horror experiences in history, superior even to what Team Silent achieved in SH2.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into it. I know some people laud Minerva's Den narrative as the best in the series, but the game's pacing is ridiculously overbearing, with just too much combat encounters to make the experience enjoyable. Would've preferred it to be a more slow and moody offering. Many people loved Bioshock 2's combat, so I respect their attempt at giving more shoot-em-up scenarios to the player, but the experiment didn't pan out -- at least to me.

Didn't finish it, so I won't be giving it a score.

Wrote this message in my native language (portuguese) as a summary of my thoughts on the game. Since I'm too lazy to translate it, I'm pasting it here as is, and I'll leave the translation to anyone who, for some heck of a reason, wishes to do so.

Tem os seus momentos frustrantes (controlos pouco ergonómicos, câmara com consciência própria), mas há um feeling muito particular neste jogo que nunca vi replicado. Eu já tinha lido isto e, agora que o joguei, verifico: o mundo de Shadow of the Colossus irradia uma energia muito própria. É deserto de qualquer tipo de vida para além dum ou outro animaleco, mas há uma alma ali que confere a cada paisagem um propósito que transcende completamente qualquer possível interpretação que possamos ter. É um mundo completamente natural e ao mesmo tempo alienígena. Há algo nisso que me marcou muito, juntamente com o tom todo da narrativa: o herói que controlas progressivamente assume-se como um vilão, assassino de criaturas lindas de morrer, para o fim admitidamente nobre de ressuscitar uma mulher que deve ser todo o seu mundo, mas fá-lo sabendo que tanto a paisagem como o seu próprio ser vai cair numa decadência irreconstituível. Mas o final do jogo consegue, surpreendentemente, afirmar-se como uma celebração à vida e que homenageia todo o esforço feito ao longo da jornada, que, porém bárbara, foi movida por nobreza, devoção e amor....

Monumental, ainda nos dias que correm.

It's absolutely incredible how drastically a game's mechanical philosophy changes just by slightly readjusting the speed and intensity of a combat system. In Dark Souls you felt like a thing to burned, gnashed, stabbed and pounded until made ash, and thus the combat reflected this by incentivizing the player to tackle it in a ponderous and surgical manner. Bloodborne doesn't just ask you, but demands that you partake in violence in a much more bestial manner, where you have to throw yourself at your enemies, again and again and again, because blood is not just a consequence or need of your journey, but a blissful pleasure in of itself. Even when hunted, you're always the Hunter.

What a game, what a setting, what a feast for the eyes and ears. I do have to give it another go before pitting it against the other Soulsborne games (and Sekiro, of course), but it's just as masterful as I anticipated it being.

EDIT: currently tied with DS1 as my favorite of the series.