Firewatch is a first person adventure set in 1989 where the player takes the role of a fire lookout in the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. The game starts off in an incredibly strong fashion, setting up a narrative that is very emotionally gripping in just a few text lines - the wife of the main character, Julia, has early-onset dementia and this has taken a massive toll in their relationship. Henry, the main character, eventually comes to Shoshone, in a way, to escape from his marriage's issues after not being able to take care of Julia anymore.

When arriving to the park, he meets a woman - Delilah - with whom we speak for the entire game via a small, pocket radio, but never see. Delilah is our only company for the vast majority of the game. Throughout the game, the relationship between Delilah and Henry is developed as Henry takes on small tasks and hikes around Shoshone accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack and some gorgeous views - I took a lot of screenshots.

The game jitters a bit and has quite a bit of frame drops which should not happen since the game isn't technically impressive at all, even if very beautiful, and while that signals a bit of lack of polish, it was not a deal breaker for me. As the game progresses, the voice lines exchanged between Delilah and Henry are an absolute delight, and I often found myself walking around in-game just DESESPERATE for them to start talking again (that's how enjoyable they were). But soon enough the focus stops being on the inner troubles of the characters and starts being on some strange occurrencies happening in the park.

I will admit, the game had me on the edge of my seat for the majority of the time, and I was so focused and immersed that I was jumpscared twice with things that weren't that scary (LOL) but after the mystery unrolled I missed the more introspective, contemplative voice lines of the beginning of the game. The ending felt a bit rushed and not even seeing Delilah at the end honestly felt a little bit more like they didn't want to make a 3D model for her than anything else, it was really underwhelming. In spite of this, I never felt like the quality of the dialogue dropped, just that the focus of it changed and some plot lines were left unopened or were closed too quickly contrasting with the early game's more slow and calculated pace (for example, the teen's disappearing outcome is revealed to us in a single interaction from Delilah).

All in all, Firewatch is quite an experience, with an extremely strong visual identity (ranging from the beautiful designed posters to the varying canyon landscapes), solid soundtrack, brilliant voice acting and a very unique premise. But its execution ranges from brilliant to okay, it's technically a little rough around the corners, and the ending could've been more worked on. For a game with such a strong focus on escapism, with Henry running away from his wife's illness, Delilah avoiding her broken relationship, Ned trying to stay away from the consequences of his sins, and perhaps you, the player, trying to escape from reality while playing the videogame, Firewatch unfortunately feels like it's avoiding itself in its last legs.

A challenge can be anything that’s difficult to achieve, but to be challenged, in the sense of being called to action, carries a much more complicated set of implications. The most distinct is a sense of inescapability, that there are no alternatives but to rise and give your best within a certain set of limitations. The difference between the two is core to what I found lacking in Elden Ring, but it’s also what I think lies at the center of the game’s unprecedented appeal. In a game like Dark Souls, you could find yourself at the bottom of Blighttown with no way to easily boost your weapons, no way to upgrade your flask, no way to try a different weapon, nothing, you had to either press onwards, or do what no player wants to do, climb back out and redo the whole thing when more prepared. For lack of a better term, it was a challenge in both the intransitive and transitive senses; it was difficult, and it also confronted players with that sense of inescapability. Elden Ring’s wide open world with unimpeded access to weapon upgrades, weapon arts, summons, physick flasks, alternative progression paths, and so much more means that the only time the game presents an active challenge is an hour from the end, in the final couple bosses. The rest of the game is a wide open space where you can always go where you’re prepared, and snowball without pressure. The Souls games always let players do this to some extent, but the ease with which this can be achieved in Elden Ring is its unique selling point, and thus why I think it’s so appealing to newcomers. An open space dotted with intransitive challenges allows players of all skill levels to enjoy themselves in the way they want to, and never hit any brick walls. For me though, the most memorable parts of the series were the times like Blighttown and the drop into Anor Londo, when I knew that my only real choice was to press onwards against all odds. Elden Ring is clearly an artistically ambitious game, and I can applaud and respect it for that, but now that I’ve finished it, I’m left without any similar moments to remember. I’ll certainly recall playing it, but that's a lot different from an experience hoping “to be remembered”.

remember video games? enter the cyberpunk memory. save the sinker. kill the psychopomp. become a diamond dog. 48 hours. welcome to the hologram. vaporwave monstrosities and naive soundchip convulsions. a flash of a grid then water. promises of simulacrum. oneiric sex. metamorphosis. disgustingly terrestrial. touch the rhombus. sleepwalking hordes of mass programmed and jittering and killing in the hallway and subway. ghosts escape from the television. more than one. religion is dead. the city the city. the bubbles awaken. the spring the autumn is not a season it is a chapter. what is the deal with computers are turned on. the gametes want to kill you. the lichen wants to kill her. the fruit of the womb. breathing underwater. following around to see a life that's never in. what is the difference between a dream and a memory? sayaka is trapped. the d-movies are a simulation they arent real the insects the molluscs the frondless things crawl in them massive writhing birthing. she could die. that is why you are moving through the dream. 48 hours. it never really saw. post-future psychosexuality. there's so little to do few verbs god gives like a draconian edict uttered in sparks by a burning bush it burns and is gone and even to speak of it is incoherent it may never have been because burning only happens in filaments. the noise repeats time signature. the purity of mathematics is unseen unheard hidden from us withheld. deep underwater an ocean blue black deep starless. pathetic machine elves we do not build temples we build hospitals. the tokyo metropolitan area is not burning. from graphica or if anything. city popping a bubble. recommended by a machine. there's so little to do so little verbs that new slimegod molting raving. a war of information you never could have known. use the rhombus to grow. eros mindgash and voynich interpol. for all we know sayaka is everything there ever was and is. there is only one mouth after the grid that vomits the words up like a faucet and enlightens no one like a faucet but it is only for a moment before it is gone there is acid left behind. chrome swordsman and lepidopteric dominatrix. sperm and egg. digital and analog. incubus and succubus. sinkers and their false consciousness. no water no snow no sunshine the fog the fog the computer monitors the excretions the fog and. following an angel. penrose acidmother her new kingdom and spirit. if buttons do it where it is done. the code is invisible. egg the dream symbiote they approach. the skyline acid torn like a bitch. unsorted synthetics crawling into bodies. human. look for water and find nature is dead the trees are alive but we have killed it and put up a parking lot we remember when it was only yesterday just yesterday it was an era of future there was a future. it is not new it is not old which is it if you cant tell. wish for holographic inscriptions. orbs are too pure ovals and spheroids instead it could be argued this is all because of the bomb. nothing haptic nothing in the water feel with fingers and feel empty. killer zooid unsymmetrical baptism force. claw and whip and blade and lasers. the rhombuses of all sorts of hues are the key to metamorphosis. seek and ricochet killtronics. also spin so explode sexy crystals when they explode. optic nerve electrified split ends. cochlea you didn't know this music you didn't find it. robot and sperm the CD player the faint ones those ones are dead. not sordid where there is no dialectical. and through the wire. this is a simulation. loud synthesis babbling burbling bubbling. cities rotting like memories. there are spectres. veins draw shapes. everything is yonic. the antennae and pseudopods lunge. not even acid rain. the bluest banshee lives in the aquifer. it is possible to find eggs in everything if you look hard enough. the legless eyes are looking and kill with their eyes but they arent. the only hounds are gemstones. throw your body off a building. take up the stethoscope and the pliers. out in. just out. nibiru. 48 hours. there is something inside your brain. we made it. so many eyes. but fend off the flesh and chitin and ectoplasm. you are not afraid of their tentacles. gamelan and singing. take god out of the tape deck. make it so that you can see so that angel spiraling over and over and over again. who it is. witness the hectocotylus. what's the difference between memory and imagination? turn on the filter. NTSC. pure ideology. the nation is infinite they promise. symbiosis. it may have been an impossible psychic wave that shattered everything like modernity heralded by the shining objects unnamed by the new language that pours out onto the streets and into minds without consent. unrooted look for roots see if you can find roots. cement and drywall crack so easily. absences leak out like the ocean. burble and murmur. the broken glass reflects you in the city. hologram and holograph take shape. not a matrix. not coitus. somnambulism if you cannot see the computer. say the word hauntology over and over again. incoherent visions of purple in the room like genesis. embodiment just out of reach. atavism withers. atavism withers. don't say it again. the twilight of us. hypnagogic paroxysms and an endless wall of. in the water unknown sinking so deep and deeper and even deeper and even deeper still. the bubbles break. unbearably human. it is only synthesis. this is how you remember the dream. maybe that wasn't how it was. but it's how you remember it. who is the dreamer and who is the dream? save sayaka. turn metal and grow wings. save her from "Story of the Ruined Capital". Ave Maria gratia plena ave dominus tecum bendicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus. 48 hours. save her. become a diamond dog.

The reputation on this one was Japanese and Weird, which is certainly true of a story mode that goes to some crazy places. But it’s the survival mode that best captures Werner Herzog’s view of nature, encouraging "no kinship, no understanding, no mercy". The absurdity of seeing a Pomeranian demolish a gazelle in slow-motion soon gives way to the terror of an empty hunger bar with no food in sight, or being ambushed by a gang of predators, hidden by the cover of rain - with thrumming techno music and stat-boosting challenges further driving the brutal tension of a literal dog-eat-dog world. Its genius lies in the random events and weather changes that discourage any kind of complacency. You must feed, breed, and hide to survive, but most importantly keep moving, as you never know when your section of the city will turn against you. It's clearly the best game ever made about global warming. Buy it while you still can!