an unforgiving masterpiece of making you lose time. you can't speed-up text in a decent way? who's the evil mastermind who design the 100% run requisites?

that's about it. best visual novel ever made

Tama is cute.

Right so Deadly Premonition is my favourite game of all time. Not because I think it's so bad it's good, but because I think it's a masterpiece with a couple of rough edges.

Yes there was some jank, yes the combat felt like a cheap Resident Evil 4 and yes there were some incredibly frustrating quick time events, but the voice acting was fantastic and fit with the characters, every character from the main cast to the side NPCs were all unique, Greenvale felt like a real place with a deep and fleshed-out world and it's one of the very few games to make me shed a tear with how much it grabbed me in and made me care for its characters.

This sequel was never going to live up to the original for me, I knew that, yet I'm still let down. An average of 15fps and three crashes in 20 hours isn't acceptable. Yes, Deadly Premonition was known for running terrible but only in ports on PS3, PC and the Switch prior to some patching. The original Xbox 360 version ran at a mostly stable 30fps and technically worked fine. It frustrates me that people are excusing that state it's in as part of the charm when it never was to begin with, even more so that I can imagine the devs knowing this and using it as an excuse to release it in such a state.

Even more so, if this game gets patched and works at a solid 60fps it won't fix a lot of the problems. Le Carre feels mostly lifeless and empty, the cast doesn't have anything on those of the last game, the trans character is handled pretty terribly, York impersonating an African man is needless and pointless, the otherworld sections are far worse than before as they have been reduced to a few hallways with nothing but full combat where at least the first had puzzles and was scary and the new cartoony art style just doesn't fit the tone.

As for what good I can say, the soundtrack is great even if half of it is from the original, the cast all give good performances and the 2019 sections are really intriguing even if they can drag on a bit

Even if it's patched I find it hard to recommend this to anyone unless you absolutely loved the original and need to know what happened after it like me, even if I would have preferred that story to have stayed contained.

the first deadly premonition became one of my favorite games of all time after i played it a few months ago. i can honestly say that not a single day has gone by where i haven't thought about that game at least a little, either through a funny and memorable scene of dialogue or some connection i suddenly pieced together about the game's themes and its gameplay. the second game is a bit of a disappointment. i didn't expect it to surpass the original, and while at its best moments it matches some of that game's charm, during its worst moments it doesn't come even close or doesn't try. it's about as underwhelming as i expected, but at least it's not the disaster i feared it could be.

the dialogue is still excellent. if you enjoyed the first game you will undoubtably have a great time listening to york interact with the world and comment on his situation. this is really the sole reason i don't hate this game. i was always eager to turn it on and keep playing because york's dialogue is memorable and quotable and there are many hilariously bizarre scenes that i will be thinking about for years.

unfortunately that's about the only thing the sequel does as well as the original. the world feels lifeless and there are much fewer interactable npcs, which severely limits the pool of potential suspects. the story is interesting but the payoff is underwhelming and a lot of the twists feel forced or unbelievable. the otherworld sections are completely lacking the horror aesthetic that made them interesting in the original and rather than serve as twisted versions of the town's landmarks, are completely separate locations that all share the exact same setting and assets. the main issue with the game is that it just doesn't expand the first game very much. i don't feel like i have a better understanding of this world, its lore or its characters after beating it. it was just another miscellaneous adventure starring york, and the payoff of the present-day segments is so minimal that it feels like they didn't need to be there.

there are also some really uncomfortable depictions of racism and transphobia in the game that, even if they don't bother you personally, are completely unnecessary. swery has addressed these and says he plans to change or remove them. hopefully he is able to fix the problem but it really shouldn't have been in the game to begin with. edit: problem was not fixed

overall, i had a lot of good experiences playing this game but i don't think it was worth returning to the world of deadly premonition for the game we ended up getting. the universe of deadly premonition has a lot of room to expand the setting and lore, but this game barely does that.

edit #2: upon further thought, i like this game a lot less than the thoughts i had originally wrote out led on. i gave this game a 6/10 then, which i wrote after playing it on release, but it's been a couple of months since then and i'm struggling to remember any of what i thought were standout moments. the only positive thing i had to talk about was the memorable writing but nowadays i can only remember the parts of the story that frustrate me.

For anyone who follows Suda 51, it's obvious that he puts much of himself and his life experiences into his own work. His games are filled with paralels to himself, his thoughts, ideas, opinions, and everything else inbetween, creating a very distinct series of games that are not only intertwined by a common theme (The past) but also by Suda.

Travis Strikes Again is the most blatant example of this dynamic, putting Suda directly into the shoes of Travis Touchdown, a once rising star in the world of assassins, now a washed up and reclusive hermit jaded by his previous existence.
TSA is steeped in love for the primitive and wild west origins of videogames that Suda was lucky to be a part of, recontextualized through the modern indie scene that revitalized not only the uncharted territory of the videogame creation process, but Suda himself.

TSA is a myriad of references, introspections, observations and jabs at Suda's past work and his participation in the creation of those, constructing a surprisingly heartfelt and personal redemption arc for both Travis Touchdown and Suda.
To accomplish this feat, TSA is presented as a indie looking top view hack n' slash beat em up reminiscent of old school arcade titles, where Travis goes inside a videogame console to fight through stages and bosses of videogames he played at an early age and that made him the man he is now, this too interconnected with Suda's past.

The gameplay itself isnt anything worthy of writing home about, it gives you just enough to be entertained all the way through its length and provides a nice challenge to overcome. Of all the Suda action oriented games, it's probably the least interesting one gameplay-wise, functioning more so as an intersection between the the narrative meat of the game.

But if you have played Suda games before, you know that the gameplay is never the main focus of the experience, but a vehicle for something greater than the sum of its parts. And to be able to fully appreciate this title, you have to be already invested in the Suda 51 canon. Otherwise, this game might not speak much to you, understandably so.

A fantastic transitional step for Suda, and im looking forward for what's next to come.

Dark Souls 3 is one of those games I like, but also has a lot of flaws. It feels more like it's trying to be more like Bloodborne with its enemy design, but you still have the moveset of a normal Souls character, which leads to some frustrating situations at times, the game is very linear outside of a few instances, which is somewhat disappointing compared to other Souls games, and there's quite a few call backs to Dark Souls 1, although it doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother others. It's still fun enough to play through a few times at least