I can't believe I waited so long to play Alan Wake! This game is really something and I had a blast with it. The story is really interesting and Alan Wake himself is such a fun character. Bright Falls itself is also such a cool and eerie place, and a great setting for this type of horror/thriller story.

The gameplay also holds up in my opinion and while I've heard some refer to the game as too repetitive, I find that the game drip feeds you just enough tools to deal with the Taken, and just enough enemy variety to keep things interesting. Plus, the mechanic of having to weaken enemies with light and then take them on is a novel and entertaining gameplay loop. The crows do suck though, fighting those things is always weird. The worst enemy for sure.

Overall though Alan Wake really kicked ass and it's episodic level structure really made the game digestible and fun to play in chunks. Having already played Control and now this, I am very excited for Alan Wake 2, Control 2 whenever it comes, and whatever else Remedy has in store for this world.

Mortal Kombat is back and it is awesome! While not without flaws, overall MK1 is another strong entry in the series, especially since the soft reboot with MK9. Personally, the star of the show with this game is the single player campaign. NetherRealm continues their hot streak of putting out the best campaign modes in the fighting game genre. The story is characteristically cheesy as most Mortal Kombat stories are, but the premise of a rebooted MK timeline is fun and fresh and the ways iconic characters are reinterpreted is great to see.

With regards to the gameplay, I'll admit I'm not a pro at fighting games but MK1 is overall solid. Fights are fast and brutal and the addition of the Kameo system is cool and differentiates the game from previous entries. There are a couple minor things that I miss from the way MK11 played, such as environmental interactions, but generally the game plays great.

My biggest issue with the game right now is the game's roster. Part of this issue for me is more subjective and part of it is, I'd argue, a legit grievance. For starters, MK1 has 23 base characters (including Shang Tsung as a pre order) whereas MK11 had 25, MKX had 24, and MK9 had 28! So the smaller roster size is somewhat felt especially with regards to who is on the roster. This part of my grievance is the subjective part. While I appreciate MK1 paying homage to the PS2 era of Mortal Kombat games with its cast, and I have come to like characters such as Li Mei who is new to me, overall the lack of any new characters combined with the lack of some fan favourites for me detracts from the game a little. The second part of my grievance with the game's roster is more definitive. For a while now, some people have complained that DLC in some games comes across as being greedy on the part of the devs for charging for content that people argue was cut from the game before launch and held for more money. Generally, I disagree with this notion, and think most DLC is relatively fine. However, I can't help but feel this complaint about DLC in MK1 and relate it back to the roster. Ermac and Quan Chi are going to be DLC characters yet both appear in the campaign with full move sets, animations, voice acting, etc. So why hold them for DLC and not just put them in the base roster when again, the roster is the smallest one in recent memory for the series and (in my opinion) omits fan faves. It just seems strange and an actual example of when companies hold content and save it for DLC.

Barring these roster grievances and potential shitty company decisions I still maintain that Mortal Kombat 1 is another worthy, fun, gleefully violent entry in the series and I can't wait to see where NetherRealm goes next (hopefully after they revisit Injustice).