Scorn is an uneven balance of Riven-like alien techno-puzzling and atmospheric existential horror akin to SOMA. The art is a perfect amalgamation of Giger & Beksiński, fleshy organic architecture amassed across the surface of a dying world. The first two-thirds present particularly engaging core puzzles, as you slowly unpick the purpose of the machines you are revving up, often leading to some sort of sacrifice of an innocent(?) being (ranging from tiny weird guys to enormous weird guys) in this abject world. The wordless communication of the narrative through exploration, the environment & your ritualistic puzzling is refreshing (in a time where many games won't. shut. up).

The alien life wandering the flesh-corridors are alluring at first, with some interesting behaviours ambivalent to, & decentering, the player. But their placement and the very awkward feeling combat generates annoyance rather than tension, a very clumsy implementation of what was probably envisioned as a ‘living’ world but grew smaller in scope as they struggled to bring this to release. This is most evident in the very dull final chapter where a (puzzle) boss and most puzzles are solved with blunt-force explosives. Despite my final impressions, Ebb has a really strong foundation here and I look forward to seeing how they grow.

12 years on from the strange, incomplete original, DD2 is more of the same, uneasily sitting between the uncompromising Souls series & more conventional narrative ARPGs. At times evoking a desolate offline MMO, DD2 is at its best when out in the wilds, the sun setting at your back & two or more beasts landing on the path ahead, all Arising out of dynamic systems.

The main questline unfortunately does not play to these strengths, with much of Act I confined to the capital & some really dull writing. Fortunately, writing does not maketh a game, and side-quests that take you out into the unreasonably huge map are much more interesting, and really need to be sought out in the crowds and corners of the world. Keeping track of these with the bizarre quest tracker is uneven and obtuse: you’re either reading the landscape and tracing clues or just beating your head against a wall figuring out what the game requires of you.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is singular, not quite fully realised, a beautifully rendered physics-heavy oddity. The art direction is profoundly generic, but so deceptively understated it at times resembles a Ray Harryhausen film, full of weight, movement and character. DD2 makes you feel like you have friends, albeit stupid friends, who'd throw themselves off a cliff for a view of yonder.

[ played via steam deck ]

So, I've had a load of games I've wanted to get through in the beginning of 2024. I've played a pretty good spread of genres and qualities and got hit with both a blessing and curse: a two-day long, still ongoing power outage. I got sick of playing the things I've been getting through so I took a break with this one. Sitting in the pitch dark, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I... enjoyed my time with it, I think? Although I felt very underwhelmed once I realize how shallow the world, the systems, and the characters were.

It's weird to say, and it sounds a bit pretentious, but have you ever played a game and been struck by the realization that you are not the target audience? Not because the game doesn't appeal to you in themes or genre, but because it feels like its targeting players unfamiliar with what its trying to be? Thats what Citizen Sleeper has felt like to me. I don't like saying it, but it's true, and it boggles my mind ever so slightly because resource management simulators in the way CS presents itself are not new-gamer familiar. Despite this, you are given very long, hand hold-y dumping menus the first time you interact with people, with systems that seem to serve no.. real purpose? After only an hour or two, I had gamed the system well enough to not feel any of its difficulty. Despite the many paths in its story, I never felt pressured or had the fear I couldn't feasibly complete the content available to me. I don't think every game HAS to be difficult or lock me out of content and require many playthroughs (i honestly hate it when games do this), but CS's world would have been the most perfecf place for this and it rarely comes up. You can encounter different endings, yes, but it is entirely possible to accidentally stumble into every piece of content even if you don't fully understand the systems. I was very confused on the condition/energy system for a solid 2+ hours and still managed to complete every time gated prompt with ease thanks to the generous leveling systems and time windows.

In fact, the entire class system is pointless. All it did was ensure that when I finished the game, the stat I had a debuff for was the only one that ended at a +2 bonus rather than a +3. If the stats were fixed or more scarce or even impacted by the choices you made in the story, it would have felt more rewarding to pick and choose what risks you made. Instead, I just chose "what do I have perks for", which often was a +1 or +2 to a critical dice roll, with the option to reroll my dice if they were low costs. There was consistently no stakes present, and the one part of the game (the 3 part DLC? after stories) that stressed how intense and difficult the window of time would be... I completed it in half the allotted time.

I am not a game designer. I don't have a perfect recommendation on how to fix this in a neat way, but removing the outright stat bonuses to dice and only having perks or only providing bonuses as a result of your choices would help increase the pressure and difficulty a little bit, while still feeling satisfying and not changing the core mechanics so much. There were other issues I had with balancing (by the end of the game I had an overflow of 700 coins, and could effectively buy any of the balancing resources necessary without thinking), but this was probably the most game-breaking. It removed any hint of strategy I faced, and I felt really disappointed by this aspect of the game. I hoped that the story and overall world-building would suffice in picking up this slack, but...

The premise at CS's core was great. I loved the idea of our emulated Sleeper robot self finding their place, seeking refuge and their place in the world. It was fun to meet characters and find new places constantly that made the Eye feel alive, but unfortunately the writing, aside from a few select characters, felt so bland. It is well written for the most part in its prose and when it has things it wants to say, but the actual time we spend with most characters to get to know them is short.

One character I really liked was Tala, a bartender who you meet after facing discrimination for being a Sleeper, and eventually befriend and work for. Unfortunately, you talk to her for a few minutes, do some fetch-dice-quests, and then suddenly you speak in another visual novel-esque sequence and you are already good friends. None of the build up is actually there, on screen, and while I still liked the relationship the MC and Tala have and the things I learn about her, it still feels like I'm not even experiencing this in my own story. It happens without me, and this occurs multiple times with other NPCs. The after stories fix this and is genuinely the better part of Citizen Sleeper's entire campaign, but it happens so late. You're given brief impressions of characters and asked to invest in them, and you do and you can, but I wish that 75% of them had been expanded on whatsoever. Feng was wonderful, as well as Peake and Riko, but they are also the few characters who have long and sprawling storylines that interweave with the Eye's political turmoil and each other's struggles at least tangentially.

Even the big political factions are only brief mentions with little impact on the story until the absolute end (and it still feels tacked on). You can choose to provide intel and complete stories where you side with conflicting political factions and rise in their ranks but it never reflects elsewhere.

Citizen Sleeper takes itself seriously, but feels too shy to commit fully to anything. It doesnt want to give you complex narratives, maybe because it doesn't have faith that the dice mechanics are capable of supplementing the decision-making systems, I dont know. But there is a really strong foundation that it fails to capitalize on. I think it's a good game regardless, but that almost makes it worse because I can see so clearly how it could have been great.

I still recommend you pick it up as I enjoyed my time with it, but I dont know... I see they're making a sequel and I hope that when they do, they aren't afraid to be more in-depth with the mechanics and storytelling at hand.

Some cool tech & snappy gameplay trapped in Free-to-play hell. We talk a lot about games being tied to & shaped by their technology but little about how they’re shaped, and hollowed out, by their revenue model: GaaS “living games” are released (and shut down) before there is any life in them.

The Finals contains the movement & sugary energy of nu-battlefield (post-Battlefield 1) wrapped in the most horrid vibes: Forza Horizon-esque npcs at their infinite party, Siege/Valorant/Hyperscape-adjacent esports mush. Embark has managed to make Unreal resemble Frostbite, including impressive physics & destruction that echoes the chaos of bad company 2, but it’s all wasted here.

Even for a tight competitive shooter, this needs a more fleshed out setting, either leaning further into the surreal elements (bodies exploding into coins) or situating it in a world that is more than a watered down squid-game/mirror's edge/DICE's entire catalog. Feels like a very polished tech-demo and I refuse to play 100 hours to unlock interesting mechanics or outfits, which has led to every character running around in the default tracksuit/pyjamas. And don't get me started on the AI voices.

I am cautiously optimistic about embark’s other beautiful but empty sci-fi project, ARC raiders, which has seemingly transformed into yet another extraction shooter.

Alan Wake II is a prime example of how taking a big fucking swing can really pay off.

Its 13-year-old predecessor was met with a mixed reception (strong atmosphere; naff characters and combat) and sadly failed to get its intended sequel made at the time. But, despite my dislike of that first game, it was heartwarming to see, at last, Sam Lake championing Alan Wake II, all the way to the recent Game Awards.

Even from that first teaser trailer, it was clear Remedy was doubling down, putting everything they had into this. The result is a culmination of ideas born from their prior games, including Quantum Break and Control, notably the seamless blend of gameplay and live action footage.

And if Twin Peaks was a key inspiration for the first game, the second is very much its own Twin Peaks: The Return - crazier, scarier, and richer from its many years in the metaphorical slow-cooker - even the plot (SPOILER ALERT) is very much The Return: new characters piece together past and present events in order to bring back the absent hero trapped in the Black Lodge/Dark Place.

This Return segment focuses on player character FBI agent Saga Anderson, investigating cult ritual murders in different areas of Bright Falls, using a ‘mind palace’ system to organise jigsaw pieces of the case, profile suspects and keep count of how many wall-mounted deer heads she’s caressed. I found these detective segments so enjoyable that the later levels as Alan, wandering around his mind (in a form of Otherworldly New York Plaza), were underwhelming by comparison. There are some game highlights in playing the title character, such as a spooky hotel and a movie theatre; and who could forget the Herald of Darkness musical segment?! But Saga’s… saga moves the story forward at a more engaging pace.

The combat indeed feels weightier but no less annoying for the most part. The enemies that can speed-dodge attacks are a nightmare to pinpoint in darker areas where they hide and throw stuff at you. I also found it frustrating when circling back to areas to find hidden items, only to constantly have enemies respawn for the same annoying fight on lower ammo. There are a couple of horde-based enemy sequences, similar to the first game, which also border on tedium. All of that said, most of the boss levels still manage to be quite tense.

All the stuff with the fictional Old Gods of Asgard band, the Alex Casey movie segments and Wake’s usual bullshit writing can be campy and indulgent as expected, but Sam Lake gets away with it, this time, by having the rest of the game be just as bold and bombastic. Its heightened visuals - notably those live action ’monochrome visions’ and the dark murmuring figures aberrating in and out of the moody environment - make every moment unpredictable.

Lastly, Alan Wake II couldn’t have come at a better time. With a piss-poor opening to an uncertain Silent Hill revival that is Ascension, and (rather fantastic) remakes such as Dead Space and RE4, this year of survival horror was very nearly dismissed as a nostalgia wave for older classics, plus maybe some indie outliers. With a sequel that is far better than anyone could’ve expected, Remedy breathed new life into the genre, showcasing a whole new horizon of potential, graphically, narratively and stylistically.

The core element of Lem’s 1964 novel they’ve captured is the planet of Regis III, with its pastel pink dunes and liquid rock formations, an intoxicating, vivid landscape. The plot is tangential to the novel, and part of the mystery is how it fits in with Lem’s tale of advanced military tech facing up against an inexplicable alien force.

But unfortunately (about 7 years out from Firewatch and 6 from SOMA), they really aren’t doing enough here to distinguish this from numerous hollow walking sims, despite the painterly landscapes and luxurious retro-futuristic tech. There’s little negative space to soak in the planet's surface, only constant muttering to yourself or your weirdly annoyed boss off-planet. Overlapping dialogue and abrupt popups disrupt gameplay constantly, and no amount of contextual animations can feel like meaningful interactions.

Puzzles are almost an afterthought and at most you will contend with occasional navigation challenges through samey looking caves. Outer Wilds and Subnautica have demonstrated how alien archeology and space exploration can be distilled into tense & dynamic gameplay, and in comparison this feels a little archaic. I look forward to more attempts at Lem’s work (possibly a psychological horror take on Solaris!?) and recommend experiencing this for the artwork alone (& a climax featuring the largest rocket of all time 0::).