I have recently gotten very into the post-apocalyptic survival horror genre taking place in a soviet era winter, namely the Metro series and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and I believe that Metro Exodus is the current pinnacle of that type of game.

The story is relatively strong, especially as you get towards the end, but the way it plays out can be a bit of a drag. You leave home with the Order, with hope of finding somewhere to live on the surface away from the Metro. I can honestly say I don't remember a single character in the game outside of Anna and Colonel Miller, and the odd villain/new ally here and there. The crew of the Aurora are as generic as they come, but they don't drag the story down, they just don't add anything to it . The issue I found that made the story drag wasn't the characters as much as it was the gameplay loop. Don't get me wrong, this game plays very well, but the loop of 'go to new area, find out what's wrong with it, help the locals overcome the problem and leave' got a bit repetitive by the 3rd or 4th new area, which by the way, are all varied and beautiful and wonderful to explore.

The way this game immerses you and makes you take it slowly is something to be proud of. There was never a moment where I felt the need to rush forward; I wanted to find that teddy bear for the little girl back at my train, and I would take my time and go out of my way to do so. The game encourages exploration, looking for loot in every nook and cranny and maybe you'll stumble across something handy, like an upgrade for your night vision goggles or a new weapon part.

That brings me to the crafting. When I first started the game I loved the crafting - it added depth to the weapons that the previous entries didn't have. Out in the world you could fine someone with a modded weapon, strip those mods off and then apply them to your own weapon. It's a fantastic system that really encouraged you to try different weapons and builds for different scenarios. What I DIDN'T like, however, was the rest of the loot system. The loot felt entirely meaningless outside of crafting materials. And you might think "well lot's of games give you crafting materials as loot!" and you'd be correct, but where I think Exodus misses a step is that ALL YOU GET is crafting materials. There are two types of materials, liquid and hardware, and you mix them together to make either ammo or medkits/filters. I hate this system, and would much rather find ammo and medkits on dead bodies than materials to make my own whenever I want. It made looting tedious, forcing you to go to every dead body to pull mats off to then craft ammo for your weapon type once you get to a crafting station.

The rest of the game is mostly great, aside from the touch of eurojank everything has in it. I don't hate eurojank, but found myself losing immersion whenever my character glided across a surface from running too fast, or from sound effects just simply not playing, or characters speaking over eachother during dialogue in un natural ways. None of it ruined the experience for me, but it did succeed in reminding me I was playing a videogame.

All in all, this game is a really great experience and I'd recommend it to anyone that loves this style of game, as of right now I don't think I've played a better version.

Do you miss the days of going to your friend’s house on a friday night, ordering a pizza, cracking open a mountain dew and having a blast gaming with them all night? Thats the feeling Helldivers 2 gives you from the moment you boot it up and watch the satirical Starship Troopers-esque propaganda opening, asking you to enlist with the Helldivers to spread democracy across the galaxy and squash the alien bug threat!

There is so much to love about this game: it’s frenetic chaos, gorgeous graphics and stellar animations, tight and rewarding gunplay, but most of all it’s just PURE FUN! The basic gameplay loop is this: you load up a mission from your base a la Warhammer: Vermintide or Deep Rock Galactic, launch the mission solo (not recommended), with 3 friends or matchmade, and you have a designated amount of time to complete the mission. Objectives range from defending against the swarms of alien bugs to launching a nuke at a nest to thin their numbers. Throughout the mission you will find numerous points of interest, from bug nests that reward you with money and xp for destroying, to hidden supply caches that can give you anything from ammo to premium currency.

Where this game really shines though is in the small details. Stuff like crouching or going prone makes firing your weapon more accurate than standing and running, to your entire character model being covered in dust, blood and guts as you kill more and more enemies. The devs clearly put a lot of time and effort into making the game immersive while also being fun to play, and they nailed it.

But the best thing about this game is the stratagem system. Before launching a mission you have the opportunity to select up to 4 stratagems: these include things such as an orbital precision strike launched directly from your ship in space, an assortment of special weapons like grenade launchers or flamethrowers, defensive turrets and airstrikes. These are on a relatively short cooldown which is locked to the individual, so it is encouraged to use as many stratagems as possible since your teammates will be doing the same. And on top of that, the friendly fire in this game is more comical than it is frustrating; you’ll be in the midst of fighting a giant crusher type bug, being thrown around as your gun fails to puncture it’s thick armoured skin, and the next thing you hear is “orbital strike incoming!” as you realize your teammate has just called in an orbital strike on your position to kill the bug and also you. But thankfully theres 20 revives per mission, which recharge when you run out, effectively taking away the frustration of being killed by your friends and making it a funny moment instead of a pain point.

The enemy variety at launch feels great, not to mention there’s an entire second faction of terminator-like robots that you can fight if you’re sick of killing giant bugs, and presumably more factions on the way. And one of my favourite aspects of the game is the liberation front: a community focused objective that drives the entire community to one like minded goal of liberating specific areas of the galactic map, rewarding the entire community with currency to buy more stratagems if they can liberate the required planets by the end of the week. It really adds to the immersive feel of a galactic war, and unites the playerbase into one goal: spread democracy across the galaxy!

This game survives off of vibes alone, and for that I love it. But as a game, it's pretty meh overall.

Let's start with the good: the weird, haunted small town vibe is the strongest selling point of this game. The way it mixes so many familiar ideas to horror/thriller fans, from the Twin Peaks inspired Oh Deer Diner, to the entirety of Bright Falls feeling like it's right out of a Stephen King novel, complete with an Overlook Hotel section. Even things like the collectible radio shows from the local DJ Pat Maine, and my personal favourite: the Twilight Zone inspired Night Springs episodes that you can find and watch throughout the game. The game is weird in the best way possible, throwing a ton of different ideas from around the thriller genre together to make a wonderfully strange experience.

This weirdness extends to the characters. From the titular Alan Wake, a famous writer suffering from writer's block, constantly narrating his every thought as if he's the star of his own novel, to my personal favourites Odin and Tor, the dynamic duo at the head of the fictional band Old Gods of Asgard, played by the very real band Poets of the Fall. Remedy has created such a deep and interesting lore between this game and Control (and the larger Remedyverse) that I cannot wait to dive into Alan Wake 2 to see what more they have to offer.

Now for the bad: the gameplay is pretty weak. At first I was in love with the idea of a flashlight serving in place of a reticle - wherever you point the flashlight, that's where Alan will shoot. I still think it's a great concept, but that's about where the fun stops. The combat loop is very simple: point flashlight at enemy to break their 'shield', then shoot to kill. I actually don't mind this as a survival horror mechanic, but the problem is that this is the ONLY method of combat, and there is a lot of combat in this game. If there had been more tension and less combat I think the gameplay would have felt better, but as it stands the combat scenarios become incredibly stale and since killing enemies doesn't actually benefit you in any way via ammo drops or anything, I ended up just running away from a lot of combat scenarios to save time.

Speaking of running, the stamina and dodging systems are atrocious. The dodge only works half the time, and it doubles as the start of the running animation, which can be pretty awkward. Not to mention there is no stamina meter so the only way to know if you're running low is by Alan's body language, which would be fine for immersion if it weren't for 2 things: the first being that there's a mini map with a health bar, so if they wanted to do this for immersion they could have also showed Alan's health in a more contextual manner (or double down on the health bar and just add a stamina bar), and the second issue being that whenever Alan slowed down from a sprint to a jog, you could just press the sprint key again to make him fully sprint?

Finally, let's talk about the story. The plot of this game is actually kind of awesome: a writer looking for inspiration from a small isolated town, when his wife goes missing and he loses a week of time in his memory. He then proceeds to spend the game looking for his wife, while finding copies of a manuscript written by him that he doesn't remember writing, detailing the events that are happening to him. It's fun, it's campy, it's mysterious, and Remedy really plays to their strengths here by making it equal parts comedy as it is thriller. It's light hearted and heavy at the same time, while taking itself seriously the whole way through. It's nothing new and exciting to write home about, but it works very well in this setting and even better with the context of Control, and I'm hoping the sequel just builds upon this.

All in all, this game stands as a great starting off point for the weirdness of Remedy: the weird setting and plot is all there, but the janky awkwardness of the gameplay brings it down. Remedy has learned this over the years to create more enjoyable experiences (I know I keep bringing up Control but man, what a game), and I'm hopeful that Alan Wake 2 is Remedy's magnum opus.