Obviously not really poker, despite the theme. Strange things happen with the cards in your hands, the poker terminology rapidly descends into insular gibberish, and probability is controlled - but tantalizingly never fully in your control, one always feels the freedom found from giving oneself over. Maximum difficulty runs have a sub-50% winrate, as far as I know.
It's not actually replicating the flow of a poker game. It's about endlessly seeking less so wins and losses, but simply spending more time in The Zone before you're kicked out; of ditching the flashy presentation and exciting music and narrative overtures of its competitition and being a smooth ride to get you into The Zone, of gradually ramping up stimulation to change your baseline level of what's satisfying, of abandoning your agency and accepting that the house always wins and that we will die and it's better to spend your time on the way there insensate and comfortable.
It's not poker, it's a slot machine.

I wrote a lot of substantive critique and compliments in a bunch of different places for the few hours i played this as a filler inbetween Rebirth (review pending) and Dragon's Dogma 2 (review probably not happening) but i think the real core of this is just... it's still a combo-focused game, it's got that DMC DNA and all your moves are built around linking them together and styling on enemies, right? But the combos aren't as interesting as the games that it's building off of, because it's shit-scared to push back or make the player feel like they ever failed, and everything you're doing is ultimately just filler inbetween mashing out your cooldowns during stagger - which does the vast majority of the damage in any given fight for about 5% of the brain cells. At that point, why am i not just playing DMC4?

It's a plot about coming together with a combat system about fighting literally with your lone wolf. People fuck a lot and present it as a sign of maturity. I'd rather just get caught up on One Piece.

This was so fucking bad in every regard that I spent its runtime successfully dissociating it from Silent Hill as a concept. "Sure, Ito and Yamaoka are here, but they're hired guns nowadays anyways," I said. It plays like a terrible itch.io or Steam shovelware game, and its mix of incredibly detailed environmental assets (so much unique graffiti!) and horrifically rigged main character model whose hair is clipping through her glasses in every single cutscene in the game gives it a certain Unreal Marketplace Slop atmosphere like those as well. The inciting incident of the plot defeats its own themes and the themes of witches, generational trauma, neglect, and incidents from seven years in the past having unintended consequences make it clear this was written by a guy who wants to be Ryukishi but isn't Him. All of these are so comically bad and dumb that I was able to laugh this off, until the credits song was actually good. The guitars played the Silent Hill riff, and I had to deal with the fact that this is the future of the series. This is what I have to look forward to. I sank into the couch and have not been able to escape.

Astro’s Playroom is a wonderful experience that leaves me with far more complicated emotions than something so straightforwardly joyful really would ever want me to. It celebrates everything about Sony’s past, showering you with artifacts that lovingly render hardware ephemera in 4K glory, grounds itself in the present walking you through the innards of your new device and showing off the capabilities of the DualSense, and has no vision of the future. Jumping and moving through the levels is serviceable, and the adaptive triggers and HD rumble feel great and are used great.

The references and cosplays in this get to pretty deep cuts (I gasped at the Jumping Flash fella, then was knocked flat by the Vib Ribbon bunny, and I’m still confident I hallucinated a fucking Siren reference), and it’s delightful to see all of Sony’s back catalog get their due like this. It’s been four years and there are exactly thirteen PS5 console exclusives that could be added to a sequel - five of which have not released yet*. Nine are in established franchises, and over half are sequels or remakes. Seven are rated M for Mature, four are rated T for Teen, and two are so early in development they haven’t been rated by the ESRB. Astro’s Playroom is one of, generously, three games on this list that somebody under the age of twelve would be expected to have any fun at all with, and frankly I think 90% of the appeal would go over their heads given what a nostalgia trip this is.

The PlayStation 1, 2, and 3 are all of a certain type of utopian thinking that died with Web 1.0. Technology and art were synthesized into something for everybody, from children to adults, inventing new design grammar as they went along to create experiences that no medium could ever replicate. Sony developed, funded, and promoted scores of games that aimed at every conceivable demographic and, frequently, aimed at no demographic, believing that pushing the medium forward and creating wholly unique kinds of games creates the kind of brand identity that builds real loyalty.

Games have grown up since then, and they make games for grown-ups now, with such large budgets that true experimentation is quite difficult to justify (unless you have Hideo Kojima-sized star power and trailer editing). This one, especially, is still trying to be in the lineage of what came before, offering a utopian look into the World of PlayStation, but there is that key difference; before, each console offered a glimpse of the future, a foundation for a better tomorrow. Astro’s Playroom tries to show a utopia, but can only really believe that we already experienced it, have seen what it could offer, and have moved on towards greyer horizons.


*I am counting Rebirth here even though there are 48 hours left. Sue me.

It’s incredible that the Yakuza Like A Dragon series exists in this form at all. It’s really easy to discuss these games as a simple comeback story where it was saved from (Western) obscurity by grassroots efforts rallying around 0, but the fact that this insane momentum was met by RGG Studio changing the protagonist and turning it into a triple-A turn-based JRPG when the studio has no prior experience making those and conventional wisdom says the genre is utter sales poison is staggering. The last several mainline games demonstrate a remarkable and admirable disinterest in providing fans with what they expected or wanted, which is doubly impressive when the series is so iterative by nature.

Infinite Wealth iterates a lot on its predecessor, especially. It’s still a turn-based JRPG, and its changes are really, really cool. 7 felt like an experiment that had some great moments but didn’t cohere, an exemplification of the divine mathematics that underpin Dragon Quest and the travails that come when they are fucked with too much. Infinite Wealth still has a major debt to DQ (and some tinges of Chrono Trigger-style enemy shuffling) but manages to be much more unique and self-assured.

For starters, the exp curve is just phenomenally well-considered this time. Gone are the days of 7’s stupid-ass back-to-back grinds, and the scaling for exp and job levels means that it’s very easy to catch up and it can be surprisingly difficult to overlevel. In my playthrough, I kept half of the cast with their default jobs and I had the other half level a side job to 30 before swapping back to default. Team OG ended the game with job levels in the forties, and Team FAFO ended the game with a cumulative sixty job levels. I didn’t feel punished for doing either, as each job kit feels well-rounded and useful even without getting into the insane potential added by skill inheritance, but leveling side jobs felt breezy.

Beyond just the math, job design and skills got so much love - each new job has a really cool and distinct aesthetic, a really fun playstyle, and AoE attacks are way more interesting than they were 7. Circle AoEs might have one edge centered on the targeted enemy, making them finickier for selecting a full group but granting finer control over who else to include, granting damage bonuses for initiating the attack from far away, or having a long line start and end at interesting points. Cone-shaped AoEs are a lot more useful-feeling in this game when their far edge can be centered on the targeted enemy instead of the front tip. It all adds up to make lining up attacks require thought and positioning, which is really nice.

Being able to move around is the most transformational part of the combat changes, easily, but it’s part of a host of other changes that all feel a little small on their own but add up fast. There’s now a proximity bonus for basic attacks that adds in extra hits if they’re made from up close, and getting a proximity hit from behind guarantees crits. Enemy AI is aware of this, and the window to get back attacks is often fleeting at the start of the player’s turn. Having autoattacks be gimped if the party member is pathed far away or wants to hit a specific far-away enemy is frustrating, and there are three major ways to circumvent this - the simplest is to just use a skill to close the gap and do reliable damage.

They can also pick up an environmental object and use that - being able to walk up to ‘em means that they’re an actually valid part of the player’s strategy this time, and on top of their positioning benefits they're a great way to hit elemental weaknesses on people who don’t have certain skills. Otherwise, they can stand nearby another party member and do a combo attack that applies their weapon effects, does full damage at range, and gives their partner a bit of MP back on hit as well. These latter two options are useful and have a variety of obvious applications, but still come with drawbacks - if somebody’s basic attacks do knife or gun damage, then using a ground weapon will override that. Sometimes proximity attacks do way more damage than a combo strike or weapon attack, or the other person in a combo attack will hit an enemy’s elemental resistance and do almost no damage.

On top of all this, there is now a visible knockback indicator for attacks, which adds in yet another layer on top of all of this: knocking an enemy down into a party member does a lot of damage and applies their weapon effect, but knocking them into another enemy does a good bit of AoE, but knocking a large enemy into a wall scores a full knockdown other party members can exploit that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Enemies who block can have their guard broken by either doing a grab-type attack or hitting them from behind; a grab will permanently break it, a back attack will just pierce it for that one attack (and any followups while the enemy is on the ground). This is all then further compounded by the incessant shuffling and jockeying for space that enemies do - every consideration the player will make is based on reading the situation as it exists and trying to capitalize on split-second opportunities. It’s fully turn-based, but it has the pace and feel of an action fight, while retaining the positional focus, comboing, and okizeme of the series’ beat-em-up roots. It’s really fucking good.

The standout is Kiryu’s default job, which exemplifies almost all of this. Style swapping changes the properties of his basic attacks in cool ways on its own; Rush lets him make two weaker attacks per turn, giving him strong AoE or letting him score a guaranteed KO on a weakling before focusing fire on somebody else, Beast lets him do grabs without spending MP and amps up his ability to use ground weapons, and Brawler is the “vanilla” set of attacks that then let him do heat actions under the traditional series rules - be nearby a specific environmental object or otherwise fulfill certain criteria, get into proximity with them, then ace a quick QTE. All three styles get additional action game flair by having their proximity attacks have a short mash or timing prompt, which sells Kiryu both as somebody with a foot firmly planted in real-time and also as a monstrous DPS machine who feels awesome to control.

This mechanical empowerment is contrasted by his narrative role. Ichiban’s stylization as a JRPG hero sells him as somebody strengthened by his friends, but it results in a constant bitter tinge when Kiryu is in the squad. He didn’t always need help, and the character writing does a lot of really satisfying stuff with this disempowerment and reliance for such a stoic, badass lone wolf. Infinite Wealth is a game defined by dichotomies like this - obviously it’s a story split between two countries and two leads, but its themes are equally defined by parallels and mirrors. Everything ultimately comes back to purification or corruption, light and dark, and the terrors and delights of both the past and the future.

It doubles down on everything that makes these games what they are while simultaneously being confident enough to downplay so many of the series’ touchstones, giving the game a feel kinda like a concert that’s half playing the hits and half showing tracks from their next album. The first time a jacket is dramatically removed to reveal the body underneath is an unthinking act of kindness on Ichiban’s behalf, performed without any intent to fight or to show off, but when the player sees the world through Kiryu’s eyes, he can’t help but see ghosts everywhere he goes. These themes of past and future cycles make it hard to not feel a bit of metatext in this being the first full game released after Nagoshi left, and this “changing of the guard” plot can spark worries of being a retread of 7’s themes - and while certain plot elements certainly evoke it, there’s always a knowing tweak to it. 7 is a game about starting over again, of living through a storm and planting seeds for the future once the rubble’s been swept away. Infinite Wealth is more about perpetuating or changing the cycles everyone inhabits - of seeing what’s been done to them and the people before them and trying to break, fix, or continue things.

The returning characters are all well-considered and, equally importantly, most feel unexpected. Few of them feel obligatory, and those that do are given angles and elements that keep them surprising and cathartic nonetheless. Plenty of them have been chewed up and spit back out, some have come back stronger and better, some are indolent, and some lucky few stroll back into the picture feeling just as magnetic and lovable as they were all those years ago. Seeing the game take full advantage of its position as the ninth mainline title in a series stretching back almost twenty years is just as satisfying as seeing how it fantastically it intersects fantastically with the character writing writ large.

Yamai manages to escape the “Majima clone” allegations with aplomb, with a great design, fantastic presence (Koyasu the GOAT), and a satisfyingly mercurial-but-coherent role in the narrative. With the exception of Saeko, whose entire character frustratingly feels like an extension of Ichiban’s arc, literally every single party member is given a lot more to chew on this time. The gap between December 2019 and November 2023 reshuffled a lot and the status quo shifts give people unexpected and lovely positions and angles to view the world. Each little skit and friendship bingo conversation is consistently funny and interesting, and the new party members are literally all bangers. Special shout outs to the job unlock cutscenes creating the implication that Chitose has a Nico Robin-style hyperactive imagination that she does not ever share with anybody; that being said, Tomizawa and Chitose are both incredibly endearing and have a lot of great dramatic and comedic chops. Tomi gets more focus in the front half and Chitose the back, which gives her a bit of an edge in terms of immediate retrospective emotional edge, but both are excellent.

Tomizawa’s arc is tied up with the Barracudas, who are kind of a nexus of the game’s more annoying issues. The gang has a really strong and sympathetic hook that is connected to pretty venomous social commentary, but they rapidly recede from institutional relevance and, just like 7, the themes of homelessness, discrimination, and critiquing the lived effects of Japan’s comically harsh anti-yakuza laws (making it basically impossible to have a normal life certainly makes it effective for killing recruitment, but guys seeking a way out certainly have their work cut out for them…) feel under-discussed after the first act. Additionally, while Yakuza has always had a heightened tone, there are times when, regardless of the player’s tolerances, there will be moments that stretch credulity; especially when combat is done with silly costumes. Sometimes it feels weird to talk about America’s crumbling infrastructure and skyrocketing cost of life only to then beat up three Hungry Hungry Homeless.

These are issues, and they deserve mention, but simultaneously, this is the ninth mainline RGG game. Every issue raised so far has been present to some degree or another in quite literally every single game in the franchise. They’ll affect enjoyment to varying extents, of course, but… I wouldn’t get too mad at a fish for being bad at climbing trees, or at least when I’m neck-deep I’d think I know what pitfalls I'd fallen into.

For all the love heaped on the character writing, the main villains really falter, which is unexpected for this series. There’s good villains and bad villains, and certainly sometimes they contrive excuses for a final boss when punching out a businessman would be unsatisfying, but RGG Studio’s been on a hot streak for antagonists for a good while now. The antagonistic forces in this game feel more like an exercise in thematics than they are actually characters. It’s cool to see a contemporary political thriller manage to make themes of corruption, despoiling paradise, and battling against nature feel grounded within a real-world context and not feel too hacky about it, but despite their screentime they have a terminal lack of real presence or sauce. The villains’ big dramatic showcases pale in comparison to both the quiet and loud moments that accompany their underlings and frenemies. They do create good moments by contriving the protagonists into circumstances that showcase their amazing traits and even better voice actors, but the monologues and physical performances shown off could be bounced off somebody I actually give a shit about and I’d be into it even more than I am.

The cutscene direction, as implied above, is excellent. The stunt coordinator for every game since 6 cut his teeth on Mark DaCascos hood classic Drive (1997), a shitload of tokusatsu, and a little old game called Devil May Cry 3, and it lends the cutscene brawls a sense of physicality and flair that a lot of game cutscenes weirdly can’t do very well. The dramatic scenes have astonishingly good blocking and composition. For how many cutscenes are in this game, they find so many great camera angles, poses, and little vocal quavers to give far more weight to far more than one would expect.

It’s easy to gush about this game, and while it has its flaws and doesn’t always favorably stack up to past games, it feels like a chore to discuss them. Sure, Ichiban got a better moment in 7, Kiryu’s finest hour is still (regrettably) the final scene in Gaiden, and the enemy shuffling just inherently means that the combat’s chaotic, uncontrollable nature will create frustrating situations and missed attacks. It’s maybe not as focused as some other Yakuza games? (I mean, not really, lmao, the only games you might be able to argue that for are 2 and 6, and buddy, 2 is not as focused as you remember it being and 6 is just not interesting.) But at the same time, I don’t really give a fuck.

I love Yakuza most when it’s maximalist, audacious, willing to totally fuck with your expectations, and unafraid to be messy. That’s what I associate the series with and that’s what I want with each new game. That’s what I got here. I was so worried that Kiryu’s return would feel cheap, I was worried that losing Nagoshi would rob the games of an ineffable soul, and Gaiden put the fear of God in me that they would retain the godawful grinds that 7 had (if not double down.) Some mistakes it makes are certainly frustrating and I hope that one day the series will move on.

At the end of the day, it’s hard to not root for the game anyways. A game like this is so special to me. It never treats its past as a burden, and it plants one foot after another into an uncertain future with confidence. You can’t always cure stupid, but the way it endlessly strives towards a better and brighter path, unafraid to experience the sad, bitter, silly, and sweet in all its forms… it’s nice to see a game’s ethos resemble its admirable hero so much.

Manages to be an incredibly uneven experience with themes of progression, regression, and alienation, but is somehow not annoyingly self-aware about these issues being so ironically fitting. There are many games in the series I like more than this, but as a showcase of pure excess and indulgence this is fascinating. I love and hate this in about equal measure, but the thing that really frustrates me is my inability to feel strongly about its actual narrative goings-on.

Sure, I shouted and yelled at the stupid overexplained plot twists that make it worse, and I was excited at the setpieces, but it’s scattershot and incapable of selling emotional plot beats or conveying the interesting parts of its themes past expositing about them. Similarly, the underlying mechanics and control scheme are a series best (yes, better than V, fight me) but the dearth of stealth is made more painful when almost nothing is actually tested. Guards are rarely in interesting compositions or threatening patrols, and they’re so spread out that you can get in straight-up gunfights at times and not draw any ire. The few occasions that they break from this (the first part of Act 1, the second half of the final portion of Act 2, the climactic sneaking section in Act 5) are exhilarating and offer the same ass-clenching excitement and complex movement as the very best this series has to offer - as long as you do something other than tranq headshotting, because they decided to give you the MGS2 tranq pistol again except with effectively infinite ammo and a faster tranq time, for some fucking reason.

The narrative has a similar tendency to actively undercut its best elements, and once again you kind of have to go against what it itself is trying to guide you towards to actually fuck with what it’s putting down. MGS’ tonal variety, uncompromising quirkiness, and deeply human immaturity are all important parts of the series, but there’s a usual command of tone that is not present here. The sense of indulgence harms pacing a lot, giving emotional beats plenty of time to go stale before they’re followed up on or just outright ruining moments that the direction is trying to play as something you feel strongly about.

Other games have these issues at times (I’m sorry, Kojima, but I laughed at Otacon shouting “E-E!” when I was twelve and I’ll laugh at it when I’m ninety) but there’s a sense of cohesion and clarity granted by their commitment to a specific narrative and tone. The B&B Unit is the lowest point of mainline MGS because of its failure to do the same. I think what he was going for is conceptually cool; discussing the effects of endless war and using it to convey dehumanization both through literal war machines as well as overt fetishization is not an inherently bad idea, but the final execution fails to evoke any sense of real dissonance or horror because of the comical levels of ogling its blocking and camerawork indulge in. Shoving a woman’s pussy in the player’s face while she cries and vomits doesn’t really make me reflect on much, it just makes me want to fire Kojima out of a cannon into the sun.

The general inability to write women as something knowable or as people the male cast are capable of empathizing with is especially dire when motherhood is another one of the game’s main motifs alongside sensation, alienation, progression, regression, aligning the series timeline, misanthrophy, late capitalism, finding confidence in new technology and new people even as the world goes to hell, and, and, and...

As a whole, MGS4 is incapable of combining those threads, as its thematics are sidelined for plot-driven exertion as it attempts the unification of PS1 Tom Clancy theatrics with a cold Baudrillardian cyberpunk thriller, a sixties Bond homage, and Portable Ops into a single aesthetically, tonally, and narratively coherent series. The Metal Gear Solid Timeline was never a major point of consideration prior to this and the desperate attempt to connect it all is mostly accomplished via the majority of the cast being completely different characters with new designs, motivations, voices, and intentions.

Romance in this game is also handled awkwardly. I’m not touching “a man who shits himself for a living negs a woman into marriage” with a ten-foot pole, but it’s worth noting that Otacon’s grief over losing another love interest isn’t really as much about her loss but more because he’s frustrated that he had another woman die before he could fuck them. I think character assassination is cool, sometimes, and I think even Otacon’s plot beat here is something probably with degrees of intentionality, but it is intensely difficult to read charitably when this work is so unempathetic and afraid of its women.

You know a character whose shift for the worse is handled awesomely? Snake! I fucking LOVE Old Snake. His regression from his MGS2 personality into his frostier, more dick-ass MGS1 characterization makes total sense and the Psyche Gauge is a fantastic way to illustrate his insecurity and fragility. His circumstances are horrific, but the reaction to a joke of his bombing is almost as emotionally devastating as discovering he has six months to live and three months before he turns into a WMD. He combines the parallel threads of MGS and remains narratively engaging, aesthetically satisfying, genuinely hilarious, and emotionally-driven throughout.

The sections that connect most strongly to him and his struggle are generally my favorite parts of the game. Act 1 is really cool for how alienated he is from the conflict, being hot-dropped into “the middle east” (where? go fuck yourself, it’s terrorist country and it’s all indistinguishable to an american like you!) and given zero context for the war. The game incentivizes you to make huge shifts in this battle and tip the scales purely out of convenience to your unrelated efforts, and asking myself what I was really doing there was genuinely cool. The aesthetic language of seventh-gen modern military shooters is used to near-parody levels here and is then completely flipped with the insertion of psychotic MGS shenanigans and the protagonist’s frailty. His relationship with Raiden is the most consistently well-written, well-directed, well-blocked, and well-acted shit in the entire game, on top of Raiden’s stuff in this game being the coolest action in fiction. Act 4’s first few minutes got me genuinely wistful and misty-eyed even as I’d only played MGS1 for the first time earlier in the week*, and the final boss is deserving of its hype.

Basically everything to do with Big Boss and his former friends is a swing and a miss. The retcon introduced with Portable Ops is basically what ruined the plot of literally every single game in the entire franchise from that point onwards and I really wish that Kojima just treated it as non-canon and did his own fucking thing. The Christ and Eden symbolism in Act 3 makes me retroactively dislike similar elements in MGS3, even though that was a good deal less annoying about it. The ending’s emotionality is ruined so fucking hard by 25 minutes of exposition about its connection to MGS3 that I genuinely kind of think it should’ve ended at the expected point for the credits.

MGS4 offers an attempt to conclude a series while trying to build sequel hooks for a new generation of designers to take the reins, using the game’s increasing fascination with the PS3’s hardware and gimmicks as a genuine metaphor for learning to accept the present and future for what they are. It’s agonizing that these few moments of optimism go unrequited. This wasn’t the finale, none of the seeds sown here bore fruit, and instead of entering a new era, the same man made games trapped in their own stifling shadows. Instead of facing the future, the tides of the 2010s subsumed another and made alienated, nostalgic, and ultimately desolate attempts at a follow-up.

*Yes, I played every other mainline before starting 1 and 4. I didn’t grow up with a playstation and only recently could emulate MGS4, please understand :meowcry:

I don't like the return of massive stun after attacking a blocking enemy and Kaito's styles just being two from Yakuza 0 disappoints. These are my only issues with what's otherwise basically a perfect RGG Studio game. This final boss goes so fucking hard it's unbelievable. Really hope that they have more short, focused expansions like this that share a similarly sharp grasp on character writing and fill out side characters. I'd pay $30 or $40 for a standalone with this little bullshit very easily. I love that this DLC is an echo of Yakuza 1, except Kaito is willing to live for other people instead of dying for them and thus has a very, very different approach to things. He's such a great character.

this did its job of making me excited for 8 and accomplished very little else.
they are showing a willingness to make kiryu as a character and kuroda as an actor extend way fucking further than he did in the prior seven games - i don't think i can even visualize kiryu so consumed by helpless despair that snot is coming out of his nose as he trembles and weeps for any incarnation of the character prior to this, and that flexibility relative to the series baseline is what i appreciated about ichiban. i was dreading kiryu's return for infinite wealth, but i think they might actually have a real angle for him.

that being said, this game sabotages every part of its narrative, mechanical, thematic, tonal, and character construction for 80% of its runtime in the disgustingly cynical decision to make it a $50 game instead of a focused DLC or interlude. if this game was a DLC that shipped without any side content past substories and the ayame network, but used that smaller scope to tell a focused, well-paced narrative without constant utterly horrific pacebreakers this would be fantastic, and you can very much tell that something of that scope was closer to the original intent than this.

until the literal point of no return, there is not a single plot beat in the entire game that doesn't have 5-30 minutes of utter dead air between it and the next thing of value. i have little interest in these games' coliseum matches and this game makes you do them on literally six different fucking occasions. you constantly go between it and the couch, and it means that you become hyper-familiar with exactly two alleyways in sotenbori as you repeatedly walk back and forth between two points of interest instead of these games' ability to make you ping-pong between a variety of locations throughout the world.

it's a fascinating companion piece to 6, both for the obvious narrative connections, but also in the way that both games are fundamentally compromised. 6's insane ambition and messy development create a seamless experience with chunks missing, and a plot that is essentially white noise as their best-laid plans fizzle apart in the pursuit of pure polygon-pushing. it's something i have sympathy for. gaiden is, instead, something that has flashes of true brilliance and pathos, with a unique atmosphere and a real desire to be connective tissue and closure all at once. its failures come from pure fucking greed and a meaningless search for length over focus. i can't forgive it for the fundamental cynicism of the decision to charge $50 for this

This game is messy but really cool. Just download a cheat engine table because it's really not worth dealing with how weird damage gets in the lategame and how you start to fall off the exp curve.

Blisteringly fast-paced and pathologically unable to let its characters have a moment of rest, it balances the consistently-dire stakes with goofy skits that let the cast worm their way into your head. Balances an earnest, potent, and overtly queer and anticapitalist message with a cool lil sci-fi plot that has some neat worldbuilding when they're not directly quoting from Hebrew scripture. I think there's a few points where it cribs a little too heavily from Yoko Taro in terms of how it delivers its punches, but it has a decidedly unique flavor and construction of its own, and I'm an absolute sucker for one of the late-game twists about Eve. Reconciliation is not always an option, and nothing is more pure than killing for the people you love - except for misquoting Tampopo to your crush to seem cool before hyperfixating on shoyu tonkotsu ramen and undoing that coolness factor instantly.

Once the bugs get ironed out, this will be the video game equivalent of House of Leaves: visually inventive, its unique presentation within its medium an artform unto itself, but I don't know if the stuff beyond that will stick in my craw quite like what it draws comparison to.

The lack of both enemy variety AND interesting things to do with the enemies (lack of consistent stuns and/or limb-based damage or hit reactions in general) gets really tedious, and the walk speed is pretty slow relative to the amount of ground these maps want you to cover. They have a "shoot the randomly-determined glowing weak point" mechanic and then make it almost impossible to hit enemies from behind because of their tracking, aggression, and your lack of counterplay.

There's a lot of "but why?"s like it in these mechanics. I really think the pistol upgrade Saga gets that lets you stun enemies with successive headshots should've been a core part of your kit for both, and I STRONGLY question the inclusion of a powerful dodge mechanic that includes an even-stronger perfect dodge. It feels like it's supposed to be your universal stun option, but it's inherently reactive instead of proactive (which, given the lack of other options mid-fight, means everything you're doing past just waiting for them to attack is boring and feels bad) and it also means that ranged enemy types, all one-and-a-half of them, have zero interesting counterplay options.

I'm not sure why they got rid of the "flashlight-is-your-crosshair" conceit they had in Alan 1 when it was distinctive, satisfying, and cool. Inventory management, at least on PC, feels like every interaction has one button press too many, and it's just not very interestingly handled in the first place - it's not as complex as RE4's tetris and it doesn't have the addictive optimization-induced high that successive RE:2 replays tap into. It all being real-time would be cool if you ever had to interact with it in combat, but the hotkeys are generous and the UI is kludgy enough that anything not on them is just not worth equipping mid-fight. Saga's key items list is just flat-out bugged and doesn't remove most of them like it's supposed to, which makes finding the few reusable keys incredibly annoying.

It feels like punching down to write this much about the mechanics when Silent Hill's gameplay is also pretty bad and it's my favorite survival horror series, but Silent Hill is a lot more cohesive with how puzzles, enemy placements, and dungeon designs loop you around encounters (even if they're too damn easy). Alan Wake 2 feels like it wants a lot of Things To Do for the sake of it, and this confounds pacing and requires interactions with the mechanics far more than it or I actually want.

At its (frequent) best, it's instead a set piece-driven linear thrill-ride. Character writing in general touches on cool or relatable conceits and doesn't really know what to do with those ideas outside of these set pieces, even if there are a lot and they're actually sick when they do happen. Alan's plot board allows for a lot of visual inventiveness but runs dry pretty quickly, and it's genuinely astonishing how underused the lamp is after its cool-ass introduction. It entirely ceases to be a resource immediately, and I feel insane thinking about that for too long. His dungeons get progressively shorter as time goes on, or maybe just repetitious enough that I started editing out the downtime in my brain.

Saga's side hews more traditional in structure, aesthetics, and Silent Hill-ass dungeon crawling, and it's generally better for it. Her mind palace mechanic is addictive and rewards engagement with the environment while training the player to be genuinely thoughtful. The route split is strange and outright expects you to finish one side first despite not signposting that, which makes the escalating action that leads into its climax scream to a juddering halt.

I don't want to go into detail with said climax, but I left feeling like it has two amazing ideas with only one getting the execution it deserves. They cooked incredibly hard with tying mechanics, presentation, and narrative to a singular moment of catharsis and then killed whatever momentum built up before or after that before running face-first into an ending that felt like it needed far more deliberation.

My issues with the ending and its narrative momentum were heightened by having a staircase bug out and make me fall through the map every time I sprinted on it, forcing me to lose 2-5 minutes of progress. Remember what I said about walk speed? Still a pretty easy recommend to anybody interested though, and hopefully my issues with the climax get ironed out with NG+ and the DLC. Initiation 4 is worth the price tag on its own. Do wait for bugfixes though, it's really dire.