I know making RPGs are really hard but man you could've picked a better genre then co-op roguelike button masher. It probably didn't help that I played the whole game by myself but really I don't think I'd want to subject my friends with 5 drawn out level filled with spongy enemies, shallow rouge like systems, and almost no variety for missions or objectives; this game really is just 5 hours of samey looking areas with the same button mashing combat with shallow systems and nothing else.

I guess you could get some laughs from the game but personally I think South Park has gone downhill in the writing department for the past few years and this game just kinda proves me even more right that Tray and Matt are so washed.

If you really want to play a co-op multiplayer game with friends that’s less then 40 dollars just play Helldivers 2, honestly just fuck this game.

I don't ever wanna hear anyone ever say "Oh Redfall was pretty bad but not as bad as Gollum or that King Kong game", mf this game is worse then both of them and I've played all 3 so I know what I'm talking about.

Now is Gollum and Kong "objectively" worse than Redfall, yes; but I don't like viewing art in objective terms. So let me say it like this. Gollum and Kong were both made by smaller middle budget studios given a minuscule budget and an even smaller time frame to release said game. In the case of Kong it's just boring shovelware that somehow got popular on Twitter and Youtube, and in the case of Gollum it was the victim of a studio way too passionate and not nearly as talented giving an impossible task and as a result an interesting if not flawed idea turned into one of the biggest jokes of last year causing everyone at the studio to lose their jobs.

Redfall is neither of those. Redfall is scum. Redfall is the result of higher power taking a quick glance at popular trends and then tasking an extremely talented team to make something they're not trained or know how to make. So the game pretty much languishes in development hell for years causing the studio to bleed all that amazing talent from their past games, and then the higher powers decide they got cold feet and no longer want the game they asked the studio who knew nothing about this genre of game and know want them to make it like all their other games, unfortunately that's not how game development works and they were too far in to backtrack now and too much money had been sunk into it so now it has to be a patch work job where the devs need to work around the game they spent 3 years making in order to please the higher powers. Then the higher powers get bought out by an evil power hungry mega corporation and now Redfall is not just "a new game made by Arkane '' but rather "a new game/reason to buy an Xbox". It's now been put on a pedestal by Xbox and Bethesda executives as the next big AAA Xbox release and now the patchwork game that barely works and should've been canned years ago needs to match up to the high echelons of not just the studios past games but also a brand that is comprised of franchises like Halo, Gears of War, and Blinx The Time Sweeper.
So the game released and it's a complete disaster, not because it's a buggy barely functioning game, but also because it's a big fat load of shit.

As looter shooter go Redfall does pretty much nothing new with it's systems and mechanics that have been in-play since 2012, and as a FPS it's somehow worse than Prey 2017 which is funny since the guns in that game were better than Redfall's and that was one of Prey's biggest faults. Enemy variety is piss poor even after all the updates the AI is still dumb as shit. Missions and objectives try to do the usual Arkane immersive sim pick your own path style but since it's an open map and not handcrafted levels the mission designers can't go crazy with path ideas so as a result it's very bland and basic. Character are the most annoying "how do you do fellow kids" shit I've seen since the Saints Row Remake and it really didn't do the game any favorites that the character I picked was probably the most annoying one out of the lot. (Her tagline was The Telekinetic Threat in Student Debt :T) It probably also dosn't help that the story of the game is told not through cutscenes but rather through still framed of model with narration in the background, I've seen Xbox Live Arcade games with more unique cutscenes and animations then this what the fuck??????

Redfall is a products and I mean that in the most demeaning way imaginable. Almost every aspect this game has does nothing new and feels like a hollow attempt to ride the trends of other games while not understanding what made them good. I shit you not I genuinely think the Gollum vs Sméagol argument system is a more original and fun idea then anything in Redfall, yeah sure it didn't work properly and was kinda goofy but the idea for it showed the devs knew what they were working on and wanted to try something that was inline with Gollum as a character and it's a more original idea then anything in Redfall. By the end of Redfall during the final boss I had lost most if not all respect for the game, and then the game hit me with a basic enemy gauntlet and a final (press E to kill the final boss). After doing that and seeing the last cutscene deadass I was like this for the rest of the night My honest reaction.

I hate this game, it's everything I hate about the AAA gaming scene and it's borderline anti-art.

Fuck Redfall.

I have a weird love hate relationship with games that pride themselves on being "subversive".

On the one hand I have no problem with media that wants to break social norms and taboos so long as what their making as an overall point to it and isn't just "lol isn't this fucked up, crazy right.". If done right you can get masterpieces of subversive media like A Clockwork Orange, Funny Games, Pink Flamingos and Freddy Got Fingered, unfortunately I can count on one hand the amount of video games I've personally seen that've tried and failed at tackling subversive media. When most games set out to tackle this level of writing and story tell it can either go two ways, It's either by a group of creative individuals who have a strong view of what their game is trying say along with having strong narrative themes that intertwine with the gameplay and narrative, games like Undertale, Cruelty Squad, Death Stranding, Hotline Miami 2, Spec Ops The Line, and Conker's Bad Fur Day. On the other side of the coin you have games that say they have a strong message and a subversive narrative but either fail from sheer incompetence of storytelling and thematic elements and tone deafness; even if they did try to incorporate the gameplay by tying it in with the game’s overall point it can still fail by not having a strong enough concrete vision of their game causing the rest of the game to fall apart in the process, game like Hatred, Twelve Minutes, Postal, Bioshock Infinite, Last of Us 2, Mafia 3, and Saints Row 3.
The real question here is what camp does Harvester fall into.

Harvester is a tough sell for me because while I really love the late 90’s early CG visuals and the use of crunchy FMV for their character sprites and cutscenes; and the acting is………camp, very……very camp. Unfortunately for all the elements of the game I really liked it’s weighed down by the biggest problem with the game being that it’s not a very good game to play plus I don’t respect what the game is trying to say.
As a point and click game it’s way to linear, almost railroading you down one single path with almost no diverging pathways for puzzles unlike other much more simpler point and click games, even better though during the last hour the game changes ganreas from point and click to dungeon crawler. And it has some of the absolute worst combat I've ever played, I’d respect the idea and change if it didn’t feel so half baked and poorly thought out. You also get a wide variety of dialogue options for NPCs even for ones that have no real use in the overall game, but besides a handful of character a lot of them just feel like flavor text and don’t add anything besides giving the town the game takes place feeling a lot more empty; it probably also doesn't help that a lot of the areas in the game only really matter to one puzzle and that’s it or other times some areas will have almost no point at all and are just there for a joke or “irreverence social commentary”, like the towns nuclear missile station run by a PTSD riddled commie heating Vietnam veteran who had entire torso blown and now stand guard and will blow you head off if you enter a conversation with him and mention anything that isn’t wholesome a-ok american pride, and if he does shot you he accidentally falls over and launches the nukes killing every in the town giving you a game over and sending you back to your last save. It’s funny ... .for like the first time but after awhile it just gets tiresome and that can be said for a lot of the games “irreverence social commentary”.

The main games overall message and themes are…I think “violent media does not create violent individuals but rather the people around them create monsters through the act of allowing disgusting degenerate behavior influence their actions”. The game is very much a response to the violent games panic of the 90s and while I do think they did a decent job tying the game’s message and themes into the world of the game and the game itself it still left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It might be because of the really lame twist at the end but I think a large part of it mostly comes from how much of a strawman argument this game feels like at times. Pretty much every other character in the game are inherent violence sociopath with a lot of them either having vices of porn, murder, arson, being racist, incest, child kidnapping, child murder, grooming, being gay?, and since the game takes a page from Blue Velvet where it portrays quiet suburban middle america but under that thin vale it’s a seedy underbelly of degeneracy. But here it’s trying to do its message with the most tone deaf straw man character I’ve seen since Postal and overall it just kinda leaves me feeling like a big fat load of nothing. Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to disagree with the game’s overall intent I just don’t like how they went about executing the set ideas in the most late 90’s way possible, lude, dumb and somehow racist.

I think my overall take away from Harvester is it’s a game I really wanted to like and still do like from a purely visual perspective, but on almost every other side I either just don’t vibe with parts of the game or actively dislike other parts that are very important parts of the game. I know this game had a really rushed development and as a result the late game feels very unfinished but I don’t know I feel like even if I lived in a timeline where it was fully released like the studio wanted I still don’t think I’d really vibe with it. Maybe I’m just getting older and find the absurdist and counter cultural way of telling a story and delivering a message frustrating and annoying………………………..naa I still like Freddy Got Fingered, it’s probably the games fault.

After being pretty impressed with No Code's first title Stories Untold and then learning their one of the poor souls picked by Konami to make one of the new Silent Hill games I felt like it was my obligation as a concerned parent fan to see if these devs truly have what it takes to make a Silent Hill game, and from what I've seen of this team's game (all two of them); I'd say they're a better pick then Bloober Team.

While I personally feel like Observation falls a little bit short with its overall mystery and narrative with a lot of the actual meat of the story being very backloaded, it makes up for it with some amazing atmospheric dread with the station itself. Since you play as the station’s onboard AI a lot of the game can only be viewed through the cameras throughout the ship and combine the severe lack of visibility; along with the station looking like a very realistic depictions of modern space stations so everything looks like a mess of wires it really adds to a intense feeling of unease, and as the story does get going and more characters start popping up the mystery just gets thicker and thicker until you get to that ending where I just grinning from ear to ear; no joke the ending almost made up for the more frustrating bits.

The biggest complaint I personally have with the game overall is the bits whereas the onboard AI your tasked to go do objectives around the station to make sure the few remaining crew mates don’t meet with a terrible fate like accidentally getting jettison the space, or having to go outside the station to make sure the station has enough oxygen so nobody suffocates. And while I feel as though the writers did a good enough job in incorporating the more gamey moments into the narrative very well, actually trying to move around the station is a challenge in frustration. Remember how I said the station looked like a very realistic depiction of a modern space station, well a part of me thinks they did too much of a good job because almost every part of the station looks pretty much the same. To add insult to injury the UI isn’t very user friendly when it comes to actually relaying information to the player, it adds to the immersive elements of you playing as a sugar-free HAL 9000 but a part of me feels like they still could’ve had their cake and eat it too if they’d went in a different direction in terms of presenting how an onboard AI would see the ship.

While I do have a shit ton of issues with the general gameplay this isn’t really one of those games where you play it for its gameplay. It’s a game way more focused on telling a sci-fi horror mystery and letting the player go thought the game at their own pace and while I do appreciate it’s story and the voice actors do a really great job I really wished the narrative didn’t feel so backloaded, because for the majority of the early hours of the game it feels like you're mostly just waiting for the plot to start rather then getting engrossed in the story from the get-go.
I know it sounds like I really don’t like this game from how much I’m complaining but I assure you once the game gets going and once you get a…..fairly good grasp on the stations layout the game just takes off like a rocket and gets pretty great. But idk as a whole I just wish more time was put into areas that needed some attention the most rather than making the whole experience feel very lopsided.

Who would've thought that a tribute game for those crappy Zelda CDI games would not only be an actual functioning product unlike those games, but would just be a fun game in and of itself.

I don't know if it fully captures the original aesthetic the CDI games had since I could kinda tell that most of the cutscenes were done by different animators and some tried adapting the style in various different ways; one even used 3D models for some reason. But if that is the case I'm more or less ok with that since I think it gives off more of a group effort project feel like those reanimated projects where individual animators reanimate a whole movie in their own style. (my favorite character is the Vinny vinesauce frog)

As 2D platformer goes it sure does play, some would say very well. It's properly tightened responsive and the levels don't overstay their welcome and flow really well which is something I feel most 2D platformers seem to have a problem with especially older ones. My only gripe with the level and game progression would be how cryptic it can feel sometimes. They did add in a side mission or progression indicator where once you found said item in a level it'll tell you which level you need to take it to, but sometimes I got stumped on progression not knowing where to go or where to look next which forced me to have to go back to older levels and replay them over and over again until I found out what I needed to do, and I think that's probably the worst part of the game tbh. Even if you know where you need to go or what you need from a level at that point you'll still need to replay through the whole level in order to either deliver an item or to unlock a new item, sometimes more then once. This result in times where I had to replay the first level of the game somewhere around 5 to 6 times just to make basic progression thought the game and it's side missions and the levels never change, it's just the same level over and over again with the same enemy placements and everything but this time you'll need to get one specific item. I feel like having midlevel fast travel points to NPC's would've imitated it entirely and would've made progression feel less like a slog but it probably also would've made the game like 3 hours shorter, a lot of the time going through the levels over and over again felt like extreme levels of padding for a game that's already pretty short (I finished the game in 5 hours). Again I don't hate the core gameplay, it just pisses me off that the game feels this need to pad itself out with replay the same levels over and over again just for the sake of basic progression.

For what it is; that being a tribute game made for bad games people like as a joke it's pretty fun and not much else. I played this like all the way back in February and never logged it since once I stopped playing it and moved on to something else it just seeped out of my mind. It's what it is and it does a good job making these bad games fun, but it's really padded out by the end and besides it's point and laugh nature it left me with almost no lasting feeling other then it randomly popping back in my head while I’m at work and think "oh yeah I did play that, that was fun I guess.".
It seems very fitting that Limited Run Games published this, I mean that in both a good and bad way.

Dada

Dada (/ˈdɑːdɑː/) or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916), founded by Hugo Ball with his companion Emmy Hennings, and in Berlin in 1917.[2][3] New York Dada began c. 1915,[4][5] and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris. Dadaist activities lasted until the mid 1920s.

Developed in reaction to World War I, the Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works.[6][7][8] The art of the movement began primarily as performance[9] art, but eventually spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculpture. Dadaist artists expressed their discontent toward violence, war, and nationalism and maintained political affinities with radical politics on the left-wing and far-left politics.[10][11][12][13]


Cover of the first edition of the publication Dada, Tristan Tzara; Zürich, 1917
There is no consensus on the origin of the movement's name; a common story is that the German artist Richard Huelsenbeck slid a paper knife (letter-opener) at random into a dictionary, where it landed on "dada", a colloquial French term for a hobby horse. Jean Arp wrote that Tristan Tzara invented the word at 6 p.m. on 6 February 1916, in the Café de la Terrasse in Zürich.[14] Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness and absurdity that appealed to the group. Still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning (or no meaning at all) in any language, reflecting the movement's internationalism.[15]


Francis Picabia: left, Le saint des saints c'est de moi qu'il s'agit dans ce portrait, 1 July 1915; center, Portrait d'une jeune fille americaine dans l'état de nudité, 5 July 1915; right, J'ai vu et c'est de toi qu'il s'agit, De Zayas! De Zayas! Je suis venu sur les rivages du Pont-Euxin, New York, 1915
The roots of Dada lie in pre-war avant-garde. The term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 to characterize works that challenge accepted definitions of art.[16] Cubism and the development of collage and abstract art would inform the movement's detachment from the constraints of reality and convention. The work of French poets, Italian Futurists and the German Expressionists would influence Dada's rejection of the tight correlation between words and meaning.[17] Works such as Ubu Roi (1896) by Alfred Jarry and the ballet Parade (1916–17) by Erik Satie would also be characterized as proto-Dadaist works.[18] The Dada movement's principles were first collected in Hugo Ball's Dada Manifesto in 1916. Ball is seen as the founder of the Dada movement.[19]

The Dadaist movement included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of media. Key figures in the movement included Jean Arp, Johannes Baader, Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Emmy Hennings, Hannah Höch, Richard Huelsenbeck, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Tristan Tzara, and Beatrice Wood, among others. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including Surrealism, nouveau réalisme, pop art and Fluxus.[20]



I fucking hate playing Baldi's Basics but I can appreciate a good shitpost when I see one.

I sometimes have the tendency to look down on these ‘Lost games' ARG BS that flood itch.io and steam. Not because they're bad or not scary but because they're always the most basic bog standard creepypasta BS you could possibly think of with very little to show for it in scares, puzzles, or clever use of the ARG format. I think the only games I’ve seen done well were Ben Drowned, Godzilla NES, and Petscop, two of those are just hi-effort Creepypastas and one that doesn't even exist. Which is why I'm glad to say that this game goes out of its way to not only pass the super low bar of lame creepypasta lost game bs; but also carve its own path as a pretty great ARG and a genuinely scary experience. Finally we can have a lost game ARG where it's not about a dead person/child controlling the game but rather something much MUCH worse.........disgruntled employees.

Also I really wanna give this game a huge thumbs up for the game's N64 like presentation. It's not one for one like the games of its era and at points you can clearly tell it’s not a game that could’ve worked on a real N64, but they make it work in the lore of the ARG along with still having the ability to make the atmosphere all the more dreadful by going for a more basic lower quality look.

I don't have much else I wanna say about it without giving away spoilers but I do think the puzzles are a little too obtuse at times but the game was designed to be a community driven ARG experience so really if anything they did too good of a job if you think about it. But overall it's just a really solid horror experience I'm glad I gave a chance instead of just scrolling past it like any other itch.io ARG creepypasta schlock.

Sometimes I like going into a game so blind that I don't even know the basic premise of said game. Now this is probably a bad idea for games since sometimes you'll be slamming down 40 to 60 bones on some games but in the case of something like this which was 7 dollars I figured 'Eh if it sucks it's not that big of a loss" so I booted it up and tbh I don't know what I was expecting with this game but I was still pleasantly surprised.

Corn Kidz is yet another fan made attempt to replicate the look and feel of 3D platformers of the early 3D 5th gen systems with this one mostly going for N64 (duh the title). I've played many of these tribute games and while I always appreciate the effort the devs put into their games it always feels like less of a tribute games harkening back to that early era and more so trying to mimic the style and falling prey to all the worst parts of that era like bad camera, slippery controls, and a monotonous amount of collectibles that all feel have haphazardly placed. Corn Kidz falls somewhere in between these types of games but more so on the side of which I like more.

For one thing the game nails that 5th gen polygonal graphics to a T and even does a good job formating the game in the proper 4x3 aspect ratio which I really don't see many of these tribute games try to pull off. The most impressive part of the general look of the game are the filters used to mimic that hazy CRT tv look. I'm very picky when it comes to my CRT filters since most times then a game or emulator tries to add in filters to mimic old CRT component cables. It always looks fake or too digital or so blurry you can't even tell what you're looking at. Corn Kidz did the impossible where the filters used not only don't look like complete dogshit but also do a nearly perfect job replicating that CRT haze that the N64 had. It's not perfect. You can still clearly tell that this game is using filters most of the time and it still has that digital sheen that gives it away but I think that only applies to nerds like me who can tell regardless, overall it's an amazing achievement given how small the team of this game was.
The gameplay is also extremely fun which is probably the most make or break when it comes to these 5th gen tribute games. It really doesn't strive to do much to differentiate itself besides having its movement be more forced with precise platforming akin to others like Hat in Time or Mario 64. The animations are really well done and overall it's just fun to move around and collect random stuff which is at the end of the day the main goal for 3D platformers.

The only thing I wish the game did better was having a more consistent thematic style. What I mean is a lot of the game's levels don't really make much sense for why it's there or what it's purpose is; but since it takes place in a dream I guess you can say it just fellows dream logic where nothing makes sense, so this playground/house/water dungeon/tower...thing????makes complete sense. I'm not even saying the 2 levels this game has are bad, it's more so I would've like the levels to stand out with an interesting aspect to them that makes me remember them more, like how Banjo or Conker did it. This problem also falls with the characters of the game as well. Again I don’t think the characters of this game are bad just like how I don't think the worlds themselves are bad, I just would’ve liked it if the characters had more layers to them besides the one note archetypes they've been given. Besides some jokes that are kinda whatever they don’t really have much long lasting memorable elements to them besides their roles in the game’s mechanics. Hell, I finished the game a few days ago and I’m struggling to even remember the main character's name. They’re fun in the moment to moment gameplay and serve the purpose for the game’s design but don’t stand out as memorable characters in their own way; at least to me. I also would've liked it if it had more than 2 worlds rather than just one normal world and the other being the tutorial world, but given how this was a small team I'm not gonna say it's a real problem.

I think overall the devs succeeded in what they set out to achieve with this game. If they set out to make a loving tribute to 5th gen 3D platformers of the era they did a fantastic job at it. It surpasses in a lot of areas that I've seen other games fall flat on and it also excels at almost everything else, I just wish there was more to the game itself and it had a more consistent identity to it's levels and characters besides the surface level "oh it's a spooky 3D platformer". As it stands, it's a really great fan game that really needs to find a more concrete identity of what it wants to be outside of mimicking the N64's visual style and game structure.

I see no reason why a short McDonald's tie in game should be as good as it is. I mean it's not perfect or even anything to right home about; besides the music being pretty alright and some genuinely good level design for it's era, but it's far too easy and I felt like there was a little too much going on visually at times so where I started getting a headache. I think having the novelty of playing a McDonald's video game that isn't a horrible slap dashed togather waste of time is enough for me to say it's at least worth a look but other then that it's really nothing special.

Ever since I finished Alan Wake 2 I felt like revisiting Remedy's older games to give myself a much more nuanced perspective on not just Remedy as a studio but their artistic outlook and the studios main creative director and lead writer Sam Lake.

As first games go Death Rally isn't really a great example of Remedy's future outputs. It's a pretty decent car combat game with much more of a focus on winning races rather then killing all your competitors. You earn money from races, which you use to upgrade your car so you can enter harder races in which you earn more money until you go head to head with the champions to become the king of the death rally. It's pretty simple and besides some small story text in between races there is next to no story; which is pretty standard for the era. Really what makes this game stand out among other top down racing games of its era is its aesthetic and its writing. The general tone the games goes far is apocalyptic; while other car combat games like Twisted Metal or Carmageddon also have this general motif Death Rally stands out as its own thing by giving its apocalyptic tone a more melancholic feel, think Death Race 2000 meets The Last Man On Earth but with more fire and less vampires. The other aspect that really stood out to me was the small story blurbs that show up after every race, they all have staples of Sam Lakes writing going forward in which a lot of them are very metaphor latent and in the case of this game also have a bleakness to them which add to the game's lonely apocalyptic tone.

Knowing that Max Payne comes after this game makes a lot of sense since I can see a lot of that game's tone and aesthetic emanating from this game. It's a neat novelty to look at as Remady's first game but besides some neat aspects there's really nothing of substance here anymore.

Yup, it's a masterpiece.

I kinda have a hard time writing about games that are critically acclaimed since by the time I get around to finally playing them everyones either already said everything that needed to be said about it, it's especially hard when said game is almost 26 years old and is from one of the most influential series in the whole genre.

Whatelse can I really say other then it's a triumph for the PS1, Kojima's love for movies and the medium shines through the 5th gen pixel style with some really inspiring storytelling and standout voice acting; and I don't just mean stand out for the era I mean stand out just in general. You can even see a glimpse of Kojima's surprisingly inspired cinematography for some of the cutscenes, yeah sure it's still PS1 so Kojima and his team couldn't go as raw as they probably wanted to but for what they were still able to put on the screen it's pretty damn impressive.
That's the word that kept popping into my brain the further I went into this game, impressive. The 5th gen was a blossoming era for video games, with the creation of the third dimension and significantly more space on a compact disk developers could go to much further lengths. They could add in voice acting, cutscenes to add in more context and story, the possibilities were...well not endless but still pretty close for the time. This new era had the ability to push gaming further than we've ever seen it before, and it kinda did that. See while devs had these new tools they didn't really know how to fully utilize them, that's how you'd end up with cheesy voice acting, poorly aged FMV or CG cutscenes, and stories that are about as shallow as a puddle; not all of them were like this but that's just the result of growing pains when it comes to a whole new way of making video games.

And in comes Kojima with his team and his encyclopedic knowledge of film and storytelling gave us Metal Gear Solid. Not only does it have a very keen eye for claustrophobic and imposing cinematography for both it's cutscenes and gameplay, but also it has a damn great narrative about the horrors of war, manipulation of soldiers and loss of individuality under army or governmental power, and the restrictive nature of letting your origin or genetics dictate your life and actions. And on top of that it does something I haven't seen a lot of other games of this era do well, which is tying its narrative and story into the gameplay in a way that also mirrors how so many studios do nowadays. Kojima's team walked in and almost effortlessly made a game that not only holds up today as a great story in gaming but holds the test of time as a stand out game......with a few exceptions.

See I've been going on about the presentation, the voice acting, the cinematography. I haven't really been talking all that much about the game part of this game, and that is mostly due to the fact that I think the gameplay is just ok. The stealth systems are pretty good and overall the game nails the claustrophobic nature of Shadow Moses through great level design, it's just going through Shadow Moses is kinda really easy. The guards have a very shallow field of view making it very easy to be able to bypass them without any trouble and the game feels like it flushes you with ammo so if you do get caught killing most guards isn't really that much of a problem, also it dosn't help that the enemy AI is kinda all over the place sometimes. I know this is PS1 and even with the impressive systems they made for this game there will still always be hardware limitations. Even then though it's not a deal breaker for me since I still think it's just ok, just not as grand and fantastic as its story or even its bosses.

Bottom line........I mean it's Metal Gear Solid it's fucking fantastic. Even with little problems I do have with the gameplay and some characters don't detract from how impressive and inspiring this was not just as a game but as a piece of media. This is a triumph of programming and now I have to play through the rest, just to see where Kojima takes his story and characters next.

As a remaster it's kinda lackluster, besides the "newer" models and more high-res textures it's pretty much just looks like the PC version, which isn't a bad thing since I think the game still holds up pretty well for it's era I just would've liked a few more changes to really make this game stand out as a remaster. But even if I don't think it really makes full use of it's remastered elements I can't deny that I'm glad this exist as a good way for newcomers who've never played Alan Wake on 360 to finally play it very accessible way with all of it's DLC content, which is something I wished more studios and publishers did.

It's kinda funny that the first game I played turned out to be my new favorite game of last year. Funny how things work out like that.

Alan Wake 2 is for my money the best game Remady has made to date and is currently my new favorite pick for best recent survival horror game that's not a remake. Everything from that always great Remedy combat, to Sam Lakes writing feeling REALLY on point this time around, and even the actors and voice actors doing a fantastic job both in live action cutscenes and through VA and mocaping. I can't say I have a full understanding of the story yet, mostly since there's still some lingering pieces that don't fall into place yet but even then the number of twist and turns this story took kept me on the edge of my seat, and the way they were able to weave the story in between neo noir nightmare to a horror mystery and still have story cohesion is honestly really impressive.
I will say the only part I'm meh about in retrospect is how long it takes before it starts becoming a survival horror game. What I mean is for the first 3 to 4 hours or so you're railroaded down this linear line of progression pretty much having ammo given to you and it's not until the first boss when the game finally starts to open up more and spread its wings. On the topic of its gameplay I also really love how Remady was able to explore the different types of survival horror games. In the game you can bounce between two characters; Saga and titular Alan Wake, Saga's gameplay is much more akin to the gameplay of RE4 or Dead Space; where the item management is still an important aspect of the gameplay but it's still more skewed towards action. The titular Alan Wake's sections however are much more oriented towards classic survival horror like classic Resident Evil or Silent Hill, you have half the inventory space that Saga has and only have access to 3 weapons which are kinda unreliable and ammo is super scarce. The titular Alan Wake's sections take place in the titular Dark Place and most of the enemies are these shadow monsters; there's a shit ton of them but only some of the shadows are real enemies. You have to carefully maneuver through these shadow enemies without them seeing you which requires you to turn off the flashlight and move in pure darkness, and if you think one of the shadow monsters is coming to kill you the only options is use up one of your flashlight charges hoping your right and it's an enemy, or waiting to see if it's an actual enemy but also taking the risk of losing health.
It's not perfect, the exploration on Saga's side can feel a little tedious at times and The titular Alan Wake's sections feel really short and don't have the same lasting feeling that Saga's sections have, but even then I feel as thought Alan Wake 2 found that certain sweet spot of balance that rarely see most survival horror games reach without making some limitations.

14 years and Remady somehow hit it out of the park with one of my new all time bangers, and to think..........it's all because Epic wanted a new exclusive game for their shitty pc store front and have nearly infinite amounts of cash to throw around. Good on you Sam Lake and co......good on you for gaming the system.

How.........how in the name of god did Santa Monica do it.

Somehow.......they made a FREE dlc, more content rich, more story rich, and more meaningful to the greater series then most paid dlcs.....I'm just...shocked. Santa Monica has reached a peak with this era of GoW, even if the rougelike gameplay is shallow and no where near as other games in this field; they still hit it out of the park with the writing and acting. No joke Naughty Dog wishes they could write a character as good as Santa Monica writes Kratos it is unreal how great he is in this.

I'm just glad I ended this year off with kino instead of the last Saints Row reboot dlc pack because how boy that would've been depressing.