Most horror games really work for me because they tell scary stories more than mechanically scaring me in the moment. I love SOMA dearly because its story, in spite of what even the developers agree is pointless gameplay, was special. There are exceptions... an exception? The resident evil series, despite its immense dumbness, has managed to frighten me pretty much 100% mechanically.

Darkwood is special because it can join resident evil in that exclusive club of horror games that can really viscerally get me, and it doesn't have to be dumb as a bag of rocks either. Im not gonna call it genius, but Darkwood is clearly operating on a higher level than it ever had to. The dialogue has an opaque, heavy quality to it that bears sinking your teeth into to find meaning.

The real main event here is the visual and audio presentation. The game is uniquely presented in a top-down perspective, with your characters vision limited to line-of-sight within a narrow cone. The game visually obscures things from you just enough to stress you out, while making sure you can HEAR them coming long before you see them. Darkwood knows your imagination is the scariest game of all, and masterfully plays your senses + your mind to convince you that a barricaded door is all that stands between you and a nightmarish death.

Darkwood needs to be seen to be believed, and if you enjoy horror games whatsoever, it is a must-try.

The Last Of Us Part II is a huge departure from the style of the first game. Where Part I was a thoroughly "it is what it looks like" affair, a straightforward story about a relationship with a neat little twist at the end to give you a new perspective, Part II is much more ambitious. Its got THEMES.

There are mechanical subversions in the name of themes, story beats reassert those themes, the game might even intentionally toy with the level designs enjoyability to make the player empathize with certain characters better? I could describe it as an indie game story made on a GTA budget, and I really wanted to enjoy it, but I'm afraid the game just didn't do it for me.

The biggest crime of all is length. Where the first game could not have been over 20 hours long, Part II feels like it needs close to FORTY HOURS to complete, including a totally unnecessary final act which sucks all energy out of what could have been a perfectly satisfying climax.

Many of my gripes with the first game still stand. The tender, introspective story found in the cutscenes clashes with the hours-long murder holes one regularly finds themselves stuck in. For a game that wants to subvert our attachment to the First's protagonist, this one indulges in gratuitous flashbacks to him several times. The game wants to critique the consequences of protagonist-brain, solipsistic worldviews, but cannot conceive of a world in which a single girl can't kill like 500 people because she was Built Different.

I think a story that focused on Abby primarily would have been a solid 4 from me. The Ellie stuff drags this game down hard.

I dont want to revel in this game's failures, but I find it interesting in how dated it is. It was apparently in development for 7 years and it feels like it--12 Minutes is a ceolacanth of 2010s critical darling narrative game design.

Multiple twists as the primary driver of interest in the story? Liberal use of dark/twisted events to "earn" the story its artistic merit? Fixation on a single emotional beat, at the expense of variety/depth? Clamoring for Hollywood prestige by casting stars who are clearly out of their element?

I feel that the time-loop concept has legs, but its hard to give the game much benefit of the doubt when the performances really are just that bad. Daisy Ridley responds to her husband being choked to death like I do when my cat scratches my furniture. Willem Dafoe belts out strange breathless sound bites that cut off half a second too early. Clicking rapidly on a home invader as he attempts to murder your wife results in a comedically-timed "Sir?! Sir?! Sir?!"

I'd feel dishonest calling it BAD, but I expected much more.