forgot i even played this thing lol. better then fallout 4. most interesting in how it builds itself to exclude and automate the most annoying development tools. this leads to a jarringly disjointed world where you fast travel from cell to cell which are each individually more detailed and interesting then most of what you would see in skyrim or fallout 3. it all falls apart because the connective tissue of traversing to these areas (intentionally or simply wandering across them through happenstance) was more vital then i think they realized. it was certainly more then i ever realized. i do like a lot of the bigger city zones in this game, some of them quite a bit, but it's just so boring. oh my god it's so boring

i sort of bristle at the way people talk about this being "The First Game To Be Art" or "Finally Games Are As Good As Movies With Alan Wake 2," if only because this title deserves more robust discussion then the sort we were seeing in 2013 gamefaqs posts when the last of us came out or in 2023 magazine articles when the last of us came out. those kinds of sentiments are also just stupid and annoying on their head.
outside of all that i think this game is absolutely delightful. a solid and compact cube of game design. there were some weaker or underserved mechanics (case board) and a few moments i did genuinely hate (both musical numbers) and by the end both are recontextualized in ways that i absolutely adored. the last 30 minutes are the only thing that drag the entire experience down. so agonizingly close to the end when it seems like the game is about to nail everything it becomes a children's cartoon about going to therapy before dropping you into two lukewarm encounters and that's it. however the game does get an extra star for being finnish so it's back up to a perfect 5.
i will probably end up getting this on xbox at some point because i hear it runs 1% better and i would be happy to replay

disgustingly bad. it's clear painstaking work was put into the engine in an attempt to bring the visuals up to Next Generation Standards and it still somehow looks like slurry churning on your screen constantly. i would be knocked straight out of my chair if i was presented with proof that this game had any art director at all. to compliment this stunning visual package bethesda has graced us with one of the most frivolous and completely boring stories ever put into a video game. whenever i see just how many units this game moved i feel like i can't breathe.

just on a completely different wavelength then me. i do like the sense of decay and growing abandonment that pervades every environment especially as a build up and contrast to breath of the wild's world being almost entirely reclaimed from ruins like these. even in the few populated areas you're encouraged to be weird and antisocial and keep escape plans in the back of your mind so you can skulk off to a secluded corner and turn into a wolf or teleport away. vibes city in the twilight world. all great stuff that made me wish i made a stronger connection. strange adventure gameish item/environment combinations at times that i never once got used to. lame bosses and an extremely annoying penultimate dungeon. so fascinating to think about when the game's off and so hopelessly boring when you're actively engaging with it.

i feel like the wider conversation around both left 4 dead games (and most of valve's catalogue at large) has turned negative. i don't think any of valve's games are necessarily perfect but i do feel there's some overcorrection going on. every game after half life was half life and every game after left 4 dead was left 4 dead. in that sense i can understand feeling tired of how these games are now basically unavoidable but like come on. what is there to hate about left 4 dead. it literally has everything you could ever want in a video game. its got level design. its got characters saying pills. its got pacing. its got movement (in the way that every source title has ""movement""). its got guns. for a good while every person on earth was sucking valve off for everything they did (i still suck valve off extremely frequently) and i totally understand that it got really annoying. they do make really good video games though.