Even though I grew up around a N64 I missed out on this game as a kid and it wasn't until I had a Wii and enough money to buy the game on Virtual Console that I finally got my grimy hands on SM64. I loved this game then, and even went as far as getting all 120 stars. As a kid who assumed he was bad at video games this meant a lot to me. I was also a super Yoshi fan so seeing Yoshi on that roof filled me with so much joy! Even during this replay I had vivid memories of waiting for dinner while playing this game, almost brought a tear to my eye. more than a decade later and I can confidently say this is one of the most stressful games that I've played recently. The janky Clinton administration camera + the demonic level design genuinely had me questioning whether or not I was going to finish this game. I think most of the maps from the latter half of the game are evil as fuck but Tick Tock Clock, Rainbow Ride, and Tiny Huge Island must've single-handedly bent the moral arc of the universe against justice. One minor inconvenience on any of those stages and you'll be greeted by Charles Martinet's best Mario scream to date. My original plan was to get all 120 stars and greet Yoshi on the roof for old time's sake but upon realizing I'd have to get 100 coins on Rainbow Ride I decided I'd rather keep the extra year of life expectancy that would be lost attempting that challenge. 103 stars it is!

Another conflicting game for me because the presentation is nice, the sprite work is great, the music is cool, and the character designs are, impressive to say the least. But with all of that said, I just couldn't find anything interesting about the gameplay, at least not anything interesting enough to keep me playing. As someone who's 100%'d The Binding of Isaac and put enough hours into Enter the Gungeon to understand it, this game doesn't have anything that really makes it standout from those for me. The isometric angle and ability to jump on furniture would be an interesting idea if you weren't constantly hit by things that are "inches" below you. So many times where I try to avoid an enemy by jumping over them just to get hit. In fact, most hits felt like you were cheated in some way. Sure the designs of the enemies themselves are nice but so many feel like a giant middle finger to fight - any enemy that sits in the air or off screen waiting to drop on you is a direct message from Satan to remind you he exists. Doesn't help that 90% of them also feel like bullet sponges, and the guns either don't help with that feeling OR are so good you only want to use them on bosses. I could go on about the different kinds of items but in general, you don't get the creative and seemingly infinite item combinations of Isaac, which is fine, but I wouldn't say these items necessarily made the game more fun either. It mostly feels like you're able to stock up a large amount of them very easily, which doesn't even always end up with you feeling stronger. In my 15+ runs I would say I had 2 runs where I was able to quickly kill bosses or instantly clear rooms. While my original plan was to get the true ending on every character, it was on my 6th character that I realized I didn't really care.

Overall, not a bad game by any means but it couldn't keep me entertained longer than 10+ runs and I don't think I'll be playing it again. The bountiful breasts were not enough I guess.

Wow, way more spectacular and grand than I thought it would be. It feels like there's so much to unpack with this game and it actually felt like an improvement to every other Remedy game in some way or another. The combat reminded me of Max Payne, foregoing the powers of course, the use of mixed media in the pursuit of deepening the world reminded me of Quantum Break. But in the end I kept thinking about how much they've improved upon the story telling elements of Alan Wake. Of course they are in a connected universe, but Control stands on it's own as a game with a bigger scale than any other Remedy game before it.

The artstyle genuinely surprised me, the harrowing and often expansive interior of the "Oldest House" often left me just staring at some of the environments. I loved the Brutalist interior and the fact that the bureau was limited to technology from the mid 20th century. This was also the first game where I really embraced Ray Tracing and although I eventually turned it off for more frames (my PC struggled to get more than 60 fps) I definitely spent the first hour or so in awe at the technology.

At first I didn't know how to feel about the combat, but as soon as I got the dash ability and the shatter form, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I've mentioned that it reminded me of Max Payne at times, but most importantly in some combat sequences it reminded me of ULTRAKILL, which is my favorite FPS game. Maybe it was my gun form choices (Shatter & Pierce) and the fact that you heal from killing enemies. The end result? I spent at least 3 hours playing those damn SHUM arcade cabinets because the Crowd Control mode reminded me of the Slayer Gates from Doom Eternal. I will mention that I didn't really find a use for the other gun forms with my playstyle and sometimes the combat encounters when you were just traveling through an area again became annoying but this was the most fun I've had killing things in a Remedy game so far.

The performances, Remedy games are all about performances, and this game has them in spades. I sort of mentioned this in my Max Payne 1 review but I love oh so dearly how every character in these games is a real person. With Alan Wake 1 they took this to the next level by weaving some Live-Action videos into the game, and of course Quantum Break is part TV show. This game takes all of that and spreads them throughout different artistic mediums. The videos left behind by Darling, the Threshold kids, the hotline calls, and of course anytime The Board or the Hiss have something to say. Remedy never fails to make learning more about the worlds within their games interesting enough to have me go out of of my way to find them. I wanna learn what AWE's are, I wanna see the new episode of Night Springs, and I want to find out what's the deal with those creepy ass dolls. Speaking of Darling, Matthew Porretta gives that role his all and even though I never doubted his strength as the english voice actor for Alan Wake, it was nice to see him play a more energetic character. And I can't talk about great performances without talking about the main character herself, Jesse FADENNNN. I enjoyed her character and actually sympathized with her case of imposter syndrome that she doesn't get over until the end of the game. While playing the game I completely forgot that Courtney Hope who plays Jesse in this game also played Beth in Quantum Break and she killed that shit too. Excited to see more of her work in Control 2.

Of course I have criticisms, and they mostly relate to the new systems introduced for this game specifically. The quest system is cool and I did every side quest I could find but the Bureau Alerts and Board Countermeasures literally didn't add anything to the game for me and you have to repeatedly do them to even make the rewards worthwhile. I imagine an alternate universe where Control has a battle pass and you have to do Board Countermeasure weekly challenges to get the level 100 skin. Expeditions were right there next to those two mission types because I genuinely would not have touched them more than one time if I didn't get a new outfit for making it to tier 3. Moving past the missions, the inventory system also just kind of annoyed me for the first part. I would have a ton of fun in a combat encounter and then have to spend like 30 seconds directly after getting rid of Tier 3 junk that the enemies drop on death. Not to mention that even if I wanted to keep mods that I thought I would end up using (I never did), I didn't have enough inventory space! Whether these complaints were the result of a publishing deal with 505 or the devs just trying new things, I would say that they didn't work for me.

I put 32 hours into this one and that's the most amount of time I've put into any singeplayer game in recent memory. Although this game stands well enough on it's own, I'm excited to see how they expand upon the mechanics and world of this game in Control 2. 6 games down and only one left in the "Remedy Rampage", and from what I've heard, Alan Wake 2 is the best thing since sliced bread.

DO NOT PLAY THE GAME PASS VERSION, IT DOESN'T WORK

Although the gameplay tended to fall a bit flat, and even at sometimes felt like sort of an afterthought, I genuinely had a great time with this game.

The combination of third person shooter and TV show wasn't something I thought I would enjoy but every actor involved brought their absolute A game, especially the late and great Lance Reddick. As always Remedy delivered with the world-building and story, and the different branching path choices literally made me stop and think about what I would do vs what Paul would do. Although it falls out of the Remedy connected universe of Alan Wake and Control, I could easily see how this game could be incorporated into the CU.

This game genuinely got me excited for Control and AW2 because now I can see what Remedy is able to do with a modern engine. Only 2 more games to go in the Remedy Rampage, Control and AW2.

Alan Wake turns into Alan Wick in this more action oriented mini sequel to Alan Wake 1, and I think the game was dragged down because of it. Gone is the dark and spooky forests of the Pacific Northwest, which was replaced by a Arizona town that didn't feel fleshed out at all.

I'm not really sure why they thought that after all the fun ideas they used to tell the stories of MP, MP2, and Alan Wake, they thought the best way to handle this game was to have you play through it's three distinct stages THREE different times with ultimately MINIMAL changes.

Yeah the extra guns are fun, I enjoyed using the crossbow and double barrel combo myself, but I came to this restaurant to eat a good story; I left quite famished!

Mr. Scratch was a genuinely disturbing character, and not at all the way I thought he would be written. From fighting shadow creatures that state facts about the forest or fishing to an ACTUAL serial killer, how unlucky for Mr. Wake.

For how much I seemed to dislike this game, it did expand the lore of the Alan Wake universe AND it got me even more excited to see fight Mr. Scratch in AWII.

4 down with 3 more to go in the "Remedy Rampage."

The continuation of a trend in Remedy's games where they find new quirky ways to tell a story; I think this game is the beginning of something special.

Many people talk about the combat being linear or the encounters with enemies being bad, but to tell the truth I actually enjoyed the combat of this game. Even though I sometimes felt as if I had too many good resources (flaregun ammo, flashbangs), I had a fun time figuring out how to kill the 4 people walking at me while using as little resources as possible. I GUESS the flashlight mechanic didn't REALLY change all that much throughout the game, but I really didn't mind that much. Instead they just tried to give the player more ways to specifically attack with LIGHT, which I think is the right move, but I think it could've definitely been better implemented.

I think the game has flaws of course but fundamentally I believe it was a very important step forward for Remedy and I'm SUPER excited to see how they improve upon this game's mechanics and storytelling in AWII. I also loved the Max Payne references, Sam Lake can you do the face?

3 games down, 4 left to go in the "Remedy Rampage."

For me, it was an improvement over the original in every aspect other than the story, not that the story was necessarily bad but it was a lot more off the rails than the first one. Like comparing John Wick 1 to John Wick 3.

Other than that I had a great time with this game. The increase in the difficulty of "Detective" meant that I actually had to use the game's mechanics to kill the 4 people running at you, which I missed in Max Payne 1. Although they "re-use" environments from the first game, the new physics engine gave everything a sandbox feel, especially in the early chapters. One of my minor complaints about MP1 was that there were too many guns and too much ammo, and although the gun count is similar, I found myself scrounging for ammo and being forced to use all of them, which was a cool mixup.

All in all, it was Max Payne 1 but with all of the mechanics improved, so I enjoyed it a lot. Two games done and 4 more to go in the "Remedy Rampage".

As the first game in my "Remedy Rampage", where I'll be playing through every game Remedy Entertainment has ever made, I think Max Payne was a great start to their catalog. With that being said, just like Half Life 1, I really don't know how I truly feel about this game.

Throughout the game I was constantly reminded of Half Life 1, which is weird because gameplay wise they are nothing alike. Maybe it was how old they are (1998 vs 2001), maybe it was the fact that you can hit E on almost everything for a silly little interaction, or MAYBE it was the fact that every face you see in-game was a real person. Regardless, just like Half Life 1, I can tell that this game was made by a small but passionate group of developers and other than having to edit registries and game files to get it to work properly, I think the game holds up pretty well.

The biggest similarity between this game and HL1 for me though, was the fact that I felt like I was missing something very vital by playing it 20+ years after it released. I laughed when I launched the game and it warned me not to turn some settings on unless I had 32 MB of VRAM. I was amazed when I was told by a friend that this game was hard to run when it released, and it's engine was used in the 3DMark 2001 benchmark! While playing, I could never know the impact this game had back in 2001, and I think something is lost because of that.

It's because of that "something" that when I have a small criticism of the game play, I can't help but disregard it because at that point I'm already comparing this 20+ year old game to games I've played in the last 5 years of my life.

I wish the game play was a little faster. Mr Payne doesn't need to be bouncing around the walls like his peers in "Double Action: Boogaloo", but it would've been nice if the shoot dodge didn't activate bullet time every time. I also felt that there were WAY too many guns, which is a weird complaint I know. But what's the point of using the dual berettas if the dual Ingrams exist. This is an example of a complaint that is fueled by my experience with modern games. In Doom Eternal and Ultrakill, two of my favorite shooters of all time, every gun has it's use. Max Payne doesn't really LOSE anything by having so many guns, but it was a thought I couldn't shake while playing.

Overall, I had a good time with this one and I'm excited to play the sequel, which I've heard is "just better". I'll also probably come back at the end of all of the Remedy games just to try out the other difficulties, which I skipped for now.

A very fun audio and visual experience.

As a big sound enjoyer, my favorite part of the game was when I would do something and then a loud sound would play, almost emphasizing the fact that I just did something. Not many games do this! Or maybe my favorite part was when the 30 seconds of sporadic dissonant instruments would suddenly turn into 5 seconds of almost cohesive music, often times brought upon me doing something :O.

I will admit that by the 3rd album the steam from the first two albums was starting to run low for me and the background brain chatter, that is almost standard for a human of the modern era, began to creep it's way back in. I was forgetting my Ape roots.

But the game was able to clutch it up by the end of the 4th album, where I escaped with other mistreated caged animals and was treated to probably the craziest credits song I've ever heard in a video game. I loved that part and listened to it for longer than I'd like to admit.

Overall, it's a real ape experience and you probably won't find a better ape experience out there. The Donkey Kong Country trilogy got nothing on Ape Out. You could play 4000 hours of Winston in Top 500 and that wouldn't even compare to the angry beast I became every time I heard a loud cymbal crash.

I genuinely adore this game. For a game that came out nearly 20 years ago, I couldn't help but look in awe at the art style of this game. The kind of game that makes you wanna pull out a sketch book and just go to town. It really is a beautiful game to me, I could probably talk about it all day!

Featuring the enigmatic and troublesome, "King of All Cosmos" to his silent but almost as emotive son, "The Prince", Katamari Damacy dropped me into a childlike rendition of our Planet Earth with one goal, to rebuild the stars. As the son of the god of the universe, it is a simple task of course, just as long as I ignore the cries of the poor (or blessed) humans who I happen to roll up along the way.

The game play loop is really simple, roll small things up to make one bigger thing, but it's the presentation of it all that really left a mark on me. I probably wouldn't call it a visual benchmark but for a game that seems to refer to an abstract view of literally whatever it can, Mr. Takahashi managed to still keep it cohesive. The OST can be described in so many different words and genres, and I'm ready to add to the pile of praise by saying it's easily in my top 10 VG OSTs, and that's saying a lot.

One of my favorite parts of this game was going to the collections section and reading all of the childlike descriptions of real life items, presumably written by The King of All Cosmos himself, who doesn't dabble in the affairs of humans.

I will say, Reroll is far from a perfect upgrade to the original. It kinda sucks you have to play through the tutorial to get to the settings menu, and the mixed FPS can be jarring for the first 30 minutes or so. (The game runs at 30 but the prince in the bottom right is displayed at 60.)

For game I didn't really think I would enjoy, a Katamari sized hole in my chest has been filled. I'm glad I took the time to play this and I can't wait to try out We Love Katamari Reroll!