itsprettygood
2011
So much more my shit than the first game was. Just total earnest mayhem, time travel shenanigans and heartfelt relationships. The gameplay is so much tighter, the story way more original and fun, the characters more exciting, and an ending that genuinely blew me away.
It doesn't surprise me at all that the gamer dudes didn't like this one, but this is probably one of my favorite Final Fantasy titles. What an insane improvement, loved basically every second!
It doesn't surprise me at all that the gamer dudes didn't like this one, but this is probably one of my favorite Final Fantasy titles. What an insane improvement, loved basically every second!
The new remaster is absolutely horrible, ugly cutscenes and non-functioning multiplayer, just a total wreck worth avoiding at all costs. However this is still one of the most endlessly replayable games I've ever touched. There's some kind of secret sauce here that has kept me hooked since birth. The 10 hours I'm logging here is only for the Switch version, because I genuinely have no clue how much time I've spent on this over the years.
2009
For some reason, I always had trouble wrapping my head around the combat, but man, what a world to live in for a while. I really like all these characters, and the insane nonsense of the story really won me over. To call this bad is just odd to me, as it isn't doing anything other Final Fantasy games don't have worse examples of. I think it's quite good even! Now onto XIII-2, which from what I've heard, will be much more my style.
2023
2010
Sam Lake's writing is endlessly indebted to the work of David Lynch and Mark Z. Danielewski, but he's very aware of this. Alan Wake, to me, is about the forms of violence inherent in art. The vision of seeing yourself as that which worlds are born of, centering yourself within the universe. It's certainly clunky, and the game itself can be repetitive to actually play, but I can't help but admire what Lake and his team are going for here. One of the rare director-driven video games, I'm extremely excited to try Alan Wake 2!
This review contains spoilers
A vast improvement over the last game in essentially every way, but still quite a mess. I love the idea of making Peter/Harry/Venom a love triangle, but that dynamic is bogged down by every other character in this story being unbelievably boring versions of themselves. The combat also feels... worse to me now, for some reason. At least when Peter isn't using the symbiote. Broadly it's good, but very flawed.
2016
2018