Kind of a minimalist take on Hotline Miami-style twitch action, only isometric instead of top-down, and aesthetically closer to Transistor or the abstraction of Superhot. There's something very reminiscent of Supergiant's work in general, especially in its atmosphere and use of music. Only takes a few hours to finish but what's here is very, very sharp. It's quite difficult by the end and its a testament to its mechanics that they still hold up under such intense pressure. If it ever gets ported to Switch I could see it blowing up in a big way.

Playing this for the first time years after release just drives home the seismic impact it had on the genre. I don't think it's a stretch to say it's one of most important horror releases of the past decade, if not the most important. It goes so far beyond jump scares, tapping into a deep, primal sense of fear that overrides everything else and commands you to get out of this place as fast as you can. It's a high level panic brought on by the overwhelming sense that you're experiencing something that's wrong in some fundamental way. It's not just a smart, terrifying reinterpretation Sill Hill's themes, it's a horror landmark in its own right. The only other recent game I can think of that even comes close to this is Kitty Horrorshow's Anatomy.

(I played both Unreal P.T. and PT Emulation and I'd probably recommend Emulation if you have access to it. There's a lived-in griminess to it that suits the game, I think, while the Unreal version comes off as a little too clean in places. I know that's the more difficult version to get a hold of though, and I don't think there's a big enough difference between the two to warrant paying for one while the other is freely available.)

I could write an essay on this game and its use of suicide notes. I've mentally drafted the outline multiple times. Maybe I still will at some point. The problem is that my conclusion is a giant shrug. Receiver 2 treats the topic of suicide with as much care as any piece of media I've seen, but that level of care is matched only by how deeply it disturbed me. There's one particular note that felt like it crawled beneath my skin and started burrowing into my marrow. And I still have absolutely no idea what any of this means.

Is it effective? Yes. Is it in line with the game's themes? For sure. Am I reacting this way because of my own history of mental health issues? Maybe! Could the game make the same point without the notes? I don't know. Is it necessary? Again, I don't know. On some level I appreciate that a game has made me engage with such complicated feelings, but I have to stop just short of praise. It leaves me with a messy jumble of thoughts and emotions that I'm incapable of shaping into a single coherent opinion.

You know what? This is actually a pretty solid improvement over Isle of Armor, and at points it's better than the base game. The big thing is that the Wild Area just works, finally; there isn't even any point in referring to it as a distinct location because it's so fully integrated into the world, which is how it should have been in the first place. And dungeons are back! They're small-ish compared to the old games, but it's a step in the right direction. The part of the game I'm having the hardest time sorting out my feelings for is how it's basically one giant legendary rush - I think I love it, but I know there's also a massive amount of nostalgia at play there. Of course, this all comes with the same caveats the main games did: the online functionality isn't even close to being up to snuff, and it's obviously a series going through some growing pains. Still, it's the most fun I've had with Pokemon in years.