Before I played this I imagined it as another heavily emotional walking sim with an obvious tragic ending. Now I finally got to play it and it went against my expectations, for the most part. The game opens with a huge emotional gut punch, something that might be close to home as a real life fear. So I found the protagonist’s choice to take the Firewatch job understandable, relatable. Something I would want to do myself if such a thing existed on these little islands I call home.
I enjoyed the radio conversations and casual strolling in nature. I was shocked and completely sucked in by the creeping paranoia as the game presented its mystery. When that was resolved it didn’t keep the gravity I was hoping for but it managed to end satisfyingly.
Since it annoyed me I will mention I encountered a bug with my late game save not loading, which I understand other players have experienced but never got fixed. Thankfully I was able to get a recent save from the cloud and only had to redo a few bits from earlier in the day.

There’s a line that stands out to me where Barret refers to the ‘Gilded Saucer’, emphasising how the bright lights and supreme extravagance of the Gold Saucer serve as a distraction, a veneer for the true ugliness of the world and the ugliness and exploitation beneath the surface. This ought to be what the game is about, but it feels more like the whole game experience has become its own gold saucer, each region like another ‘square’ full of amusements and distractions.

I must admit I had a hell of a lot of fun with this game. It kept me playing for weeks, about 150 hours, with plenty more postgame challenges and tedium left over. The game is bloated as hell with filler and busywork, but also packed with fun mini games and delightful combat. Aside from some tweaks like more aggressive AI for party members or range and jumping attacks for everyone, I don’t have any issue with the combat and it kept me coming back for more.

The main story doesn’t match up to that though, so the overall package is frankly disappointing and frustrating. Despite much speculation and hints from the creators at something big and meaningful, it doesn’t follow through. All the narrative weight goes into plot and driving to the next big spectacle, rather than saying something or really focusing on the characters. Characters are sometimes reduced to love interests, magical plot devices and comic relief in their vastly expanded, stretched out journey. So many opportunities to dig into their feelings and connections are wasted in favour of brief feel good moments and affection gauges going up. Sephiroth no longer feels at all unnerving or threatening. Big lore dumps are added in attempt to add history to the game’s world but I find they lack flavour.

When they’re not competing for ‘best girl’ the leads do feel engaging. It’s clear they have their own relationships not just the one they each have with Cloud, so it’s a bit sad not to see more of that, which could’ve been a better use of the side quests and even the various times the party splits up in main story chapters.

The game suggests some great positive influences from other titles like Yakuza series and even western RPGs. It’s also got some bad habits from them too like some annoying cinematic button presses which don’t provide the emotional weight intended.

Having said all that I really appreciate the scale of this game and the effort and love poured into it; it certainly shows more than other recent entries to the franchise. I hope the same level of passion and fun can go into an original story for the next mainline FF or even a separate IP. The final chapter seems divisive but I actually found some intrigue in it. In recent years the multiverse concept has quickly moved en vogue to cliche but there’s actually a few crumbs of excitement for me there. Maybe they can pull it off, maybe we’ll never learn.

I’ve been trying to work out how to write about this for a while. It’s easy to have a list of complaints when you don’t like something, or set out the pros and cons when something is just decent. When I find something truly exceptional and beautiful like this I don’t know what to say.

From the start when I first met Trico, I was utterly enamoured. It’s such an amazing feeling interacting with this enormous mythical animal hybrid thing. It’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s adorable, but also dangerous, alien. Like a pet but not. Something that could never be in a zoo. I’ve spent a lot of time just watching him, seeing him play, scratch, roll around, like my own dog. Taking hundreds of pictures. Forgetting that this is just a ‘program’ or a series of numbers, triggers and scripted gestures. It’s easy to suspend disbelief when something is so immersive like this.

I love the tactility as well, climbing through its limbs and down, riding and petting it. Pulling out spears from its flesh and feeding it so it can heal. Of course there’s some issues with controls, camera angles, deliberate animal stubbornness and wild inobedience, but these frustrations were easy to move past.

The game has a great variety of puzzles and problem solving, even when Trico’s not around.

Some might find the narrative overly sentimental but I think it’s earnest, it was completely affecting for me, the same kind of open-ended, involving experience as the team’s other titles where you can find your own meaning to attach to it. SOTC had some standout moments to me and TLG has so many more. I’ll never forget this.

Very much like an alternate timeline sequel to Resident Evil 4. Lots of nice spiritual parallels to RE and Silent Hill, but also interesting and quite ugly in its own unique way. Between some very video gamey action sequences, it often feels like intruding on someone else’s nightmares. I enjoyed the shifts between set pieces, the way the world would, fall apart and throw you somewhere new. Companions disappear and reappear similarly, maybe more just at the convenience of the plot than for dramatic effect. That all makes up for the more questionable narrative so you don’t have to think about it too much.

Love the feel of wandering the setting of abandoned haunted modern Tokyo. I like the use of magic in a first person game and excellent use of haptic feedback on the PS5 controller. Sadly falls apart once the open city world opens up a bit more and it’s clear it feels like the usual open world ubisofty template with shrines as radio towers, excessive odd jobs and collectibles that just get in the way; and when you wade through that for the main story that’s just a fairly simplistic quest with little to say. Could’ve been better if it was much shorter.

Revisiting this I had a good time. Even after getting platinum on PS4 I still enjoyed the combat and even doing the side quests.
On the narrative and overall experience I find the REMAKE project underwhelming. I enjoy the nostalgic feeling of wandering through Midgar again, but at the same time, it feels almost like a Disneyland version of it. Where detail is added, it lacks a bit of authenticity and charm. The slums are oddly clean, the class division often more like background dressing, occasionally even romanticised.
I don’t mind the idea of changes in a new adaptation. There’s a theory that the whispers represent OG fans fighting any idea of change. This is a cool idea, but it just doesn’t work if you’re not following it up with something meaningful. So far it seems the changes consist of adding redundant background stories for the smallest details, and tying in some of the woeful spin-offs we’ve already tried to forget about. The big political themes have been diluted in favour of flashy shounen anime story beats and sword fights. Characters have been brought to life in a way, but cloud in particular is changed for the worse. Repeating the same issue made in Crisis Core, he’s made more into a timid boy who can’t talk to girls, rather than a soldier out of his depth, a man pretending to be something he’s not, and the abstract he wants to be, Zack, feels less impactful now that he too is more of a cartoon character.

After going through the first Alan Wake again I should’ve known, but my tempered enjoyment of Control, all the high praise and the new style in the trailers convinced me to give this a try. Honestly I just don’t know what everyone is seeing in this? Are we just that starved for games going slightly out of the ordinary that this gets praised as a masterwork?

The game certainly is a huge step up from AW1. It has a lot of style but there’s still not much substance behind it. Alan Wake is ostensibly about writing and literature, yet not that well-read.

Remedy has grand ambition and clearly some talent there, I’d love to see that be refined into something more focused. Get some writers involved that really know what they’re doing and are prepared to have something to say. I can’t help feeling like this would work better as a TV show. Not just because of the cool, fun live action scenes, but because it genuinely feels plotted like one, and it barely does anything with the medium it’s in.

There’s also a strange contradiction where Remedy seems afraid to use cutscenes, but still relies on that structure to tell its story, having both exposition and dramatic moments play out by having characters stand and talk to each other while the player can only pace back and forth.

I do want to commend the effort to have a stronger art direction and build an atmosphere. The live action scenes and some of the theatre sequence are genuinely interesting, but out side of that there’s a lot of the same back and forth, walking about and fighting the same old enemies.

Pretty good! It worked hard to recreate the feelings of the films, but it’s a little overstretched. The android Joes are amazingly creepy, more so in fact than the aliens. The xenomorphs are a bit plastic, more nuisance than terrors. Quite a lot of it is a bit plastic now that I think about it, mostly very clean. Despite being thrown around a whole space station, crawling through vents, dodging bullets, the main character never shows much sweat, no bruises or even a few smudges. So much for a little while I wondered if there would be a twist that she was an android herself. Not saying these details should matter but it’s the kind of thing that could’ve had more attention if the whole game was a much more concise experience.

Absolutely fantastic experience from start to finish. It’s so enthralling to make your way through this undersea world, uncovering details through text, audio logs and your surroundings. Hiding and running from enemies has so so much tension. The game’s narrative explores thoughtful SF ideas the likes of which I’ve rarely ever seen in a video game, matching up to some great novels. The game format with its first person perspective makes this a unique experience and sets a great example for the medium.

I remember coming away with a bad impression of this years ago on the PSP. A few hours into this version I thought I’d been wrong. While it’s clearly not coming in with a strong story, it at least felt like fun. There was just a little bit of romantic subtext suggested, enough to grab onto for a functioning fudanshi, but that soon got lost by the wayside. It just gets BAD, but it doesn’t want to commit enough when it could’ve gone full out. The idea of fleshing out Zack as a character and especially the whole Nibelheim story turns out feeling totally hollow, as much of the game just aims for fanservice and fleshing out minor details that were better left redundant. It could be possible to say something interesting or at least show more respect if you really must keep milking the franchise, but not in these hands.

Coming back to this after all this years it was still an exceptional experience. As the years have gone on we’ve got used to improvements in graphics and game design, and the quality of life options in the newer ports really help when you’re a full grown ‘adult’ with not as much free time. But the magic is all there if you look for it. This time around I found myself appreciating more of the details in the background of each area you visit; seeing the impact Shinra has on the world in every corner; some really quite offbeat enemy encounters.

Comparing this to the Compilation tie ins and REMAKE project and it’s clearer than ever sometimes less is more. The whole story of Cloud’s identity crisis works so well here where we don’t really have that much of Zack. By leaving his story a little more vague it emphasises him as a personification of the ideal man in Cloud’s head. The themes of environmentalism, anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism are all clear amongst others, with Sephiroth/Jenova/WEAPONS embodying their ultimate escalating threats.