seem to be going through remedy's catalog starting with max payne 1. not huge into spooky games so i didn't go out of my way to check out wake back in the day. checking it out for the first time this year, there's a lot to like. the pnw scenery looks great, the models hold up, and the core gameplay loop of juggling a light and weapon against multiple shadows feels great early on. the particle effects, the recoil, the little slowdown at the end of every encounter. feels real good to bust shadows.

then they start tweaking the difficulty up and the system starts to fall apart. the fun part of the game is the feeling of expertly juggling a bunch of enemies swarming you, knowing where to focus, getting a sense for when you should turn around

but as the difficulty ramps up, the game is not interested at all in giving you interesting encounters or tools to deal with the difficulty apart from flares and flashbangs, which aren't interesting to use. eventually i stopped trying to fight the shadows at all and just walked from light to light strategically popping flares

it's a real shame because the game still handles really well, remedy was absolutely onto something, it's just half-baked. compare it to RE4 where the tank controls feel way more limiting and yet the level design and enemy variety very clearly communicate your available strategies and risks

it's remedy so the plot's campy fun, zero complaints there and a large part of why i didn't find it too hard to power through after the absolute slog that ep 3 was.