the game is absolute fire.

maybe not as good as bayonetta

but i think it's the absolute peak platinum games game. everything vanquish, metal gear rising and nier automata promised they could be - astral chain is. enjoyed pretty much every moment of this, except maybe the parts where you had to carry ice cream or move boxes (that kind of sucked0.

glad I saved this and decided to play it after I finally played Alan Wake, seeing him modernised made me a little giddy. although the real lack of Wake was a little disappointing. I was expecting more, especially post-Twin Peaks The Return I was hoping this to get really Lynchian but it just kind of feels like an extended side mission where you deal with one of Alan Wake's lamer characters. also hoping Jesse would get a flashlight, but alas she's stuck throwing lights at people.

ultimately feels like an ad or a pitch for a modern Alan Wake sequel, but hey, it gave me an excuse to play more Control and i am so down for some more Alan Wake

the cool game time forgot. feels a little undercooked. kind of makes the case that video games are a way cooler medium than prestige TV, possibly by accident but still.

just some basic pros and cons.

pro:
- the shooting in this game is sick and the time powers, once you learn how fully operate in their rhythms, are really fun

con:
- there weren't enough shootouts, and on normal the game is not challenging at all. they could have really experimented more or even implemented some wackier set-pieces (imagine a tenet style reverse shootout or something)

pro and con:
- the above could apply to the platforming too. there's not enough, most of it is cool in concept and while the execution is fine it's mostly too easy and it coulda been way cooler (the part on the bridge was cool)

pro:
- beth wilder rules

con:
- the story doesn't really pick up, imo, until it unveils her reality but by then the game is practically ending and the sudden rush to get to the stop the big, save the world stuff means the game offers her no resolution and by the extension the game itself. it ends on this transparent hook for a sequel that's probably never gonna happen, just feels cheap for anyone playing it way after release.

pro:
- at least remedy made control next, cast courtney hope (beth) again as jesse and gave her a whole game that's mostly more sick af combat. we may never get a quantum break sequel, a more refined version, but at least remedy kind of learned the lessons from here and gave us control.

i thought vanquish was almost too generic for its reputation for a while there, and while i don't believe its mission structure ever gets creative enough to justify its cool slide boost mechanic it is ultimately a work of pure joy story-wise and really comes into its own on the last two acts.

i think this game needed to be fused with titanfall 2 so you could run on walls and shit but obviously replace the silly american pathos of boy and his robot story with this japanese depiction of US interventionism and over the top machismo.

i am hyped to play metal gear rising after this because it feels like platinum may have funneled what they had lying for this game's never-materialised sequel into that. this game itself wears its metal gear solid influence on its sleeve already.

you're just some guy, some free man, if you will, who is trying to impress a hot chick by helping her save her dad, and by doing so you unknowingly become the face of a revolution.

feels less like a game and more like a collection of ideas for what games could be. very minimalist. credits are just white text. diegetic cutscenes. nice physics and graphics, mostly in service of a fairly generic story set in a barren fascist alien nightmare.

yeah it sucks to play as a mute in a game with side characters who are clearly forming bonds and attachments with said character but i kinda feel like that's supposed to be a bit of a joke.

game does feel at odds with itself in terms of being a shooter. i think portal (or at least portal 2, the one i played) feels closer to the kind of game this wants to be, which is basically what it becomes for its final two chapters. saying that, i really dug the shooting and the cold starkness of the level design. you can turn this into a doom-like where you're perpetually hunting down tight corridors with a shotgun blasting everything in sight, even with more unique tools and weapons at your disposal. there are some more open levels, a couple of needlessly long vehicle levels, for example. but i really dug this as a pure corridor shooter.

as an aside, i was surprised how many set pieces were in this game. maybe not a ton but enough to make me go wow this feels like every shooter i've played that has released in 17 years since.

shit feels timeless.

it's pretty dope. more of a shooter than ep 1.

i kind of love it as an artifact. the cliffhanger ending, still, infamously, unresolved. gaming's biggest mystery? not, imo. the third episode - or third game - it was setting up seemed pretty straightforward. instead it dovetails in its final moments with this shock event and just sort of... ends. that's it. cut to credits. i think to get any more would actually be harmful. it's like the sopranos of game endings, intentional or otherwise.

i was listening to someone talk about how war games are rarely if every about people but simply warfare. i think half-life with its scarily mute protagonist is almost incapable of seriously dealing with the aftermath of this ending without radically altering that and giving freeman a personality and some lines and maybe more importantly being a game about anything other than shooting faceless trooper goons. half-life feels like a game demo, set upon the world to test the limits of graphics and gameplay, its story almost seems improvisational and made up on the fly. half life 3 exits - i think it's kind of just the leftovers, with gordon and alyx reincarnated as kevin and nora.

idk i am very tired.

beneath the snarky, smart-assholery, buried inside of this generic PS3 era campaign there is some pretty on-the-nose but nevertheless knowing commentary about the carelessness of the rogue-ish video game archetype's casual warpath (not only is Grayson, bulletstorm's lead, a pawn for a psychopathic war general in his life before the game, his quest for revenge essentially leads to the destruction of all life he encounters).

but while the game can step up to the line and have its lead character admit his sins, it ultimately falls somewhat short by having supporting characters let him off the hook in the bluntest ways, revealing, unfortunately, the shallow writing propping up wat is mostly an excuse for some creative gameplay and fun video game set-pieces.

the game is maybe the most ps3-ass game i've played since vanquish, which was also a seemingly generic game on the outside, that, too, was hiding some actually pretty fun gameplay that ultimately didn't quite live up to its full potential.

pretty fun overall, i'd say.