A year off between playing the first third and finishing the rest didn't do this game any justice. Its weird mix of hoorah US military sensationalism and goofy sci-fi jibber jabber really confounds me. I kind of understood the appeal of the first one but this just feels like one of those movies they mock on Mystery Science Theatre. And the shooting and guns are all woeful. I don't know, man. It's just so bland and unappealing to me. Some of the art in the updated anniversary edition is neat, I guess. Kinda DMT-esque.

I'd like to add this next part for me, as it is a journal entry of sorts.

I started this in October 2021 with the intent to plough through the whole series. But I met someone online while playing it, and this new friend, she slowly helped to pull me out of my depression. Subsequently, however, this game and series got smeared with the unfortunate association of ... well, all my sadness and dark thoughts. I couldn't play it without thinking of my first time meeting her, and even though that should he a happy association, my mind would drift directly to the feelings I had leading up to that (all of which were deeply negative). It inevitably took over a year for me to come to terms with the fact that I'm better off now than I was back then, that I no longer have to let the loneliness I felt then dictate my life now (and especially as my friendship grew and evolved and remains one of the more stable things in my life, that there no longer remains any doubts of losing that is a huge boost to my self-esteem).

I didn't think this was a very good game but the act of returning to and finishing it is actually one of my proudest gaming moments of 2022, as it's a mental block I didn't think I'd get over (just three months ago I was staying with my friend and crying in their living room while they went out, as I thought back on how I got from playing Halo 2 to having the road trip of my lifetime; crying because at the time of starting Halo 2 I didn't really imagine myself being alive a year from then let alone enjoying myself so much).

This is a weirdly personal game for me. A lot of heavy, unrelated emotion tied to it. Shame it sucked.

utterly boring and hollow. i am fascinated with its depiction of a future London, however. compare it to something like cyberpunk's fictional night city and there is something thoroughly more interesting about a real city in a game. real places, real history. only problem with a game like Legion is its complete lack of culture and humanity. you can play as anyone, and as such you're basically no one. you can hack everyone but you can't really talk to anyone. the whole game is about systematic oppression but there's no personal stories about anyone of it. they can't call out the police. there are signs that down with "violent" cops. game is so cowardly.

They hired Hoyte von Hoytema as a cinematography consultant, and for the opening D-Day levels it really shows.

I think it's sad for video games to still be chasing """"cinematics"""" in vain attempts to gain prestige because I think it highlights a thorough misunderstanding of what makes each of those respective mediums unique and special. BUT. Kudos for a game for at least admitting they need help in making their game look like a movie and working with someone who knows what they're doing. This game was lit to the tits. Shame it was written like an Allied propaganda, WWII-themed Fortnite weekend event.

one of the most rewarding games i've ever ever played.

i first took note of this when i saw it on kirk hamilton's GOTY list. then i peeped it at an EB games for $10 (with an added 2 for 1 deal, which i took advantage of by obtaining a copy of Borderlands 3 for fun). i thought, well i have no burning desire to play this any time soon, but for that price i had to buy it. went for a nice bike ride on a sunny day off work to pick it up. it was a good day. played it for a moment, liked it. put it down for a month with the intention of returning eventually. finally made the jump and spent two work weeks and a weekend coming home, then sitting alone in my room, binging Seinfeld re-runs and working on a level (or two) of this a night (taking up about 1 hour of game time and 4 hours of my real time to complete).

i am new to tactics/strategy games. outside of Hades, i am sort of new to isometric game. this accomplishes s much visually though, in outdoor settings, that it may have completely changed my entire outlook on gaming. i spent the first real night of playing this thinking "all i want to do now is play disco elysium and divinity original sin 2" knowing they're utterly different games but finally having a come to jesus moment of my own thinking how this absurd stealth take on the western genre is slowly opening up my mind to broader things.

i'll probably cherish my time with this game until i die or just forget about games. my experience with this game reminds me of the night i stayed up until 4 am watching Drive and staring out my living room window listening to nightcall afterwards. like Drive, Desperados 3 is mostly a shallow revenge story. but i think it captures something inside of me through its style. being a diorama game with an isometric camera means every scene is also pretty reminiscent of the shot of the Los Angeles skyline from Drive's opening credits. there's something about the depth of the frame from angle that just sparks something inside of me. it's hard to explain. but i think there's now a clear pre and post desperados 3 line separating my gaming life in to more pieces.

i am thinking of the quote from former Marine Jimmy Massey that's sampled by Lamb of God on the title track of their 2004 album Ashes of the Wake:

"this is a new type of war, this is an eradication."


and also these quotes from the game itself:

"Cost of a single Javelin Missile: $80,000"
— Unknown
"Cost of a single Tomahawk Cruise Missile: $900,000"
— Unknown
"Cost of a single F-117A Nighthawk: $122 Million"
— Unknown
"Cost of a single F-22 Raptor: $135 Million"
— Unknown
"Cost of a single AC-130U Gunship: $190 Million"
— Unknown
"Cost of a single B-2 Bomber: $2.2 Billion"
— Unknown


even when you're killing "the bad" Russians, you're doing so in the most flat out destructive way possible.

kind of the video game equivalent of (another quote) the george orwell line "if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever".

game sort of just says "war is as inevitable as capitalist imperialism is at extinguishing it".


plays well and looks nice, i guess. very stripped for call of duty. after this they are all literally hollywood blockbusters with the a-list casts and everything. this is almost avant garde in comparison. they'd never make this game today. i kind of appreciate that. idk.

this is a super cool GAME. story, is, like okay. i am fine with the meta-narrative aspect, i like when games call me a piece of shit (and I don't even think the game is doing that, i think it's calling the US military a piece of shit and it's nice for at least one game to do that even with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, the likelihood of getting another game like this seems slim).

but war crimes and horrific immersive in-game violence aside, this is a really well put together game with some generic cover shooting and a generic nolan north voice performance hiding some great sand and glass related set pieces in plain sight. this has some of the richest oranges and blues i've ever seen in AAA game as well (perhaps that's what hurts it the most, that even if the colour pallete is trying to lull you in to a darker story, the aesthetic never actually shifts to match it, unlike kane & lynch 2 which committed the entire game through to being completely hideous. the psychedelic rock soundtrack also makes me want to play it again which seems bad for a game where you kill about 60 innocent local civilians in order to advance)

first half miami cop part is lame (although i do love alligators in games and a good hurricane). it's set up like some lame CBS cop drama written by someone whose dad watched miami vice maybe once and they remembered it. says nothing about policing, the politics of policing, or the war on drugs (maybe if anything it's saying shoot first and ask questions later and that the only way to arrest anyone is to throw them to the floor, perhaps the game's sole, still utterly un self aware critique of policing). it's all merely set-dressing for a second half rogue cop part set in LA that has some very pretty set decorations (the mansion in ep7 looks sick, right of a john wick movie or something) and a nice little car chase part with some exciting scripted explosions. then it becomes a literal war game for a minute and you're reminded how thin this game's premise of being a cop thing is how little even its creators cared enough about it to begin with.

also just thoroughly uncharismatic beyond all belief

pure pulpy tony scott inspired acid wash neon noir nonsense.

there's some stuff in here about addiction, alcoholism, american imperialism, toxic masculinity. mostly it's just surface level padding that makes the game seem more mature between the parts where you go pew pew.

and boy, do you go pew pew in this game. pew pew to the max.

flying majestically john woolike through the air dual wielding a mix-matched load out of an uzi and a revolver while controlling a sorry old american drunk really made me say out loud "this is some dope ass shit."

i also don't think i've played a game with an old white man action hero who went through so many different outfit changes and haircuts over the course of one linear game. it really added to my enjoyment. watching max wallow in self pity between action set pieces i couldn't help but feel "yeah this dude is flawed but look at that head of hair, what a cool dude". and then he shaved it and i thought "oh no" but also "this level of self-loathing is relatable."

anyway. cool game. flawed. but the flaws add a level of personality that a lot of AAA games are simply missing in their attempts to be immaculate works of art (which to me hete is a symptom of being inspired by tony scott and not alejandro gonzalez inarritu)

empty repetitive spectacle crossed with a french extremity/torture porn sensationalism that never clicks into place one way or the other. Lara Croft's design feels very inspired by The Descent, down to a copycat scene where she literally rises out of water drenched in blood.

those horror elements makes for an interesting set dressing, especially in comparison to the lightweight, frolicking Indiana Jones inspired adventuring in the Uncharted series. gone is a quest for treasure. welcomed marooned on an island of supernatural worshiping Russian pirates. when Lara has to kill her first man, there's a compelling dramatic weight to the moment. but the game does nothing with that, says nothing about it. quickly moves on and sets her on a bloodthirsty, revenge-seeking rampage that would make 80s Schwarzenegger jealous.

the quick turn to action doesn't bother me. i can accept it as a convention of the genre. i just don't think this game pulls it off very well nor infuses it with the horror very well. it is a very paper thin game with no real concrete base. at least in the Uncharted games there is some characterization, some dialogue and banter and quiet moments between all the action. the game gives something to care about. and i guess i can accept straight action and a thrilling non-stop tension but i can only watch Lara fall off a ledge and not break any bones so many times before I grow incessantly bored with the trick.

i also think, you know in film, with horror specifically, there's a tactility to everything that brings it to life. in a game where every movement is carefully designed and manufactured, there's something extra gross about watching them animate this character into moments where she's constantly being impaled, or threatened with assault... there's like no humanity to it. but you know as a movie this would only be 2 hours long not like 7. i would rather have watched either the Angelina Jolie or Alicia Vikander Tomb Raider movies on repeat all day than have played this really. at least one has a shirtless Daniel Craig in it.

it's been over 30 hours since i finished the game, and i thought by now i'd have something substantial to say but for now the only words i can muster in my forlorn state are "good game. great game. fuck. go play this game."

utterly fulfilling. beautiful to look at. depressing as hell. one of the best written things i've ever experienced. if i never played another game again i'd be fine considering the emotional exercise i got out of this (i'd like to praise the intelectual elements too but i feel too stupid to say anything about that just that it felt super smart in a genuine way).

i often wonder where the AA/AAA games about motherhood are. and while technically this is a game about siblings, the way both Amicia's brother, Hugo, and also occasionally young budding alchemist, Lucas, huddle around her during certain sections where she has to illuminate a path through a plague of rats with a torch felt really maternal to me. it's also really rare for a game with a female protagonist to be so devoid of paternal/male figures too. i think that's what makes playing feel so fresh to me (even if it's not the freshest concept outside of games).

i really fell for this game's emotional tricks. the way it throws you into a bleak, terrifying world and then - like a flower blooming in the mud, blood and shit of a corpse-ridden battlefield - gives way to these really relieving moments of young teen characters bonding as they clutch onto each other (figuratively and literally) through the hell of it all. i think the game really nails those little quiet moments between stealthing passed inquisition guards and piles of swarming carnivorous rats, there's often a real personality to them (sometimes they offer levity, sometimes, as wit Melie, you can feel a genuine tension that exists beyond merely being your new BFF).

odd note: but i appreciate that i didn't have to collect any journals (i don't know why that stood out to me). but the "environment storytelling" is mostly the actual environment, a few npcs maybe, but there's like no like walls of text or little notes left lying around. made the game feel more in the moment, more urgent and the world by extension less artificially constructed (even if by the end what it's doing with the waves of rats is some insane out of this world shit... game kind of goes too far there i think but oh well).

also appreciate that murder in this game - while painted as a necessary evil via lines like "there was no other way" - isn't completely written off as just another wanton act of regular video game violence. the first two men you kill feels genuinely harrowing. likewise there are moments where you have a "choice" to kill/let someone die and while there's no morality system characters may remark upon it and in those moments you can feel Amicia grappling with her actions. it made me wish the game put more thought into non-violent combat and scaled back the amount of encounters where you 100% have to brain a guard with a rock/sic rats on them (and by the end the game feels like it just said fuck it, kill everyone). a missed opportunity but possibly because of how considered it felt at other times.

red dead redemption 2: russian DLC

this may be more of a semi open world immersive sim with heavy stealth elements. but it's telling a lot of the same story as RDR2 and in very similiar ways.

both feature trains, coughing fits, and some fine natural day/night lighting. both are very slow, heavy, tactile games (in very different ways, RDR2 is more realistic but metro exodus is the game with an in-game map and a first-person camera that shows off some of gaming's most extremely textured gloves).

both are about desperate people suffering a bleak existence and attempting to survive harsh environments while clinging to dreams of a brighter future.

both take serious time out and go out of their way to explore their side characters in more depth than most games typically offer their main characters.

the best moments in both games are the quiet ones. like just the pleasure of exploring the world and taking in the atmosphere. or just listening to conversations, that either include you or don't. i think in that way both games aren't just about companionship but the importance of empathy.

both are about the consequences of your actions too. although in red dead 2 those actions are scripted. the game is third-person. you play a scripted character with a preset fate. metro exodus on the other hand, while featuring a scripted character, is in first person and has how play as someone who only ever speaks during loading screens when they're writing in their diary (another connection to rdr2 re: the diary). it ultimately tests your character's morality through your actions as a player. maybe those actions too subtle. maybe they're too dense to grasp. all i know this game left me in the same space as red dead 2 but i had to face that the bitter taste in my mouth was not the author's doing but my own, and when i realised i had to reap what i sowed, all i could say was "damn, you got me".

cool game. glad i played it. and even on a launch ps4 this thing sparkled. will play the DLC eventually.