there's a line midway through where our lead dude, Rex, futuristic cyber commando and one-liner extraordinaire, asks the lady giving him missions if she's familiar with video games. she confirms she is and that video games are good and healthy for people and anyone who says otherwise is a fucking idiot.

fast forward maybe two hours and you're riding a mechanical dragon that has lasers for eyes and says things like "genocide is fun" and "this is happy and sad" as you two unstoppably destroy everyone and everything in your path on your way to the final cutscene

it's just funny that this came out a year after spec ops the line which said video games do hold power and playing as a vicious psychopathic killing machine is a little cliche. and here comes ubisoft with their far cry 3 spin off that is the definition of a male action power fantasy. like this makes DOOM look like the last of us. just so gleefully murderous and punctuated at every turn with the cheesiest 80s action one-liners and plot points.

and yet it fucking owns so go figure.

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

pure pulp writer nonsense that pays homage to stephen king the only way anyone can: by taking a simple, killer premise and making it run laps around metaphor island until it pukes.

but it's kind of wonderful anyway. is wake dreaming, insane, or did all this happen? where did the stuff about the clicker come from? it's as if some third party retconned the game in real time 4/5s the way through. did he kill his wife? is the lightness a metaphor for the horror of the blank page? or sobriety? why is the comic relief sidekick from bayonetta in this game? of all the twin peaks characters, why did log lady inspire a major character?

who cares. they took a bunch of stuff and threw it in a game where you burn shadows with an energizer flashlight and then blow them away with light grenades and flares. it throws a school bus at you and expects you to kill a combine harvester with said flashlight and maybe the magic of norse-inspired power metal.

anyway i love what this game does with light, i love the pacific northwest atmosphere and i dig every overt reference it's making at all times. and it had a kooky enough hook to keep me invested to the credits.

rad

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.

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.

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)

the first pre-Origins AC game I've played in four years (sorry black flag) and the first I've finished in eight (that being iii).

after 250 (or 400 according to sony) hours of odyssey and valalla in the last eight months, this was a bit scary to go return to because i'd sort of put the old school assassin's creed gameplay out of my mind and in a mental compartment under the filename 'dated'.

but i was pleasantly surprised with this. lighting was good. some nice crowds. good feeling to be back in a big city again. they really knocked old london out of the park. tons of women in big dresses, dudes in suits with hats and mutton chops, tons of child labourers working the factories and begging for change, smoke stacks as far as the eye can see. carriages in lieu of horses (or cars). a simulated city from 2015 that feels as alive and bustling as anything made since (something so spectacular about all the boats on the thames going up and down and having to manoeuvre yourself across the river by leaping from one in motion to another).

i've come to accept assassin's creed games as a tourist trap. i had long since given up on the series but now that it has its hooks back in me i remember the joy of wondering what beautifully recreated piece of history i'll get to stab dudes in next.

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)

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.