There's a certain kind of gamebro desire for thee modern open world crime game. One so realstic you can get audited for not doing your taxes, and date in-game e-girls and live the life you feel you're not quite equipped for in the real world. The macho nerd's escapist fantasy.

Playing GTA V for the first time in nine years, I'm more impressed with its recreation of modern Los Angeles than I was at the time of release. It "holds up" remarkably well, still maybe the king of the castle as far as open world games go. The depth of detail is still really impressive. I get lost just walking around looking at the cracks in the footpath, the trash littering the streets, the pedestrian and traffic AI and the way they'll give me the finger if I rev my engine at a stop light. It's in a word, 'impressive'. It's closest gaming has gotten to creating that escapist fantasy. I could feel myself wanting to just live inside the game; drive around a picturesque Los Angeles in a nice car, buy some sick suits, some flashy guns and live the American dream of looking cool and owning destructive property.

And that's ultimately what GTA V is: a game with a pretty setting you're there to destroy (not actually admire or live in); itself a pretty piece of technology made through backbacking labour practices.

It's all kind of a vapid nothing. This is fully emphasised whenever anybody - a main character, side character, or NPC - speaks in this game. Not simply because there's no charming or quietly interesting dialogue (if anything, it is an actively terribly written game - a shame for a game full of long driving-and-talking scenes), or that the voice acting is bad, but because characters are such functioning non-entity cliches. A game written by an AI with the brain of a 14-year-old British boy with only the cultural knowledge of America via Michael Mann movies, The Sopranos and Superbad. It's a pity because I feel like there's a lot of potential with the various intertwining protagonist story structure and the allure of cool action setpieces with all the hesists in the game (most of which are just the same Heat scene told from different angles over and over).

I played this - and only this - for the entire month of August, in a state of depression, while doing a lot of E, listening to Frank Ocean and rewatching Breaking Bad. All in all I found it rather soothing. I'm not going to look back on my time fondly with it but I am kind of sad and at a loss now that it's over. I wish it were a better game. I wish I lived in LA for real.

it's fine. it's cute. it kind of has no idea what kind of game it wants to be. there's one too many AAA elements lumped in almost as if they couldn't say no when someone asked "what about stealth?", "what about combat?", "what about a hub world?", "what about collectibles?", "what about side quests and a inventory?". it could have just been a Limbo or Ico esque minimalist linear journey but I guess you can remove the developers from Ubisoft but the Ubisoft from the developers.

I am also just a little sad that it's a game about robots. why feature robots if you're going to humanise them. just use humans. the "lore" just feels childish to me. a lot of Stray reminded me of Kentucky Route Act V, where you're also a cat, roaming around listening to - and soaking in - the lives of everybody in this town. it's very written first, gameplay-orientated second. whereas Stray feels like "okay we got a game where you're a cat, now let's fill in the rest quickly". but hey, they nailed the cat stuff. so good on em. i wish it were in service of something more though.

I wish I had something more substantial to say about Max Payne. It's been a week since i finished it. I don't think it was my fave in the series. But as the original, I gotta give it a lot of love. This bizarre pop culture stew, made from chunks of The Matrix, Raymond Chandler, Twin Peaks, John Woo and bad New York accents. It's a combo only Remedy still solely provide. But I think what's been lost over the years is the palpable atmosphere the series has when it's trading in street level crime. The alleys and dirty hallways of dilapidated apartment buildings and hotels. That sense that the snow you're stepping in is covered in piss. The Max Payne games always tend to escalated upwards, until you're having manic shootouts in expensive, lavish high rise buildings, fighting mercenary goons. But few games ever capture and relish in the dirt the way Max Payne games do. Video games so desperately lack Raymond Chandler and John Woo inspirations nowadays too. Max Payne is a reminder that not every game with a gun has to be about aliens or shooting people of colour in various warzones. Shame the memo didn't go out.

i don't even think games like 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and Metal Gear Rising Revengeance are half as insane as this simply because this actually cost a lot of money. they spent $200m on marketing a game where you massacre civilians in an airport about two hours in; a game where you receive quotes from, among others, Confucius and Dick Cheney on your death screen; a game that climaxes with the protagonist wrenching a knife out of their gut to throw at the bad guy.

replaying this for the first time in maybe a decade and just mouth agape through the whole thing. it's not a good game. but i kinda love it. played the campaign so much as a teenager listening to Metallica's Death Magnetic that the whole thing feels glued to my being. it's a problematic fave. i'll go the grave loving it, knowing full well i am going to hell for doing so.

So I finished this and had mostly positive things to say about it as a shooter.

Then I watched a GrimBeard video and he commented once you're in a giant mechsuit, the game has actually become the antithesis of fear and instead has insulated you in the safest conditions a shooter could possibly provide.

It takes a big man to change his mind because of one comment. I'm a big man. You know what. Fuck it. I had nothing positive to say about it as anything but a shooter with some nice environments. But now I'm fairly sure those things mostly sucked too.

So, like, yeah. Bad game.

Been playing this bit by bit slowly for a month now. Played it high, drunk, stoned and burgeoning on a k-hole at times. Still haven't finished it. But fuck it. I just wanna diary my thoughts.

I think that it's as good as a good as a game like this could ever hope to be. It is a thematically empty experience. It is not as nuanced narratively or emotionally as it thinks it is. It is all aesthetic. It is a grim, brooding Dad game for people who love violent video games. All of its maturity is mechanical and physical. It is at almost every turn always a video game first. There are skill points and weapon upgrades. All sorts of video game narrative bullshit and conveniences ripple through it. But when you're swaying trying to load a handgun bullet-by-bullet or bashing some guy's teeth into a railing or machete-ing your 500th nameless post apocalyptic goon, all under some really intentionally well mood lit areas, you feel something. It loses impact the more you play, the game is way too long. But you see the rare instance of what happens when a AAA game developer gets an unlimited budget to heavily fetishise brutal violence. It's sick. I love it. I wish it wasn't coated in so much sentimentality and artstation lustre. But I think it's the most expensive murder simulatior ever made and it's stands as almost a novelty in my mind. The only other game like is maybe Max Payne 3 (and TLOU2, which I feel identical about but just as a sequel feel lesser).

So I played this game for a month straight. Got to level 105 in 100 hours and got to the Mountaintop of the Giants.

That was a month ago. I have played maybe five hours since. I have officially decided to retire. Real life is too stressful to enjoy this any longer.

I have nothing interesting to add or contribute about this game.

It is perhaps the pinnacle high art AAA game development. It is the video game equivalent of one of those meals that would appear in the TV show Hannibal. It is elegant and expansive and exhausting. It is every Dark Souls game gelled together and cubed and stretched out across a giant canvas. It is maybe the best game I've ever played. It will be the best game I never finish until I make headway elsewhere. I will return to Elden Ring. But I feel like I've been clubbing for 40 hours straight and Hidetaka Miyazaki's idea for an afters is a 2 week no sleep bender to Ibiza. I'm good. Maybe later

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.