a bit better than i had thought but still easily the black sheep of Remedy's catalog (well hopefully, i still need to play Alan Wake 2 after i replay Control and do its DLC) with nothing else coming close.

i don't know, i just find myself feeling more charitable about it all in a post-Control world. like yeah the gameplay is serviceable and the powers themselves leave barely any impression but when you look at it as something of a prototype for what was to come it's whatever.

the tv show format is interesting, though it is a gag that it came years late after the whole mess with Xbox/Microsoft and tv (to think i find myself craving for that vs the past few days at this point...) among other things. i'm not usually into time travel stories but i enjoyed the characters and was mildly invested. it's a bummer this left things open but we'll probably never see it followed up on. i think Remedy did something with similar but not the same character stand-ins or at least the same cast members later on so it's fine.

final boss is bad to a baffling extent still, especially with the load times this game has. what the hell were they thinking?