BrunoV
Yet another utterly fascinating swing from Remedy. A game not without its faults that nevertheless had me hooked from the very start. In terms of setting and worldbuilding it quickly became one of my all-time favorite pieces of media.
In terms of its narrative, it starts as strong as it can be. Control’s first two to three hours are some of the best work Remedy has ever developed. It’s also a game that struggles with pacing. The overall structure has some extremely high highs and some rather meandering in-betweens. Every great element of this game also has a rather dull attachment weighing the experience down.
The last couple of hours are simply spectacular as well. As I rolled credits on Control, I wished that Remedy had attempted a more focused, slightly more linear, approach to the game’s structure and narrative. Something more akin to their previous output would solve 90% of the issues I have with the game.
The games' second act, though continuing to introduce fascinating spaces to explore and weird documents to read, tends to blend together in memory as an amalgamation of fetch-quests that don’t really add up to much in terms of the main plot thread, character or world building. This feeling is only amplified by the gradual ramp up of side quests that distract from this main story path. Some are pretty stellar and memorable, specially the ones that grant Jesse new powers to fight with or dive head-on into the sheer fun absurdity of the supernatural world that Control presents, but most of them are even more forgettable fetch-quests and an endless barrage of procedurally generated time sensitive combat encounters that pop up in random areas of the map every set amount of minutes, flashing the screen in big bold letters, attempting to entice you into dropping whatever more interesting thing you are doing to go there and kill some repetitive waves of enemies for some truly lackluster rewards.
The game has some slight metroidvania influences in its approach to the world design, in a Jedi: Fallen Order kind of way. As you advance in the story, you’ll start unlocking abilities that will grant access to new sections of areas you’ve already explored, pushing the player into going back to those places in order to find new stuff. There are a couple of issues with this approach in Control. In particular, the Oldest House, the supernatural, ever shifting, setting for the game, is a very weird and labyrinthian place, and a pretty hard one to traverse at that. Exploring every nook and cranny for the first time is really fun but going back to places and trying to remember how to get back to somewhere, even with the use of fast travel points, is a real pain in the ass. This and the enemy waves that spawn pretty much anywhere large enough to be a combat arena every time you go through there, makes simple fetch side-quests even more bothersome than they should be in the first place.
Combat is the other aspect of the game I’m quite conflicted about. The gameplay experience is amazing, powers and abilities are really fun to play around with. Remedy really nailed the superhero shooter style. My main issue is with the combat encounters. They are simply not engaging nor fun enough to sustain how many of them you can be involved in. It’s near constant, there’s pretty much just one approach that works consistently and enemy variety isn’t enough to keep them fresh for long. Quantum Break had very few opportunities for combat, Control might have too many for what It’s offering to the player. Midway through the game I was quite over these encounters, even though the gameplay experience itself never stopped being fun.
There’s also a whole upgrades system with stat modifiers for weapons and powers that should have been cut altogether. These XP points and mods are not engaging as exploration rewards, builds don´t feel different from each other when playing, the interface itself is a pain to interact with, it just doesn’t work, and it wasn’t necessary to include here. You cannot engage with this at all and still have the same experience as everyone else playing, because I’m sure most people even forget that the system exists at all.
I have my complaints about the game, and I’m rather passionate about them, but that’s because I love the overall experience so damn much. It works so well for me. This blend of weird sci fi and horror, played straight but with some sense of humor, is very much specifically my thing. I absolutely adore all of the world building, finding these documents, letters and videos. Just the look of the game and its spaces was enough to win me over instantly. The presentation is amazing, the way it uses cutscenes and video like no other game does, the wonderful music and sound design, I could go on for a long time praising every little detail I loved. Remedy, as always, created something even more ambitious and fascinating, and I hope they keep doing just that with their next games for a long while. Just maybe keep it tighter next time, trim the fat a bit.
Great DLCs too, AWE is a must play for any self-respecting Alan Wake fan.
In terms of its narrative, it starts as strong as it can be. Control’s first two to three hours are some of the best work Remedy has ever developed. It’s also a game that struggles with pacing. The overall structure has some extremely high highs and some rather meandering in-betweens. Every great element of this game also has a rather dull attachment weighing the experience down.
The last couple of hours are simply spectacular as well. As I rolled credits on Control, I wished that Remedy had attempted a more focused, slightly more linear, approach to the game’s structure and narrative. Something more akin to their previous output would solve 90% of the issues I have with the game.
The games' second act, though continuing to introduce fascinating spaces to explore and weird documents to read, tends to blend together in memory as an amalgamation of fetch-quests that don’t really add up to much in terms of the main plot thread, character or world building. This feeling is only amplified by the gradual ramp up of side quests that distract from this main story path. Some are pretty stellar and memorable, specially the ones that grant Jesse new powers to fight with or dive head-on into the sheer fun absurdity of the supernatural world that Control presents, but most of them are even more forgettable fetch-quests and an endless barrage of procedurally generated time sensitive combat encounters that pop up in random areas of the map every set amount of minutes, flashing the screen in big bold letters, attempting to entice you into dropping whatever more interesting thing you are doing to go there and kill some repetitive waves of enemies for some truly lackluster rewards.
The game has some slight metroidvania influences in its approach to the world design, in a Jedi: Fallen Order kind of way. As you advance in the story, you’ll start unlocking abilities that will grant access to new sections of areas you’ve already explored, pushing the player into going back to those places in order to find new stuff. There are a couple of issues with this approach in Control. In particular, the Oldest House, the supernatural, ever shifting, setting for the game, is a very weird and labyrinthian place, and a pretty hard one to traverse at that. Exploring every nook and cranny for the first time is really fun but going back to places and trying to remember how to get back to somewhere, even with the use of fast travel points, is a real pain in the ass. This and the enemy waves that spawn pretty much anywhere large enough to be a combat arena every time you go through there, makes simple fetch side-quests even more bothersome than they should be in the first place.
Combat is the other aspect of the game I’m quite conflicted about. The gameplay experience is amazing, powers and abilities are really fun to play around with. Remedy really nailed the superhero shooter style. My main issue is with the combat encounters. They are simply not engaging nor fun enough to sustain how many of them you can be involved in. It’s near constant, there’s pretty much just one approach that works consistently and enemy variety isn’t enough to keep them fresh for long. Quantum Break had very few opportunities for combat, Control might have too many for what It’s offering to the player. Midway through the game I was quite over these encounters, even though the gameplay experience itself never stopped being fun.
There’s also a whole upgrades system with stat modifiers for weapons and powers that should have been cut altogether. These XP points and mods are not engaging as exploration rewards, builds don´t feel different from each other when playing, the interface itself is a pain to interact with, it just doesn’t work, and it wasn’t necessary to include here. You cannot engage with this at all and still have the same experience as everyone else playing, because I’m sure most people even forget that the system exists at all.
I have my complaints about the game, and I’m rather passionate about them, but that’s because I love the overall experience so damn much. It works so well for me. This blend of weird sci fi and horror, played straight but with some sense of humor, is very much specifically my thing. I absolutely adore all of the world building, finding these documents, letters and videos. Just the look of the game and its spaces was enough to win me over instantly. The presentation is amazing, the way it uses cutscenes and video like no other game does, the wonderful music and sound design, I could go on for a long time praising every little detail I loved. Remedy, as always, created something even more ambitious and fascinating, and I hope they keep doing just that with their next games for a long while. Just maybe keep it tighter next time, trim the fat a bit.
Great DLCs too, AWE is a must play for any self-respecting Alan Wake fan.
Really solid action-adventure game, brought down by an overall roughness around its edges and lack of compelling innovation in combat, traversal, and storytelling. A slightly derivative amalgamation of what other games in the genre have done better, in a fun Star Wars package.
The story is fun and surprisingly engaging on a replay, but it feels overly familiar and tropey. Characters are well designed but lack proper development and opportunities to interact with them. Cutscenes are spectacular, they look great and are very well animated, outside of them character animation tends to be rather stiff looking and inorganic.
The story has some great moments, spectacular set pieces, and it’s overall pretty well paced. Doesn’t overstay its welcome and has a few surprises sprinkled about. A great Star Wars adventure that can’t fully shake off a feeling of familiarity and predictability.
Traversal gets more engaging as the game goes along and the player starts unlocking new abilities, but it doesn’t ever come close to being as engaging and polished as what Naughty Dog perfected in Uncharted 4. I’ve never been a big fan of this style of platforming, and while double jumping is fun enough, it still hasn’t won me over.
Combat is where the game struggles the most. When it works properly it’s an extremely engaging attempt at bringing Souls-like combat to a mainstream audience, with the addition of unlockable combos and cool force powers. Sadly, it lacks the polish and exactitude that From Software tends to bring to their games, specially around collisions and character animations. There are plenty of combat encounters that are just annoying to get through in any of the very welcome difficulty levels because of this reason. It feels like with some more time in the oven this could have been fixed, as the bones of the system seem really solid and fun to play.
Easily the best Star Wars game in a long time. A solid foundation that I hope the sequels build upon.
The story is fun and surprisingly engaging on a replay, but it feels overly familiar and tropey. Characters are well designed but lack proper development and opportunities to interact with them. Cutscenes are spectacular, they look great and are very well animated, outside of them character animation tends to be rather stiff looking and inorganic.
The story has some great moments, spectacular set pieces, and it’s overall pretty well paced. Doesn’t overstay its welcome and has a few surprises sprinkled about. A great Star Wars adventure that can’t fully shake off a feeling of familiarity and predictability.
Traversal gets more engaging as the game goes along and the player starts unlocking new abilities, but it doesn’t ever come close to being as engaging and polished as what Naughty Dog perfected in Uncharted 4. I’ve never been a big fan of this style of platforming, and while double jumping is fun enough, it still hasn’t won me over.
Combat is where the game struggles the most. When it works properly it’s an extremely engaging attempt at bringing Souls-like combat to a mainstream audience, with the addition of unlockable combos and cool force powers. Sadly, it lacks the polish and exactitude that From Software tends to bring to their games, specially around collisions and character animations. There are plenty of combat encounters that are just annoying to get through in any of the very welcome difficulty levels because of this reason. It feels like with some more time in the oven this could have been fixed, as the bones of the system seem really solid and fun to play.
Easily the best Star Wars game in a long time. A solid foundation that I hope the sequels build upon.
2022
Possibly the first ever truly ‘Lynchian’ video game. It’s ‘Mulholland Drive’ the videogame. And I absolutely adore it for that reason.
This might be the most fascinating experience I’ve had with art this whole year. There are few games, even movies, on its level.
I don’t really want to talk about the story here. It’s best to experience it, engage with it fully, really discover it piece by piece. It’s shocking, it’s twisty, it’s scary, it’s moving, it’s a lot more than you think going into it.
Manon Gage, and specially Charlotta Mohlin are on another level. Performances like these are only rarely seen.
The way this is played is fascinating as well. Play with a controller, it’s extremely tactile.
I only wish there was an easier way to pick up the last missing clips after you roll credits, kinda like in ‘Her Story’. It´s not really necessary, I believe that by the point you reach the ending you’ll me more than satisfied, It’s just to make it simpler to complete the movies.
This might be the most fascinating experience I’ve had with art this whole year. There are few games, even movies, on its level.
I don’t really want to talk about the story here. It’s best to experience it, engage with it fully, really discover it piece by piece. It’s shocking, it’s twisty, it’s scary, it’s moving, it’s a lot more than you think going into it.
Manon Gage, and specially Charlotta Mohlin are on another level. Performances like these are only rarely seen.
The way this is played is fascinating as well. Play with a controller, it’s extremely tactile.
I only wish there was an easier way to pick up the last missing clips after you roll credits, kinda like in ‘Her Story’. It´s not really necessary, I believe that by the point you reach the ending you’ll me more than satisfied, It’s just to make it simpler to complete the movies.
2023
A real delight of a game. I tend to suck ass at action games, even more when I need a minimum of coordination to get the best scores, but I had an absolute blast making my way through this nonetheless. The combat is engaging and deep enough to never get stale, all while allowing the player to engage with as many of the systems as one is comfortable with, so all the possible combinations never get overwhelming to deal with.
Really funny stuff as well, from the dialogue to the overall presentation, I can´t remember the last time I was laughing so consistently while playing a game. The art design is really cool, the game looks really pretty all the time. The music is just perfect, never repetitive, never dull, with some excellent licensed needle drops as a treat every now and then.
A true must play if it looks even remotely interesting, and easily one of the best games of the year. I didn´t really try out the post game levels and the collect-athon approach because that isn´t really my jam, but I’m sure that gamers interested in that type of gameplay will get dozens of hours of top tier entertainment on top of a hilarious, tight, really enjoyable, 10 hour main campaign.
Really funny stuff as well, from the dialogue to the overall presentation, I can´t remember the last time I was laughing so consistently while playing a game. The art design is really cool, the game looks really pretty all the time. The music is just perfect, never repetitive, never dull, with some excellent licensed needle drops as a treat every now and then.
A true must play if it looks even remotely interesting, and easily one of the best games of the year. I didn´t really try out the post game levels and the collect-athon approach because that isn´t really my jam, but I’m sure that gamers interested in that type of gameplay will get dozens of hours of top tier entertainment on top of a hilarious, tight, really enjoyable, 10 hour main campaign.
2022
Very much my thing, this felt like the southern gothic lovechild of Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium. I love when games try dare to try weird and out there things without fear of alienating the audience.
A mix of visual novel and point and click gameplay elements, its real hook is its writing and visuals. It boasts some of the most moving and evocative writing I’ve read in a videogame probably since playing Disco Elysium last year. It’s hard to wrap my head around how a team gets to write and actually design such an experience. It’s also comprised of beautifully crafted pixel art. There’s a particular frame that instantly became my new desktop wallpaper. And the music, what a surprise. Just a terrific moody score that goes so hard.
There’s just so much depth and thematic nuance here, enough to think about for a long time after playing. It oozes creativity and artistry, and a certain kind of weird earnestness and sincerity.
A mix of visual novel and point and click gameplay elements, its real hook is its writing and visuals. It boasts some of the most moving and evocative writing I’ve read in a videogame probably since playing Disco Elysium last year. It’s hard to wrap my head around how a team gets to write and actually design such an experience. It’s also comprised of beautifully crafted pixel art. There’s a particular frame that instantly became my new desktop wallpaper. And the music, what a surprise. Just a terrific moody score that goes so hard.
There’s just so much depth and thematic nuance here, enough to think about for a long time after playing. It oozes creativity and artistry, and a certain kind of weird earnestness and sincerity.
2024
I’ll never not recommend an experience so bold, ambitious, and straight up bizarre. One that needs to be played to be believed.
On that level, I had a great time. Totally appreciated what it’s going for and was constantly surprised by the turns it takes. As a gameplay experience it didn’t fully connect with me. Its sporadic puzzles are so simple at times that they feel more like small annoyances than meaningful interactions, but there are plenty of other interactions that do feel meaningful, so I’m not yet sure where I’d draw the line there. I’m kind of left believing that it would work better as a straight up “walking sim”, without some of these mildly annoying puzzles sprinkled about.
I do wish I connected with some of the themes a bit better. I’m sure that some of the lines hit deeper if one has something of a connection or more knowledge about Christianity than I do. I didn’t grow up religious, so I’m sure that some stuff flew over my head or didn’t land as hard as it did for other people. Still, I’m sure revisiting it later on will make certain moments land as intended. Enough landed for me to truly make it a memorable time that I hope others give a chance.
On that level, I had a great time. Totally appreciated what it’s going for and was constantly surprised by the turns it takes. As a gameplay experience it didn’t fully connect with me. Its sporadic puzzles are so simple at times that they feel more like small annoyances than meaningful interactions, but there are plenty of other interactions that do feel meaningful, so I’m not yet sure where I’d draw the line there. I’m kind of left believing that it would work better as a straight up “walking sim”, without some of these mildly annoying puzzles sprinkled about.
I do wish I connected with some of the themes a bit better. I’m sure that some of the lines hit deeper if one has something of a connection or more knowledge about Christianity than I do. I didn’t grow up religious, so I’m sure that some stuff flew over my head or didn’t land as hard as it did for other people. Still, I’m sure revisiting it later on will make certain moments land as intended. Enough landed for me to truly make it a memorable time that I hope others give a chance.