As someone who made a "Hunt Down The Freeman sucks 😤😤" video when this came out, it kind of rules fuck it

Absolutely baffling game every step of the way with no sense of thought out design or anything, not played a game since this where I've had so many questions for the developers. Might not be "so bad it's good" in the same way as something like The Room but gives the same feeling of complete confusion on how it was made. And in a medium that seems really eager to homogenise and streamline itself so that everything can be played by everyone, it's kind of funny playing something that doesn't seem to have been thought through at all and either completely ignores game design techniques or tries them without understanding what they're for.

Not saying this is some misunderstood materpiece but I'd actually put it alongside Half-Life 2 to show the contrast of how you should and shouldn't design an FPS campaign. It's bad but it's so bad that I feel like I appreciate games more because of it lmao

also i remember i beat this mostly in a day because we were snowed in, kind of a weirdly cozy memory 😌

A lot to say that I don’t here and I’m at work rn so this is fairly rambly but game’s cool. I love the Saga stuff, it feels like you really are trapped in this world as everything moulds around you and the people act vague and uncanny. This particular story being about the real world but having it change itself gives the game a unique tone where it still feels like this is a grounded and real world, but one that you still feel out of place in. The whole thing of solving this mystery within the mystery and using that mystery to solve your mystery is really cool!

With Alan though it feels a lot more confused I’d say? It seems to want to say things about art and artists and everything but never quite hit for me in the way I think it wanted to? The plot in Alan’s sections also don’t have the line of logic you can attach yourself to with Saga’s story, there you’re putting the pieces together yourself to solve a grounded question of “who is behind the cult and its murders” you just answer that through all the crazy stuff, with Alan though I never really understood what he was doing or why? Alan would say “I’m going to go talk to Mr Door” so I’d think “ok I guess we’re talking to Mr Door”. I forgive him for this though because the actor for Alan’s cute and these sections are similarly drenched in atmosphere, with the city feeling really dead and lonely. I like the stealth in these bits! It can get a bit much but the vagueness of the taken’s detection, the fact they’re just everywhere and that they’ll see your flashlight gives the game that underlying sense of tension and nervousness without turning it into a full stealth game.

Preferred it to what I played of F.E.A.R. 2! While that game took F.E.A.R. and made it play better for consoles but kept similar level design leading to a worse game, I feel this pushes into the console angle. Focusing on quick set pieces that carry you through the combat rather than levels that are trying to prop up and put a focus on that combat.

It's very short and not amazing, I still don't particularly like this combat and the story is very nothing-y but it has a sense of pace and energy to it that I didn't feel with what I played of the base game, so pretty ok! If this was Letterboxd there'd be a wee 'like' next to those 2 stars.

The humans when an entire village is slaughtered: oopsie! Those RDA sure are bad guys 🙄🤣 Sorry for being human!

The Na'vi when one horse is killed: God has left us, we must take over the role of the grim reaper.

Fun though! Movie tie-in like Mad Max or Terminator: Resistance where it is just using a game formula seen before (in this case Far Cry) and puts it in the context of a film people like. Easy to complain about with stuff like the similarities to Far Cry, underwhelming progression systems and (completely ignorable) microtransactions, but contains an amazing version of Pandora to explore and weaves the film's themes into its systems nicely. It also feels like a real video game rather than just a time sink! I played some of Assassin's Creed: Odyssey recently and was bothered by both how long it is and that the game felt so desperate for you to glide through it without issue. This is a pretty reasonable length of like 20-40 hours though and felt like I had to engage with its mechanics and how it was designed, rather than it just molding itself into a Frankenstein of "stuff people like".

Not a must-play if you didn't see the Na'vi running on trees when you were 7 and think "ooh I wanna do that", but I liked it