One of my very favourite games of all time. To avoid incoherent gushing, I’m just going to list all the things I love about this game. Most of this applies both to the base game and Iceborne.

- The combat, deliberately paced, and fine tuned to perfection. Your moves don’t come out instantly, so you have to be thoughtful and deliberate in how you fight, figure out what’s safe, what’s risky, find openings, or try to create openings yourself. Monsters move more frenetically than in prior entries, it isn’t as easy to bait out the easy to punish moves anymore. Apparently a somewhat divisive change, but I like it because it encourages you to engage more with the monsters, take risks, duck and weave and try to create your own openings. The monsters still have their tells and reads, they’re still learnable, just harder to cheese. The feedback on your hits is satisfying as well, with the beefy sound effects and a satisfying hitlag when you’re hitting weak spots, like it’s taking time to cut through a target, especially gratifying when you’re playing great sword.
- The gear grind. With a carefully balanced power creep from beginning to endgame that keeps you constantly moving forward, and tons of skills and build options to toy with once you reach the endgame, even easier now with the reworked armour skill system. And since your loot drops are the materials to craft gear rather than the gear itself, you’re always making some progress towards your next upgrade, never getting screwed over by RNG, at least not until you have to hunt rubies and mantles, but thankfully the game has systems that make their acquisition easier. Not to mention the gear itself, new and returning, all looks top notch (aside from...I’ll get to that).
- 14 different weapon types. The weapon roster almost feels like a video game weapon hall of fame. You got Cloud’s great sword, Sephiroth’s longsword, Arthas’ hammer, the Lumen Sage’s glaive, Kratos’ dual blades, etc. Each of them is interesting, varied and fleshed out to a point where any one of them could be the lead of it’s own action game.
- The industry leading monster designs. Each creature is thought out with their own semi-realistic biology and behaviour. Just following them around the map on their routines is one of the most interesting things to do in this game, watching Anjanath chill on the cliffside with it’s sails out, or Odogaron dragging a carcass back to it’s den, or Zinogre howling at the moon, etc. But as well, each of them implements their biology into their fights, meaning it’s to your advantage to know them thoroughly, know how to counter each ability. Rathian poisoning you with her tail? Sever it and neuter her toxin. Barioth too fast for you? Break it’s arm spikes reducing it’s grip on icy surfaces. Nergigante keeps skewering you on it’s spikes? Be aggressive, break them before they can harden. There’s also knowledge of it’s spot on the food chain, what monsters to lure it towards that’ll wittle it down in a turf war. The decision of what equipment to bring, what element or status they’re strong or weak to, which do you have to watch out for. What items counter it. Each creature, new and returning, is like a brilliantly thought out action puzzle, all unique, engaging, thoughtful, it’s some peak boss design.
- The environments. Beautiful to look at, multilayered, dense with secrets, things to explore, and unlike a lot of video game environments that feel like just themed arenas or corridors, these places feel authentic and alive. They’ve also ramped up interactions with the environment. Many of the game’s monsters will lure you into areas where they can really take advantage and let loose with their abilities, but likewise there’s lots of options for you to take advantage of yourself. My favourite map has to be the Hoarfrost Reach from the Iceborne expansion. From the cozy coniferous forests at it’s base, to the precarious glacial shelves along the coast, to it’s frozen peaks, to the ice caverns underneath, to the breathtaking frozen magma formations that surround Velkhena’s lair, the map is just mesmerizing, not to mention it’s battle music is a series highlight.
- It’s fun loving personality. The game offers a ton of light hearted reprieve in the coziness of the village and it’s denizens, the felynes, always getting into slapstick shenanigans, speaking in cat puns, my favourite is the Seliana chef who threatens to whack you with her laddle should you fail to consume an adequate amount of her cooking, the endemic life hunting, how you can catch creatures in the wilds and let them loose in your customizable player home, all the little activities you can perform with other players in the gathering hub like arm wrestling, the suana, getting drunk, to all the event quests and the goofy shit you can earn from them. The game is just so full of charm and character, I love it.
- The community. One of the healthiest, friendliest fanbases that exists for an entertainment product. Incredibly welcoming to newcomers, always willing to explain the game’s systems, help people when they’re stuck. Playing this game’s multiplayer I have witnessed more superhero moments than in any other game, someone throwing their last lifepowder so the next hit doesn’t kill me, or runs out and shields a fireball for me while I’m stunned, or running out to whack me out of stun, putting thenselves in danger so I too have a chance to escape the big area sweeping ultimate attack. It’s the kind of social experience I play multiplayer games for and I’ve really yet to experience it anywhere else.
- It’s generosity. As a franchise, the series has always been honest and consumer focused, offering tons of free dlc, never trying to force exploitative monetization down our throats. Watching World double down on that generosity, offering new monsters, new Siege raids, these high production value collaborations with the likes of Final Fantasy XIV and The Witcher 3, in addition to the usual suite of event quests and gear, in contrast to other games like Destiny and Star Wars Battlefront II descending further into their cynicism was very much a wakeup call for me, a reminder when when you pay $60 you should get a complete product, your money’s worth and then some. The franchise has kind of been a beacon of hope for the AAA industry in my eyes because of that. I honestly want to hug Ryozo Tsujimoto for that comment he made about how paid lootboxes undermine games by making you pay to not play them.

The game isn’t flawless obviously. Lots of people have criticized how half the weapon designs in the game use this weird modular scales on bone or iron system in contrast to the series’ usual unique designs across the board (it didn’t bother me as much because most of my favourites made it back, but I sympathize with those whose didn’t). And the game doesn’t quite have the diversity of monster types other games had, no serpents, bugs, crabs, I would have loved to see something like Nerscylla in the Rotten Vale map. For me though, they’re negligible in the context of what this game is to me. It was my escape throughout several of the most tumultuous moments of my life, it reminded me what it’s like to be a part of a community, it revitalized my love of gaming when I thought it was doomed to cynicism, shot one of my favourite franchises up to AAA stardom. Following it’s lifecycle from the initial beta to the final title update for Iceborne was one of the most exciting, incredible gaming journeys I’ve ever been on. My love for this video game is something I can barely even put to words.

A short while ago I read that article about Naughty Dog and how they literally suppress use of the word “fun” within the studio. I think it paints a picture of a company so up its own ass, so out of touch with the medium they’re working in, and I think it stands in stark contrast to a game like Tekken, which is so unabashedly a video game above all else. It’s combat is refined and technical, yet accessible enough that a new player can jump in and jazz up combos on the spot. It’s got a full roster with all my favourites from Tekken 3 back. It’s full of customization options, side modes like the arcade mode, Devil Within (which isn’t as good as Tekken 3’s Tekken Force, but it’s still a fun little bonus) and it even comes with the first three Tekken games. It’s so full of content, creativity and fun-loving character, and I love it.












It was also neat of them to give the final boss a move that straight up just wins him the round, fucking Jinpachi with your fuckass stun and your fireball.

Try to think of yourself as around 6-7 years old playing this hot new fighting game that came out on the PlayStation after you had played the demo over and over again on the sampler disc that came with your console, you decide you're gonna finally brave through the arcade mode against the CPU that you're terrible at dealing with.

You do fine against the first several opponents, maybe struggle at some points, but you're moving along. You eventually fight the sub-boss, which could either be a bear, a muay thai kickboxer, or an infinite kicks spamming jerkward named "Lee" depending on who you picked. Your conflict is exhausting, but you eventually persevere against your unlockable rival. The loading screen suddenly becomes the piercing eyes of the final boss who awaits you, they are an asshole in a purple suit known as "Kazuya". He absolutely manhandles you, your world constantly getting rocked with sudden blows to the stomach that make you reel, and the sight of your body going flying from a dragon uppercut becomes commonplace. Your frustration grows, but the amazing music keeps you in the game. Through sheer force of will and youthful stubbornness, you finally defeat him. Whether it was through skill or luck, it doesn't matter. You Win!

...but the loading screen returns....with demonic red eyes staring a hole straight through you....

One last opponent awaits, they simply go by "DEVIL". The sight of a purple winged demon takes the place of Kazuya, whom slowly stands up from a kneeling position to glare at you while ominous sorrowful music fills the empty void that makes up the stage. A stage of pitch black darkness, with only a screen in the background playing back your fight in real time as it stretches into itself for infinity, all while his infernal sounding voice filter and lasers install fear into your heart.

Chills, every single time.

Okay, I understand games being hard, but why do they also have to be hostile?

Yeah, the boss can be hard, sure, but why does there also have to be stretches of spike traps and mantis sword bros and laser fuckmoths on the way to that boss because the save point is nowhere near that boss and every time you lose, you know, to LeArN tHe PaTtErnS and GeT bEtTeR or whatever, you have to traverse that path each and every time? Why does dying also mess with your coins? Sure, the bank feature might have been useful, if there was more than one! Why would I ever want to freely explore this place if it meant at any step I could bump into a boss or a bullshit Celeste spike corridor that will murder me and take away like a thousand of my coins because I also got murdered again on the way back to that boss? Why does difficulty have to be married to wasting my time? Why can’t the “consequence” of losing just be, you know, you can’t go any further until you win? Why do I need to be punished for the hubris of wanting to play Hollow Knight but not knowing how to do it exactly right the first time? Do you guys, I dunno, do you like that or something? Do you like games that are not just hard but also just give you the finger and laugh at you? Do you go on the switch store and be like hm, let’s see, what’s out there that’s not only challenging but also gives me a net negative amount of progress to effort? What’s out there that can actively mock my endeavors to experience something greater than myself all the way through by reminding me that I have limited time and then actively smashing that time right in front of me? Because I love that feeling, I really enjoy it and it makes me feel warm and cozy, I love it more than hot fudge sundaes, more than my girlfriend, more than even my own birthdays.

No no, that’s you, that’s what you sound like when you play Hollow Knight.

i really wish i enjoyed this game as much as everyone else does (or people said i would).

for a game described to me as "metroidvania with precision platforming meets Dark Souls," it really comes out feeling like less than a sum of those parts. in terms of the world design and exploration, the game is great at matching the joy of breaking into every tiny crevasse to find secrets and lore that Dark Souls does. the characters and lightly revealed lore that's steeped in mystery is great. the platforming is serviceable, but whenever the game decides to flip the switch to try and turn into Super Meat Boy (sometimes quite literally with buzzsaws) it feels very disjointed and out of place.

the combat (mainly by way of the bosses) by comparison feels like a chore. even by the end of the game when i had gotten a lot better at maneuvering in fights, most of the boss fights were not engaging or challenging beyond "hope you get the good pattern that allows you to heal". in addition to this, why not be more generous with benches in regards to boss placements?

it's small decisions like this that continued to baffle me as time went on. you get more movement options as the game unfolds, but trekking between areas connected by stags still feels arduous enough to dissuade me from wanting to explore more. i enjoy the lore of the stags, but would fast travelling between benches break the game so much to prevent it from being included?

it's things like this that makes me feel like the game is bloated. this may be a problem of playing the game now that there's 4 extra content patches (give players a way to play the launch version pleaseeeee), but there's just so much in the game that feels like Content For Content's Sake. the game like a love letter to the old metroidvanias the developers loved that has been weighed down by AAA games' addiction to More. i can see the mechanics (literally) taken 1-to-1 from Super Metroid, but i don't see the tightly crafted world, simplicity, or elegance of it. i see a checklist of things to waste time doing rather than a curated experience.

Despite everything, I ended up really enjoying this game. It is just too fun to be a bad game. Fundamentally it is a well built game. It just needed more time to cook. And I let it. I waited 2 years after launch to give it another chance. I always knew the game had the potential to be great.

There are only two things that really brings this down for me.
1. There are too many things to do.

It seems like a dumb complaint. Oh no! There is too much content! But, I think it is a real problem for games like this. I think that in a weird backwards way, it can end up making the world feel smaller. When you are doing the same things over and over again, the immersion is broken. You can tell they added all this stuff to pad out run time. And that leads to my second complaint.

2. The main story is too short and the ending feels unsatisfying

They had to add tons of repetitive stuff to distract from the fact that the main story is INCREDIBLY short. Because it is so short, it leads to the ending being very unsatisfying. Both in the way that it leaves you wanting more AND wanting more from the characters. There isn't enough character development for the main characters, let alone the side characters. Everyone is very charming, but I wanted more depth from all of them.

The game is incredibly fun to play. Infinitely replayable with the different playstyles and romance options. It is what saves the game in the end, and is why I have 150 hours in game with just one playthrough. And with it being a game, I would say the gameplay is the most important part.

This might be the hardest game ever for me to critique. It's good, it's original, Metroid fans adore it, and it's packed with content for the price, but I didn't have much fun with it. I found exploration to be a chore with a bizarre and unhelpful map system, in a world full of enemies too simple to be interesting and too uninteresting to be fun. The atmosphere and a couple breathtaking moments were enough to keep me playing until the end, which is more than I can say for most games in the genre at least. I guess it must be pretty good for someone who doesn't care for these games to think it was basically ok, but that doesn't mean I can personally say anything other than "it was basically ok".

The moment at which I knew this game would go down as one of my favourites was when I found the Lomei Labyrinth. I was venturing up the northeast part of the map, making my way to the Ancient Tech Lab. On my way I ran into a grounded guardian, an encounter which ended with me getting blasted off a cliff. It was raining, so I couldn’t climb my way back up, so instead I decide to venture north along the shoreline. As I made my way around the cliff base, the rain escalated into a thunderstorm, that’s when through the rain, illuminated by the lightning, I spotted the silhouette of this massive, imposing, monolithic structure off in the distance. This incredible, atmospheric sight, like a scripted vista you’d see in something like Shadow of the Colossus, is something I happened across by chance, just one of the many, many, many times this game’s world and mechanics all coalesced to create something breathtaking.

Say what you will about this game’s shortcomings when it comes to dungeon and enemy variety, but I’ve yet to play another video game that gives me the same feeling of exploration and wonder that comes with this one. Moments like this, like the first time I climbed a rock formation looking for ore and it stood up and tried to kill me, like the first time I realized lightning was about to strike my sword so I quickly threw it at an enemy just in time for the thunder bolt to strike and blast them away, like the time I decided to take a chance and make a frantic sprint for my sand seal to try and outrun an angry Molduga bearing down on me, jumping out of my seat as I make it by the grit of my teeth, these moments have stuck with me and will continue to stick with me far longer than any scripted random encounter I'm seeing for the 27 millionth time in any other open world game.

as a purely sensory experience i found this sublime in a way that took me back to how it felt seeing and hearing doom for the first time in 1994. my computer could only just barely run it well enough to be playable, but one of the college kids living nextdoor had a high end 486 and he let me play it over there for a little bit. doom made me think of games as spaces in a way far more powerfully than anything before it.

scorn isn't the elegant action masterpiece that doom eternally remains, but it is a vivid ontological crawl through the biomechanical macabre which instills feelings of curious awe, revulsion, and anxiety (when i hear that puzzles are a big focus in a game i get anxious regardless, and this unholy paradise of giger and beksinski had me exceptionally filled with queasy dread). a hideous experience i cherish.

man what a disappointment

alan wake was definitely something that I looked forward revisiting after the release of the second game but the more I went on with the game the more its seams started to break apart

this is a remaster of the OG game and as a remaster its pretty chill you have that new texture work 60 fps shiny graphics definitely the most interesting part of the game if I gotta be honest and also kudos to remedy for making a remaster that works wonders on the pc because after playing those shitty ports for ff7r and ff15 I really needed this to play accordingly and it did

in its premise this game has such a great introduction alan is a writer that slowly descends into schizophrenic madness after the disappearance of his wife during a holiday trip in idk where probably twin peaks (I've never watched twin peaks I have no idea what yall are talking about)

bomb subject matter that may or may not be enhanced by the fact that apparently a ghost manuscript somewhere allegedly written by alan is influencing the course of the story and making every single part of the game a nightmare

now there's a lot of different points and ropes to untie here and there but it never really get more interesting than that the many side characters are only a way for alan to keep being delulu or a way to contrast his schizophrenic frenzy and there's that his trustworthy pal is a dipshit the cop is atrociously underdeveloped there's an old woman somehow and the psychiatric doctor is probably the most based character because he goes to alan and tells him “gurl you delulu” and gets punched in the face rip

the main plot is basically what I said alan searches for his wife the end theres some degree of backstory and explanation to what is happening but the game really loves remaining confused to the fucking end to the point that you can't excuse its pretentiousness anymore I really LOVE the story here but there's not enough tension or insight for you to actually make a cliffhanger open ending

and adding to all this there's a kingdom hearts typa script with stuff like “his heart is full of darkness… only the light can stop the darkness” youre tripping this is so surface level it makes me want to tear my hair which is a shame because the fact that the game is segmented in different chapters and subsequent recaps makes it feel like you're watching a TV series alright

that being said the art department is pretty alright they're really going for a realistic based type of experiment because wow thr environments are so boring for a guy experiencing schizophrenia like theres a lot of woods and woods and woods sometimes there's some points of interest like structures here and there or natural formations like falls or cliffs but it's really sedimented into the reality aspect of things and honestly that was really a disappointment particularly for a game which has a lot of focus on “light and darkness” and the answer to that is literally streetlights in the forest ok whatever

last but not least the gameplay is pretty fun . for 5 minutes before you realise all you're gonna do is get from point A to point B doing this sequence of actions: shine light on enemies -> shoot at them and OPTIONALLY try to not get killed by phantom pieces of trains or construction machines or lintels rinse and repeat sometimes the game is gonna introduct new stuff like weapons or new ways of shining lights like a bigger flashlight or unmovable spotlights but apart from that this is what you're gonna do the entire game and all that while you run through woods until a cutscene or a mob of enemies tries to kill you while saying shit like “I love McDonald's burgers but they're not healthy” literally I'm not joking here

when the gameplay and art direction are not hitting and not even the narrative gets as gripping as you want it to youre left with a mid experience and I'm pretty sad because I remembered seeing this game around on youtube when I was younger and thinking it was absolutely groundbreaking but experiencing it again after all this years maybe I set my bar too high and was left empty ended

still !!! didn't hate it please fans don't kill me also the interlude songs are definitive bops

From what I can tell, next to nobody agrees with me on this, but I think this game is kind of a disaster.

As a big MAX PAYNE guy and a fan of horror games, I snapped this up when it came out and played through it dutifully. In the end, I was left pretty cold by it, and over the next decade I’ve constantly thought about doing a revisit because I’ve always felt like I must have missed something. Well, thanks to the remaster, I finally got around to it, and I think that what I missed is that it just plain sucks. This run through was actively painful, and for close to the entire time, I wished I was doing anything else.

- First and foremost, I capital-h hate the combat. Hate it. After being so famously empowered by Remedy in MAX PAYNE, this game's thrilling new mechanic of having to fill out a fucking application in triplicate to ask each enemy individually if, oh please sir, may I shoot you now? feels like absolute shit. The dodge is the jankiest thing ever. Having no reticle sucks ass. The enemies taking the same amount of damage from every bullet every time makes shooting feel like homework. The overall combat design makes every encounter feel math-based, resource-based. You spend X bullets and Y items because there are Z amount of enemies. You can make some savings by exploiting the environment if you look around. Maybe that’s a deliberate choice and maybe that’s fun for people, but I like shooters to be spontaneous and surprising – I like reacting in the moment. This very much feels like the opposite of that. I Hate it.

- Moving, running, jumping – all feel like crap. Wake drives like a boat. And the camera is placed terribly.

- The enemies are bad. You’ve got a less-interesting, less-scary version of the DEADLY PREMONITION zombies, and that’s it. Seriously. Don’t talk to me about bear traps or goo puddles or flying ‘poltergeist’ physics objects or fucking BIRDS because, wow, that stuff is embarrassing. Literally make a second enemy type.

- The story is stupid, and very badly told. Hey, what if Stephen King went to Twin Peaks? (It would suck, is the answer.) I hate to be reductive and bring up those two points of reference that are quoted so, so much when it comes to this game (and so many others) but the narrative really is just those two things, and the most clumsy, unadorned, surface-level takes on them, combined to make something incredibly boring and unoriginal. From that instantly tiresome starting point (and I do mean ‘starting point’ - the words “Stephen King” are, incredibly, the first things spoken in this game) we have the sloppiest patchwork of levels and cutscenes stitched together that don’t dare slow down for a single second to analyze any particular point or let any moment breathe lest it become abundantly clear how little any single aspect OR the greater whole make sense. At times you might think they’re going for a SILENT HILL/Jacob’s Ladder type dream logic thing where there are levels of reality and individual scenes don’t necessarily connect in a logical way, but they’re not! It’s supposed to fit together and make sense! And God, it gets so King/Mike Flanagan dopey at the end (with a stunningly dumb finale), which is appropriate I guess, but still not good!

- It’s never scary, not once. Not even close, not even close to close. Not even the jumpscares. It is heroically, subversively unscary. Both MAX PAYNES are scarier, easily. Which is part of why this is so disappointing! I thought that Remedy would have had a great horror game in them.

- The woods are soooooooo fuuuckiiiiing borrrriinnnnggggg oh my goddddddddddddd

- The pacing is apocalyptically bad. Every chapter and the game in total feel impossibly, crushingly long. They deploy appropriate and fairly well-done TV show-style “Previously on Alan Wake …” interstitials, but hey guys, guess what? Episodes of Twin Peaks weren’t two and a half hours long.

- The game’s only, only move to shake things up is to take all your guns and power-ups away. It happens multiple times per chapter and has the most hilarious of justifications in the story (or just none at all, sometimes). You have to re-upgrade your flashlight and find a new revolver, like, literally ten times apiece. It feels. Like SHIT.

Are there positives? Sure, a couple. The collectible manuscript pages are a great idea and help flesh out supporting characters and unseen events in a cool, in-universe way that the main narrative definitely doesn’t have the time or confidence for. They are still by their nature the opposite of “show-don’t-tell”, but I’ll take it. What else … uh … James “Voice of Max Payne” McCaffrey shows up in a brief role and is great, but that mostly just makes me want to play MAX PAYNE 3 again. And then there’s … um …

Anyway, this has been good for me. I feel like I’m finally getting closure on this. I finally understand my relationship with this game: I really don’t like it, and I find it super disappointing! And yet a big part of me is still excited about a sequel because in my mind, this game should have been a slam dunk and I feel like Remedy can still get a horror game right. I’m pulling for them! But this sucks, man.