What a beautiful and thoughtfully curated environment to try to enjoy as you wade through one of the most boring video game stories you will ever experience.

Don't worry though, there was still absolutely zero improvement to the parkour so going from point A to point B to listen to shit writing will still feel just about as fun as getting a colonoscopy.

I don't know who the hell they are making these games for but it sure aint me.

Off-Peak represents the art and value of Collage, a mode of expression that values the substance of what someone is saying vs the means by which they are saying it.

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There is, probably, no way around it: in any other situation Off-Peak could be called an asset flip. As a casual observer its hard to explicitly verify every single assets origins but its clear almost all the images are from real life things - most notably the Cyrk posters, originating for the real “circus poster” movement that happened in the Polish art scene post 1960 (or something like that). There are brewery company billboards, clips of graffiti and street art, real sheet music of classic stuff (or so Ive seen it be claims), quite possibly just straight up illustrations used as wall art, and even besides that I doubt Cosmo D modeled all the people, mushrooms, fish, animals, trains, whatever. I would be prudent to assume Cosmo D made very little here.

And I sort of dont care, at least not in this case.

The key element I think, is that Cosmo D isnt trying to plagiarize these things, youre not made to believe that these are original creations. No, to me the goal is to present culture. Interests. Off-Peak isnt trying to get you to think it invented a beer called “Falco” by Eviltwin Brewing, its trying to get you to think something like Falco would be advertised at a place like Off-Peaks station.

Certainly this could still be infringing - but you know what? I think art should be a lil infringing sometimes. Omelets and eggs and all that. Collage has always been a bit controversial but there is merit and value in curation, where someone weeds through an ocean of possibilities and narrows it down to a collection of meaningful instances, something finite that you can connect with and understand. Something you can wrap your head around - and sometimes something that can present new connections you might not have considered before.

To me this is where all of Off-Peaks personality comes from. The juxtaposition. The framing. The impression, the atmosphere it ecks out. Train stations where lap steel players get tickets to exotic places by tycoon directors that seek to turn places of transportation into commerce and connoisseurship. Cities partially submerged in water like a new age Venice, where things like the circus are enterprising and eccentric art collectives.

I draw alot of energy from the experimental-ness of it all, and as an amateur effort I find it impressive that its half as entertaining and engaging and thoughtful as it is.

Like, heres my thought: if every asset flip was this cool, I could only imagine the amount of art that we would be creating when these people got their hands on some budget.

Amazing graphics, storytelling, and visual arts/presentation. Big fan of everything Remedy puts out so this is one of only 2 games I bought at release in 2023 (other was Tears of the Kingdom).

This should've been an easy 5 star, but the combat being clunkier than the first game and enemies randomly soaking up 20 shots it just became frustrating. I even had to bump the difficulty down to easy just to experience that sweet, sweet story and was still dying! WTF Remedy. Control and this game have difficulty spikes that no one is asking for.

I played American Nightmare after this game and god the combat in that one feels glorious in comparison.

Regardless as a Remedy fan boy I will replay New Game+ and look forward to the DLCs. If no one has played a Remedy game before I'd probably still recommend Control over this.