there's something so interesting about games like these. a great doom-like shooter relies on 2d illusions of 3d spaces, an informative hud, and enemy sprites with convincing movement patterns and damage feedback to keep you immersed in a facsimile of a killing spree in whatever fictional space. in playing this less-than-great-pretty-terrible-honestly early clone i become hyper aware of things like how my characters hands and weapons are just an image superimposed over the actual game world and not a real thing inside of it, or how enemies are just pngs that play certain animations and tick down an invisible number when i click on them. i'm not firing a gun, i'm interacting with rickety dos code constructions. fascinating shit.

also, this game was used to train special forces in the u.s.

v weird and jarring seeing this game actively fight against itself every minute of its playtime. it’s trying to appeal to fans of action games of the early 2010s while also trying to make sure classic sh (silent hill AND survival horror) fans still fuck w it. third person standard fare controllable camera that occasionally switched to fixed camera angles + classic sh item pick up noise that sounds strange coming from this game. and that works well enough for me tbh. can’t lie I did play the majority of this w v low audio on bc what I did gleam from the story was insanely boring not to mention its depictions of black/hispanic/native american peoples is like uhhh iffy and stereotypical. so I didn’t bother w the side quests bc why are there side quests in a survivalhorror game + if that’s the writing they’re leading w and isn’t optional I can’t imagine the writing for the optional side quests is at all good. rlly rlly cool and beautiful and very creative set pieces and how the game fucks w ur perspective idk I rlly do like this game visually.

idk good silent hill is like a rlly good horror movie and downpour is like a fun but shoddily/hurriedly made haunted house. it’s a vague impression and idea of sh and that’s good enough w me lol idk though ill prob rlly like the sh2 remake so yknow w/e

why did I spend sixty dollars on a kind of mid ancient game that sat below my tv for like six months

81 HOURS
FOR 8 BADGES
i have a problem.

pokemon heartgold aka Professional Little Guy Simulator 14 is my first ever pokemon game. it has reignited a dangerous level of autism for these creatures that i have not had in almost a decade. it is also a deeply flawed title containing a confusing level curve, unsatisfying grinds, a soundtrack that's trying a little too hard (less is more!) and a consistently poor story. and yet the sense of adventure and the kinship i feel with my mons is inexplicable! i now understand why people have endlessly yapped around gen 2. the art direction was unrivaled and there's enough mons to make infinite parties full of adorable fellows, but not so many that i'd find it overwhelming. and it's so cool to see this gen given new life on more powerful hardware. there's a real lackadaisical energy to this game that i love.

my next game will be pokemon crystal. i think the side content in heartgold was kind of unnecessary/bloaty and the soundtrack was worse (route 47 aside...). still an all around good experience, and a strangely emotional one at that. my Honest rating is a 3/5 but i gotta give my boy feraligatr the love he deserves for sticking with me all the way through.

final party: ho-oh, feraligatr, miltank, entei, dragonite, vaporeon. perfect party <3

feels like i played this alongside my six year old self. we did it lil' buddy, we finally beat the one game we had no chance in hell of finishing without a gamecube memory card

as with sa1, there's really no point in arguing about this series since the detractors have long made up their shitty minds. sa2's an interesting beast though because it manages to excel just as much as its predecessor... in very different ways!

the speed stages are great, albeit nothing like sa1's. maybe you prefer these more linearly driven, setpiece-focused levels, but i might be partial to having a spindash that can blaze me across entire courses in a matter of seconds. i like going places i shouldn't and being rewarded for it. there's some of that here, but it's not nearly the same. that said, there's no city escape or final rush in sa1 so we'll call it a draw

treasure hunting is improved tenfold. i definitely prefer the newly limited radar system (it makes finding shards early super satisfying) and the overall increased difficulty. especially after knuckles' previous story was an absolute cakewalk. rouge is basically knuckles on hard mode and i generally prefer her side more for that. love her music too, though i wish it was more lyrically driven to better contrast knuckles

shooting's a more mixed bag. tails reps one of the best stages but also most of the worst. eggman on the other hand for the most part lives up to gamma's gameplay well enough - especially once he gets his booster. there's def a sense of flow to these that i feel a solid chunk of people don't give deserved credit because they just wanna go fast and grind rails

...which is a sentiment i don't completely identify with because i feel sa2 is more than the sum of its parts. the narrative is genuinely great and actively shifts moods and gameplay styles accordingly. you're always listening to a banger, you're never on the same sort of stage for more than a few minutes at a time - and you're always pushing closer to one of the greatest fuckin' finales you'll ever find in video games. the quality of direction really skyrocketed here. the last episode's preview alone completely solos every single scene in sa1

one strange oddity though: there's a surprising lack of shadow gameplay here. maybe the devs weren't so confident in him as a newcomer and didn't expect him to be such a hit?

if they knew what was good for them, sonic team would've just made a whole ass game where you play as shadow the hedgehog...

EDIT: after careful deliberation (replaying the shit out of everything) i've decided that i have 0 significant issues with this game. i'm not even standing by what i said about the speed stages before. they're all fuckin' fantastic and i think i might actually prefer these to sa1's (granted i need to spend some more time with that game too for confirmation)

on top of all of what i've said - i've still barely scratched the surface of the chao world content and that on its own is pretty impressive for being in an already tightly-packed game to begin with. how the fuck did this get made in two years?

i also learned last night via the extra video that city escape was inspired by sonic team constantly receiving parking tickets while living in san francisco. that's worthy of some merit on its own

and maybe this is cheating to mention since it's largely battle rerelease content, but i don't care: the multiplayer is some of the most fun i've ever had with a 2-player game

you know what - fuck it, 10/10

EDIT 2: got all 180 emblems. basically a perfect game

--spooky mormon hell dream :-)
-bright falls is a town that hasn’t changed in the thirteen years since the original alan wake. being in the town again for the first time in this game it’s often times shocking and impressive how your mind is called back to the original game. everything looks the same just with the town sinking further into disrepair but with the citizens pretending everything is still fine. there’s countless towns across america where nothing ever changes, where everything just gets worse. bright falls has taken on a very common sort of traditionalism and patriotism in 2023, it makes sense that the police force are wary of saga and casey, it makes sense that the first ppl detained as suspects are a black couple. it is a town that is afraid of both outsiders and change bc they’re one and the same, bright falls is a microcosm of american bigotry, a specific kind of rural small town bigotry.
-finally finished devil house by john darnielle this year and absolutely adored it and especially its critiques on the true crime community. alan wake 2 is obviously not as focused in on critiquing true crime as a form of entertainment as devil house but regardless it still is. it’s hard to do a story about everything that happens here without pointing inwardly about what it means. you are in a way being reprimanded for enjoying the blood and the gore and the death and the suffering. as are alan and saga. alan enjoys being a writer and continuously does exploit the suffering of real world people and families and using them in his stories. saga enjoys being a detective and seeing the worst of what america has to offer, she even says at a point that she enjoys everything her job entails more or less regardless of the real life consequences of it for other people. there’s a sort of weird and giddy glee in the way she talks when investigating a crime scene
-rlly like more or less everything the game is saying in a sociopolitical way,, however idk I find myself kind of conflicted w the repeated usage of the phrase monster and victim. alan repeatedly makes use of this term to describe an ending fitting of the genre, he’s obviously the monster, more specifically his greed, ego, self interest and ambition are, and it could definitely be viewed that everyone he comes in contact w is a victim in some way. but if it’s saying that saga is THE victim idk I find that a bit weird given how much of her character is her actively going against the narrative society and alan have written for her
-I rlly love that remedy now fully understands how truly awful alan is, that he knowingly writes in real life people and families into stories to serve his own self interest. he is irredeemable no matter how hard he tries to redeem himself and make up for his past actions, that’s the loop.
-love seeing remedy finally having the tech and talent to fully accomplish a vision w seemingly no compromises. this feels like 20+ years in the medium have brought them to this. i don’t even mean in how it’s all connected to prev. titles but more so how every remedy game is built upon each other
-the first game was such a solitary lonely affair, it was rlly just alan by himself for the entirety of the game. this however is so full of like v lively and well designed characters and that makes sense given how much of the story is about connection and family and learning to like be an open person who can rely on others when need be. bright falls is designed like scary northwest version of shenmue which is v cool,, loved wandering around after each chapter and seeing how the town changed and how ppl reacted to the changes
-love the characters of rose, cynthia and alice and how the writing is at least cleverly enough subverting the idea of histrionic depressed scorned women. love their relationships w wake and zane and how we only view the female characters in this like that bc at first we don’t have the full scope of what happened in their relationships w these men. how wake and company more or less haunted them and drove them to these points and it’s smth the first alan wake never even dared to talk about, smth that most games wouldn’t ever try to broach. rose looks a lot like rosamund pike that’s cute :3
-think i <3 this for the same reasons i love nope,, like the movie nope. both are some of the strongest indictments against artists and the pursuit of art that ive ever seen. they both definitely kind of stumble into that concept while trying to be about the importance of art/pursuit of artistic ambition etc. idk seeing jordan peele say nope is about the joy of making movies is kind of crazy given that my read of it was v much so about how greed and ego killed an entire artform that being of like cinema in the seventies. and idk aw2 is def trying to be about how art connects us all no matter our differences but idk that’s a little bit hard to see where they’re coming from given the fact that everyone is in this situation bc of the greed and ego of men in pursuit of artistic importance.
-there’s like this bones/suicideboys sounding song in here and i think it’s one of the worst things ive ever heard lol
-lots of cool stuff involving alice and her work as an artist and filmmaker. alan’s sins and past failures as a man and a husband literally projected back onto him through the only way he’s capable of understanding.
-I love how sam lake and co approach stories and storytelling,, making smth pretty unique to this medium by pulling on a bunch of disparate threads and loose connections and inspirations and homages from other mediums. there’s stuff in here from bret easton ellis books and aki kaurismaki films, clear lines of influence drawn from prestige police shows like hannibal and sharp objects and true detective, visual homages to like the watchmen comics. it’s cool to pick up on these influences and see where they lead and how they differ from the original source. it would not surprise me at all if lake saw the 2011 movie twixt,, card carrying twixt fanclub member headass
-I don’t think the ending totally nails it,, lots of hokey monologues and needless exposition, mfs vagueposting like crazy in that final chapter. im sure most of my issues w it will be totally nullified once the dlc chapters come out + i have more time to sit w it.
-friend of the devil is a friend of mine if I get home before daylight i might just get some sleep tonite ;-)