I was one of the people who actually played the original Alan Wake on the 360 not long after it came out.
I had no idea what it was, it was a library rental when I was around 15, and it changed my life. Remedy’s brilliant approach to storytelling and writing, truly unique third person shooting, often unpredictable and equally terrifying. I was who this game was made for.
And they did it, they really did it. Everything: the sound design, the production design, dialogue with NPCs, the detective work, the world bending, the two egregiously detailed semi-open hub worlds, and a mixed media presentation unlike anything seen since Control (but done in an alarmingly more effective way), the acting work, the overall creative direction, the shift to true survival horror, EVERYTHING works.
The more time I’ve spent away from the game, the more I dwell on how special of a piece this game is; the result of a veteran studio who has never ever been afraid to stick to their guns and problem solve over and over and over again.
Play the first Alan Wake, then play the second. They are stories you will never forget.
Alan Wake II was the best game of 2023.

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon feels like a miracle.
A dizzying barrage of missiles, lasers, and scrap metal.
Pulsing rhythms meet vibrant synthesizers, pushing you forward, drowning the fears of a one-man-army. A broken one-man-army, swallowed by debt, forced into the life of an apathetic mercenary, and genetically modified to do just one thing: pilot AC’s. I’d never played an Armored Core game before this, but now?
I’m in it for life.

Armored Core VI takes basically every lesson From Software themselves have learned through ten years away from the franchise, and brings a true to form Armored Core experience to players. It’s not a souls-like, though I’m not sure why people assumed it would be, they woulda just made another one if they wanted to. It’s Armored Core, which means bleak ultra-capitalist commentary experienced from a cold distance, sortie based mission design, world building through role-playing immersion, the works. Missions are usually less than ten minutes, with almost every arena fight taking less than one, at least in my experience, and you’re greeted with a massive variety of missions asking you to accomplish tons of different objectives, many of which involve exploding as many robots as possible. And we’ll get to the action in more detail in a second, but this structure offers players a real sense of role playing that I hadn’t expected.

Being an AC pilot can actually kind of feel like a career: online training modules, form responses from the people you work for, competitive pay to consider, a purposeful disconnect from the people you slaughter and the fact that you’re turning coat the next morning and weakening the folks you just worked for. It’s genuinely compelling stuff if you’re willing to experience it through this very purposeful distance.

I found myself very quickly taking the role, in my physical real world home, of a quiet and surviving mercenary.
Allowing the garage screen to sit open and play chilly ambient music while I sorted through shops, slowly and methodically planned builds, and took smoke breaks between missions.
I quietly made note of the times my handler and others called me a dog; they don’t say it all the time, it’s enough to know they mean it.
You’re an attack dog to them, but you already knew that.
It’s why you’re here, on Rubicon, trying to escape your debts.
The freedom fighters cajole me, “Why fight like a dog for these corporations? You are more than this!”
How would they know? They don’t, can’t.
A desperate plea, and how do I answer?
Gunfire; no choice.

It’s a tense and tantalizing push and pull of what you know you’re doing and the very individual reason for why you’re doing it, often at odds with one another. You hate the corporations too, they put you in this state to begin with, but working for them is the only chance you might get to make it out alive. This is one of Armored Core’s biggest strengths, and I think a ton of people will blow through this game not really recognizing that. I mean I get it, just like the rest of From Soft’s work it’s obtuse and doesn’t explain much and drops you right at the beginning of a potentially world-ending conflict. But if you’re already familiar with this type of storytelling, and are actually willing to see new approaches to narrative in video games, Armored Core VI does an unbelievable job at keeping this illusion intact, and I think you’re going to enjoy it.

Just to be clear, this is hardly the first Armored Core game to do this, in fact the very first one did this to great effect, which is why it’s remained a staple of this series.
It just really works for me man, everything about this world comes together in a way that even when I’m not on missions, I still feel like the low level merc trying to make a name for himself and survive another day.

And as you move farther, and get better, you’re no longer this low level merc. You’re soon taking on the other AC’s you’ve met in the field in the arena, the handlers who you’ve been taking orders from all game. Slowly climbing the internal ranks, one by one, until there’s literally no other mercenary on Rubicon who compares to you, because you’ve destroyed every last one of them. At least virtually, these arena fights are simulated in the lore, but they’re absolutely no joke.
And the game world takes them seriously, ALLMIND, your mercenary AI, begins to almost editorialize the fights as they get harder, and once you’ve climbed all the way up the ranks she thanks you for your dedication and seems almost in awe of your ability.

You and your AC become one, eventually the blur of insane speed, explosions, gunfire, and dense UI all become second nature. You don’t have to check your ammo counts as often, because you’ve internalized the order and timing of the weapons you fire, consistently filling stagger and going direct hit damage. And unlike the Souls series, at least in my experience, this takes so much less time to internalize. Your boosters feel like legs, flying feels like running, and your weaponry becomes your arms. It does that very cool thing called “flow state” where the controller disappears and you don’t have to think about what you want to execute, you just do it.

I could go on for so much longer, (and I will over on my YouTube channel one day soon) but ACVI has a game and production design purity and perfection that I don't think I've seen since beating Persona 5 Royal and Nier: Automata for the first time.

I don't know if it'll be for everyone, but holy shit was it for me.