He might just be the greatest Dave to ever do it. Dave the Diver is a game that succeeds in blending a very fun sea diving adventure with a cool restaurant simulator that, for better or worse, is constantly trying to expand on itself.

The gameplay mainly revolves around diving into the vast sea and gathering materials and ingredients during the day, and then using what you acquired to create dishes for your sushi bar which you operate during the night. This day/night loop hooked me from the very beginning and it stayed that way for a good chunk of my playtime. Exploring the ocean and discovering/catching all the aquatic life was very fun and you're given a lot of tools and upgrades to work with. The restaurant management section of the game starts out very slow but quickly picks up once you start building up your rating and more things are opened up to you. I honestly ended up enjoying it more than the diving section by the time I was done with the main story.

Speaking of the story, I ended up really liking that as well. It's silly, endearing, and pretty well-paced for the most part. I think what really makes it shine though are the characters. The main cast is really cool and each of them have their own little quirks that make them stand out. The way they interact with Dave, whether helping him out in some way or just simple banter, is really nice. I ended up liking a lot of these characters more than I originally assumed I would. Trust me when I tell you Bancho is the coolest character in the game.

The game is also really good-looking. The 2D-pixel art is really appealing to look at and the cutscenes are really over the top in the best way possible, they fit each character perfectly, and I rarely ever skipped them.

Remember when I said this game constantly tries to expand on itself for better or worse? Yeah, that's my main issue with it. This game constantly introduces new mechanics, features, minigames, etc.(especially in the 2nd half) in what I assume is to try to keep the gameplay loop fresh. While some of the things they introduced are nice, how they went about it and the sheer amount of stuff brought in is almost overwhelming. By the end of the game, a lot of it just felt like I was just doing busy work. Getting overloaded with a constant flow of new information...now I know how Jogo felt.

Despite the issues, I really enjoyed my time with Dave the Diver and I do recommend it. Not sure if I would call it a "cozy" game like a lot of other people do tho.

I never thought starting this year that by the end of April I would have finally played all 4 of the original classic Phantasy Star games. They have been on my bucket list for years and the experience has been a mixture of surprises and Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium is no exception.

To start with I really want to get this out the way that this game is by far the best of the 4 games. It takes all the good parts of Phantasy Star II and builds on them in all the right aspects while still linking the story of every game in the series together. It really feels like it ties the plot up for all of them while still being able to play it on it's own. It's an incredibly well made experience with a couple of aspects that really stood out in particular.

Story wise the game takes place 1000 years before Phantasy Star III and 1000 years after Phantasy Star II which in turn was 1000 years after Phantasy Star I. We are once again in the Algol star system following mercenary hunters Alys Brangwin and her apprentice Chaz Ashley on planet Motavia. They have been hired to take care of some monsters that lead them on a steadily longer world saving adventure than they could have anticipated. The writing and story of Phantasy Star IV is a massive increase in quality over it's predecessors with full comic like panel cutscenes, genuinely funny jokes, facial expressions and stand out personalities making the story moments actually a delight rather than simply a cardboard set of instructions for the next location. This was such a pleasant realisation within less than 10 minutes of starting that this was going to be a much different experience than I initially thought.

The game moves at a fast pace generally and while certainly not linear I would say it seems very focused so it's quite clear in most cases where to go but still plenty of space for side exploring and without being super grindy. The combat is still turn based and the dungeons are third person. The most interesting thing about the combat is how kind of insanely ahead of it's time it feels. Though it has the basics of the genre in that you can attack, use magic and items it also lets you can set up macros from a list prior to fights. These serve as pre selected moves for your whole party for that turn. For example I had 'macro A' set up as my opening gambit to cast buffs for defence, attack, speed up and a strong attack spell so I didn't have to manually select them each time with 'macro B' as all attack, C as spells etc. Certain combinations of spells or skills would also unlock extremely strong special attacks like a combo though you would have to experiment or look them up to know what they are and set them off in the right turn order uninterrupted.

Another stand out feature I didn't expect is the game also has a hunt system at the guild so at this point I am really feeling like Final Fantasy XII took the gambit system, hunt system and Star Wars influences entirely from Phantasy Star IV... It's obviously more limited here to only a dozen or so and are essentially side quests you (sometimes) get rewards for but with the improved dialogue, characters and towns it all comes together to make the game and world feel very alive for a title in this era.

Visually it's colourful and crisp and the aforementioned anime scenes are fantastic. I love the art style and designs that Phantasy Star II really solidified for the series. I've generally enjoyed all the music in the games so far but like everything it feels like Phantasy Star IV just cranks it up to eleven with every track creating this crunchy electronic bass the megadrive was so good at. There is even a great Phantasy Star 1 remix as part of the OST.

Honestly I really loved Phantasy Star IV and it is easily in my top games to recommend for the megadrive for it's pacing, production values, compact design and scenes but there is one thing that does hold it back from a five star award from me. It goes through party members at such an insane pace it's a bit strange with characters constantly coming and going sometimes within the space of a dungeon or two. They were often the ones I liked most leaving me consistently with Chaz who, and let's be polite to him, is an unlikeable idiot. It is however only a small nit-pick really in an otherwise fantastic RPG I would recommend.

+ Anime scenes and dialogue make the game feel slick with personality.
+ Macros are such a great feature for setting up combat instructions in a seamless way.
+ Music is fire.

- Going through party members like disposable cutlery with the story pacing.

Great art direction. Interesting character design, a nice cel shading style and overall beautiful aesthetics.
The gameplay is a little formulaic, basically fighting until the rage bar fills up, pressing R2 and watching something cool. But it's something really REALLY cool, very exaggerated and over the top, I played the whole time with a smile on my face. The music is really cool and really highlights the emotion of the moment.
It has a lot of QTE but I haven't found one that gives instant death when missed. Either you take a little damage or you get a slightly lower ranking at the end of the mission.

The game has 18 missions, 6 for each arc. The last one has an extra scene when completing 5 missions with S-ranked or completing 50 missions on any difficulty. I had 2 when I finished the game, so I went back and did the first 3 missions again and got the requirements. I did the mission again and saw the scene, which ends with a fucking cliffhanger.

Capcom in its darkest period put the true ending through DLC. The arc is called Nirvana and has 4 missions, I would say "Nevermind" but it's the best part of the game. I couldn't put the game down until I saw the end and I'm satisfied.
Another DLC is a crossover with Street Fighter 4. One fight against Ryu and another against Akuma. One round like a tradicional fighting game and another like the rest. I defeated Akuma the first time Oni mid tier was no work, but against Ryu that came first gave me a lot of trouble.

The worst part for me was the performance, at times the frame rate dropped a lot and the input lag is so much that I had to advance the time in almost a second to get the perfect QTE. There is no way to calibrate this like in Guitar Hero.

Even with some problems, I really liked it. It's the best Berserk game to date. I imagine Guts rubbing Griffith's face against the walls of Falconia like that. Too bad we'll never see it.
I miss Kentaro Miura. =(

It's surprising to me that this really quite excellent cyberpunk-noir title sold so poorly outside of Japan, but I think there were two factors behind this: its potent cocktail of gore, violence, and mature themes significantly reduced the demographic of gamers who would buy it, and it seemingly is one of the first (if not the first) visual novels to be released outside of Japan, into a playerbase that is more accustomed to point-and-click adventure games.

In a way, my initial experience with this game probably mirrored that of the West in general - this might be my first visual novel, and I was baffled at first by the linearity, the lack of difficulty, and the lack of... gameplay, really. But I warmed up to it quickly enough - the genre's laserlike focus on telling a story made the experience like reading a book but with extra interactivity, and the ability to take things at my own pace. Gillian Seed, who was investigating the menace of the Snatchers (humanoid robots who kill people and take their place), could either be played as a no-nonsense straight-laced agent, or a talented goof-off who flirts with anything that moves and drinks booze on the government's dime, or anything in-between. With each new area and next stage of the investigation, I could either rush through with urgency or spend time interacting with everything and soaking up the impressive tapestry of lore, and I enjoyed the freedom that this genre afforded me. And, of course, Hideo Kojima being Hideo Kojima, the game made very clever use of the medium to pull of some clever tricks that books can't; in a very early example of this, your companion hears a faint noise and rather than outright telling you what it is, prompts you to turn the volume up so you can hear it yourself.

Of course, an interactive book is only any good if the story itself is good, and Snatcher definitely delivers on that! A lot of the plot elements seem derivative, especially today, but that doesn't take away from how well-crafted the world is, how cool some of the plot twists are, and how this story about synthetic life forms replacing people contains a heart and humanity that I associate with Kojima's best works. The pacing and storytelling is generally good too, though it suffers slightly from a need to over-recap key plot points, and several jumpscares or genuinely tense moments lose some of that thrill due to being overly-telegraphed.

This is an easy recommend to anyone - a patchwork of cinematic influences and inspirations that contains the seeds of Kojima's later work, easy enough to play to completion, both streamlined and compelling enough to never wear out its welcome.

fun little time waster, but not that deep of a game even for atari standards. It's basically a physics simulator where you have to calculate the right speed and angle to set your cannon so mr cannonball can land in his safety bucket instead of splattering against the floor. There's a mode where the speed is randomly set and you have to set the angle to compensate, a mode that's the same thing except the cannon is farther away, a mode where you can set the speed AND angle but the position of the cannon is randomized (yet you can move the safety bucket for some reason so it's really more like catch), and a mode where the speed and angle are randomly set but you can move the position of the cannon (and again the bucket). There's also variations of each of those four gamemodes to include a giant forcefield with a rotating gap around the bucket so you have to time your shot properly as well as aiming it, but I felt that it really didn't add much besides making the game more burdensome since this is way more of a thinking mans game than anything so proper timing feels unnecessary. Regardless, in any gamemode you have 13 shots and if you get seven buckets you win whereas seven cannonball corpses is a loss. Nothing really more to it. I can imagine this game was probably a fun programming experiment and there's gotta at least be ONE math nerd out there that really got into doing cracked human cannonball trickshots in order to impress the ladies, but for me this game is just okay.

Killer on Debt

Suda51's Killer is Dead was one of the many titles produced during the "Dark Era" of Grasshopper Manufactured as a developer since they're not publishers themselves. The 7th gen on consoles and the craze of action games, no matter the type was an age to learn the in and outs of the market. Say; your Bayonnetas, Devil May Cries, your Metal Gear Revengeances and even No More Heroes, something more close to home. Each one adding their own flair and substance beyond just connecting combos; the story, characters, dialogue, style, music and the overall presentation helps a lot of these titles stand on their own in top of being Hack and Slash games.

What doesn't suit me much with Killer is Dead is the overall package itself. The consistency in a game is key, maintaining a structure that can last is hard. Specially when we're talking about videogames. Killer is Dead greatest sin is that it can't mantain it at all, and when it does is you start to notice that something is missing. This leads me to believe that: Development time was tight and not enough, it was too ambitious and due to a lack of funding a lot of stuff had to be cut or simple inexperience led to a subpart product.

Takes some light inspiration from No More Heroes combat, combined with a simple yet fun upgrade system and killer7 signature cell-shading style and even the word "killer" slapped on the title. The combat is really fun albeit braindead easy and can get really repetitive on longer sections that require you to fight endless hordes of faceless enemies. It emphazises a "counter and strike" playstyle towards the normal enemies and being agressive towards some bosses; either dodge or parry their attacks to squeeze more juice out of the combat. When it comes to style, Killer is Dead is one hell of a looker, we don't see many games if any with the style that originated in killer7 emphasizing the crude and raw colors over the scenery, specially the blacks disguised as overly thick shadows. Killer is Dead has some of that, but it failed to secure a peaceful cohesion with all of the visual flare it has to offer. It is very close but they might have gone overboard with the motion blur and glow in general? While killer7 remained mostly calm and gave you enough time to analyze the scenery in your head without any intrusive post-processing effect while on gameplay. It is distracting in Killer is Dead if we compare it directly to killer7, it unecessarily stains an already clean image and thus ruining some of the merit it might had towards the future at least for me.

This time we the take control of "Mondo Zappa" and no it's not Sumio Mondo's lost cousin or anything just because they share that word. "Mondo" means "World" in Italian and my guess is because both characters travel around the world very often due to their jobs. Zappa works under an agency sustained by taxes, which means they work for the goverment, and their main goal is to execute whoever the client at hand is asking. Each chapter is treated as missions or levels which can be selected on a world map alongside sitting with some side-content in top of it alá No More Heroes 2. "Giggolo" as they're called are basically side-missions were we need...to enchant women with gifts? The whole ordeal is unnecessary, used as an excuse to give us new gadgets to make combat/exploration easier. It might be one of the many corporate meddling decisions that Grasshopper wered force to include because it really feels out of place and not something even a teenager would like. Lame.

Back to the story itself. It is known by most people that Suda51 makes games for a specific type of audience, they're not for everybody and that is perfectly okay. The weird and outlandish style can both attract and discourage people to try these games. Most Suda51's work tend to be chaotic on the surface, but subtle on the inside; Killer is Dead is vague and tries to tell it's whole narrative in that style. You see, killer7 worked because it has a fundation to stand on and the details of the story while vague were presented correctly as it had a lot to tell and was complex even for it's time. Killer is Dead narrative is quite simple but burried under layers and layers of vague dialogue and shiny visuals that end up confusing more than answering the questions themselves. That is why Killer is Dead fails for the most part and it is why I feel indifferent towards it.

Killer is Dead is worse that the sum of it's part. On one side it is a good and stylish action game, on the other side the music and the story are quite underwhealing and doesn't do much to shine on it's own so I barely had any reason to go forward outside just wanting to finish it. Play it if you're in the mood but don't feel forced to do so, it's 2$ on Steam on most sales.

This is yet another Kirby game I had yet to play prior to this Kirbyathon. I was honestly feeling a 6 most of the time I was playing, and was thinking this is the best Kirby spin-off thus far (after Dream Course). Then the endgame happened.

Let's start with the positives first though. This is basically Kirby breakout and it's generally pretty fun. You break blocks by bouncing Kirby against the paddles, typical breakout basically. The twist here, besides being Kirby themed ofc, is 4 of Kirby's staple copy abilities are in the game and used as power-ups. Stone let's you destroy anything directly below you, burn anything directly above you, needle stops you in place briefly and let's you cling back onto a bumper and aim again and spark bounces you sporadically destroying any block in your path more effectively. This was probably the coolest part of the game. Like Dream Course, the copy abilities are implemented super well into the actual gameplay.

Each level also has a boss at the end, like Pinball Land, but unlike that game I was actually able to beat (almost) all of them this time around. They can be pretty fun but watch out you don't get thrown into the spikes. Luckily in the stage prior to the boss, you can get a sneak-peak at what the boss will be as well as the opportunity to get safety blocks that cover the spikes in the boss stage.

The OST was alright, I saw some reviews saying it was really good but I can't say any of the songs stood out imo.

Now for the endgame, the later stages can be quite annoying with their block placement and the use of 4 bumpers around the screen. The 10th stage, I even decided to save state past that first section cuz it was just so obnoxious. The hit detection on the bumpers can be wonky, which I can't discredit the game too much since it's still a Gameboy game, however it still led to some frustration in the endgame. That plus you can't even play the final level and get the true ending without getting a certain score threshold in each stage. I did this only once in stage 9, and it was by complete accident. I tried to beat the required score a couple of times in stage 1, but I think there's also a secret time requirement (from one of the reviews I read on here) and with how random the game can be with being able to hit blocks in time, yeah no thanks. I know they did this, so it would make you replay the game a bunch, however it's still a bummer.

Overall, it's a decent little game however the true ending being locked to a somewhat frustrating 100% and the endgame levels being kinda frustrating brings it down a bit. It's a fun little time waster, and definitely better than Pinball Land. And yeah, this is yet another game I technically wasn't able to beat due to the 100% requirement. At least I beat every other stage in the game otherwise.

This game is pretty much one big homage to the tabletop games that inspired so much of the medium, and while I'm not a big tabletop player myself (i don't have a group of tableplayers to dungeon and/or dragon with, nor do I have the spare time to be doing long campaigns), I definitely see the vision this game goes for. It basically strips the RPG to its absolute bare essence. Cutscenes are told mostly through text over still images, there's pretty much zero animation in the game as every character is a still figure model, there's no level-based stat progression as equipment and skills are your tools to survive enemy encounters, and there are plenty of dice to be rolled for checks. While the overall presentation of everything can certainly feel a bit dry at points, the writing absolutely steals the show. I haven't played any of Yasumi Matsuno's other work, but if the writing in those is as raw as it is here you can consider me very interested to try them out. The cutscenes did a really good job at allowing my mind to fill in the blanks created by the limited visual presentation, and I did enjoy each of the party members even if I still do not know how to properly pronounce "Giauque". Only downsides this game has is there's a random dumb item grind smack dab in the middle of the game that's just doing the same battle over and over in hopes that a progress item gets dropped and that the game kinda has a short length that makes it feel over just as the party starts to get enough skills to make battles comfortably interesting. It certainly ain't a game for everyone, but I enjoyed it surprisingly more than I expected.

It’s really a shame that reactions to Stellar Blade are more focused on the fanservice or the coomer reactions. You got one group of people who just focus on the fanservice and hail the game to be the savior of sexualized women in gaming, and then you got the other group who view the game in a negative light because of the first group. And you know what? I can’t even blame them because the first group is really insufferable.

I don't care in the slightest about Stellar Blade having a "sexy" protagonist. I saw a trailer for it once and was immediately interested, because of how fun and unique it looked.

But coomers saw the female Protagonist’s butt and were obnoxious about it ever since. Like come on, it’s bottom of the barrel fanservice you’re going all crazy for. Literally everything I've seen about this game online is people with underaged anime character avatars cream their pants over how this game is "destroying wokeness" or whatever. Nothing against Eve, because she is really pretty and I actually really like her, but she looks like every female character in every korean MMO ever made. It's like people going to war over white bread. Apparently, these guys are now whining about censorship, signing petitions, and making videos of themselves (they look about as you'd expect) about why their cause matters lmao. These pathetic gamerbros will never not be incredibly annoying and cringe to me.

Because Stellar Blade is just so much more. Picture all those apocalyptic gachas and their really great world-building, fantastic atmosphere but really cheap and dull (chibi) gameplay, then amp it up to AAA levels – that's the magic of Stellar Blade.

The environments are beautifully crafted and the atmospheric soundtrack is another aspect I deeply appreciate and thoroughly enjoyed in this game. There's nothing quite like losing yourself in a captivating melody as you journey through vast, lonely landscapes and cities. Just like Nier, Stellar Blade really nailed its soundtrack.

The gameplay is just so much fun and showcases an exceptional level of refinement and polish. Every movement, dodge and parry hit the mark perfectly. The more skills you unlock, the cooler and more fun the combat gets. There's never a dull moment - the gameplay remains consistently exciting and stylish from start to finish.

I found the plot to be really intriguing, and I really enjoyed uncovering plenty of secrets and snippets of lore. But what really surprised me were the sidequests. Sure, some were usual filler content, but most served to make the world feel alive and deepened the lore. Completing them was enjoyable, they never felt like a chore. So good job there.

Oh, and I'm pleasantly surprised by Eve! Initially, I expected her to be the typical "waifu" (ugh, I hate that word), merely there for visual appeal with little personality beyond conforming to generic “anime girl” tropes. Most of these tropes revolve around being “innocent”, "naive" or a "sweet flower girl." But Eve defies those expectations, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Even though Stellar Blade took huge inspiration from Nier and other apocalyptic gacha games, it's still an extremely unique and fun game that everyone should give a chance. Don't listen to the manchildren throwing tantrums or all the buzz about the “fanservice," which is honestly vastly overexaggerated due to some optional skins. Honestly, aside from the optional skins, there are absolutely no horny aspects present in the game.

There are just so many little touches to the point where you can tell the developers really cared about making this game great, and they succeeded. Stellar Blade is simply a beautiful game.

Gameplay is basically non-existent (and through that at least slightly less painful than Drakengard 1 /hj), music is great though the OST lacks in variety. Biggest strength is definitely the design of the cage, which constantly blew me away, despite its simplicity.

But sadly this game consists of more than just walking along those beautiful corridors: it wants to tell a story as well - or at least it tries to, while it often feels like it doesn't REALLY want to. Characters, one of the biggest strengths in previous games, are one-dimensional and mostly disappear into the background aside from their individual weapon stories that make up about half of the game: and they're barely any more interesting than the weapon stories in previous games, just now stretched out over an entire chapter each. Predictable at best, hilarious at worst. The rare good idea is quickly suffocated by the extremely stilted presentation.

The main story of Sun and Moon, the second story arc, was the only part of the game I felt went in actually interesting directions, conceptually. The story between the two siblings still mostly falls flat for me in the end, but telling this story from two, intertwining perspectives was a short glimpse of an interesting idea - something that could've been turned into a proper story for a proper game.

Then the final arc, The People and the World, comes along, with a "power of friendship" main story, carried entirely by tons of lore drops that make all the TRUE NieR fans go "WOOOAH, LORE!!!". Because this IS the real NieR 3 after all - how could you disagree, when it has all this incredibly """important""" lore that answers all these questions? At least, that's the sentiment I've seen online recently, one that might just be the final nail in the coffin towards my alienation from the NieR-community.

Here's the thing: what defines the "importance" of this game within the series? Sure, it answers tons of questions, it confirms so many of the theories I had for almost 10 years… but at some point, I just had to ask myself: "so what?". I was really invested in the lore of this series for the longest time. And now all this buildup for all these grand mysteries lurking in the background, carefully planted over the course of multiple games: it all culminates in the answers being thrown in my face in between the actual plot. All this LORE barely matters to the events of the actual story, much less so to the characters themselves. They just accidently stumble into documents and glorified flashback sequences and go "wow, I have no idea what any of this means", just so players can go "YOOO, THAT'S THE THING FROM DRAKENGARD!!!".

I think at some point many fans of the series have stopped to understand what made Yoko Taro's games so special, and why he handled world building the way he did. Over the years, I've seen more and more people complain about how the lore is "too spread out" across different types of media, and how all of it should've just been in the games themselves instead. But no: those details and backstories weren't originally left out of the games to get on people's nerves and sell more books and manga: you think anyone bought those before Automata became the success that it was? You think this was all planned out as a clever marketing strategy? No, those details were left out because THEY DIDN'T MATTER. The lore was always hinted at, there was always this certain air of intrigue to how big and incomprehensible the DrakeNieR multiverse really is. Instead, the games focused on the characters inhabiting that world - never understanding it fully, much like us.

I always loved crafting theories around the lore because it was this hidden background element: something I had no chance of ever fully grasping. First and foremost, however, I was there for the stories Yoko Taro decided to tell. That becomes all the more obvious, now that we get a game in the series he didn't direct - one he only supervised to make sure it stays accurate to the lore, while an entirely new team of writers came up with the actual, individual character stories.

This is the result: paper thin vignettes drenched in lore. So much new knowledge, yet so little value. I never cared less about what the world of NieR might have left to offer.

From the man who sold the world

This fucking game man. Its such a hodgepodge of so many great things and so many bad things. The gameplay is fantastic and honestly some of the most fun I've had in an open world game I have no gripes against that. Yet the story is such a mess, some of it hidden in cassette tapes and the whole story just gets super unstructured after the 2nd chapter. But I still really like the story and the characters (for the most part). The Man Who Sold The World was such a perfect song choice for this game. I love how that ending just ties together the whole series like a nice bow.

Gotta go fast!

After Sonic Adventure has served as my personal gateway into the series and Sonic Adventure 2 gave me an even better experience, I can proudly call myself a fan of the series now. A fan who only played 3D Sonic. That being said, Sonic Origins opened up a whole new dimension to me: 2D Sonic!

Here's a quick rundown of the zones: Green Hill was surprisingly the least engaging zone for me, but I can appreciate it for how iconic it is and being a good introduction with a timeless theme. I didn't have an issue with Marble Zone's methodical approach for the most part, although some of the random pop-up spikes felt a little cheap. Spring Yard is fine, but gets repetitive after a while. Now, Labyrinth Zone seems to be pretty universally hated, but I didn't find myself having much of an issue with it and thought it was rather refreshing after going through Spring Yard, the underwater sections were cool. Star Light Zone had cool catapults and Scrap Brain was... rather hard compared to the rest of the game - but that makes sense, it's the last level for a reason! The final fight itself though was a bit underwhelming and the ending was cheap.

But in the end, I enjoyed my time with the Blue Blur's debut game, even if most of the level design goes against the whole "gotta go fast" motif, which apparently is a dealbreaker for many. And while 2D Sonic is fun, I'd be lying if I told you I didn't miss the homing attack from Adventure at first.

Alan Wake is a very special game for me. Along with the lesser-known Guns, Gore & Cannoli, it's what got me back into video games in 2020 after five 'wilderness years' where I thought I was done with this hobby. It brought me so much joy in a way that simply doesn't come when you're a habitual player. Far be it from me to claim it works for everyone, but I genuinely believe video games cured my depression, and Alan Wake was the game that started this return.

I could not have chosen a better game to get back into the hobby, because even non-gamers would find a lot to appreciate here. Alan Wake has an intriguing story, beautiful graphics and a kick-ass soundtrack. Also, its gameplay isn't very good. So it fulfills all the requirements for a classic survival horror title.

The first two words spoken in this game are 'Stephen King.' Alan Wake is a love letter to the campy, commercial horror that makes up so much of his work. There are shot-for-shot homages to his film adaptations, and the protagonist directly lampshades his knack for turning innocuous objects into horror stories. And just as with some of Stephen King's favourite heroes, the main character is an author. A tweed-suited author, unshaven and unassuming, who can't run three steps without running out of breath. He seems to be have written a story that is coming true, word for word. This gives us such brilliantly meta passages as, "He took out his hip flask when he reached the page that described how he reached the page that made him take out his hip flask." Sam Lake is a great writer himself.

It was an incredible feeling to explore this game's world, and remember how entertaining video games are - I'd forgotten. The chief gameplay gimmick is illumination - in the light you're safe, in the dark they get you. This makes every unlit spot in the game feel like a threat, and street lamps are safe havens. It's tense, and was even more so when I replayed this game because I accidentally selected Hard difficulty without realizing it. The gameplay isn't going to win any awards, however. Alan sucks at cardio, and for a game that heavily advertises Energizer batteries, all it taught me was that they can't even power a dinky torch for 5 seconds. It's a repetitive game, and vestiges of its scrapped open-world design still shine through in the nigh-pointless driving segments.

Yet it still brought me so much joy. The development team might not have known how to make movement feel good, or the gunplay satisfying, but they definitely knew how to create a moment. Fighting off dark demons with the power of heavy metal, fireworks exploding everywhere, is a memory I will treasure forever. Even the small things - the in-game TV programmes, the NPCs in the loony bin and the thermoses you pick up because Alan's body is 75% black coffee - they made me so happy. This re-ignited a video game addiction that has still to subside 4 years later. So thank you, Remedy, and thank you Sam Lake. Now do the face.