It's incredible how for me this game was outdone years ago in terms of FPS game play, yet it still holds up very well. It's still got some old game things like 5 million secrets per stage and incredibly varying map quality but when the game shines it's really sick. I will say that I've started this game before but abandoned it, it turns out that when aiming isn't really as important in an FPS it's hard for me to keep playing. But this time I wanted to see it through for the experience and I'm glad I did. But;

WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THE SUPER SHOTGUN IS A DOOM 2 WEAPON? I WAS PLAYING THIS GAME JUST WAITING, PRAYING TO SEE IT AND ONE GOOGLE SEARCH LATER ALL OF THE EXCITEMENT DRAINED FROM MY SOUL.

So I guess I'm gonna play Doom 2. Also, other than the first two maps, Episode 4 was the highlight for me, was lots of fun!

Wow, way more spectacular and grand than I thought it would be. It feels like there's so much to unpack with this game and it actually felt like an improvement to every other Remedy game in some way or another. The combat reminded me of Max Payne, foregoing the powers of course, the use of mixed media in the pursuit of deepening the world reminded me of Quantum Break. But in the end I kept thinking about how much they've improved upon the story telling elements of Alan Wake. Of course they are in a connected universe, but Control stands on it's own as a game with a bigger scale than any other Remedy game before it.

The artstyle genuinely surprised me, the harrowing and often expansive interior of the "Oldest House" often left me just staring at some of the environments. I loved the Brutalist interior and the fact that the bureau was limited to technology from the mid 20th century. This was also the first game where I really embraced Ray Tracing and although I eventually turned it off for more frames (my PC struggled to get more than 60 fps) I definitely spent the first hour or so in awe at the technology.

At first I didn't know how to feel about the combat, but as soon as I got the dash ability and the shatter form, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I've mentioned that it reminded me of Max Payne at times, but most importantly in some combat sequences it reminded me of ULTRAKILL, which is my favorite FPS game. Maybe it was my gun form choices (Shatter & Pierce) and the fact that you heal from killing enemies. The end result? I spent at least 3 hours playing those damn SHUM arcade cabinets because the Crowd Control mode reminded me of the Slayer Gates from Doom Eternal. I will mention that I didn't really find a use for the other gun forms with my playstyle and sometimes the combat encounters when you were just traveling through an area again became annoying but this was the most fun I've had killing things in a Remedy game so far.

The performances, Remedy games are all about performances, and this game has them in spades. I sort of mentioned this in my Max Payne 1 review but I love oh so dearly how every character in these games is a real person. With Alan Wake 1 they took this to the next level by weaving some Live-Action videos into the game, and of course Quantum Break is part TV show. This game takes all of that and spreads them throughout different artistic mediums. The videos left behind by Darling, the Threshold kids, the hotline calls, and of course anytime The Board or the Hiss have something to say. Remedy never fails to make learning more about the worlds within their games interesting enough to have me go out of of my way to find them. I wanna learn what AWE's are, I wanna see the new episode of Night Springs, and I want to find out what's the deal with those creepy ass dolls. Speaking of Darling, Matthew Porretta gives that role his all and even though I never doubted his strength as the english voice actor for Alan Wake, it was nice to see him play a more energetic character. And I can't talk about great performances without talking about the main character herself, Jesse FADENNNN. I enjoyed her character and actually sympathized with her case of imposter syndrome that she doesn't get over until the end of the game. While playing the game I completely forgot that Courtney Hope who plays Jesse in this game also played Beth in Quantum Break and she killed that shit too. Excited to see more of her work in Control 2.

Of course I have criticisms, and they mostly relate to the new systems introduced for this game specifically. The quest system is cool and I did every side quest I could find but the Bureau Alerts and Board Countermeasures literally didn't add anything to the game for me and you have to repeatedly do them to even make the rewards worthwhile. I imagine an alternate universe where Control has a battle pass and you have to do Board Countermeasure weekly challenges to get the level 100 skin. Expeditions were right there next to those two mission types because I genuinely would not have touched them more than one time if I didn't get a new outfit for making it to tier 3. Moving past the missions, the inventory system also just kind of annoyed me for the first part. I would have a ton of fun in a combat encounter and then have to spend like 30 seconds directly after getting rid of Tier 3 junk that the enemies drop on death. Not to mention that even if I wanted to keep mods that I thought I would end up using (I never did), I didn't have enough inventory space! Whether these complaints were the result of a publishing deal with 505 or the devs just trying new things, I would say that they didn't work for me.

I put 32 hours into this one and that's the most amount of time I've put into any singeplayer game in recent memory. Although this game stands well enough on it's own, I'm excited to see how they expand upon the mechanics and world of this game in Control 2. 6 games down and only one left in the "Remedy Rampage", and from what I've heard, Alan Wake 2 is the best thing since sliced bread.

I'm sorry to offend people over the age of 30 but this game is MID. The movement and gun play is fine but HOLY FUCK GIVE ME MORE. I understand this game was built on a really old engine but bro. The music is mid. (cardinal sin for a video game) The title is mid. The art style is mid AT BEST; the environments can look nice but the enemies and weapons ARE MID. The writing is worse than mid, it's just BAD. I understand you're not supposed to take it TOO seriously but I can literally tell this game was written by horny nerds. (a bad thing) And to top all of this off, the latter half of the game is WAY too fucking long and unfocused. So many rooms and routes where I'm like, why does this exist? I actually liked the last boss because I just got to shoot shit and not worry about collecting the third keycard of the stage! Don't think I'll ever play this game again fr.

Might be my favorite out of the Half Life 2 Trilogy. The "tower defense" sections are way more entertaining than they were in Half-Life 2 (f*** those turrets) and just running from the antlion guard brought me more joy than all of Episode 1. (The charged gravity gun is a cool idea but I got bored after 5 minutes) I played this game for the first time in like 2012/13 and a decade later I think they should go to jail for that ending. P.S. Vortal Combat is also in the top 3 songs of the whole HL2 OST.

I can only really describe this game as charming, in almost every aspect.

Art Style: Charming
Music: Charming
Gameplay: Simple and almost archaic but it works for this game, very charming.

But I also believe this believe would not suffer in it's charm factor if there was more DEPTH to the combat which is literally what this game is all about. As it currently stands, I liken many of the melee combat scenarios in this game to two boulders crashing into each other, and with all of the different classes and weapon types I just wish there was more of a felt difference between the combat scenarios.

Regardless the combat works well enough that it doesn't make the game annoying to play or make the game too easy to play.

However I must mention the UX with the inventory, the hotbar , and the dual hand system is in desperate need of a rework because constantly having to open your inventory to move stuff around on your hotbar gets REALLY annoying.

All around very fun with a friend but not sure if this is really a roguelike I would play by myself.

TLDR; Game is stupid long, writing is often really childish, music is great, artstyle is hit or miss, and I wish the gameplay had more depth when you didn't have cards.

Man talk about a conflicting game, because I really want to give this game like a 2 or 2.5 but I don't know if it really deserves all of that.

First of all, I found that this game was WAY TOO LONG for the story they were trying to tell and the last 10 hours or so of gameplay were filled with me really wishing that I was playing something else.

Yes, I think the gameplay can be fun, and the mechanics do help you to feel like a speeding bullet.

The card system is cool, and the way they interact with each other is sick! But whenever I was just running around cardless, I just felt so freaking BORED, and I'm not really sure why. Maybe because you just feel like a box sliding across the floor with no sense of momentum gain or conservation and you don't even get a view model to get a good sense of how fast you're actually moving. This game just turned into me waiting for the next card at every turn possible because the movement without cards just lacked any DEPTH.

I would've LOVED if there were more movement options in the game outside of having a specific card. Because of this, getting an ace medal on every stage is more a matter of knowing what to do and which routes to take rather than mechanical skill or any game knowledge deeper than a kiddie pool, although I'll admit that this is probably just a preference of mine rather than a flaw in the actual game.

As for literally everything else, one time I saw a steam review of this game that called it a "Machine Girl album with a free game" and I thought about it a lot during my playthrough because the music actually did so much heavy lifting for me.

The album by Machine Girl was great and definitely kept me going, even though certain songs would get a little annoying to hear after the 20th run of a level. (The songs would also loop for an entire chapter which DEFINITELY annoyed me near the end of the game)

Although the landscapes can sometimes be beautiful, the writing, and the overall art style of the game tended to be hit or miss for me.

I don't wanna completely discredit the writing of these characters, as in serious moments they tended to have something ACTUALLY interesting to say, but SO MUCH of this game's dialogue felt like it was written by or FOR middle schoolers. And it especially hurt because all those gifts that I spent a good amount of time collecting in the games 100+ levels only increased the amount of middle school DRIVEL that I had to listen to/read.

I will admit that by the end, I did end up caring for most of the Neons we get to meet, but I wish I just didn't have to play through 20 hours of the game to care.

The artstyle often reminded me of webtoon comics and I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

In conclusion, I wouldn't say I regretted playing Neon White but I don't see myself opening this game anytime soon and would've liked to see the game have more depth, both in its writing AND it's movement.

As the first game in my "Remedy Rampage", where I'll be playing through every game Remedy Entertainment has ever made, I think Max Payne was a great start to their catalog. With that being said, just like Half Life 1, I really don't know how I truly feel about this game.

Throughout the game I was constantly reminded of Half Life 1, which is weird because gameplay wise they are nothing alike. Maybe it was how old they are (1998 vs 2001), maybe it was the fact that you can hit E on almost everything for a silly little interaction, or MAYBE it was the fact that every face you see in-game was a real person. Regardless, just like Half Life 1, I can tell that this game was made by a small but passionate group of developers and other than having to edit registries and game files to get it to work properly, I think the game holds up pretty well.

The biggest similarity between this game and HL1 for me though, was the fact that I felt like I was missing something very vital by playing it 20+ years after it released. I laughed when I launched the game and it warned me not to turn some settings on unless I had 32 MB of VRAM. I was amazed when I was told by a friend that this game was hard to run when it released, and it's engine was used in the 3DMark 2001 benchmark! While playing, I could never know the impact this game had back in 2001, and I think something is lost because of that.

It's because of that "something" that when I have a small criticism of the game play, I can't help but disregard it because at that point I'm already comparing this 20+ year old game to games I've played in the last 5 years of my life.

I wish the game play was a little faster. Mr Payne doesn't need to be bouncing around the walls like his peers in "Double Action: Boogaloo", but it would've been nice if the shoot dodge didn't activate bullet time every time. I also felt that there were WAY too many guns, which is a weird complaint I know. But what's the point of using the dual berettas if the dual Ingrams exist. This is an example of a complaint that is fueled by my experience with modern games. In Doom Eternal and Ultrakill, two of my favorite shooters of all time, every gun has it's use. Max Payne doesn't really LOSE anything by having so many guns, but it was a thought I couldn't shake while playing.

Overall, I had a good time with this one and I'm excited to play the sequel, which I've heard is "just better". I'll also probably come back at the end of all of the Remedy games just to try out the other difficulties, which I skipped for now.

Genuinely so happy creative people are embracing the Horror Co-op genre because jesus christ I had given up on the genre after the 3rd Backrooms game. I'm sure the 3rd extraction horror game will be the end of my interest with the sub - genre but I'll take it any day over all the phasmophobia and DBD clones.

Just like Lethal Company, the presentation is all there. I love the contrast between the silly and colorful new world against the dark gritty but still silly stuff of the "old world". Not to mention the game being focused around making a video means you have to stick around your friends and "perform" to get the highest view count possible. It's a great twist on the "horror" aspect of the game because you WANT to see these scary monsters. You WANT to die in funny ways because it'll make the video better.

This game does share the same problem I have with vanilla Lethal Company in that restarting after a long and difficult run feels so bad, to the point where you're just waiting for the game to be scary again. I do wonder how much more I'll play this game but from I played I'd say it's a great game. Also it was completely free for an entire day! Who does that?