lightningzero
This review contains spoilers
(CW: Mention of Sexual Assault)
(Also... spoilers)
Obscure 2 (or Obscure: The Aftermath) is a sequel to a game I can’t even find anywhere online because of its name. Try looking up “Obscure Video Game” or “Obscure PS2” and see how long it actually takes you to find this one.
A proper direct sequel to the first Obscure, set two years after the events of that game, with a whole new cast – and a few returning characters.
The introduction to this game is much more psychological horror – more Silent Hill than Resident Evil – starting with a nightmare sequence 5 minutes in, followed by generic pop punk background music, followed by a platforming sequence? Followed by a sudden transition to two new playable characters??
Obscure 2 is all over the place. In stark contrast to Obscure 1’s open floor plan level design, a quasi-Spencer mansion in the skin of a creepy High School, Obscure 2 is actually a mostly linear experience, split into neatly-segmented levels: frat houses, spooky forests, hospitals, derelict factories, what have you. It makes for a much more consistent “experience” throughout, never lingering on any one environment or set piece for too long. In other words, it’s paced pretty well!
The characters in this one feel like actual characters, complete with banter during gameplay which helps to characterize them further – even if some of their personalities are essentially cardboard cutouts, or barebones stereotypes. It’s still fun to hear them talk to each other, their presences never became an issue.
Obscure 2 is goofy, and it knows it’s goofy, and it has fun with it. Playing through this game with a friend was also a very enjoyable experience (thanks again Patrick) with a healthy amount of laughter between moments of adrenaline and genuine horror. It’s like watching a campy horror film with your friends, but you’re playing it!
There’s also a conscious effort to streamline the original’s survival horror. This means no more permadeath. When a character dies, it’s an automatic game over; this is fine, as I felt permadeath didn’t really add much to the original anyways (it’s all too easy to load a recent save). This means that characters now have abilities that are essential to making progress, which feels like a great step forward for the most part. Obscure 2 will usually force you into playing new characters, but there’s a few levels where you can choose your characters, even though this will sometimes require players to backtrack to switch to the correct character to progress.
This focus on unique characters and their abilities is neat, but I think its weaknesses were also highlighted early on as well. In one sequence, my partner and I were tasked with rescuing Jun, the twin sister of our resident hacker Mei, and only had a certain amount of time before it was too late. On our first attempt, we didn’t make it in time, and found her lifeless body in a grueling cutscene; on our second attempt, we made it in time, but Jun was immediately thrown out of a window – a unique sequence ensued where one of us controlled Jun on a CRTV, while the other person attempted to “maintain a signal” to keep the TV static to a minimum. We thought this was awesome! That is, until we finished this section, and Jun died anyway. The same cutscene played of us finding her lifeless body. I would understand if she was killed off later, but killing her almost immediately after rescuing her and playing through this special sequence not only feels cruel, but unnecessary.
Subsequently, a LOT of the main cast ends up dead before the credits roll. Their deaths are appropriately gruesome, and even a little mean. We always vocalized our frustration as yet another character met their grisly fate.
Then, there’s Kenny, a returning character from Obscure 1, who goes full William Birkin and becomes a major antagonist for the game’s latter half.
It’s implied (and then confirmed) that Mutant!Kenny impregnates Amy while she’s unconscious, which is way fucked up for a game like this. It’s another one of those plot details you could chalk up to the game being schlocky on purpose, but it also hardly matters once all is said and done? It feels like it’s supposed to set up another sequel, but it’s also never made explicitly clear that Kenny’s child survives considering the helicopter Amy’s aboard explodes. Who knows?
The fakeout ending actually caught us by surprise! What followed was a genuinely difficult extra hour of gameplay and another final boss, although the game felt like it had already run out of fuel by that point, so to speak. It’s commendable that Obscure 2 still had a few tricks up its sleeve at the eleventh hour, but even then… if you break it down to its constituent parts, it’s just a few more cutscenes, some light backtracking, a few easy puzzles (except for the door medallion puzzle, which we solved by guessing), and a mediocre final boss.
However, if I can praise Obscure 2 for anything, it’s the commitment to being a bigger, bolder sequel. The presentation is late 6th-gen/early 7th-gen perfection. The music for this entry feels much more appropriate, kicking in to highlight big moments instead of undermining them.
There are some noticeable steps backwards – a lack of difficulty options impedes replayability, and no post-game content is always disappointing.
I still enjoyed my time with Obscure 2 and I love that a survival horror co-op game like this even exists. I still can’t ignore the many aspects of Obscure 2 that feel less polished or outright worse than Obscure 1, but I think that it’s a solid title otherwise, and a miracle that a sequel even came to fruition.
(Also... spoilers)
Obscure 2 (or Obscure: The Aftermath) is a sequel to a game I can’t even find anywhere online because of its name. Try looking up “Obscure Video Game” or “Obscure PS2” and see how long it actually takes you to find this one.
A proper direct sequel to the first Obscure, set two years after the events of that game, with a whole new cast – and a few returning characters.
The introduction to this game is much more psychological horror – more Silent Hill than Resident Evil – starting with a nightmare sequence 5 minutes in, followed by generic pop punk background music, followed by a platforming sequence? Followed by a sudden transition to two new playable characters??
Obscure 2 is all over the place. In stark contrast to Obscure 1’s open floor plan level design, a quasi-Spencer mansion in the skin of a creepy High School, Obscure 2 is actually a mostly linear experience, split into neatly-segmented levels: frat houses, spooky forests, hospitals, derelict factories, what have you. It makes for a much more consistent “experience” throughout, never lingering on any one environment or set piece for too long. In other words, it’s paced pretty well!
The characters in this one feel like actual characters, complete with banter during gameplay which helps to characterize them further – even if some of their personalities are essentially cardboard cutouts, or barebones stereotypes. It’s still fun to hear them talk to each other, their presences never became an issue.
Obscure 2 is goofy, and it knows it’s goofy, and it has fun with it. Playing through this game with a friend was also a very enjoyable experience (thanks again Patrick) with a healthy amount of laughter between moments of adrenaline and genuine horror. It’s like watching a campy horror film with your friends, but you’re playing it!
There’s also a conscious effort to streamline the original’s survival horror. This means no more permadeath. When a character dies, it’s an automatic game over; this is fine, as I felt permadeath didn’t really add much to the original anyways (it’s all too easy to load a recent save). This means that characters now have abilities that are essential to making progress, which feels like a great step forward for the most part. Obscure 2 will usually force you into playing new characters, but there’s a few levels where you can choose your characters, even though this will sometimes require players to backtrack to switch to the correct character to progress.
This focus on unique characters and their abilities is neat, but I think its weaknesses were also highlighted early on as well. In one sequence, my partner and I were tasked with rescuing Jun, the twin sister of our resident hacker Mei, and only had a certain amount of time before it was too late. On our first attempt, we didn’t make it in time, and found her lifeless body in a grueling cutscene; on our second attempt, we made it in time, but Jun was immediately thrown out of a window – a unique sequence ensued where one of us controlled Jun on a CRTV, while the other person attempted to “maintain a signal” to keep the TV static to a minimum. We thought this was awesome! That is, until we finished this section, and Jun died anyway. The same cutscene played of us finding her lifeless body. I would understand if she was killed off later, but killing her almost immediately after rescuing her and playing through this special sequence not only feels cruel, but unnecessary.
Subsequently, a LOT of the main cast ends up dead before the credits roll. Their deaths are appropriately gruesome, and even a little mean. We always vocalized our frustration as yet another character met their grisly fate.
Then, there’s Kenny, a returning character from Obscure 1, who goes full William Birkin and becomes a major antagonist for the game’s latter half.
It’s implied (and then confirmed) that Mutant!Kenny impregnates Amy while she’s unconscious, which is way fucked up for a game like this. It’s another one of those plot details you could chalk up to the game being schlocky on purpose, but it also hardly matters once all is said and done? It feels like it’s supposed to set up another sequel, but it’s also never made explicitly clear that Kenny’s child survives considering the helicopter Amy’s aboard explodes. Who knows?
The fakeout ending actually caught us by surprise! What followed was a genuinely difficult extra hour of gameplay and another final boss, although the game felt like it had already run out of fuel by that point, so to speak. It’s commendable that Obscure 2 still had a few tricks up its sleeve at the eleventh hour, but even then… if you break it down to its constituent parts, it’s just a few more cutscenes, some light backtracking, a few easy puzzles (except for the door medallion puzzle, which we solved by guessing), and a mediocre final boss.
However, if I can praise Obscure 2 for anything, it’s the commitment to being a bigger, bolder sequel. The presentation is late 6th-gen/early 7th-gen perfection. The music for this entry feels much more appropriate, kicking in to highlight big moments instead of undermining them.
There are some noticeable steps backwards – a lack of difficulty options impedes replayability, and no post-game content is always disappointing.
I still enjoyed my time with Obscure 2 and I love that a survival horror co-op game like this even exists. I still can’t ignore the many aspects of Obscure 2 that feel less polished or outright worse than Obscure 1, but I think that it’s a solid title otherwise, and a miracle that a sequel even came to fruition.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
Playing through Sonic Frontiers for the first time, it was hard not to have a big, dumb smile on my face when Kellin Quinn’s vocals for Undefeatable or Break Through it All accentuated some of the series’ most spectacular boss fights in recent memory. I appreciated talking to Amy, Knuckles, and Tails, and having these characters feel like characters again, for the first time in a long time. I loved the melancholic story and desolate environments. Although they felt incongruous with the last decade of Sonic’s output, it felt like another bold step forward for Sonic Team, a new horizon, uncharted territory – starting nearly from scratch and reinventing Sonic’s movement yet again was a big gamble, and one that I felt paid off.
Sonic Frontiers was not a perfect Sonic game by any stretch of the imagination. For every triumph there was comparable failure: everything from the stripped down boost gameplay in Cyberspace stages, to the lackluster combat, to the abhorrent pop-in, and obviously much more I won’t discuss here. You’ve probably heard all this before.
Sonic Frontiers was and is not a perfect Sonic game, but if not a step in the right direction - it's at least a proper reorientation, a much-needed weaning from the over-streamlined boost formula from Sonic Forces, and a manifesto that Sonic Team could still, in fact, create a game that - even at its worst - pushed the series forward.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
I’ve loved Sonic the Hedgehog since I was a kid. I met my best friend, Garrett, sixteen years ago on YouTube through shared interest in Sonic the Hedgehog. We used to play Xbox Live together. He visited me for my high school graduation. We played through Sonic ‘06 the Summer of 2015. We still visit each other every year or so.
I took a short break from the series when I couldn’t finish Sonic Unleashed, and then jumped back in with Sonic Generations. I remembered why I loved these games to begin with.
Sonic Mania is my favorite game of all time.
When the Sonic Symphony World Tour show was announced in Los Angeles, I asked Garrett to visit me again. We both took a week off work.
This is the same week that Sonic Frontiers’ third and last update was released: the Final Horizon. We agreed to play through it together.
For the first time since Sonic ‘06, we were able to play as Amy Rose in 3D. Exploring Ouranos Island and coming to grips with Amy’s moveset was a joy, at first. She has a triple jump again! She can glide now! We ran into a mini-boss that killed us immediately.
“Let’s just ignore that one,” I told Garrett.
We realized our speed/ring/attack/defense stats had returned to Level One. Amy Rose was a clean slate. No upgrades. We were certainly in no condition to fight an endgame mini-boss.
We hit the story beats we needed to, then the game let us control Knuckles. This was a surprisingly emotional moment. Although it hadn’t been sixteen years since we’d controlled Knuckles, it felt like meeting an old friend.
“Oh, God,” Garrett groaned suddenly as he started to glide around the map.
“What’s wrong?”
He handed me the controller, “Feel this.”
I picked up the controller and started to glide as Knuckles. I understood what he’d meant. The windup was unusual. The turn radius was abysmal. The input delay was horrific.
“What the fuck?” I said out loud. It took a few more minutes before I put the above criticisms into words.
“Yeah,” Garrett laughed, summating, “it doesn’t feel good.”
We spent the most time as Knuckles and, subsequently, experienced two Starfall events, which have a chance to occur randomly each night cycle and allow players to (essentially) farm Koco to upgrade their character’s stats.
The Final Horizon wants to have its cake and eat it, too. Multiple playable characters necessitate a highly varied moveset for each, but to balance it properly, any upgrade materials earned as Sonic do NOT carry over to other characters. Amy, Knuckles, and Tails have their own upgrade materials, their own upgrade trees, their own level progression. HOWEVER, the new Ouranos Island is built in such a way that every character must have a Cyloop ability, and each character must unlock their respective Cyloop ability using their upgrade tree, which requires exploring Ouranos Island and earning enough upgrade points to unlock the Cyloop ability for each character in the first place, so they can explore the island even more and, eventually, complete their main objectives.
It feels unusual, however, to block progression in such a way as to force players to upgrade their characters here. In the base game, Sonic learns new attacks through his skill tree, but none of these are essential to making progress (except for the Cyloop, which is the first ability that Sonic unlocks anyway).
Here, having to use the skill tree to unlock basic abilities for characters like “melee attack” and “parry” that were already regular abilities for Sonic feels arbitrary. It’s not like it takes too long to unlock these abilities anyways, players need only find two or three special Koco to obtain these abilities, but it feels unnecessary.
It’s disappointing. I play with Knuckles for a certain amount of time and learn that he can only climb on certain surfaces, so as to keep the game balance intact. It makes sense, but it doesn’t cushion the blow any. I discovered a challenge that requires Knuckles’ ability to latch onto walls and climb. A cannonball hits me and I fall to my death. I try again. A cannonball hits me. I try to recover and latch onto the wall, but Knuckles doesn’t respond. I fall to my death. I try again.
I remember playing Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on my Nintendo Wii. The year is probably 2007 or 2008. I remember playing through the Hero Story for the first time and finally being able to play as Knuckles. I remember Knuckles’ second level: Pumpkin Hill.
You know me, the fighting freak Knuckles, and we’re at pumpkin hill. You ready?
Nostalgia is a potent drug, strong enough to trick us into believing that even the most unremarkable chapters of our lives are golden, perfect snapshots. Only when we return to these chapters, we find reality is oftentimes much less kind than our memories tend to be.
I’ve replayed almost every mainline Sonic game countless times. I know that I love Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 in spite of their flaws.
I know that I love the sensation of gliding through the air as Knuckles, the pure joy of nose-diving in rapid circles, of sticking to each and every surface, of burrowing underground to find hidden treasure. Rats. I know that I love playing as Knuckles. I know that I was disappointed when I played as Knuckles in Sonic Frontiers because it wasn’t the Knuckles I remembered. It wasn’t the Knuckles I fell in love with.
“You’d think they would’ve figured this out by now,” I said to Garrett, mostly out of frustration after another cheap death, “it’s like… I’m thinking about, like, sewers.”
He didn’t know what I meant by that. I tried to explain it and probably ended up sounding like a doofus – completely unintelligible.
“I’m sure there are people who know how to make sewers, and maintain them,” I waffled around the point I was trying to make, “but, you know, I’m not sure that we know how to make them.”
“What?”
“Like, you don’t think about this? That making sewers isn't common knowledge?”
“What are you talking about?”
“How many people know how to make sewers? How many people will know how to make sewers? Imagine everyone who knows how sewers work – one day, they all die, and nobody wrote it down. Like, imagine it’s all tribal knowledge, or something.”
What I meant is that I’m worried. I have so much anxiety about the future. Sometimes I’m worried that nobody is worrying enough. There are entire lexicons, pillars of society, professions, sectors, that will be lost to time – just slowly fading out, forgotten, and by the time somebody realizes that nobody put the fundamentals down to paper, it’ll already be too late.
Another library of Alexandria is lost, every day, for the rest of time, forever.
Somehow, Sonic Team remains incapable of emulating the movement of either Sonic Adventure. It eludes them even now.
In a series where increasingly chaotic galaxy-ending terrors converge on an anthropomorphic hedgehog who has the ability to go Super Saiyan, with each entry escalating in scope, ambition, and performance – the ease of basic movement remains a foreign concept.
The sewers are overflowing with noxious waste. Vile, repugnant sludge. The streets are drowned in garbage. Your home is sinking into bedrock. It’s always been like this.
I remember Knuckles’ second level: Pumpkin Hill.
I remember gliding between the stony mountaintops, scaling the rocky pumpkin obelisks, evading ghosts, chasing oscillating signals of the shattered Emerald. It’s closer…
I remember the sunset skybox. I remember the JPEG artifacts eating the edges of the stony pumpkin mountain faces like sweet fire. I remember the background music, looping around back to its first verse.
We finally got to play as Tails. There was catharsis, exhalation. Our baby boy could fly again. Another finger of the monkey’s paw curled inward.
Our opinions of the Final Horizon diverged much more around this point. Garrett was content to play these characters again, and I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
We traded the controller often. Sometimes one puzzle or platforming section was too difficult or obtuse and either of us would tap in while the other tapped out. Some platforming challenges were puzzles in and of themselves. Every time we died or found ourselves at an impasse, we’d give each other a look, or laugh out loud.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
“This is… uh,” I stammered, “this is… like, the next Sonic ‘06.” I said.
Garrett laughed, “Don’t say that.”
Neither of us hated Sonic ‘06, not like a lot of people do. Then again, it was our childhood. Our biases were impossible to avoid. I couldn’t shake the thought. This was the next Sonic ‘06, I thought to myself. For better or for worse.
When we finally assumed control of Sonic and the game directed us to our first (of five) towers, we hit a wall. Although Rhea Island was notorious for its long, perilous tower ascents, it was at least kind enough to provide checkpoints; as we struggled upwards, only to come crashing down once more, we realized there would be no checkpoints.
Sonic Frontiers had become Getting Over It.
Every time we came hurtling back down to earth, I’d start singing $uicideboy$.
One last pic and I’ll be gone
Make it count
Put the flash on
Never really felt like I belonged
So I’ll be on my way
And It won’t be long
We continued, swapped the controller between each other for each attempt, each time a little closer to heaven… nearly an hour later, we’d finally conquered the summit.
We did this, again, and again, and again, until we finally reached the fifth and final tower.
To be fully transparent, there is a lot to like about the Final Horizon. Beyond the novelty of being able to play as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy in 3D again for the first time in over a decade is an achievement, and praiseworthy on its own. Once I was comfortable with Sonic’s movement again, the towers were actually very engaging and memorable platforming challenges that I felt were deserving of their endgame difficulty. Lastly, the additional Cyberspace stages were also fun, much more challenging and interesting ideas with unique gimmicks for each stage – I only wished these were part of the main quest, and not relegated to completely optional content.
That being said, the experience of the final “trial” is probably the worst Sonic Frontiers has to offer. This penultimate boss rush might be the most cynical idea of difficulty I’ve seen in any Sonic game ever. The perfect parry mechanic retroactively cheapens these encounters by demanding frame-perfect timing, and ruins the spectacle by requiring mechanical mastery to proceed.
I’ve finished every Fromsoft Souls game (except for Sekiro) and there wasn’t a single one with parrying mechanics that were this demanding. For my first two attempts, I grappled with Giganto and attempted only to learn the parry timing; if Sonic loses one ring as Super Sonic each second, and the game only gives you 400 rings total for this encounter, that means a regular attempt will average around six-and-a-half minutes. During the thirteen minutes I attempted to learn Giganto’s parry window, I only managed to successfully parry him twice.
This is straight up not finished. Nobody playtested this. Almost every user I’ve seen discussing this boss rush has mentioned that dropping the difficulty down to Easy “fixes” the perfect parry (and it does) but this is not how difficulty should be designed. If almost every player can unanimously clear 99% of the game on the hardest difficulty, but can only progress at the eleventh hour by dropping the difficulty down to Easy, that’s a huge problem.
The new final boss is also marginally better than the older one, by default. This updated final battle features a beefier Super Sonic with blue eyes(!) and a new second phase for Supreme. It also features the absolute worst camera for any Sonic boss fight I’ve played, a brand new targeting mechanic that isn’t explained anywhere, and a cutscene that outright kills you if you don’t have enough rings.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
Rolling the final cutscene on the Final Horizon and watching Sonic launch himself through the image of an Eldritch God should’ve been an easy victory lap, but it wasn’t.
“We’re so fucking back,” for better or for worse.
Garrett and I and our friend Jordan (another longtime Sonic fan) were strapped for time as we watched the credits roll. It was 6:15pm. The concert started at 8. We were ready to leave before the credits had finished. I wore the hoodie I bought at the Sonic Speed popup cafe in San Diego. It was 7pm when we hit serious traffic a mile away from the Dolby Theatre.
Garrett and Jordan took turns adding songs to a growing playlist of Sonic OSTs. I sat in near-gridlock, frozen bumper-to-bumper in an ocean of automobiles. Jordan played E102’s theme from Sonic Adventure.
“This makes me feel an emotion that doesn’t exist,” he said.
My eyes glazed over in silent terror. It was 7:30pm. It was only a concert. I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal if we were late. I wanted death. Old habits made playthings of my emotions, paralyzed me. Old anxieties like nightmare tendrils, looming deadlines overhead – the hands of the clock a guillotine ready to drop. I bit my lip. I still wanted death.
Cars moved inches at a time, each red light another eternity. 7:45pm. We finally hit another artery, the lifeblood of the city flowed freely again, us along with it. I found the parking I reserved ahead of time after circling the area once. It’s 7:55pm.
We reached the Dolby Theatre at 8pm on the dot. The three of us walked inside the wide auditorium together as the final countdown began. We sat down. The lights dimmed. As the orchestra started playing, a wave of relief washed over me. We'd made it.
Watching the show, I had to appreciate the accompanying background montage which appeared on a massive monitor above the orchestra, as it highlighted the many flourishes and creative liberties of the performance. The music synchronized to Sonic as he took incoming damage in Labyrinth Zone, prompting audience laughter; or the dramatic flooding sequence in Chemical Plant Zone; or the first appearance of Metal Sonic in Collision Chaos and his eventual defeat in Stardust Speedway.
It was then I realized that Sonic’s greatest strength, as a series, was its many iconic moments. Not only the dramatic story beats, as in cutscenes, but its many instances of semi-interactive storytelling; as in the flooding sequence in Chemical Plant Zone, or running away from an Orca, or an oversized truck, or traversing an upside down castle.
After the intermission, however, was our main event. Not only what we’d been craving all night, but our entire lives.
I've been in love with this series for well over half my life now. When I was a kid, I always used to listen to Sonic the Hedgehog soundtracks. I thought Zebrahead’s His World was the rawest thing I’d ever listened to when I was thirteen. I listened to Crush 40 religiously, each vocal track another unforgettable experience – a story’s climactic end heralded by Johnny Gioeli’s radical vocals.
As the second act began and the first chords of Shadow the Hedgehog’s (I am) All of Me filled the Dolby Theatre, setting the crowd alight, I remembered why I fell in love with the series again.
I don’t even like Shadow the Hedgehog anymore, man. That game sucked!
However, what I’ve always loved was Shadow’s soundtrack –its dark, industrial sounds and heavy metal ethos seeped into every crack and crevice of its experience. When I was a kid, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
So imagine the experience of seeing Crush 40 live, playing a song you’ve unconsciously memorized the lyrics to forever ago, backed by a full orchestra, in a room filled with Sonic fans screaming the lyrics alongside you.
I never thought I’d be here.
As a kid, I never thought I’d get to see Crush 40 live, and yet here they were. I’d fulfilled one of my oldest wishes. I was able to see Crush 40 live with my best friend.
Kellin Quinn made an appearance for the encore, and performed Break Through It All and Undefeatable. Better memories of Sonic Frontiers resurfaced.
For the final song, Johnny Gioeli joined Kellin Quinn for Live & Learn. Quinn provided backup vocals. Hearing him scream, “Hold on to what if?” cut deep into my soul.
The performance ended.
“Los Angeles,” Johnny addressed us, “we’ve made a beautiful memory here tonight.”
We made our exit shortly after. Garrett told me his only regret was not being able to attend the 3:30 showing as well. Rarely do we get to experience these moments twice.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog, and yet it was hard to not be disappointed by the Final Horizon.
What should’ve been a resounding triumph was neither an encore nor a reprise, but yet another new direction – an unwelcome challenge, a pale imitation of old glories. I was disappointed. But seeing Crush 40 live reminded me why I loved Sonic in the first place.
I’ll cherish these memories. They won’t always be perfect, but sometimes they are.
I know I’ll return to Sonic Frontiers again one day, but for now, yet another chapter of the blue blur’s legacy comes to a close.
In hindsight, I know that even if Sonic Frontiers ended up being poorly received, it wouldn’t kill Sonic. If Sonic ‘06 couldn’t kill Sonic, nothing can kill Sonic. Regardless of whichever new journey the hedgehog embarks on next, I know I’ll be there day one, eager to see what’s in store. After all, the adventure is never solely the end; the adventure ends up being the memories we take with us.
Playing through Sonic Frontiers for the first time, it was hard not to have a big, dumb smile on my face when Kellin Quinn’s vocals for Undefeatable or Break Through it All accentuated some of the series’ most spectacular boss fights in recent memory. I appreciated talking to Amy, Knuckles, and Tails, and having these characters feel like characters again, for the first time in a long time. I loved the melancholic story and desolate environments. Although they felt incongruous with the last decade of Sonic’s output, it felt like another bold step forward for Sonic Team, a new horizon, uncharted territory – starting nearly from scratch and reinventing Sonic’s movement yet again was a big gamble, and one that I felt paid off.
Sonic Frontiers was not a perfect Sonic game by any stretch of the imagination. For every triumph there was comparable failure: everything from the stripped down boost gameplay in Cyberspace stages, to the lackluster combat, to the abhorrent pop-in, and obviously much more I won’t discuss here. You’ve probably heard all this before.
Sonic Frontiers was and is not a perfect Sonic game, but if not a step in the right direction - it's at least a proper reorientation, a much-needed weaning from the over-streamlined boost formula from Sonic Forces, and a manifesto that Sonic Team could still, in fact, create a game that - even at its worst - pushed the series forward.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
I’ve loved Sonic the Hedgehog since I was a kid. I met my best friend, Garrett, sixteen years ago on YouTube through shared interest in Sonic the Hedgehog. We used to play Xbox Live together. He visited me for my high school graduation. We played through Sonic ‘06 the Summer of 2015. We still visit each other every year or so.
I took a short break from the series when I couldn’t finish Sonic Unleashed, and then jumped back in with Sonic Generations. I remembered why I loved these games to begin with.
Sonic Mania is my favorite game of all time.
When the Sonic Symphony World Tour show was announced in Los Angeles, I asked Garrett to visit me again. We both took a week off work.
This is the same week that Sonic Frontiers’ third and last update was released: the Final Horizon. We agreed to play through it together.
For the first time since Sonic ‘06, we were able to play as Amy Rose in 3D. Exploring Ouranos Island and coming to grips with Amy’s moveset was a joy, at first. She has a triple jump again! She can glide now! We ran into a mini-boss that killed us immediately.
“Let’s just ignore that one,” I told Garrett.
We realized our speed/ring/attack/defense stats had returned to Level One. Amy Rose was a clean slate. No upgrades. We were certainly in no condition to fight an endgame mini-boss.
We hit the story beats we needed to, then the game let us control Knuckles. This was a surprisingly emotional moment. Although it hadn’t been sixteen years since we’d controlled Knuckles, it felt like meeting an old friend.
“Oh, God,” Garrett groaned suddenly as he started to glide around the map.
“What’s wrong?”
He handed me the controller, “Feel this.”
I picked up the controller and started to glide as Knuckles. I understood what he’d meant. The windup was unusual. The turn radius was abysmal. The input delay was horrific.
“What the fuck?” I said out loud. It took a few more minutes before I put the above criticisms into words.
“Yeah,” Garrett laughed, summating, “it doesn’t feel good.”
We spent the most time as Knuckles and, subsequently, experienced two Starfall events, which have a chance to occur randomly each night cycle and allow players to (essentially) farm Koco to upgrade their character’s stats.
The Final Horizon wants to have its cake and eat it, too. Multiple playable characters necessitate a highly varied moveset for each, but to balance it properly, any upgrade materials earned as Sonic do NOT carry over to other characters. Amy, Knuckles, and Tails have their own upgrade materials, their own upgrade trees, their own level progression. HOWEVER, the new Ouranos Island is built in such a way that every character must have a Cyloop ability, and each character must unlock their respective Cyloop ability using their upgrade tree, which requires exploring Ouranos Island and earning enough upgrade points to unlock the Cyloop ability for each character in the first place, so they can explore the island even more and, eventually, complete their main objectives.
It feels unusual, however, to block progression in such a way as to force players to upgrade their characters here. In the base game, Sonic learns new attacks through his skill tree, but none of these are essential to making progress (except for the Cyloop, which is the first ability that Sonic unlocks anyway).
Here, having to use the skill tree to unlock basic abilities for characters like “melee attack” and “parry” that were already regular abilities for Sonic feels arbitrary. It’s not like it takes too long to unlock these abilities anyways, players need only find two or three special Koco to obtain these abilities, but it feels unnecessary.
It’s disappointing. I play with Knuckles for a certain amount of time and learn that he can only climb on certain surfaces, so as to keep the game balance intact. It makes sense, but it doesn’t cushion the blow any. I discovered a challenge that requires Knuckles’ ability to latch onto walls and climb. A cannonball hits me and I fall to my death. I try again. A cannonball hits me. I try to recover and latch onto the wall, but Knuckles doesn’t respond. I fall to my death. I try again.
I remember playing Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on my Nintendo Wii. The year is probably 2007 or 2008. I remember playing through the Hero Story for the first time and finally being able to play as Knuckles. I remember Knuckles’ second level: Pumpkin Hill.
You know me, the fighting freak Knuckles, and we’re at pumpkin hill. You ready?
Nostalgia is a potent drug, strong enough to trick us into believing that even the most unremarkable chapters of our lives are golden, perfect snapshots. Only when we return to these chapters, we find reality is oftentimes much less kind than our memories tend to be.
I’ve replayed almost every mainline Sonic game countless times. I know that I love Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 in spite of their flaws.
I know that I love the sensation of gliding through the air as Knuckles, the pure joy of nose-diving in rapid circles, of sticking to each and every surface, of burrowing underground to find hidden treasure. Rats. I know that I love playing as Knuckles. I know that I was disappointed when I played as Knuckles in Sonic Frontiers because it wasn’t the Knuckles I remembered. It wasn’t the Knuckles I fell in love with.
“You’d think they would’ve figured this out by now,” I said to Garrett, mostly out of frustration after another cheap death, “it’s like… I’m thinking about, like, sewers.”
He didn’t know what I meant by that. I tried to explain it and probably ended up sounding like a doofus – completely unintelligible.
“I’m sure there are people who know how to make sewers, and maintain them,” I waffled around the point I was trying to make, “but, you know, I’m not sure that we know how to make them.”
“What?”
“Like, you don’t think about this? That making sewers isn't common knowledge?”
“What are you talking about?”
“How many people know how to make sewers? How many people will know how to make sewers? Imagine everyone who knows how sewers work – one day, they all die, and nobody wrote it down. Like, imagine it’s all tribal knowledge, or something.”
What I meant is that I’m worried. I have so much anxiety about the future. Sometimes I’m worried that nobody is worrying enough. There are entire lexicons, pillars of society, professions, sectors, that will be lost to time – just slowly fading out, forgotten, and by the time somebody realizes that nobody put the fundamentals down to paper, it’ll already be too late.
Another library of Alexandria is lost, every day, for the rest of time, forever.
Somehow, Sonic Team remains incapable of emulating the movement of either Sonic Adventure. It eludes them even now.
In a series where increasingly chaotic galaxy-ending terrors converge on an anthropomorphic hedgehog who has the ability to go Super Saiyan, with each entry escalating in scope, ambition, and performance – the ease of basic movement remains a foreign concept.
The sewers are overflowing with noxious waste. Vile, repugnant sludge. The streets are drowned in garbage. Your home is sinking into bedrock. It’s always been like this.
I remember Knuckles’ second level: Pumpkin Hill.
I remember gliding between the stony mountaintops, scaling the rocky pumpkin obelisks, evading ghosts, chasing oscillating signals of the shattered Emerald. It’s closer…
I remember the sunset skybox. I remember the JPEG artifacts eating the edges of the stony pumpkin mountain faces like sweet fire. I remember the background music, looping around back to its first verse.
We finally got to play as Tails. There was catharsis, exhalation. Our baby boy could fly again. Another finger of the monkey’s paw curled inward.
Our opinions of the Final Horizon diverged much more around this point. Garrett was content to play these characters again, and I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
We traded the controller often. Sometimes one puzzle or platforming section was too difficult or obtuse and either of us would tap in while the other tapped out. Some platforming challenges were puzzles in and of themselves. Every time we died or found ourselves at an impasse, we’d give each other a look, or laugh out loud.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
“This is… uh,” I stammered, “this is… like, the next Sonic ‘06.” I said.
Garrett laughed, “Don’t say that.”
Neither of us hated Sonic ‘06, not like a lot of people do. Then again, it was our childhood. Our biases were impossible to avoid. I couldn’t shake the thought. This was the next Sonic ‘06, I thought to myself. For better or for worse.
When we finally assumed control of Sonic and the game directed us to our first (of five) towers, we hit a wall. Although Rhea Island was notorious for its long, perilous tower ascents, it was at least kind enough to provide checkpoints; as we struggled upwards, only to come crashing down once more, we realized there would be no checkpoints.
Sonic Frontiers had become Getting Over It.
Every time we came hurtling back down to earth, I’d start singing $uicideboy$.
One last pic and I’ll be gone
Make it count
Put the flash on
Never really felt like I belonged
So I’ll be on my way
And It won’t be long
We continued, swapped the controller between each other for each attempt, each time a little closer to heaven… nearly an hour later, we’d finally conquered the summit.
We did this, again, and again, and again, until we finally reached the fifth and final tower.
To be fully transparent, there is a lot to like about the Final Horizon. Beyond the novelty of being able to play as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy in 3D again for the first time in over a decade is an achievement, and praiseworthy on its own. Once I was comfortable with Sonic’s movement again, the towers were actually very engaging and memorable platforming challenges that I felt were deserving of their endgame difficulty. Lastly, the additional Cyberspace stages were also fun, much more challenging and interesting ideas with unique gimmicks for each stage – I only wished these were part of the main quest, and not relegated to completely optional content.
That being said, the experience of the final “trial” is probably the worst Sonic Frontiers has to offer. This penultimate boss rush might be the most cynical idea of difficulty I’ve seen in any Sonic game ever. The perfect parry mechanic retroactively cheapens these encounters by demanding frame-perfect timing, and ruins the spectacle by requiring mechanical mastery to proceed.
I’ve finished every Fromsoft Souls game (except for Sekiro) and there wasn’t a single one with parrying mechanics that were this demanding. For my first two attempts, I grappled with Giganto and attempted only to learn the parry timing; if Sonic loses one ring as Super Sonic each second, and the game only gives you 400 rings total for this encounter, that means a regular attempt will average around six-and-a-half minutes. During the thirteen minutes I attempted to learn Giganto’s parry window, I only managed to successfully parry him twice.
This is straight up not finished. Nobody playtested this. Almost every user I’ve seen discussing this boss rush has mentioned that dropping the difficulty down to Easy “fixes” the perfect parry (and it does) but this is not how difficulty should be designed. If almost every player can unanimously clear 99% of the game on the hardest difficulty, but can only progress at the eleventh hour by dropping the difficulty down to Easy, that’s a huge problem.
The new final boss is also marginally better than the older one, by default. This updated final battle features a beefier Super Sonic with blue eyes(!) and a new second phase for Supreme. It also features the absolute worst camera for any Sonic boss fight I’ve played, a brand new targeting mechanic that isn’t explained anywhere, and a cutscene that outright kills you if you don’t have enough rings.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
Rolling the final cutscene on the Final Horizon and watching Sonic launch himself through the image of an Eldritch God should’ve been an easy victory lap, but it wasn’t.
“We’re so fucking back,” for better or for worse.
Garrett and I and our friend Jordan (another longtime Sonic fan) were strapped for time as we watched the credits roll. It was 6:15pm. The concert started at 8. We were ready to leave before the credits had finished. I wore the hoodie I bought at the Sonic Speed popup cafe in San Diego. It was 7pm when we hit serious traffic a mile away from the Dolby Theatre.
Garrett and Jordan took turns adding songs to a growing playlist of Sonic OSTs. I sat in near-gridlock, frozen bumper-to-bumper in an ocean of automobiles. Jordan played E102’s theme from Sonic Adventure.
“This makes me feel an emotion that doesn’t exist,” he said.
My eyes glazed over in silent terror. It was 7:30pm. It was only a concert. I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal if we were late. I wanted death. Old habits made playthings of my emotions, paralyzed me. Old anxieties like nightmare tendrils, looming deadlines overhead – the hands of the clock a guillotine ready to drop. I bit my lip. I still wanted death.
Cars moved inches at a time, each red light another eternity. 7:45pm. We finally hit another artery, the lifeblood of the city flowed freely again, us along with it. I found the parking I reserved ahead of time after circling the area once. It’s 7:55pm.
We reached the Dolby Theatre at 8pm on the dot. The three of us walked inside the wide auditorium together as the final countdown began. We sat down. The lights dimmed. As the orchestra started playing, a wave of relief washed over me. We'd made it.
Watching the show, I had to appreciate the accompanying background montage which appeared on a massive monitor above the orchestra, as it highlighted the many flourishes and creative liberties of the performance. The music synchronized to Sonic as he took incoming damage in Labyrinth Zone, prompting audience laughter; or the dramatic flooding sequence in Chemical Plant Zone; or the first appearance of Metal Sonic in Collision Chaos and his eventual defeat in Stardust Speedway.
It was then I realized that Sonic’s greatest strength, as a series, was its many iconic moments. Not only the dramatic story beats, as in cutscenes, but its many instances of semi-interactive storytelling; as in the flooding sequence in Chemical Plant Zone, or running away from an Orca, or an oversized truck, or traversing an upside down castle.
After the intermission, however, was our main event. Not only what we’d been craving all night, but our entire lives.
I've been in love with this series for well over half my life now. When I was a kid, I always used to listen to Sonic the Hedgehog soundtracks. I thought Zebrahead’s His World was the rawest thing I’d ever listened to when I was thirteen. I listened to Crush 40 religiously, each vocal track another unforgettable experience – a story’s climactic end heralded by Johnny Gioeli’s radical vocals.
As the second act began and the first chords of Shadow the Hedgehog’s (I am) All of Me filled the Dolby Theatre, setting the crowd alight, I remembered why I fell in love with the series again.
I don’t even like Shadow the Hedgehog anymore, man. That game sucked!
However, what I’ve always loved was Shadow’s soundtrack –its dark, industrial sounds and heavy metal ethos seeped into every crack and crevice of its experience. When I was a kid, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
So imagine the experience of seeing Crush 40 live, playing a song you’ve unconsciously memorized the lyrics to forever ago, backed by a full orchestra, in a room filled with Sonic fans screaming the lyrics alongside you.
I never thought I’d be here.
As a kid, I never thought I’d get to see Crush 40 live, and yet here they were. I’d fulfilled one of my oldest wishes. I was able to see Crush 40 live with my best friend.
Kellin Quinn made an appearance for the encore, and performed Break Through It All and Undefeatable. Better memories of Sonic Frontiers resurfaced.
For the final song, Johnny Gioeli joined Kellin Quinn for Live & Learn. Quinn provided backup vocals. Hearing him scream, “Hold on to what if?” cut deep into my soul.
The performance ended.
“Los Angeles,” Johnny addressed us, “we’ve made a beautiful memory here tonight.”
We made our exit shortly after. Garrett told me his only regret was not being able to attend the 3:30 showing as well. Rarely do we get to experience these moments twice.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog, and yet it was hard to not be disappointed by the Final Horizon.
What should’ve been a resounding triumph was neither an encore nor a reprise, but yet another new direction – an unwelcome challenge, a pale imitation of old glories. I was disappointed. But seeing Crush 40 live reminded me why I loved Sonic in the first place.
I’ll cherish these memories. They won’t always be perfect, but sometimes they are.
I know I’ll return to Sonic Frontiers again one day, but for now, yet another chapter of the blue blur’s legacy comes to a close.
In hindsight, I know that even if Sonic Frontiers ended up being poorly received, it wouldn’t kill Sonic. If Sonic ‘06 couldn’t kill Sonic, nothing can kill Sonic. Regardless of whichever new journey the hedgehog embarks on next, I know I’ll be there day one, eager to see what’s in store. After all, the adventure is never solely the end; the adventure ends up being the memories we take with us.
2004
Y2k-flavored survival horror. The original Resident Evil 5?
Co-op was fun and I was lucky to have a partner to play with (Thanks Patrick). Putting aside the weird troubleshooting to get two controllers working on a PC version of this game, I don’t think this is one I’d come back to regardless.
It starts out interesting enough. I think you could sell anyone on ObsCure with the elevator pitch alone: early 2000s survival horror with multiple playable characters, permadeath, and drop-in/drop-out local co-op.
It’s unfortunate that the co-op feels incongruous, an afterthought. There are too many encounters where the camera would focus directly opposite to enemies, or Player 1 would get too far ahead, leaving Player 2 unable to do much of anything.
For some people, maybe that’s a selling point. Maybe awkward camera angles and janky combat enhances the survival horror experience for you. It wasn’t my cup of tea here.
There’s also the (coincidentally) proto-Alan Wake combat, which was underlined by my most recent replay of Alan Wake. You have to “burn away” the darkness surrounding enemies using a flashlight, although here it’s more of a miasma which can damage you, I think? Also, enemies regenerate their “darkness” almost immediately, making it a tug-of-war between using the flashlight, and dealing damage. Again, it’s awkward, but that might be what some people find endearing about it. I couldn’t help but think that Alan Wake did it better though!
Coming to grips with some of the mechanics, the early game was novel. My partner and I found ourselves running out of healing items and ammo, having to switch characters to not die, and it was a genuinely rigid and tense survival horror experience. Eventually, however, we settled into our preferred characters – I stuck with Josh, whose ability allowed him to sense if there were any useful items available in any given room; my partner chose Shannon, whose ability was to turn into a AAA game protagonist, dropping extremely obvious hints as to what to do next at regular intervals.
Honestly, the idea of a character designed around giving hints is pretty smart. The map is also generous, marking POIs and objectives which definitely made this playthrough a breeze.
Our final playthrough clocked in at 6 and a half hours, with regular breaks and pizza in between. I think we could’ve cleared it in 4-5 hours otherwise. Its brevity almost demands a second playthrough, but… I don’t know about that.
I recently finished Resident Evil 1 remake for the first time (Chris’ story, that is, I finished Jill’s story about a year ago). I couldn’t help but compare the experience of both games.
RE1 demands a lot of backtracking, with very few hints, limited inventory space, and such tight difficulty scaling and pacing that its gameplay loop becomes a rhythm of expeditions into the Spencer Mansion, which feel decidedly methodical and calculated.
ObsCure is comparatively linear, with backtracking that is rarely required, and squeezes players of their resources during stretches of heavy combat, leaving voids of enemies and supplies that offer zero utility in revisiting.
The bombastic soundtrack also completely kills any kind of atmosphere this game would’ve had. There’s also no options to lower any music OR sound, so you’re stuck with this the entire game. Compare this to regular RE1 ambience and you’ll understand. One intends to create dread, another panic – but it’s hard to create panic when nothing is happening, at all.
This feels like half of an average survival horror game, and it unfortunately didn’t grab me. Hard to recommend unless you’re a genre enthusiast.
Co-op was fun and I was lucky to have a partner to play with (Thanks Patrick). Putting aside the weird troubleshooting to get two controllers working on a PC version of this game, I don’t think this is one I’d come back to regardless.
It starts out interesting enough. I think you could sell anyone on ObsCure with the elevator pitch alone: early 2000s survival horror with multiple playable characters, permadeath, and drop-in/drop-out local co-op.
It’s unfortunate that the co-op feels incongruous, an afterthought. There are too many encounters where the camera would focus directly opposite to enemies, or Player 1 would get too far ahead, leaving Player 2 unable to do much of anything.
For some people, maybe that’s a selling point. Maybe awkward camera angles and janky combat enhances the survival horror experience for you. It wasn’t my cup of tea here.
There’s also the (coincidentally) proto-Alan Wake combat, which was underlined by my most recent replay of Alan Wake. You have to “burn away” the darkness surrounding enemies using a flashlight, although here it’s more of a miasma which can damage you, I think? Also, enemies regenerate their “darkness” almost immediately, making it a tug-of-war between using the flashlight, and dealing damage. Again, it’s awkward, but that might be what some people find endearing about it. I couldn’t help but think that Alan Wake did it better though!
Coming to grips with some of the mechanics, the early game was novel. My partner and I found ourselves running out of healing items and ammo, having to switch characters to not die, and it was a genuinely rigid and tense survival horror experience. Eventually, however, we settled into our preferred characters – I stuck with Josh, whose ability allowed him to sense if there were any useful items available in any given room; my partner chose Shannon, whose ability was to turn into a AAA game protagonist, dropping extremely obvious hints as to what to do next at regular intervals.
Honestly, the idea of a character designed around giving hints is pretty smart. The map is also generous, marking POIs and objectives which definitely made this playthrough a breeze.
Our final playthrough clocked in at 6 and a half hours, with regular breaks and pizza in between. I think we could’ve cleared it in 4-5 hours otherwise. Its brevity almost demands a second playthrough, but… I don’t know about that.
I recently finished Resident Evil 1 remake for the first time (Chris’ story, that is, I finished Jill’s story about a year ago). I couldn’t help but compare the experience of both games.
RE1 demands a lot of backtracking, with very few hints, limited inventory space, and such tight difficulty scaling and pacing that its gameplay loop becomes a rhythm of expeditions into the Spencer Mansion, which feel decidedly methodical and calculated.
ObsCure is comparatively linear, with backtracking that is rarely required, and squeezes players of their resources during stretches of heavy combat, leaving voids of enemies and supplies that offer zero utility in revisiting.
The bombastic soundtrack also completely kills any kind of atmosphere this game would’ve had. There’s also no options to lower any music OR sound, so you’re stuck with this the entire game. Compare this to regular RE1 ambience and you’ll understand. One intends to create dread, another panic – but it’s hard to create panic when nothing is happening, at all.
This feels like half of an average survival horror game, and it unfortunately didn’t grab me. Hard to recommend unless you’re a genre enthusiast.
The idea of unlocking new weapon abilities after multiple upgrades is neat, and the main stage progression was fun, but when I found the room with infinitely respawning Atlanteans and ended one run with over 3000 golden eggs, it started to dawn on me that maybe this game kinda isn't that good.
More a standalone DLC than a spin-off/sequel/what have you. Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is not a step forward, but a lateral movement that feels unnecessary.
Inoffensive, if not for the bizarrely specific anti-QoL changes.
More enemy types have been added – namely, the Splitter, the Birdmen, the Grenadiers, and the Giants; the Splitter is okay, it’s a neat idea but nothing groundbreaking; the Birdmen feel like a missed opportunity, not nearly as aggressive or as interesting as an evolution of the birds from the first Alan Wake could’ve been; the Giants are boring, just bullet sponge enemies; the Grenadiers are good, if only because they’re the only enemies that attack at range, and can hurt other enemies with their grenades.
What’s baffling, and something I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere, is how the basic Taken enemy type has been nerfed from the original Alan Wake. Although these were melee-only enemies, they could also pressure the player by throwing their weapons, meaning that you couldn’t just run away from them; you had to dodge their melee attacks up close, or their projectiles at range. You could also use your flashlight beam to stun them, interrupting their throwing animation. This actually gave the combat in Alan Wake a lot of depth, and I’m surprised they decided to remove this feature entirely in American Nightmare.
The most offensive changes are the nerfs to the flashlight, flashbangs, and the flare gun.
Battery capacity has been halved, from a maximum of twenty batteries to only ten. Additionally, the flashlight beam now MUST be boosted to burn away enemy shields, whereas the boost was originally a mechanic that reduced the amount of time needed to get through an enemy’s defenses; there were some enemies that did require a boosted flashlight beam to break through, but these were meant to be mini-bosses, kinda. Now, every enemy in American Nightmare requires a boosted flashlight beam, which is stupid. There was a strategy in conserving battery power, in boosting only when necessary – I understand reducing battery capacity to that end, but then making the boost a requirement to damage an enemy is overkill. Completely pointless.
But no, the most egregious thing in American Nightmare is the flashbang/flare gun nerf. No longer ultra-destructive screen-clearing spectacles, flashbangs and flare guns can only stun enemies now. No more satisfying slo-mo nukes. Boring.
There’s also the fact that Serena Valdivia is written like… that, you know? Weirdly fetishtic and unnecessary.
There’s also the fact that the Old Gods of Asgard /Poets of the Fall needle drops in this one feel so unearned. Both occur when some enemies spawn in towards the end, for no reason.
There’s also the fact that the Kasabian needle drop, which I thought fucking ruled at first, always cuts abruptly after 10 seconds when some enemies spawn in.
There’s so many small things that kill the experience of American Nightmare that it makes me genuinely upset that, for a while, this was considered Alan Wake’s final chapter.
It’s not all bad. Alan can run for more than two seconds in this one. Some of the new weapons, like the Magnum and the Crossbow, are actually really good and feel fun to use. Mr. Scratch is a fun villain, and I do hope he returns in Alan Wake 2. Last but not least, it’s short - you can wrap the whole thing up in an afternoon if you really wanted to.
I also really liked the desert setting, I thought it was a fun contrast to the Pacific Northwest from the first game. There are some really gorgeous environments and visuals here.
It’s also a bittersweet sendoff. This would be the final performance by Brett Madden, the voice talent behind Alan’s wife, Alice, before she passed away in 2020. Although Alan reunites with Alice in her short film, “Sunrise,” at the end of American Nightmare, it’s been established that this was meant to be symbolic, not taken literally.
When footage of an early build of the supposedly-then-canceled Alan Wake 2 was posted online, it became obvious that American Nightmare was built from the bones of what the original Alan Wake 2 was supposed to be. Looking at the footage now, I would’ve loved to have seen this iteration of Alan Wake, although it’d’ve been a departure from the extremely grounded action horror foundation of the original.
American Nightmare is an interesting excursion into what could’ve been. Ultimately, it’s held back by some poor design choices and counterintuitive gameplay tweaks.
It’s not great, but it’s not where this story ends, either.
Inoffensive, if not for the bizarrely specific anti-QoL changes.
More enemy types have been added – namely, the Splitter, the Birdmen, the Grenadiers, and the Giants; the Splitter is okay, it’s a neat idea but nothing groundbreaking; the Birdmen feel like a missed opportunity, not nearly as aggressive or as interesting as an evolution of the birds from the first Alan Wake could’ve been; the Giants are boring, just bullet sponge enemies; the Grenadiers are good, if only because they’re the only enemies that attack at range, and can hurt other enemies with their grenades.
What’s baffling, and something I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere, is how the basic Taken enemy type has been nerfed from the original Alan Wake. Although these were melee-only enemies, they could also pressure the player by throwing their weapons, meaning that you couldn’t just run away from them; you had to dodge their melee attacks up close, or their projectiles at range. You could also use your flashlight beam to stun them, interrupting their throwing animation. This actually gave the combat in Alan Wake a lot of depth, and I’m surprised they decided to remove this feature entirely in American Nightmare.
The most offensive changes are the nerfs to the flashlight, flashbangs, and the flare gun.
Battery capacity has been halved, from a maximum of twenty batteries to only ten. Additionally, the flashlight beam now MUST be boosted to burn away enemy shields, whereas the boost was originally a mechanic that reduced the amount of time needed to get through an enemy’s defenses; there were some enemies that did require a boosted flashlight beam to break through, but these were meant to be mini-bosses, kinda. Now, every enemy in American Nightmare requires a boosted flashlight beam, which is stupid. There was a strategy in conserving battery power, in boosting only when necessary – I understand reducing battery capacity to that end, but then making the boost a requirement to damage an enemy is overkill. Completely pointless.
But no, the most egregious thing in American Nightmare is the flashbang/flare gun nerf. No longer ultra-destructive screen-clearing spectacles, flashbangs and flare guns can only stun enemies now. No more satisfying slo-mo nukes. Boring.
There’s also the fact that Serena Valdivia is written like… that, you know? Weirdly fetishtic and unnecessary.
There’s also the fact that the Old Gods of Asgard /Poets of the Fall needle drops in this one feel so unearned. Both occur when some enemies spawn in towards the end, for no reason.
There’s also the fact that the Kasabian needle drop, which I thought fucking ruled at first, always cuts abruptly after 10 seconds when some enemies spawn in.
There’s so many small things that kill the experience of American Nightmare that it makes me genuinely upset that, for a while, this was considered Alan Wake’s final chapter.
It’s not all bad. Alan can run for more than two seconds in this one. Some of the new weapons, like the Magnum and the Crossbow, are actually really good and feel fun to use. Mr. Scratch is a fun villain, and I do hope he returns in Alan Wake 2. Last but not least, it’s short - you can wrap the whole thing up in an afternoon if you really wanted to.
I also really liked the desert setting, I thought it was a fun contrast to the Pacific Northwest from the first game. There are some really gorgeous environments and visuals here.
It’s also a bittersweet sendoff. This would be the final performance by Brett Madden, the voice talent behind Alan’s wife, Alice, before she passed away in 2020. Although Alan reunites with Alice in her short film, “Sunrise,” at the end of American Nightmare, it’s been established that this was meant to be symbolic, not taken literally.
When footage of an early build of the supposedly-then-canceled Alan Wake 2 was posted online, it became obvious that American Nightmare was built from the bones of what the original Alan Wake 2 was supposed to be. Looking at the footage now, I would’ve loved to have seen this iteration of Alan Wake, although it’d’ve been a departure from the extremely grounded action horror foundation of the original.
American Nightmare is an interesting excursion into what could’ve been. Ultimately, it’s held back by some poor design choices and counterintuitive gameplay tweaks.
It’s not great, but it’s not where this story ends, either.
2010
This review contains spoilers
[SOME REFERENCES AND MINOR SPOILERS FOR CONTROL]
Alan Wake begins and ends in darkness.
Alan Wake begins and ends in dreams.
Alan Wake is a story about stories.
Alan Wake is a video game about stories about stories about dreams of darkness and dreams of light and dreams of light against darkness.
Alan Wake has lived in my head “rent free,” as they say, since I first played it in 2010, back when a snot-nosed brat like me still played Call of Duty and Halo and Gears of War on Xbox 360.
Alan Wake was the first game I played that grabbed me and never let go.
Alan Wake was neither the first game I fell in love with, nor was it the first to convince me that video games could, in fact, “be art;” however, Alan Wake was the first “horror” game I fell in love with. Misnomer maybe, as anybody who’s played Alan Wake will often warn potential newcomers that Alan Wake isn’t a “horror game” per se (not survival horror, anyways), not like your Resident Evils, or Silent Hills, or Amnesias, even. It’s a “psychological action thriller,” as the original box art coins it, which is nothing if not apt.
I’ve played through Alan Wake roughly five times. Most recently I played through the original Alan Wake (not remastered) on the Nightmare difficulty with the HUD turned completely off. If you’ve played Alan Wake before and plan to revisit it, I strongly recommend doing a No HUD playthrough! I usually play most games with the HUD on, but the game communicates so much information on screen without a HUD that I would say playing without it improved my experience overall.
Is it dated? Of course it is. Any seventh-gen game is showing its age at this point, but especially games which aimed for photorealism at the time. That’s not to say Alan Wake isn’t visually spectacular at times, but character models, textures, and animations have not aged gracefully – especially not in cutscenes.
What’s aged remarkably are the environments, the lighting and, in general, the vibes.
Set in the Pacific Northwest, in the fictional town of Bright Falls, Washington, the only thing that’s stuck with me longer than the story and its many predictable (and unpredictable) beats are the gorgeous mountainsides, wide vistas, and mesmerizing forests - the warm, dreamy autumn tableaus during daytime; and their twisted, Stygian counterparts during the night.
Revisiting Alan Wake always feels like meeting an old friend again. I’ll always remember the Oh Deer Diner, or listening to Violet Indiana’s Air Kissing while watching the sun set on Diver’s Isle, or running across a dam while being apprehended by a reality-bending vortex of pure darkness.
These moments are not few and far between, but many and near throughout.
Alan Wake is paced like a dream and a nightmare. The game occurs in digestible one-to-two hour episodes, but the actual story is delivered via quickdraw expository lore dumps – the game dishes out necessary information liberally, but if you’re not paying attention 100% of the time, you might end up missing an important detail or two which might radically alter your understanding of the story and key events.
I’ve been fascinated with this game and its story since I was thirteen, man! Every time I’ve replayed it, I’ve discovered something new, or walked away from the experience with another interpretation or theory on what’s really happening and why. Now that I’ve played through Control finally, I’ve also been picking up on obscure connections between the two games; did you know that Odin literally calls the Anderson Farm a “Place of Power”? Was this intentional, or just coincidence?
What is most interesting now is trying to determine when the events of Alan Wake become inevitable; that is, when exactly Alan sets his story in motion. Is it when he dives into Cauldron Lake, and is manipulated into writing Departure? Is it when he writes Thomas Zane into Departure? Is it when he returns to Cauldron Lake at the end of the game? Or was this legacy arranged decades in advance, by none other than Thomas Zane himself?
Episode 2 ends with Poe’s Haunted, an ethereal ballad and the eponymous title track of the singer’s sophomore record, released on Halloween, 2000. It wasn’t until much later I learned that this album was not only based on House of Leaves, but that Poe was Mark Z. Danielewski’s sister. I would end up reading House of Leaves about a decade later. I’ve written about House of Leaves this year already. I also briefly referenced it in my Control review and, despite that game and its affinity for hostile alien architecture, I believe this novel inspired Alan Wake the most.
MyHouse.wad is also, of course, heavily inspired by House of Leaves, peppered with direct references and similar creative choices; Alan Wake is, by contrast, a literalization of House of Leaves’ recursive metanarrative – although the story of House of Leaves unravels towards its conclusion(s), Alan Wake instead curls and twists inwards, an Ouroboros of cyclical cause and effect.
Alan Wake is less concerned with the overlap between fiction and reality, and instead the interplay: How does art imitate life? How does life imitate art?
Alan Wake curses its protagonist with the ability to alter reality through writing. What ostensibly begins as a Godlike influence over the totality of the universe quickly crumbles, however – and this is how Alan Wake creates its central conflict. The nebulous “dark presence” which permeates the dimension beneath Cauldron Lake (referred to only as “the dark place”) uses Alan’s weaknesses as a writer to slip into reality, plot holes become worm holes into our world. It’s such an interesting concept and the game gets a lot of mileage out of it, even as specific examples of such “plot holes” are left ambiguous throughout. What remains clear, ironically, is that ambiguity kills. Anything left up to interpretation becomes a de facto death sentence for our so-called Champion of Light.
…which is ironic, then, because a lot of Alan Wake is open to interpretation. Its story isn’t so much filled with inconsistency as it is plagued by vagueness. A lot of general ambiguity can be handwaved if you think about it for more than a few seconds, but then there’s weird instances of the aforementioned vagueness which, while not plot holes in and of themselves, are nonetheless ham-fisted in a story that is, by its own measure, supposed to be a balancing act.
There are rules in Alan Wake, but the logic is unmistakably soft magic. The story and gameplay do benefit greatly from this contrivance, so long as you accept the idea of reality-bending art. It really is convenient that Hartman and Nightingale are unceremoniously dispatched of, because Alan Wake doesn’t like them, and once they’ve outlived their narrative significance, he’s content to completely write them out of the story.
The idea that the story itself is riddled with plot holes or ambiguities is exactly what allows the dark presence to exist in Alan Wake’s world to begin with. This is literally the reason Barbara Jagger comes back “wrong” when Thomas Zane writes her into his “story”.
Alan Wake presents a true metanarrative where the weaknesses of the story are also, in a sense, necessary for the story to occur. It is logically airtight by virtue of its flaws being Alan Wake's flaws as a writer.
In the first episode of Alan Wake, players can discover an episode of the fictional TV show Night Springs entitled “Quantum Suicide”. I’ve always interpreted Night Springs as a way to explore ideas the game presents in a shorter, sillier format. “Quantum Suicide,” for example, outlines the concept of quantum immortality. In a sense, Alan Wake has bestowed upon himself quantum immortality by writing himself into his own manuscript. As he exists in his work, he must continue to exist as the story dictates. A blessing and a curse.
I think the story and its mechanisms are fairly digestible. The DLC is a little… less digestible, both narratively and mechanically.
The “special features” (as the game refers to them as) are essentially interludes, stepping stones from the main story’s abrupt conclusion towards the ill-fated Alan Wake 2 (which would then evolve (or devolve) into American Nightmare). With the gift of hindsight, a lot of the narrative choices during these “special features” are noticeably clunky. You’d be forgiven for believing that the Alan Wake we see on TV throughout “The Signal” and “The Writer” is Mr. Scratch – but no, we’re playing as the embodiment of Alan’s rationality/logic, or whatever, and the Alan Wake on TV is actually Alan Wake, gone insane from staying in the dark place for an extended period of time.
“The Writer” addresses this in a brief back-and-forth between Alan and Zane, although the explanation is ultimately superfluous. To plant the seeds of Mr. Scratch at the end of the original story and then refuse to elaborate during the DLC is an awkward choice.
Imagine any other story doing this. Imagine Max Payne ends with the introduction of Lax Payne – Max’s evil twin brother; then, in Max Payne 1.5 (which takes place in a dream), you play as the Good Max Payne, who is attempting to regain control of the actual Max Payne (not Lax Payne). Then, you defeat Lax Payne in Max Payne: Chain of Memories (although it's unclear, he may or may not reappear in Max Payne 2).
Again, with the gift of hindsight, what is actually happening makes more sense now, but for first-time players, this is still a weirdly convoluted story to tell in such a way.
And it’s a shame, too, because the DLC has some interesting ideas! Using your light to conjure objects/actions/people from words is a genuinely great mechanic, and it’s a little sad this didn’t get any mileage in the base game. There’s plenty of standout sequences: the furnace maze, the “bad word” minefield, the lighthouse sequence… it almost makes me wish that some of this was present before the DLC.
It is expected, however, as Alan Wake exercises a surprising amount of restraint. Its enemies are pedestrian, most of them literally pedestrian. There are no eldritch monstrosities or Cronenbergian meatmen (although there is a pretty gross depiction of a dead deer at one point). There’s only four weapons (not counting the flare gun). But most importantly, the questions it raises have earth-shattering implications, yet the only answers we get are that Alice survives the whole ordeal, and that it’s not a lake, it’s an ocean(...?)
I know, I know, it’s antithetical to the poetry of fear, or whatever, but the game remains austere to a fault. Even when Remedy flexes their creative muscles, they seem to want an archetypal hero story out of Alan Wake – something ambitious, yet simple.
I would also be remiss not to comment on Matthew Porretta’s performance as the titular character. In stark contrast to his portrayal of Dr. Darling in Control, Poretta is gravely serious here with very few moments of genuine distress – his frantic screaming at Mott, his wife’s would-be kidnapper in Episode 2, is one of the few standout moments. Alan’s demeanor also evolves over time, not quite embodying the Hollywood action hero at the end, but comfortable enough to score some quips and one-liners after some late-game ambushes.
Do not mistake Alan Wake’s restraint for lack of creativity. Although it lacks Max Payne’s flashy bullet time, it does have a good amount of cinematic, context-sensitive actions, rewarding perfect dodges with silky smooth slow motion goodness.
Subsequently, the marriage of Alan Wake’s gunplay and “light” as its central mechanic is effortlessly reinforced through the beam of the flashlight, which functions both as a means of weakening enemies that are shrouded (or, shielded) in darkness, and as a reticule. The subtle genius of this one decision is the crux of why I believe Alan Wake works so well. Did you know that the flashlight beam also diminishes in size as it runs out of battery? It’s a small detail, but it’s another example of the various diegetic elements that make playing the game so immersive (especially, again, without a HUD).
It’s a world I’ve returned to time and again, and each time it’s a warm blanket. Drinking in the postcard-esque locales of Bright Falls and its majestic forest clearings remains my video game comfort food of choice.
I fully expected Alan Wake to fade over time. This singular, adolescence-defining game was a warm memory, and I would've been content if it were to remain a cult classic, an old horror story with an ill-fated cliffhanger...
Alan Wake grabbed me and never let go. Now, it’s coming back.
It isn’t a masterpiece, but I fell in love with it, and it’s remained a personal favorite ever since.
Alan Wake begins and ends in darkness.
Alan Wake begins and ends in dreams.
Alan Wake is a story about stories.
Alan Wake is a video game about stories about stories about dreams of darkness and dreams of light and dreams of light against darkness.
Alan Wake has lived in my head “rent free,” as they say, since I first played it in 2010, back when a snot-nosed brat like me still played Call of Duty and Halo and Gears of War on Xbox 360.
Alan Wake was the first game I played that grabbed me and never let go.
Alan Wake was neither the first game I fell in love with, nor was it the first to convince me that video games could, in fact, “be art;” however, Alan Wake was the first “horror” game I fell in love with. Misnomer maybe, as anybody who’s played Alan Wake will often warn potential newcomers that Alan Wake isn’t a “horror game” per se (not survival horror, anyways), not like your Resident Evils, or Silent Hills, or Amnesias, even. It’s a “psychological action thriller,” as the original box art coins it, which is nothing if not apt.
I’ve played through Alan Wake roughly five times. Most recently I played through the original Alan Wake (not remastered) on the Nightmare difficulty with the HUD turned completely off. If you’ve played Alan Wake before and plan to revisit it, I strongly recommend doing a No HUD playthrough! I usually play most games with the HUD on, but the game communicates so much information on screen without a HUD that I would say playing without it improved my experience overall.
Is it dated? Of course it is. Any seventh-gen game is showing its age at this point, but especially games which aimed for photorealism at the time. That’s not to say Alan Wake isn’t visually spectacular at times, but character models, textures, and animations have not aged gracefully – especially not in cutscenes.
What’s aged remarkably are the environments, the lighting and, in general, the vibes.
Set in the Pacific Northwest, in the fictional town of Bright Falls, Washington, the only thing that’s stuck with me longer than the story and its many predictable (and unpredictable) beats are the gorgeous mountainsides, wide vistas, and mesmerizing forests - the warm, dreamy autumn tableaus during daytime; and their twisted, Stygian counterparts during the night.
Revisiting Alan Wake always feels like meeting an old friend again. I’ll always remember the Oh Deer Diner, or listening to Violet Indiana’s Air Kissing while watching the sun set on Diver’s Isle, or running across a dam while being apprehended by a reality-bending vortex of pure darkness.
These moments are not few and far between, but many and near throughout.
Alan Wake is paced like a dream and a nightmare. The game occurs in digestible one-to-two hour episodes, but the actual story is delivered via quickdraw expository lore dumps – the game dishes out necessary information liberally, but if you’re not paying attention 100% of the time, you might end up missing an important detail or two which might radically alter your understanding of the story and key events.
I’ve been fascinated with this game and its story since I was thirteen, man! Every time I’ve replayed it, I’ve discovered something new, or walked away from the experience with another interpretation or theory on what’s really happening and why. Now that I’ve played through Control finally, I’ve also been picking up on obscure connections between the two games; did you know that Odin literally calls the Anderson Farm a “Place of Power”? Was this intentional, or just coincidence?
What is most interesting now is trying to determine when the events of Alan Wake become inevitable; that is, when exactly Alan sets his story in motion. Is it when he dives into Cauldron Lake, and is manipulated into writing Departure? Is it when he writes Thomas Zane into Departure? Is it when he returns to Cauldron Lake at the end of the game? Or was this legacy arranged decades in advance, by none other than Thomas Zane himself?
Episode 2 ends with Poe’s Haunted, an ethereal ballad and the eponymous title track of the singer’s sophomore record, released on Halloween, 2000. It wasn’t until much later I learned that this album was not only based on House of Leaves, but that Poe was Mark Z. Danielewski’s sister. I would end up reading House of Leaves about a decade later. I’ve written about House of Leaves this year already. I also briefly referenced it in my Control review and, despite that game and its affinity for hostile alien architecture, I believe this novel inspired Alan Wake the most.
MyHouse.wad is also, of course, heavily inspired by House of Leaves, peppered with direct references and similar creative choices; Alan Wake is, by contrast, a literalization of House of Leaves’ recursive metanarrative – although the story of House of Leaves unravels towards its conclusion(s), Alan Wake instead curls and twists inwards, an Ouroboros of cyclical cause and effect.
Alan Wake is less concerned with the overlap between fiction and reality, and instead the interplay: How does art imitate life? How does life imitate art?
Alan Wake curses its protagonist with the ability to alter reality through writing. What ostensibly begins as a Godlike influence over the totality of the universe quickly crumbles, however – and this is how Alan Wake creates its central conflict. The nebulous “dark presence” which permeates the dimension beneath Cauldron Lake (referred to only as “the dark place”) uses Alan’s weaknesses as a writer to slip into reality, plot holes become worm holes into our world. It’s such an interesting concept and the game gets a lot of mileage out of it, even as specific examples of such “plot holes” are left ambiguous throughout. What remains clear, ironically, is that ambiguity kills. Anything left up to interpretation becomes a de facto death sentence for our so-called Champion of Light.
…which is ironic, then, because a lot of Alan Wake is open to interpretation. Its story isn’t so much filled with inconsistency as it is plagued by vagueness. A lot of general ambiguity can be handwaved if you think about it for more than a few seconds, but then there’s weird instances of the aforementioned vagueness which, while not plot holes in and of themselves, are nonetheless ham-fisted in a story that is, by its own measure, supposed to be a balancing act.
There are rules in Alan Wake, but the logic is unmistakably soft magic. The story and gameplay do benefit greatly from this contrivance, so long as you accept the idea of reality-bending art. It really is convenient that Hartman and Nightingale are unceremoniously dispatched of, because Alan Wake doesn’t like them, and once they’ve outlived their narrative significance, he’s content to completely write them out of the story.
The idea that the story itself is riddled with plot holes or ambiguities is exactly what allows the dark presence to exist in Alan Wake’s world to begin with. This is literally the reason Barbara Jagger comes back “wrong” when Thomas Zane writes her into his “story”.
Alan Wake presents a true metanarrative where the weaknesses of the story are also, in a sense, necessary for the story to occur. It is logically airtight by virtue of its flaws being Alan Wake's flaws as a writer.
In the first episode of Alan Wake, players can discover an episode of the fictional TV show Night Springs entitled “Quantum Suicide”. I’ve always interpreted Night Springs as a way to explore ideas the game presents in a shorter, sillier format. “Quantum Suicide,” for example, outlines the concept of quantum immortality. In a sense, Alan Wake has bestowed upon himself quantum immortality by writing himself into his own manuscript. As he exists in his work, he must continue to exist as the story dictates. A blessing and a curse.
I think the story and its mechanisms are fairly digestible. The DLC is a little… less digestible, both narratively and mechanically.
The “special features” (as the game refers to them as) are essentially interludes, stepping stones from the main story’s abrupt conclusion towards the ill-fated Alan Wake 2 (which would then evolve (or devolve) into American Nightmare). With the gift of hindsight, a lot of the narrative choices during these “special features” are noticeably clunky. You’d be forgiven for believing that the Alan Wake we see on TV throughout “The Signal” and “The Writer” is Mr. Scratch – but no, we’re playing as the embodiment of Alan’s rationality/logic, or whatever, and the Alan Wake on TV is actually Alan Wake, gone insane from staying in the dark place for an extended period of time.
“The Writer” addresses this in a brief back-and-forth between Alan and Zane, although the explanation is ultimately superfluous. To plant the seeds of Mr. Scratch at the end of the original story and then refuse to elaborate during the DLC is an awkward choice.
Imagine any other story doing this. Imagine Max Payne ends with the introduction of Lax Payne – Max’s evil twin brother; then, in Max Payne 1.5 (which takes place in a dream), you play as the Good Max Payne, who is attempting to regain control of the actual Max Payne (not Lax Payne). Then, you defeat Lax Payne in Max Payne: Chain of Memories (although it's unclear, he may or may not reappear in Max Payne 2).
Again, with the gift of hindsight, what is actually happening makes more sense now, but for first-time players, this is still a weirdly convoluted story to tell in such a way.
And it’s a shame, too, because the DLC has some interesting ideas! Using your light to conjure objects/actions/people from words is a genuinely great mechanic, and it’s a little sad this didn’t get any mileage in the base game. There’s plenty of standout sequences: the furnace maze, the “bad word” minefield, the lighthouse sequence… it almost makes me wish that some of this was present before the DLC.
It is expected, however, as Alan Wake exercises a surprising amount of restraint. Its enemies are pedestrian, most of them literally pedestrian. There are no eldritch monstrosities or Cronenbergian meatmen (although there is a pretty gross depiction of a dead deer at one point). There’s only four weapons (not counting the flare gun). But most importantly, the questions it raises have earth-shattering implications, yet the only answers we get are that Alice survives the whole ordeal, and that it’s not a lake, it’s an ocean(...?)
I know, I know, it’s antithetical to the poetry of fear, or whatever, but the game remains austere to a fault. Even when Remedy flexes their creative muscles, they seem to want an archetypal hero story out of Alan Wake – something ambitious, yet simple.
I would also be remiss not to comment on Matthew Porretta’s performance as the titular character. In stark contrast to his portrayal of Dr. Darling in Control, Poretta is gravely serious here with very few moments of genuine distress – his frantic screaming at Mott, his wife’s would-be kidnapper in Episode 2, is one of the few standout moments. Alan’s demeanor also evolves over time, not quite embodying the Hollywood action hero at the end, but comfortable enough to score some quips and one-liners after some late-game ambushes.
Do not mistake Alan Wake’s restraint for lack of creativity. Although it lacks Max Payne’s flashy bullet time, it does have a good amount of cinematic, context-sensitive actions, rewarding perfect dodges with silky smooth slow motion goodness.
Subsequently, the marriage of Alan Wake’s gunplay and “light” as its central mechanic is effortlessly reinforced through the beam of the flashlight, which functions both as a means of weakening enemies that are shrouded (or, shielded) in darkness, and as a reticule. The subtle genius of this one decision is the crux of why I believe Alan Wake works so well. Did you know that the flashlight beam also diminishes in size as it runs out of battery? It’s a small detail, but it’s another example of the various diegetic elements that make playing the game so immersive (especially, again, without a HUD).
It’s a world I’ve returned to time and again, and each time it’s a warm blanket. Drinking in the postcard-esque locales of Bright Falls and its majestic forest clearings remains my video game comfort food of choice.
I fully expected Alan Wake to fade over time. This singular, adolescence-defining game was a warm memory, and I would've been content if it were to remain a cult classic, an old horror story with an ill-fated cliffhanger...
Alan Wake grabbed me and never let go. Now, it’s coming back.
It isn’t a masterpiece, but I fell in love with it, and it’s remained a personal favorite ever since.
2020
This review contains spoilers
For fans of the original Alan Wake (i.e. yours truly) the reintroduction of our beloved writer is more a confirmation that, yes, he is still alive – but AWE ultimately leaves fans with more questions than answers. As a prologue to Alan Wake 2, it’s fine; as an epilogue to Control, it’s not great.
Did Alan Wake write the Federal Bureau of Control into reality? Is Jesse Faden another one of his creations? Did he invent the Hiss? I guess!
Although reintroducing light as a mechanic should’ve provided some opportunities to capitalize on ideas that were already introduced in Alan Wake and American Nightmare, Control just… doesn’t do anything with it, save for some light (ha ha) puzzle solving. I don’t know, dude! Foundation had enemy infighting, I thought it might’ve been cool using the light to fight the Taken again, but I guess not. It’s still just the gosh dang Hiss I guess.
That’s really the gist of it. There’s so many gleams of interesting ideas that don’t go anywhere.
There’s a mission where you find an arcade cabinet, and I thought there’d be a cute little pixel minigame or something – but no! It’s just an excuse to give you a short “horde mode” mission. It feels so uninspired.
The one thing I really appreciated about the DLC is the return of Emil Hartman from Alan Wake, incorporating his role from the original game and exploring the extent of his machinations. Great idea/semi-retcon that ties up some loose ends. His design in Control is appropriately monstrous.
The final boss fight for this DLC is truly fucking bonkers though. I had to turn on immortality just to finish it. He does this shockwave attack that lets him heal in darkness with such frequency that I could NOT deal any significant damage to him at all in the second phase. Maybe I should’ve waited until after Foundation to play this one? Or maybe Remedy just needs to have enemies/bosses that scale with your story progress.
Did Alan Wake write the Federal Bureau of Control into reality? Is Jesse Faden another one of his creations? Did he invent the Hiss? I guess!
Although reintroducing light as a mechanic should’ve provided some opportunities to capitalize on ideas that were already introduced in Alan Wake and American Nightmare, Control just… doesn’t do anything with it, save for some light (ha ha) puzzle solving. I don’t know, dude! Foundation had enemy infighting, I thought it might’ve been cool using the light to fight the Taken again, but I guess not. It’s still just the gosh dang Hiss I guess.
That’s really the gist of it. There’s so many gleams of interesting ideas that don’t go anywhere.
There’s a mission where you find an arcade cabinet, and I thought there’d be a cute little pixel minigame or something – but no! It’s just an excuse to give you a short “horde mode” mission. It feels so uninspired.
The one thing I really appreciated about the DLC is the return of Emil Hartman from Alan Wake, incorporating his role from the original game and exploring the extent of his machinations. Great idea/semi-retcon that ties up some loose ends. His design in Control is appropriately monstrous.
The final boss fight for this DLC is truly fucking bonkers though. I had to turn on immortality just to finish it. He does this shockwave attack that lets him heal in darkness with such frequency that I could NOT deal any significant damage to him at all in the second phase. Maybe I should’ve waited until after Foundation to play this one? Or maybe Remedy just needs to have enemies/bosses that scale with your story progress.
2021
Vampire Survivors is the Power Wash Simulator of Bullet Hells.
Vampire Survivors is Cookie Clicker: the Roguelite.
Vampire Survivors is Flappy Bird meets Dynasty Warriors.
Vampire Survivors is the gamification of popping bubble wrap with your mind and winning drugs that let you pop more bubble wrap with your mind even faster.
Vampire Survivors is pretty good. It’s also pixel barf, the equivalent of a Unity Asset Flip on a Mega Drive, emulated on an Android, emulated on a PC.
Vampire Survivors is the pioneer of a new genre without a name. Most developers gesture towards it by including “Survivors” in the title of their game. It’s probably easier than attempting to legitimize the unwieldy “Survivors-like” as a new genre, anyways.
Vampire Survivors is not a reinvention of the wheel. By all accounts, it’s more of a throwback title, more Galaga than Binding of Isaac.
Vampire Survivors is Smash TV: the Action RPG.
Vampire Survivors is not a purely idle experience, as some would have you believe; it’s certainly not a brainless game, either. It is extremely basic and, in some cases, you may owe your success (or your failure) to RNG more than any particular skill level. Calling it a game that plays itself would be hyperbolically reductive. Calling it mechanically shallow would be almost irrefutable.
Vampire Survivors is an inoffensive F2P mobile game which only gives you one (1) advertisement per run (if you wish to revive once after death). It’s a far cry from the miscellaneous shovelware titles practically built around funneling users to its next unskippable ad.
Vampire Survivors is $5 USD on Steam and sits at “Overwhelmingly Positive” with nearly 200K reviews.
…
(CW from here on out: Eating Disorder, Alcoholism)
When I lived in Portland from mid-2017 to early 2020, I lived a very frugal lifestyle. I never found stable employment. I earned my income through temp work; dishwashing, manual labor, etc. Between classes at University, I would usually eat at a Mediterranean food cart right outside the Engineering Building. Almost every day, I’d buy this special $5 lamb and chicken over rice. Sometimes the owner would give me fresh baklava or tea, but he’d never charge me extra for anything. In a place I felt otherwise unaccustomed to, there was somewhere I felt warm and welcome.
I struggled when I lived in Portland. Some days I only ate a snack or two. Anything to not live above my means. I lost a lot of weight. I wasn’t healthy. I was starving.
In 2017 I would’ve killed for the life I have now.
There are days I’m nostalgic for Portland. I met a lot of cool people there, had some unforgettable experiences. I wish that I’d’ve taken care of myself more; then again, I would’ve never been able to take care of myself the way I needed to begin with.
$5 got me to school and back on a bus. $5 got me a 3-pack of Steel Reserve, 24 fluid ounces each, enough to erase some nights completely. $5 got me lamb and chicken over rice almost every day for over two years.
…
Vampire Survivors has been universally recognized as a good game by default. It probably takes more out of a person to denounce Vampire Survivors for its sins than to extol it for its chic roguelite sensibilities. It won a BAFTA for crying out loud! In a year where Elden Ring was a game, a group of people sat down and decided that a mobile game should be the Best Game That Year.
Vampire Survivors is the de facto choice for Gaming At Home or On-The-Go. For the low price of Five US Dollars (or Free if you’re on Mobile!) you too can experience the drip-feed roguelite arcade experience that people have described as “addicting,” “like taking drugs,” or even, “crack cocaine”. Brother, the only thing gamers love more than comparing games to food is comparing games to drugs!
Vampire Survivors is the Drugs of Games People Won’t Shut Up About.
Vampire Survivors is the Food of Drugs People Like to Use in Analogies.
Vampire Survivors did NOT ruin my life. I started playing Vampire Survivors December 22nd, 2022 and I “finished” Vampire Survivors on August 25th, 2023 (“finished” as in completed “the Collection” which, to my understanding, is the truest win condition outside of the final stage/boss). I took frequent breaks for weeks or months at a time so my journey through the game was a leisurely one.
Vampire Survivors is definitely a crapshoot more often than not. You’ll likely have enough upgrades to make any build feasible late game. The only thing that tips the scale in (or against) your favor is the RNG, and even that can eventually be manipulated using the “Seal” upgrade which allows players to remove certain weapons/items from rotation, controlling the parameters before a new run even starts. However, the Seal upgrades cost a fortune – much more than any regular upgrade, anyways. If you’ve unlocked all the regular upgrades though, chances are you can turn just about any character into an AFK Gold Farm on Endless Mode and let it idle in the background until you’re satisfied. I guess in that way, it really does become an idle game at some point. It would be interesting to see a game that begins as Vampire Survivors turn into a Cookie Clicker late game (I know I called it Cookie Clicker earlier (additionally, I will write a Cookie Clicker review one day, and it will be nowhere as kind as this)), but at that point, I think we’d have to collectively agree that video games as a medium can no longer be considered art (this is a joke (unless hypothetically this video game becomes real, or maybe already exists, in which case I fear we’ve doomed ourselves to a fate much worse than death as is (this is another joke; this “game” would probably not be that good anyways, and just because one game highlights distressing market trends, does not mean they’re all Going To Be Like That. Not every game is Call of Duty. Not every game is the Last of Us. Not every game is Vampire Survivors. etc.))).
Vampire Survivors does NOT have any vampires in it.
…
Worked as a janitor at a sports club once. Real weird place. Had the musk of half a century and none of the charm. Trophy cases hadn’t been touched in generations. The attendees were pallid, shambling creatures, all of them probably sitting on a pretty six or seven figures. Bet I looked like an insect to them.
My memory’s fuzzy. Don’t remember who it was showing me the ropes. Just remember the empty rooms, infinite corridor locker rooms and dead mess halls. Spraying down various surfaces. Mirrors. Windows. Nowhere spaces. When people passed through, I ducked out of sight. Not because I’m agoraphobic or antisocial – just wasn’t dying to be perceived back then.
Worked a full eight hour shift without a break. Whoever was supposed to be checking in on me didn’t. I slipped through the cracks. When it was time to leave, I walked into the food court as it was about to close and asked one of the workers if they still had anything left to eat. I explained I hadn’t taken a break, and one of them gave me a box of rice and chili. I remember he told me that, sometimes, “it ain’t about the taste, it’s about the space”.
Words to live by, man.
I was starving.
I hardly played any games while I was living in Portland. Didn’t have the time. Didn’t have the money. I played Super Mario All-Stars and Demon’s Souls while I was living with my buddy Ian. I played Persona 3 FES for a bit. By the time I’d moved into my second apartment, I hardly played anything. I watched my roommates play Death Stranding and Final Fantasy IX. I always wanted to play more. I never did.
It’s about the space. I think about long, sprawling open world games with a hundred objectives and points of interest; a million collectibles; enemy strongholds; side quests; secrets; the last of these I played, after I'd left Portland, was Ghost of Tsushima. At a zombie’s pace I trudged through the game in a little under two years. I thought it was good. I probably won’t play it again.
I made friends with a coworker named Dan. He’s a big PlayStation guy. He has a PlayStation sticker on his tumbler. We started talking about games one day and I brought up Ghost of Tsushima. He said he’d never played it, but his friend played it – he told me that his friend would play exclusively with the black-and-white filter on, and only while listening to hip-hop mixtapes. I told him, “That sounds rad”.
Ian and I used to play Dark Souls while listening to Agalloch, drinking like sailors. There was never enough time to finish a full playthrough.
My best friend Garrett plays Destiny 2 religiously. Sometimes he’ll listen to a podcast or pull up something else to watch on his second monitor. Sometimes he’ll talk to me while he’s playing.
The point is, everyone plays games differently, and for different reasons. Where some people might find a story compelling, another player might intend to steamroll a game’s main quest – skipping each line of dialogue, every cutscene, every nonessential encounter, all in service of cutting to the chase.
People love to point to Subway Surfers as the Ur Example of brainless gaming (seriously, read some of these reviews), allowing players to split attention between one primary activity (the game) and another secondary activity (movie, television, YouTube, etc.).
I don’t want to speculate what the long term effects of this behavior could be in a broader context here, so I won’t!
…
Vampire Survivors is the Terraria of Subway Surfers. A game focused on incremental growth. Arcadelike and continuous. Formulaic and never-ending.
Vampire Survivors is the essence of the last decade of roguelike/lite experiences, condensed into 30 minutes of undiluted mayhem sans apotheosis. A monomythic Sparknotes page with a bullet point list of the stages of the Hero’s Journey.
Vampire Survivors is a symptom of our gaming climate, not the sickness itself.
Vampire Survivors is a dopamine hit in slow motion.
Vampire Survivors is an ugly mirror. A skinner box numbers-go-up slot machine nightmare monster with gnarled teeth and sharp claws and never-ending jackpots.
…
I’ve only been to Vegas twice. The first time, I was a kid; the second time, I could gamble… so I gambled. I won some money, then I lost some money, then I found the arcade cabinets. I found Bubble Bobble at the casino, man (I don’t remember if it was called Bubble Bobble, but you know what I mean). You could pay real, hard-earned cash to play arcade games in a casino instead of paying real, hard-earned cash to gamble for a chance to win more real, hard-earned cash. Would it be surprising to learn I spent most of my time playing the arcade cabinets?
Arcades are sort of like casinos for kids, if you think about it. I’m sure that’s not an original thought at all, but – is not the sole purpose of the arcade to entice children to spend their parents’ money? Even like a Chuck E. Cheese or Dave and Buster’s or whatever, they have machines where you can win prizes! The main difference really is that parents are less inclined to let a six year-old put them ten thousand in the hole or something.
Time is money. Ever seen that movie “In Time” starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried? I haven’t, but I remember seeing the trailer forever ago and thinking, “Whoa! What a clever and novel idea for a movie,” and honestly? I never want to watch it because of that. Because regardless of what that movie actually is, it’ll never run the gamut of that grand idea – it’s too much, too monumental of a world, of a setting, to be effectively communicated in 120 minutes or less.
It’s weird being alive nowadays. $5 isn’t even $5 anymore. It’s like ten, fifteen minutes maybe, you know what I mean? Every time I buy a coffee or a burger that feels like ten or fifteen minutes. The inverse is true: an hour spent working on pet projects feels like twenty-five dollars. Can’t stop thinking like this anymore.
Gamers continue to demand longer, more expensive, more technologically groundbreaking experiences at the same price – they complain when new releases don’t consume their lives, don’t become their all-in-one entertainment hub, don’t compel them to binge and splurge, don’t give them meaning.
Meanwhile, if I play a game for 20 hours and still haven’t seen 50% of it, I feel like I don't really need to see the other 50% of it. I've got better things to do.
…
Vampire Survivors is $5 and endlessly replayable. Every run is unique. Every run is the same.
Vampire Survivors is criminally underpriced. I clocked in for every achievement at 91 hours – so, if every run is 30 minutes long (barring incomplete/failed runs or special stages that clock in at 15 minutes or less), that means I’ve likely done around 182 runs. If this were an arcade game – and let’s be generous and assume it’s 25 cents a run – it would’ve cost me around $45 and 50 cents to “complete” Vampire Survivors.
Vampire Survivors is at once an empty sandbox, where oceans of enemies seem only to inhabit an infinitely looping Hanna-Barbera background and they aren’t allowed to exist outside of your screen. Nothing exists outside of your screen. You’re unable to outrun the monsters. The space between is a wasteland of tilesets and sprites. The only noteworthy events and special items are usually located on the periphery of each stage. The wild thing is that 30 minutes is usually more than enough time to collect everything.
Vampire Survivors ain’t about the taste.
…
Honestly I picked this game up because I saw Jerma playing it. I was drunk and I had five bucks to spare and I thought, y’know, fuck it. Might as well have another game in rotation. Took a few runs before it started to click.
I used to drink and game often. Definitely played Vampire Survivors drunk a lot. Last year was probably the worst of it. But now I’m 3 months sober and what’s most surprising is how playing it feels the same. It’s definitely more of a warmup or cooldown game, if I had to categorize it; the kind of game you play when you’re waking up, or about to fall asleep.
It’s not bad to be honest.
I’m not going to lie to you and say that this game doesn’t manipulate players psychologically, but also most games manipulate players psychologically? At least to some extent, some games more than others (but not nearly as bad as some have described this game as being imo).
If you were to surgically remove or alter the elements of Vampire Survivors, or reverse-engineer a proper “roguelike/lite” experience out of it, would it really be a better game for it? I don’t know. Is the Binding of Isaac a better game because its RNG elements become more of a determining factor in your success overall? I don’t know. Do I just want some roguelike games to tell me exactly what its items do instead of sinking countless hours into one and praying that its RNG decides to not fuck me for a single run? Absolutely.
Still, I did “finish” this game after 91 hours and I feel comfortable putting it down. I can’t say that I necessarily enjoyed each and every hour of Vampire Survivors (especially towards the end, where completionism was the main goal instead of just playing for additional content / unlocks (and I’m also not going to finish every map with every character, because you don’t really get anything for having done so)) but it was nothing if not one of the games I’ve ever played.
Erato_Heti’s review is a great counterpoint to this. I think it’s a great review. I don’t 100% agree with the conclusions but it’s not like critique of the game itself is a personal attack on people that enjoy the game. Vampire Survivors is not a high maintenance, cerebral game. It’s junk food.
It’s not super mentally stimulating, it won’t enrich your soul in any meaningful way, and it likely won’t dramatically alter the trajectory of your life – but it doesn’t need to.
Junk food’s not terrible in moderation, but you can’t subsist on a diet of snacks.
It’s definitely no lamb and chicken over rice.
Vampire Survivors is Cookie Clicker: the Roguelite.
Vampire Survivors is Flappy Bird meets Dynasty Warriors.
Vampire Survivors is the gamification of popping bubble wrap with your mind and winning drugs that let you pop more bubble wrap with your mind even faster.
Vampire Survivors is pretty good. It’s also pixel barf, the equivalent of a Unity Asset Flip on a Mega Drive, emulated on an Android, emulated on a PC.
Vampire Survivors is the pioneer of a new genre without a name. Most developers gesture towards it by including “Survivors” in the title of their game. It’s probably easier than attempting to legitimize the unwieldy “Survivors-like” as a new genre, anyways.
Vampire Survivors is not a reinvention of the wheel. By all accounts, it’s more of a throwback title, more Galaga than Binding of Isaac.
Vampire Survivors is Smash TV: the Action RPG.
Vampire Survivors is not a purely idle experience, as some would have you believe; it’s certainly not a brainless game, either. It is extremely basic and, in some cases, you may owe your success (or your failure) to RNG more than any particular skill level. Calling it a game that plays itself would be hyperbolically reductive. Calling it mechanically shallow would be almost irrefutable.
Vampire Survivors is an inoffensive F2P mobile game which only gives you one (1) advertisement per run (if you wish to revive once after death). It’s a far cry from the miscellaneous shovelware titles practically built around funneling users to its next unskippable ad.
Vampire Survivors is $5 USD on Steam and sits at “Overwhelmingly Positive” with nearly 200K reviews.
…
(CW from here on out: Eating Disorder, Alcoholism)
When I lived in Portland from mid-2017 to early 2020, I lived a very frugal lifestyle. I never found stable employment. I earned my income through temp work; dishwashing, manual labor, etc. Between classes at University, I would usually eat at a Mediterranean food cart right outside the Engineering Building. Almost every day, I’d buy this special $5 lamb and chicken over rice. Sometimes the owner would give me fresh baklava or tea, but he’d never charge me extra for anything. In a place I felt otherwise unaccustomed to, there was somewhere I felt warm and welcome.
I struggled when I lived in Portland. Some days I only ate a snack or two. Anything to not live above my means. I lost a lot of weight. I wasn’t healthy. I was starving.
In 2017 I would’ve killed for the life I have now.
There are days I’m nostalgic for Portland. I met a lot of cool people there, had some unforgettable experiences. I wish that I’d’ve taken care of myself more; then again, I would’ve never been able to take care of myself the way I needed to begin with.
$5 got me to school and back on a bus. $5 got me a 3-pack of Steel Reserve, 24 fluid ounces each, enough to erase some nights completely. $5 got me lamb and chicken over rice almost every day for over two years.
…
Vampire Survivors has been universally recognized as a good game by default. It probably takes more out of a person to denounce Vampire Survivors for its sins than to extol it for its chic roguelite sensibilities. It won a BAFTA for crying out loud! In a year where Elden Ring was a game, a group of people sat down and decided that a mobile game should be the Best Game That Year.
Vampire Survivors is the de facto choice for Gaming At Home or On-The-Go. For the low price of Five US Dollars (or Free if you’re on Mobile!) you too can experience the drip-feed roguelite arcade experience that people have described as “addicting,” “like taking drugs,” or even, “crack cocaine”. Brother, the only thing gamers love more than comparing games to food is comparing games to drugs!
Vampire Survivors is the Drugs of Games People Won’t Shut Up About.
Vampire Survivors is the Food of Drugs People Like to Use in Analogies.
Vampire Survivors did NOT ruin my life. I started playing Vampire Survivors December 22nd, 2022 and I “finished” Vampire Survivors on August 25th, 2023 (“finished” as in completed “the Collection” which, to my understanding, is the truest win condition outside of the final stage/boss). I took frequent breaks for weeks or months at a time so my journey through the game was a leisurely one.
Vampire Survivors is definitely a crapshoot more often than not. You’ll likely have enough upgrades to make any build feasible late game. The only thing that tips the scale in (or against) your favor is the RNG, and even that can eventually be manipulated using the “Seal” upgrade which allows players to remove certain weapons/items from rotation, controlling the parameters before a new run even starts. However, the Seal upgrades cost a fortune – much more than any regular upgrade, anyways. If you’ve unlocked all the regular upgrades though, chances are you can turn just about any character into an AFK Gold Farm on Endless Mode and let it idle in the background until you’re satisfied. I guess in that way, it really does become an idle game at some point. It would be interesting to see a game that begins as Vampire Survivors turn into a Cookie Clicker late game (I know I called it Cookie Clicker earlier (additionally, I will write a Cookie Clicker review one day, and it will be nowhere as kind as this)), but at that point, I think we’d have to collectively agree that video games as a medium can no longer be considered art (this is a joke (unless hypothetically this video game becomes real, or maybe already exists, in which case I fear we’ve doomed ourselves to a fate much worse than death as is (this is another joke; this “game” would probably not be that good anyways, and just because one game highlights distressing market trends, does not mean they’re all Going To Be Like That. Not every game is Call of Duty. Not every game is the Last of Us. Not every game is Vampire Survivors. etc.))).
Vampire Survivors does NOT have any vampires in it.
…
Worked as a janitor at a sports club once. Real weird place. Had the musk of half a century and none of the charm. Trophy cases hadn’t been touched in generations. The attendees were pallid, shambling creatures, all of them probably sitting on a pretty six or seven figures. Bet I looked like an insect to them.
My memory’s fuzzy. Don’t remember who it was showing me the ropes. Just remember the empty rooms, infinite corridor locker rooms and dead mess halls. Spraying down various surfaces. Mirrors. Windows. Nowhere spaces. When people passed through, I ducked out of sight. Not because I’m agoraphobic or antisocial – just wasn’t dying to be perceived back then.
Worked a full eight hour shift without a break. Whoever was supposed to be checking in on me didn’t. I slipped through the cracks. When it was time to leave, I walked into the food court as it was about to close and asked one of the workers if they still had anything left to eat. I explained I hadn’t taken a break, and one of them gave me a box of rice and chili. I remember he told me that, sometimes, “it ain’t about the taste, it’s about the space”.
Words to live by, man.
I was starving.
I hardly played any games while I was living in Portland. Didn’t have the time. Didn’t have the money. I played Super Mario All-Stars and Demon’s Souls while I was living with my buddy Ian. I played Persona 3 FES for a bit. By the time I’d moved into my second apartment, I hardly played anything. I watched my roommates play Death Stranding and Final Fantasy IX. I always wanted to play more. I never did.
It’s about the space. I think about long, sprawling open world games with a hundred objectives and points of interest; a million collectibles; enemy strongholds; side quests; secrets; the last of these I played, after I'd left Portland, was Ghost of Tsushima. At a zombie’s pace I trudged through the game in a little under two years. I thought it was good. I probably won’t play it again.
I made friends with a coworker named Dan. He’s a big PlayStation guy. He has a PlayStation sticker on his tumbler. We started talking about games one day and I brought up Ghost of Tsushima. He said he’d never played it, but his friend played it – he told me that his friend would play exclusively with the black-and-white filter on, and only while listening to hip-hop mixtapes. I told him, “That sounds rad”.
Ian and I used to play Dark Souls while listening to Agalloch, drinking like sailors. There was never enough time to finish a full playthrough.
My best friend Garrett plays Destiny 2 religiously. Sometimes he’ll listen to a podcast or pull up something else to watch on his second monitor. Sometimes he’ll talk to me while he’s playing.
The point is, everyone plays games differently, and for different reasons. Where some people might find a story compelling, another player might intend to steamroll a game’s main quest – skipping each line of dialogue, every cutscene, every nonessential encounter, all in service of cutting to the chase.
People love to point to Subway Surfers as the Ur Example of brainless gaming (seriously, read some of these reviews), allowing players to split attention between one primary activity (the game) and another secondary activity (movie, television, YouTube, etc.).
I don’t want to speculate what the long term effects of this behavior could be in a broader context here, so I won’t!
…
Vampire Survivors is the Terraria of Subway Surfers. A game focused on incremental growth. Arcadelike and continuous. Formulaic and never-ending.
Vampire Survivors is the essence of the last decade of roguelike/lite experiences, condensed into 30 minutes of undiluted mayhem sans apotheosis. A monomythic Sparknotes page with a bullet point list of the stages of the Hero’s Journey.
Vampire Survivors is a symptom of our gaming climate, not the sickness itself.
Vampire Survivors is a dopamine hit in slow motion.
Vampire Survivors is an ugly mirror. A skinner box numbers-go-up slot machine nightmare monster with gnarled teeth and sharp claws and never-ending jackpots.
…
I’ve only been to Vegas twice. The first time, I was a kid; the second time, I could gamble… so I gambled. I won some money, then I lost some money, then I found the arcade cabinets. I found Bubble Bobble at the casino, man (I don’t remember if it was called Bubble Bobble, but you know what I mean). You could pay real, hard-earned cash to play arcade games in a casino instead of paying real, hard-earned cash to gamble for a chance to win more real, hard-earned cash. Would it be surprising to learn I spent most of my time playing the arcade cabinets?
Arcades are sort of like casinos for kids, if you think about it. I’m sure that’s not an original thought at all, but – is not the sole purpose of the arcade to entice children to spend their parents’ money? Even like a Chuck E. Cheese or Dave and Buster’s or whatever, they have machines where you can win prizes! The main difference really is that parents are less inclined to let a six year-old put them ten thousand in the hole or something.
Time is money. Ever seen that movie “In Time” starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried? I haven’t, but I remember seeing the trailer forever ago and thinking, “Whoa! What a clever and novel idea for a movie,” and honestly? I never want to watch it because of that. Because regardless of what that movie actually is, it’ll never run the gamut of that grand idea – it’s too much, too monumental of a world, of a setting, to be effectively communicated in 120 minutes or less.
It’s weird being alive nowadays. $5 isn’t even $5 anymore. It’s like ten, fifteen minutes maybe, you know what I mean? Every time I buy a coffee or a burger that feels like ten or fifteen minutes. The inverse is true: an hour spent working on pet projects feels like twenty-five dollars. Can’t stop thinking like this anymore.
Gamers continue to demand longer, more expensive, more technologically groundbreaking experiences at the same price – they complain when new releases don’t consume their lives, don’t become their all-in-one entertainment hub, don’t compel them to binge and splurge, don’t give them meaning.
Meanwhile, if I play a game for 20 hours and still haven’t seen 50% of it, I feel like I don't really need to see the other 50% of it. I've got better things to do.
…
Vampire Survivors is $5 and endlessly replayable. Every run is unique. Every run is the same.
Vampire Survivors is criminally underpriced. I clocked in for every achievement at 91 hours – so, if every run is 30 minutes long (barring incomplete/failed runs or special stages that clock in at 15 minutes or less), that means I’ve likely done around 182 runs. If this were an arcade game – and let’s be generous and assume it’s 25 cents a run – it would’ve cost me around $45 and 50 cents to “complete” Vampire Survivors.
Vampire Survivors is at once an empty sandbox, where oceans of enemies seem only to inhabit an infinitely looping Hanna-Barbera background and they aren’t allowed to exist outside of your screen. Nothing exists outside of your screen. You’re unable to outrun the monsters. The space between is a wasteland of tilesets and sprites. The only noteworthy events and special items are usually located on the periphery of each stage. The wild thing is that 30 minutes is usually more than enough time to collect everything.
Vampire Survivors ain’t about the taste.
…
Honestly I picked this game up because I saw Jerma playing it. I was drunk and I had five bucks to spare and I thought, y’know, fuck it. Might as well have another game in rotation. Took a few runs before it started to click.
I used to drink and game often. Definitely played Vampire Survivors drunk a lot. Last year was probably the worst of it. But now I’m 3 months sober and what’s most surprising is how playing it feels the same. It’s definitely more of a warmup or cooldown game, if I had to categorize it; the kind of game you play when you’re waking up, or about to fall asleep.
It’s not bad to be honest.
I’m not going to lie to you and say that this game doesn’t manipulate players psychologically, but also most games manipulate players psychologically? At least to some extent, some games more than others (but not nearly as bad as some have described this game as being imo).
If you were to surgically remove or alter the elements of Vampire Survivors, or reverse-engineer a proper “roguelike/lite” experience out of it, would it really be a better game for it? I don’t know. Is the Binding of Isaac a better game because its RNG elements become more of a determining factor in your success overall? I don’t know. Do I just want some roguelike games to tell me exactly what its items do instead of sinking countless hours into one and praying that its RNG decides to not fuck me for a single run? Absolutely.
Still, I did “finish” this game after 91 hours and I feel comfortable putting it down. I can’t say that I necessarily enjoyed each and every hour of Vampire Survivors (especially towards the end, where completionism was the main goal instead of just playing for additional content / unlocks (and I’m also not going to finish every map with every character, because you don’t really get anything for having done so)) but it was nothing if not one of the games I’ve ever played.
Erato_Heti’s review is a great counterpoint to this. I think it’s a great review. I don’t 100% agree with the conclusions but it’s not like critique of the game itself is a personal attack on people that enjoy the game. Vampire Survivors is not a high maintenance, cerebral game. It’s junk food.
It’s not super mentally stimulating, it won’t enrich your soul in any meaningful way, and it likely won’t dramatically alter the trajectory of your life – but it doesn’t need to.
Junk food’s not terrible in moderation, but you can’t subsist on a diet of snacks.
It’s definitely no lamb and chicken over rice.
2018
Don't look up anything, just play the game – you can beat it in less than an hour and it's free.
0_abyssalSomewhere draws inspiration from familiar design. It was impossible not to think of Dark Souls when my character descended into an inky black abyss; it was impossible not to think of Silent Hill while I moved through the rusty, grimy, concrete catacombs; it was impossible not to think of Resident Evil when the camera angle fixed itself behind my character, a cold, impersonal position above me.
It's a harrowing experience. Ambient hums and distant machinery kept me on edge throughout. The bit-crushed explosion as I plummeted hundreds of feet into a dead city submerged in darkness arrested me. The wind is remarkably unnatural – obviously recorded, compressed – although as I'm wearing headphones, paradoxically, it sounds like I'm actually there.
An electric pylon juts from the center of a billowing dune. I look away and it's gone.
A uniquely grim, breathtaking sensory experience.
0_abyssalSomewhere draws inspiration from familiar design. It was impossible not to think of Dark Souls when my character descended into an inky black abyss; it was impossible not to think of Silent Hill while I moved through the rusty, grimy, concrete catacombs; it was impossible not to think of Resident Evil when the camera angle fixed itself behind my character, a cold, impersonal position above me.
It's a harrowing experience. Ambient hums and distant machinery kept me on edge throughout. The bit-crushed explosion as I plummeted hundreds of feet into a dead city submerged in darkness arrested me. The wind is remarkably unnatural – obviously recorded, compressed – although as I'm wearing headphones, paradoxically, it sounds like I'm actually there.
An electric pylon juts from the center of a billowing dune. I look away and it's gone.
A uniquely grim, breathtaking sensory experience.
2019
tl;dr I wish I liked this game more than I did.
There’s no getting around it: Control is one of the most inspired settings in video game history. The Oldest House is not just a brutalist hellmaze, but a transdimensional hotbed for new and exciting conflicts + future titles.
The SCP similarities are shameless (in a good way). The House of Leaves similarities? I’ve already talked about House of Leaves before (and I’ll likely have more to say about it when I’m talking about Alan Wake, believe it or not) but they’re mostly skin-deep. Jacob Geller has some great videos about it.
Control is captivating, at first. It forgoes a lot of the traditional Remedy set dressing / diegetic prologue-ing and instead gives you a gun, and now you’re also the new director. Congratulations!
The first hour of this game is succinct, sowing intrigue, introducing key characters, acquainting Jesse with the service weapon, the Hiss; it’s grade-A Remedy pacing. Then, it starts to open up, and it slows waaayyy down.
Drinking game: take a shot every time a Bureau Alert appears; if you finish the mission successfully, take a drink of water – if you fail the mission (or die before you can reach it), take another shot.
Bureau Alerts are optional missions but they occur so frequently and repeat so often, they started to get on my nerves. You can safely ignore all of these (they didn’t even give me ability points, so I’m not really sure what their purpose would be outside of resource farming / achievements).
Side missions range from Pretty Good to Whatever. A lot of it is just busywork (“Go here, find this,”) and almost every boss encounter was kinda bad. If it wasn’t a souped-up enemy, it was either Big Ball or Big Worm (you gotta fight this guy in a Fridge and a Flamingo). Big Ball is an anchor, actually. Credit where it’s due, I can’t say I’ve killed an anchor by throwing clocks at it until I played this game. That’s gotta count for something.
One persistent complaint across every Remedy Game I’ve noticed is lack of enemy variety. I wouldn’t say Control alleviates this problem any. I think maybe my expectations were too high. I was expecting the human enemies to diminish in numbers as the game continued, allowing for various enemy factions / types to emerge later on (the Foundation DLC does this, kinda… they’re still all humanoid enemies though). Instead, it’s mainly humanoid soldiers for 3/4ths of the enemy roster – that remaining quarter is Small Balls (Hiss Clusters), Physic Objects Glitching Out (Astral Spikes), Exploding Guys, Floating Throwing Guys, Rock Shield Throwing Guys, and my least favorite guys, Invisible Jumpscare Guys That Can’t Be Attacked Until They Attack You But If You Don’t Dodge Their Attack They Deal 95% Of Your Health.
Combat was good – but it never elevated the experience for me. Just like Quantum Break, fodder enemies were too weak and bigger enemies were too spongy; unlike Quantum Break, all of Jesse’s abilities are tied to a singular power source – meaning there’s no waiting on ability cooldowns, just one main energy recharge. Likewise, your Service Weapon – despite having multiple “modes” to choose from – operates on a cooldown as well, meaning if you spend all your ammo in one place, you can’t just switch to another mode and keep blasting.
I’ll be straight with you: I didn’t like this! I understand it’s all intentional design to incentivize switching between Jesse’s powers and her weapons, but let’s be honest – the only thing it incentivizes is using the launch ability between weapon cooldowns. There’s nothing else you can do in a firefight besides shoot, or launch, or defend, or collect health. It makes for very samey combat throughout, albeit you eventually learn to fly later on, as well (this changes combat less than you’d think).
I wish the combat felt more dynamic. Let me switch between all my weapon modes at once! Make the individual weapon mode cooldowns longer to compensate or something, I don’t know.
Inventory micromanagement was a chore. Low inventory space and boring upgrades. +10% to Reload Speed after Evade? +15% Ground Slam Damage after Reload? Go fuck yourself. Just give me +10 Damage or +10 Defense and call it a day. I don’t want to keep recycling redundant weapon/player perks just because the game hands them out like candy.
If you focus solely on the main story and ignore all the extraneous busywork nonsense, I think you’ll find that Control is actually really good most of the time. However, because this is my first playthrough, and because I’m compelled to loot and read and do everything I can blind – I found most of the downtime was a lot more uninteresting than I’m used to.
The lore is interesting, the setting is awesome, the gameplay is good – but it never harmonizes. Its good ideas are sandwiched between truly baffling gameplay conceits and creative decisions that left me feeling underwhelmed. Combat that should've been fluid and fun ended up feeling rote and unsatisfying. Concepts that should be thought-provoking were glossed over, diluted and incorporated into or alongside more digestible third-person shooter verbiage.
It ends unceremoniously, without so much as a final boss to send it off.
The ashtray maze fucking rules though.
There’s no getting around it: Control is one of the most inspired settings in video game history. The Oldest House is not just a brutalist hellmaze, but a transdimensional hotbed for new and exciting conflicts + future titles.
The SCP similarities are shameless (in a good way). The House of Leaves similarities? I’ve already talked about House of Leaves before (and I’ll likely have more to say about it when I’m talking about Alan Wake, believe it or not) but they’re mostly skin-deep. Jacob Geller has some great videos about it.
Control is captivating, at first. It forgoes a lot of the traditional Remedy set dressing / diegetic prologue-ing and instead gives you a gun, and now you’re also the new director. Congratulations!
The first hour of this game is succinct, sowing intrigue, introducing key characters, acquainting Jesse with the service weapon, the Hiss; it’s grade-A Remedy pacing. Then, it starts to open up, and it slows waaayyy down.
Drinking game: take a shot every time a Bureau Alert appears; if you finish the mission successfully, take a drink of water – if you fail the mission (or die before you can reach it), take another shot.
Bureau Alerts are optional missions but they occur so frequently and repeat so often, they started to get on my nerves. You can safely ignore all of these (they didn’t even give me ability points, so I’m not really sure what their purpose would be outside of resource farming / achievements).
Side missions range from Pretty Good to Whatever. A lot of it is just busywork (“Go here, find this,”) and almost every boss encounter was kinda bad. If it wasn’t a souped-up enemy, it was either Big Ball or Big Worm (you gotta fight this guy in a Fridge and a Flamingo). Big Ball is an anchor, actually. Credit where it’s due, I can’t say I’ve killed an anchor by throwing clocks at it until I played this game. That’s gotta count for something.
One persistent complaint across every Remedy Game I’ve noticed is lack of enemy variety. I wouldn’t say Control alleviates this problem any. I think maybe my expectations were too high. I was expecting the human enemies to diminish in numbers as the game continued, allowing for various enemy factions / types to emerge later on (the Foundation DLC does this, kinda… they’re still all humanoid enemies though). Instead, it’s mainly humanoid soldiers for 3/4ths of the enemy roster – that remaining quarter is Small Balls (Hiss Clusters), Physic Objects Glitching Out (Astral Spikes), Exploding Guys, Floating Throwing Guys, Rock Shield Throwing Guys, and my least favorite guys, Invisible Jumpscare Guys That Can’t Be Attacked Until They Attack You But If You Don’t Dodge Their Attack They Deal 95% Of Your Health.
Combat was good – but it never elevated the experience for me. Just like Quantum Break, fodder enemies were too weak and bigger enemies were too spongy; unlike Quantum Break, all of Jesse’s abilities are tied to a singular power source – meaning there’s no waiting on ability cooldowns, just one main energy recharge. Likewise, your Service Weapon – despite having multiple “modes” to choose from – operates on a cooldown as well, meaning if you spend all your ammo in one place, you can’t just switch to another mode and keep blasting.
I’ll be straight with you: I didn’t like this! I understand it’s all intentional design to incentivize switching between Jesse’s powers and her weapons, but let’s be honest – the only thing it incentivizes is using the launch ability between weapon cooldowns. There’s nothing else you can do in a firefight besides shoot, or launch, or defend, or collect health. It makes for very samey combat throughout, albeit you eventually learn to fly later on, as well (this changes combat less than you’d think).
I wish the combat felt more dynamic. Let me switch between all my weapon modes at once! Make the individual weapon mode cooldowns longer to compensate or something, I don’t know.
Inventory micromanagement was a chore. Low inventory space and boring upgrades. +10% to Reload Speed after Evade? +15% Ground Slam Damage after Reload? Go fuck yourself. Just give me +10 Damage or +10 Defense and call it a day. I don’t want to keep recycling redundant weapon/player perks just because the game hands them out like candy.
If you focus solely on the main story and ignore all the extraneous busywork nonsense, I think you’ll find that Control is actually really good most of the time. However, because this is my first playthrough, and because I’m compelled to loot and read and do everything I can blind – I found most of the downtime was a lot more uninteresting than I’m used to.
The lore is interesting, the setting is awesome, the gameplay is good – but it never harmonizes. Its good ideas are sandwiched between truly baffling gameplay conceits and creative decisions that left me feeling underwhelmed. Combat that should've been fluid and fun ended up feeling rote and unsatisfying. Concepts that should be thought-provoking were glossed over, diluted and incorporated into or alongside more digestible third-person shooter verbiage.
It ends unceremoniously, without so much as a final boss to send it off.
The ashtray maze fucking rules though.
2023
I’ve played Jet Set Radio. I have NOT played Jet Set Radio Future (YET). Just so you have an idea of where I’m coming from.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a mic drop / slam dunk / Cat 7 earthquake of a game. A spiritual successor in every sense of the word.
Where Jet Set Radio was floaty and imprecise, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is ultra-responsive, snappy, and butter smooth; THIS is what I dreamed of Jet Set Radio controlling like before I’d played it.
Air control is greatly improved with a “boost,” allowing players to alter their trajectory midair; half-pipes now launch you into the stratosphere; you can put away your skates and WALK.
They’re small, but all these QoL features really add up. It’s too easy to fall into a trancelike groove. The immaculate flow of BRC is mesmerizing, weaving together neo-megalopolitan favelas, monolithic hypermalls, dizzyingly tall skyscraper jungles, intersecting in a Mirror’s Edge / Sonic Adventure 2 playground; an urban obstacle course that’s as much fun to learn as it is to master.
This is the game Arcane Kids WANTED to make. In another universe, Perfect Stride would’ve been another generation’s Skate 3. Good grief, and alas.
More than nostalgia, however, I believe your enjoyment of this game hinges entirely on if you’re feeling the vibes or not. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk isn't that long (probably less than 10 hours) but if you’re in that groove – racking up combos, scouring each and every alleyway for hidden goodies, or just exploring at your own pace – chances are, you might be spending a lot more time chilling with your buds before you go All City.
I loved finishing the story mode and being able to really soak in the world and atmosphere afterwards. Your final objective: hang out. Being able to really appreciate the smaller details in the environments was a treat. Have you ever watched your crewmates after you switch characters at a Cypher? They’ll take turns dancing! Lovely Dreamcast-era janky mocap dances are the feather in this game’s proverbial cap… well, that and the low-poly cel-shaded character models. Each character design is fantastic, although that goes without saying. My favorites were Bel and Shine, although Red would be a shoo-in, too. EEASSSYYY!!!
I’ve seen many people call the story forgettable and bad, and I’m here to tell you those people are wrong – objectively. Not that Jet Set Radio’s story needs to be one-upped anyways, but the way some people talk about this game left me wondering if players were expecting Jet Set Radio or, uh… some mutant amalgamation of sixth generation action-platforming games. If you’re playing Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and expect a narrative as refined and tight as its traversal, you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s still a complex, character-driven story; an important foil to the flat, nominal designs of JSR. BRC is more Ghost in the Shell, in contrast to Jet Set Radio’s FLCL-brand comic book mischief and mayhem.
One reviewer went so far as to say that BRC doesn’t add anything new to “the conversation”. Like HUH? What conversation? Does every game need to be a conversation nowadays? Not every game needs to be some intertextual response to another or needs to “push the medium forward” to be good. Games don’t need to be original or even improve upon existing iterations of a thing to be good. Everyone is allowed to criticize the game but I feel like people’s criticisms should probably also be scrutinized, because calling a game like Bomb Rush Cyberfunk bad for being derivative (or a “copycat,”) is not the revelation you’re hoping it is. Who do they think this game is for anyways?
Even so, there are some misfires that inhibit the experience overall. The combat seems like a universal complaint. Normally, I wouldn’t care too much about this, but I do feel that combat is the one lackluster component that – were it done right – would’ve bumped this game up to a perfect score. It’s disappointing because the turrets, helicopters, and [spoiler alert] METAL GEAR REX aren’t bad enemies at all! They make use of the game's core mechanics (namely, graffiti, and rail-grinding in Metal Gear Rex’s case) and can actually be a fun challenge when attempting to keep up a combo. Fighting human enemies is when it falls apart. There’s no easy way to deal with these guys besides avoiding them, which I suppose is the point. They’re supposed to be obstacles more than enemies… except for when the game forces you into unavoidable combat encounters during story events. Bogus.
Could be improved in a few ways: 1) Just weighter impact SFX. Seriously. I think a lot of it boils down to how unsatisfying it feels to hit enemies. Hitting turrets and helicopters and bouncing off ‘em like a pinball is great as is. 2) Human enemies maybe need to be weaker? They feel way too spongy. There’s no actual combat ”combos” you can pull off when fighting so it’s all button mashing anyways. It shouldn’t take ten hits to defeat one! At least give them a health bar. 3) I know it’s already piss easy to keep a combo going, but maybe the game should keep your combo going while you’ve got heat on you, even if you’re not doing a manual… actually, I don’t know. Maybe that would make it TOO easy. There’s gotta be a better way to marry the immaculate flow of combos and the heat system. I don't really know about this one.
Smaller gripes / suggestions:
1. The phone camera is hilarious and fun, but I would still love a traditional photo mode!
2. It would be nice if you could zoom out when looking at the map.
3. Markers for collectibles post-story would be greatly appreciated!
4. You should be able to turn off the cutscenes for when your heat level goes up.
5. You should also be able to change skates/skateboards/bikes at Cypher squares.
6. I’d like a button to fast-forward or replay songs without navigating to the phone first.
7. An option to make your own in-game playlist would be appreciated.
8. More of a wish than a suggestion, but people are already making a mod that allows cooperative online play, and I think it would be super dope if that was officially supported and implemented by the devs.
I’ve had the soundtrack on repeat for days. I like the song that goes ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS.
I bestow Bomb Rush Cyberfunk with the highest of accolades: a game I keep installed on my PC and play every now and again because I like how the movement feels.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a mic drop / slam dunk / Cat 7 earthquake of a game. A spiritual successor in every sense of the word.
Where Jet Set Radio was floaty and imprecise, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is ultra-responsive, snappy, and butter smooth; THIS is what I dreamed of Jet Set Radio controlling like before I’d played it.
Air control is greatly improved with a “boost,” allowing players to alter their trajectory midair; half-pipes now launch you into the stratosphere; you can put away your skates and WALK.
They’re small, but all these QoL features really add up. It’s too easy to fall into a trancelike groove. The immaculate flow of BRC is mesmerizing, weaving together neo-megalopolitan favelas, monolithic hypermalls, dizzyingly tall skyscraper jungles, intersecting in a Mirror’s Edge / Sonic Adventure 2 playground; an urban obstacle course that’s as much fun to learn as it is to master.
This is the game Arcane Kids WANTED to make. In another universe, Perfect Stride would’ve been another generation’s Skate 3. Good grief, and alas.
More than nostalgia, however, I believe your enjoyment of this game hinges entirely on if you’re feeling the vibes or not. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk isn't that long (probably less than 10 hours) but if you’re in that groove – racking up combos, scouring each and every alleyway for hidden goodies, or just exploring at your own pace – chances are, you might be spending a lot more time chilling with your buds before you go All City.
I loved finishing the story mode and being able to really soak in the world and atmosphere afterwards. Your final objective: hang out. Being able to really appreciate the smaller details in the environments was a treat. Have you ever watched your crewmates after you switch characters at a Cypher? They’ll take turns dancing! Lovely Dreamcast-era janky mocap dances are the feather in this game’s proverbial cap… well, that and the low-poly cel-shaded character models. Each character design is fantastic, although that goes without saying. My favorites were Bel and Shine, although Red would be a shoo-in, too. EEASSSYYY!!!
I’ve seen many people call the story forgettable and bad, and I’m here to tell you those people are wrong – objectively. Not that Jet Set Radio’s story needs to be one-upped anyways, but the way some people talk about this game left me wondering if players were expecting Jet Set Radio or, uh… some mutant amalgamation of sixth generation action-platforming games. If you’re playing Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and expect a narrative as refined and tight as its traversal, you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s still a complex, character-driven story; an important foil to the flat, nominal designs of JSR. BRC is more Ghost in the Shell, in contrast to Jet Set Radio’s FLCL-brand comic book mischief and mayhem.
One reviewer went so far as to say that BRC doesn’t add anything new to “the conversation”. Like HUH? What conversation? Does every game need to be a conversation nowadays? Not every game needs to be some intertextual response to another or needs to “push the medium forward” to be good. Games don’t need to be original or even improve upon existing iterations of a thing to be good. Everyone is allowed to criticize the game but I feel like people’s criticisms should probably also be scrutinized, because calling a game like Bomb Rush Cyberfunk bad for being derivative (or a “copycat,”) is not the revelation you’re hoping it is. Who do they think this game is for anyways?
Even so, there are some misfires that inhibit the experience overall. The combat seems like a universal complaint. Normally, I wouldn’t care too much about this, but I do feel that combat is the one lackluster component that – were it done right – would’ve bumped this game up to a perfect score. It’s disappointing because the turrets, helicopters, and [spoiler alert] METAL GEAR REX aren’t bad enemies at all! They make use of the game's core mechanics (namely, graffiti, and rail-grinding in Metal Gear Rex’s case) and can actually be a fun challenge when attempting to keep up a combo. Fighting human enemies is when it falls apart. There’s no easy way to deal with these guys besides avoiding them, which I suppose is the point. They’re supposed to be obstacles more than enemies… except for when the game forces you into unavoidable combat encounters during story events. Bogus.
Could be improved in a few ways: 1) Just weighter impact SFX. Seriously. I think a lot of it boils down to how unsatisfying it feels to hit enemies. Hitting turrets and helicopters and bouncing off ‘em like a pinball is great as is. 2) Human enemies maybe need to be weaker? They feel way too spongy. There’s no actual combat ”combos” you can pull off when fighting so it’s all button mashing anyways. It shouldn’t take ten hits to defeat one! At least give them a health bar. 3) I know it’s already piss easy to keep a combo going, but maybe the game should keep your combo going while you’ve got heat on you, even if you’re not doing a manual… actually, I don’t know. Maybe that would make it TOO easy. There’s gotta be a better way to marry the immaculate flow of combos and the heat system. I don't really know about this one.
Smaller gripes / suggestions:
1. The phone camera is hilarious and fun, but I would still love a traditional photo mode!
2. It would be nice if you could zoom out when looking at the map.
3. Markers for collectibles post-story would be greatly appreciated!
4. You should be able to turn off the cutscenes for when your heat level goes up.
5. You should also be able to change skates/skateboards/bikes at Cypher squares.
6. I’d like a button to fast-forward or replay songs without navigating to the phone first.
7. An option to make your own in-game playlist would be appreciated.
8. More of a wish than a suggestion, but people are already making a mod that allows cooperative online play, and I think it would be super dope if that was officially supported and implemented by the devs.
I’ve had the soundtrack on repeat for days. I like the song that goes ASS ASS ASS ASS ASS.
I bestow Bomb Rush Cyberfunk with the highest of accolades: a game I keep installed on my PC and play every now and again because I like how the movement feels.
2012
I haven't played this game in years but I always remember I had to look up a video guide because I kept dying on the same QTE during the final boss and I found out the game had just been giving me the wrong button prompt the entire time
2016
In preparation for Alan Wake 2, I decided to catch up on the Remedy Games I’ve not yet played, which is… all of them except Alan Wake and American Nightmare. I’ll try to fit in Max Payne 1 and 2 but we’ll see how the schedule is looking come October!
[MINOR SPOILERS FOR ALAN WAKE TOWARDS THE END]
Took a little bit of tweaking to get the game running at 4K on PC (game is locked to 1080p otherwise) but overall it was a pretty smooth experience from start to finish.
Quantum Break leans into heavy sci-fi, a departure from Alan Wake’s horror – although the game includes a healthy amount of references to Alan Wake, especially in Act One (which were appreciated). Every time I saw something I recognized from Alan Wake I started giggling and kicking my feet like a schoolgirl. It’s harmless fun. The game eventually carves out its own style and tone as it continues.
I can definitely see the through-line from Alan Wake to this. The moments where you’re trapped inside a “stutter,” (stopped time) and platforming across debris reminded me of the Alan Wake DLC, but realized in context and not just through reality-bending eldritch magic.
The shooting is good… for the most part. Jack Joyce’s time powers are fun to play around with – though not as robust or tactical as some players might like. I played on the hardest difficulty and even then I thought the game was too easy. There’s not a huge roster of enemies, either. The only way the game evens the playing field, so to speak, is by having enemies that can neutralize, or aren’t affected by, Jack’s powers. At first, I thought this was a clever way to mix things up; then, as more enemy types were introduced, I think that illusion fell flat.
Designing difficulty probably isn’t easy. I don’t envy the people who decide how much damage each bullet does, or how many bullets an enemy takes before they’re dead, but this game’s hardest difficulty felt very weird to me. Enemies are spongy, but they also don’t deal substantial damage – so they kinda need to be extra durable to be challenging by default. Then, there’s the actual tanky enemies which aren’t annoying until the Juggernaut variants appear, which can only be damaged from behind – you can’t freeze them, so you have to either dash or dodge behind them, and hit their weak point in “focus time” (QB’s equivalent of bullet time) to do any real damage. This wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t have to do it 4-5 times, waiting for my time powers to recharge between attacks. Juggernauts aren’t common, but their presence in an arena was always more eye-rolling than frustrating.
Then, there’s the snipers, which are definitely the most annoying enemies. Every other enemy at least feels balanced around a minutes-long firefight, whereas snipers are just the Jackal snipers from Halo 2 on Legendary – once you see that laser beam from across the map, if you’re not behind cover in 0.5 seconds, you’re DONE. One bullet means instadeath. Never felt fun fighting these guys but, again, they’re not very common so it was never a dealbreaker.
The final boss is also kinda silly, amounting to two waves of enemies while being hounded by the game’s antagonist, Paul Serene. Paul can hit you with an instakill blast from anywhere on the playing field, but as long as you use your dash ability once you see him charging a shot, you’ll survive.
Quantum Break also allows players to make decisions during key moments known as “junctions” between levels; however, you don’t make decisions as Jack. You actually take control of Paul Serene. I thought this was a really cool inversion of the idea of “choices matter,” because you’re not picking choices for yourself here, you’re picking choices that the villain makes instead. Because the player has more information available to them than Paul does, sometimes you’ll ask yourself, “Should I make a smart decision because I want Paul to be more threatening?” or “Should I make a dumb decision because I want to have an upper hand against him later?” Ultimately I don’t think these choices matter much in the end, but it’s such an interesting concept that I’d like to see it explored more elsewhere.
One of the game’s main selling points, and one that I’ve been dancing around until now, is the live action segments. Remedy is no stranger to live action. Alan Wake had “Night Springs,” mini Twilight Zone-esque vignettes which were unobtrusive and diegetic short films, serving to establish tone more than do any actual worldbuilding. These were fun! Quantum Break double-triple-quadruples down on the live action bits to the point where 2-3 hours of the game are just watching the show Quantum Break.
YMMV on this. The first two episodes were boring to me, although the latter half of the series wasn’t bad; quality is noticeably choppy (in more ways than one, more on this later) and some characters literally go nowhere. If they’re not dead by the final cutscene, you’d at least think they’d get proper sendoffs – they don’t. Almost every major player in the series is left behind unceremoniously, their fates ambiguous.
There are genuine moments of pathos and a good amount of “Oh shit!” moments but I think a lot of people will find these segments serviceable at best and unnecessary at worst. Lance Reddick hard carries the live action series to an absurd degree. Although many actors feel like they’re phoning it in half the time, Reddick’s steadfast presence and intimidating delivery almost elevates the series to match its lofty ambitions… almost.
Even now, I think most people can agree that Quantum Break was nothing if not a failed experiment. I still have to respect Remedy for having the chutzpah to put a gosh darn movie in their story-driven third-person shooter game. You don’t see Naughty Dog doing that, man! They keep their games and their HBO prestige series separate!
Quantum Break the TV series is only thwarted by two things: its interplay with in-game events, and your internet connection.
Almost all of the series is inconsequential. You can safely ignore it, but you’ll miss 90% of Lance Reddick, which is extremely unfortunate.
Secondly, and more importantly, however, is the fact that you aren’t watching Quantum Break the TV series – you’re streaming it inside the game. Depending on your internet, the quality of the show may be awful. My internet can be pretty spotty, so the entire first episode looked genuinely bad; bad compression, bad artifacting, you get the idea. There were some times when the show would pause to buffer. There were even some times where playback stopped and the game only gave me the option to “skip” or “replay” (this option should’ve been called “resume,” the wording of “replay” is misleading).
Still, I can’t really think of any other workaround that doesn’t involve streaming. Even including 2-3 hours of 1080p video in a video game is enough to tack on a lot of extra GBs. Streaming makes sense, but it’s not ideal, either.
Additionally, if at some point Remedy decides to sunset the servers for these live action bits, you'll probably be left to find them on YouTube between missions. Not great.
The game wraps everything up a little quicker than I’d’ve liked. This feels better than Alan Wake’s ultra-ambiguous non-ending, but also leaves the door open for any potential sequels. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a second Quantum Break! It’s a very endearing game. It’s got that Remedy special sauce and for some people that’s all it needs to be. Warrants at least one revisit someday down the line.
[MINOR SPOILERS FOR ALAN WAKE TOWARDS THE END]
Took a little bit of tweaking to get the game running at 4K on PC (game is locked to 1080p otherwise) but overall it was a pretty smooth experience from start to finish.
Quantum Break leans into heavy sci-fi, a departure from Alan Wake’s horror – although the game includes a healthy amount of references to Alan Wake, especially in Act One (which were appreciated). Every time I saw something I recognized from Alan Wake I started giggling and kicking my feet like a schoolgirl. It’s harmless fun. The game eventually carves out its own style and tone as it continues.
I can definitely see the through-line from Alan Wake to this. The moments where you’re trapped inside a “stutter,” (stopped time) and platforming across debris reminded me of the Alan Wake DLC, but realized in context and not just through reality-bending eldritch magic.
The shooting is good… for the most part. Jack Joyce’s time powers are fun to play around with – though not as robust or tactical as some players might like. I played on the hardest difficulty and even then I thought the game was too easy. There’s not a huge roster of enemies, either. The only way the game evens the playing field, so to speak, is by having enemies that can neutralize, or aren’t affected by, Jack’s powers. At first, I thought this was a clever way to mix things up; then, as more enemy types were introduced, I think that illusion fell flat.
Designing difficulty probably isn’t easy. I don’t envy the people who decide how much damage each bullet does, or how many bullets an enemy takes before they’re dead, but this game’s hardest difficulty felt very weird to me. Enemies are spongy, but they also don’t deal substantial damage – so they kinda need to be extra durable to be challenging by default. Then, there’s the actual tanky enemies which aren’t annoying until the Juggernaut variants appear, which can only be damaged from behind – you can’t freeze them, so you have to either dash or dodge behind them, and hit their weak point in “focus time” (QB’s equivalent of bullet time) to do any real damage. This wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t have to do it 4-5 times, waiting for my time powers to recharge between attacks. Juggernauts aren’t common, but their presence in an arena was always more eye-rolling than frustrating.
Then, there’s the snipers, which are definitely the most annoying enemies. Every other enemy at least feels balanced around a minutes-long firefight, whereas snipers are just the Jackal snipers from Halo 2 on Legendary – once you see that laser beam from across the map, if you’re not behind cover in 0.5 seconds, you’re DONE. One bullet means instadeath. Never felt fun fighting these guys but, again, they’re not very common so it was never a dealbreaker.
The final boss is also kinda silly, amounting to two waves of enemies while being hounded by the game’s antagonist, Paul Serene. Paul can hit you with an instakill blast from anywhere on the playing field, but as long as you use your dash ability once you see him charging a shot, you’ll survive.
Quantum Break also allows players to make decisions during key moments known as “junctions” between levels; however, you don’t make decisions as Jack. You actually take control of Paul Serene. I thought this was a really cool inversion of the idea of “choices matter,” because you’re not picking choices for yourself here, you’re picking choices that the villain makes instead. Because the player has more information available to them than Paul does, sometimes you’ll ask yourself, “Should I make a smart decision because I want Paul to be more threatening?” or “Should I make a dumb decision because I want to have an upper hand against him later?” Ultimately I don’t think these choices matter much in the end, but it’s such an interesting concept that I’d like to see it explored more elsewhere.
One of the game’s main selling points, and one that I’ve been dancing around until now, is the live action segments. Remedy is no stranger to live action. Alan Wake had “Night Springs,” mini Twilight Zone-esque vignettes which were unobtrusive and diegetic short films, serving to establish tone more than do any actual worldbuilding. These were fun! Quantum Break double-triple-quadruples down on the live action bits to the point where 2-3 hours of the game are just watching the show Quantum Break.
YMMV on this. The first two episodes were boring to me, although the latter half of the series wasn’t bad; quality is noticeably choppy (in more ways than one, more on this later) and some characters literally go nowhere. If they’re not dead by the final cutscene, you’d at least think they’d get proper sendoffs – they don’t. Almost every major player in the series is left behind unceremoniously, their fates ambiguous.
There are genuine moments of pathos and a good amount of “Oh shit!” moments but I think a lot of people will find these segments serviceable at best and unnecessary at worst. Lance Reddick hard carries the live action series to an absurd degree. Although many actors feel like they’re phoning it in half the time, Reddick’s steadfast presence and intimidating delivery almost elevates the series to match its lofty ambitions… almost.
Even now, I think most people can agree that Quantum Break was nothing if not a failed experiment. I still have to respect Remedy for having the chutzpah to put a gosh darn movie in their story-driven third-person shooter game. You don’t see Naughty Dog doing that, man! They keep their games and their HBO prestige series separate!
Quantum Break the TV series is only thwarted by two things: its interplay with in-game events, and your internet connection.
Almost all of the series is inconsequential. You can safely ignore it, but you’ll miss 90% of Lance Reddick, which is extremely unfortunate.
Secondly, and more importantly, however, is the fact that you aren’t watching Quantum Break the TV series – you’re streaming it inside the game. Depending on your internet, the quality of the show may be awful. My internet can be pretty spotty, so the entire first episode looked genuinely bad; bad compression, bad artifacting, you get the idea. There were some times when the show would pause to buffer. There were even some times where playback stopped and the game only gave me the option to “skip” or “replay” (this option should’ve been called “resume,” the wording of “replay” is misleading).
Still, I can’t really think of any other workaround that doesn’t involve streaming. Even including 2-3 hours of 1080p video in a video game is enough to tack on a lot of extra GBs. Streaming makes sense, but it’s not ideal, either.
Additionally, if at some point Remedy decides to sunset the servers for these live action bits, you'll probably be left to find them on YouTube between missions. Not great.
The game wraps everything up a little quicker than I’d’ve liked. This feels better than Alan Wake’s ultra-ambiguous non-ending, but also leaves the door open for any potential sequels. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a second Quantum Break! It’s a very endearing game. It’s got that Remedy special sauce and for some people that’s all it needs to be. Warrants at least one revisit someday down the line.
This review contains spoilers
Saved this DLC until after I’d finished the base game (thanks @ShibuyaBeat for reminding me). Upon completion, I knew if I were to log Mass Effect 2, I’d have to log Arrival separately because, my GOD, it really doesn’t get any worse than this.
One half solo infiltration mission, one half ME3 prologue – Arrival is solidly the worst ME2 DLC by a country mile. I didn’t even like Overlord or the Firewalker missions, but they were at least… something. Arrival is a shooting gallery gauntlet that starts weak and ends weaker. It’s paced like a fever dream, catapulting from standard rescue mission to GALAXY-ENDING COSMIC HORROR. YOU HAVE TO GENOCIDE AN ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM OR ELSE THE SCARY MACHINE GODS GET YOU AAAHHHH!!!
It all feels so out of nowhere. In the span of less than 60 minutes, you’re introduced to a brand new character who tells you that she’s planning on shooting an asteroid at a Mass Relay to deter the Reaper Invasion by “months or years”. My first thought was, “Well, hm, destroying a Mass Relay to buffer an invasion by a few months/years doesn’t seem worth it”. You’d be forgiven for believing this character sounds fucking insane because, as the game later reveals, you have to take her words at face value because she’s telling you the truth! The Reapers are planning to use the Alpha Relay to begin their invasion, and they arrive in less than two days. Pretty serious stuff. Except then, this character – and seemingly all of her associates – are mind-controlled/possessed/indoctrinated and take you hostage for… no discernible reason.
Mass Effect keeps the specifics of “indoctrination” purposefully vague, but Arrival is when it feels the loosest, narratively speaking. In the first Mass Effect, indoctrination is considered a natural consequence of close proximity to a Reaper. It’s less possession and more subtle manipulation or mind control, or as the first game posits, “warp[ing] reality just by being”; Mass Effect 2’s Harbinger is, by contrast, able to beam into Collectors at a moment’s notice (and he does so frequently towards the end of the game). It’s a real tomayto/tomahto-type situation, the “indoctrination” of ME2 is far less subtle, though no less threatening; having a Reaper mindjack one of its minions and mark you for death is a great way of building antagonistic rapport through gameplay… and it works! By the time most players roll credits, they’re probably VERY fed up with Harbinger's constant in-vasive maneuvers. Here’s the thing, though – this only works because Harbinger takes control of Collectors, which are genetically modified Protheans that have been subject to Reaper experimentation for countless generations. In humans, at least, indoctrination is ostensibly much slower and insidious – not an on/off switch. How does Harbinger take control of Dr. Kenson immediately? Unless she was only pretending not to be indoctrinated the entire time, but then… why would Harbinger use Dr. Kenson to tell Shepard exactly how to deter their invasion?
Anyways, from being taken hostage, we now have less than TWO HOURS before the Reapers arrive. Some more stuff happens. Shepard breaks out of captivity (obviously). It was when I found the Control Room that I realized the game was not going to give me a choice in destroying the Alpha Relay. You’re given a choice to send a warning signal, but even if you choose to warn Batarian colonists – you’re interrupted by Dr. Kenson, and Shepard just… doesn’t attempt to send the warning signal again? I swear I’m not making this up. The game gives no indication that you can’t establish communication until later, but like, why?
You can see what I’m getting at, don’t you? The game railroads you into killing 300,000 people “for the greater good,” or whatever, and you can argue that that’s the point of Arrival: sometimes you don’t always have a choice. However, and I hope you’ll pardon me for saying this, I think that this is very fucking stupid. In a game – in a series – about making tough calls, removing player agency and decision-making to such a degree as to force them to make an unbelievably fucked up choice (that isn’t even a choice in the first place!) is honestly stupid bullshit. Any nuance is avoided. Any alternative is not considered. You kill 300,000 people and you don’t even get to have Shepard express regret for it. Every dialogue choice reinforces the idea that you’ve sacrificed countless lives “for the greater good”.
Not only is it terrible writing, it’s terrible characterization. Granted, I was playing a mainly Renegade Shepard that would take considerable risks and even make necessary sacrifices at times, but even I can’t wrap my head around the rationale here. I haven’t played Mass Effect 3 since release in 2012, but iirc this doesn’t even matter – nobody prepares for the Reapers in the months(years?) leading up to ME3, so it’s a vain sacrifice regardless. Oops!
Again, this DLC is only about an hour long. It pads its length with the standard cover shooter crap, but it’s way too much, way too fast.
Here’s how I would’ve improved this DLC:
1. Make Dr. Kenson untrustworthy from the outset. Instead of revealing that she intends to destroy the Alpha Relay in the first place, she should request Shepard's help in ensuring the safety of the Alpha Relay. This makes the revelation that destroying the Alpha Relay might be beneficial (at the cost of the solar system) much more compelling.
2. Remove the bit about “needing Shepard alive”. This basically feels like a scrapped plot point. It never really goes anywhere. The escape sequence can be cut.
3. Give players the choice to warn the Batarian colonies / destroy the Mass Relay. Maybe if players warn the Batarians but still choose to destroy the Mass Relay, only half of the colonists survive; maybe if players choose not to warn the Batarians, and then don’t destroy the Mass Relay – the Reapers attack the Batarian colonies first. There’s still a lot of interesting choices here that the game doesn’t capitalize on.
Super disappointing. Left me with a bad taste in my mouth. If you weren’t going to give players a choice, why not just make this an interactive comic like Mass Effect Genesis? I don’t get it. Two thumbs down, man.
One half solo infiltration mission, one half ME3 prologue – Arrival is solidly the worst ME2 DLC by a country mile. I didn’t even like Overlord or the Firewalker missions, but they were at least… something. Arrival is a shooting gallery gauntlet that starts weak and ends weaker. It’s paced like a fever dream, catapulting from standard rescue mission to GALAXY-ENDING COSMIC HORROR. YOU HAVE TO GENOCIDE AN ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM OR ELSE THE SCARY MACHINE GODS GET YOU AAAHHHH!!!
It all feels so out of nowhere. In the span of less than 60 minutes, you’re introduced to a brand new character who tells you that she’s planning on shooting an asteroid at a Mass Relay to deter the Reaper Invasion by “months or years”. My first thought was, “Well, hm, destroying a Mass Relay to buffer an invasion by a few months/years doesn’t seem worth it”. You’d be forgiven for believing this character sounds fucking insane because, as the game later reveals, you have to take her words at face value because she’s telling you the truth! The Reapers are planning to use the Alpha Relay to begin their invasion, and they arrive in less than two days. Pretty serious stuff. Except then, this character – and seemingly all of her associates – are mind-controlled/possessed/indoctrinated and take you hostage for… no discernible reason.
Mass Effect keeps the specifics of “indoctrination” purposefully vague, but Arrival is when it feels the loosest, narratively speaking. In the first Mass Effect, indoctrination is considered a natural consequence of close proximity to a Reaper. It’s less possession and more subtle manipulation or mind control, or as the first game posits, “warp[ing] reality just by being”; Mass Effect 2’s Harbinger is, by contrast, able to beam into Collectors at a moment’s notice (and he does so frequently towards the end of the game). It’s a real tomayto/tomahto-type situation, the “indoctrination” of ME2 is far less subtle, though no less threatening; having a Reaper mindjack one of its minions and mark you for death is a great way of building antagonistic rapport through gameplay… and it works! By the time most players roll credits, they’re probably VERY fed up with Harbinger's constant in-vasive maneuvers. Here’s the thing, though – this only works because Harbinger takes control of Collectors, which are genetically modified Protheans that have been subject to Reaper experimentation for countless generations. In humans, at least, indoctrination is ostensibly much slower and insidious – not an on/off switch. How does Harbinger take control of Dr. Kenson immediately? Unless she was only pretending not to be indoctrinated the entire time, but then… why would Harbinger use Dr. Kenson to tell Shepard exactly how to deter their invasion?
Anyways, from being taken hostage, we now have less than TWO HOURS before the Reapers arrive. Some more stuff happens. Shepard breaks out of captivity (obviously). It was when I found the Control Room that I realized the game was not going to give me a choice in destroying the Alpha Relay. You’re given a choice to send a warning signal, but even if you choose to warn Batarian colonists – you’re interrupted by Dr. Kenson, and Shepard just… doesn’t attempt to send the warning signal again? I swear I’m not making this up. The game gives no indication that you can’t establish communication until later, but like, why?
You can see what I’m getting at, don’t you? The game railroads you into killing 300,000 people “for the greater good,” or whatever, and you can argue that that’s the point of Arrival: sometimes you don’t always have a choice. However, and I hope you’ll pardon me for saying this, I think that this is very fucking stupid. In a game – in a series – about making tough calls, removing player agency and decision-making to such a degree as to force them to make an unbelievably fucked up choice (that isn’t even a choice in the first place!) is honestly stupid bullshit. Any nuance is avoided. Any alternative is not considered. You kill 300,000 people and you don’t even get to have Shepard express regret for it. Every dialogue choice reinforces the idea that you’ve sacrificed countless lives “for the greater good”.
Not only is it terrible writing, it’s terrible characterization. Granted, I was playing a mainly Renegade Shepard that would take considerable risks and even make necessary sacrifices at times, but even I can’t wrap my head around the rationale here. I haven’t played Mass Effect 3 since release in 2012, but iirc this doesn’t even matter – nobody prepares for the Reapers in the months(years?) leading up to ME3, so it’s a vain sacrifice regardless. Oops!
Again, this DLC is only about an hour long. It pads its length with the standard cover shooter crap, but it’s way too much, way too fast.
Here’s how I would’ve improved this DLC:
1. Make Dr. Kenson untrustworthy from the outset. Instead of revealing that she intends to destroy the Alpha Relay in the first place, she should request Shepard's help in ensuring the safety of the Alpha Relay. This makes the revelation that destroying the Alpha Relay might be beneficial (at the cost of the solar system) much more compelling.
2. Remove the bit about “needing Shepard alive”. This basically feels like a scrapped plot point. It never really goes anywhere. The escape sequence can be cut.
3. Give players the choice to warn the Batarian colonies / destroy the Mass Relay. Maybe if players warn the Batarians but still choose to destroy the Mass Relay, only half of the colonists survive; maybe if players choose not to warn the Batarians, and then don’t destroy the Mass Relay – the Reapers attack the Batarian colonies first. There’s still a lot of interesting choices here that the game doesn’t capitalize on.
Super disappointing. Left me with a bad taste in my mouth. If you weren’t going to give players a choice, why not just make this an interactive comic like Mass Effect Genesis? I don’t get it. Two thumbs down, man.
2010
[PLAYED MASS EFFECT: LEGENDARY EDITION VERSION]
On replay: my God, the first act of this game is a snoozefest, man. Remember Eden Prime from ME1? Remember the red skies? Remember the intrigue of seeing Sovereign for the first time? If you haven’t played ME2 in 5+ years – barring the opening sequence when the Collectors attack – can you even tell me the name of the first place you go to??? (I’ll give you a hint: it starts with an F)
Omega is still visually and aesthetically super recognizable, but the missions there are incredibly dry. 90% of the time I was thinking like, man, I wish I was playing Gears of War or something. At least the enemies and levels there require some strategy. Although the shooting galleries of ME2 are a cut above the copy-paste interiors of the first game, that’s hardly a high bar to clear.
I’d argue the game doesn’t even get that good until around maybe Illium which is also, coincidentally, when you meet Liara again, and get to the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. For a game that revels in all of its waist-high cover shooty sections and its admittedly dry, exposition-optional dialogue trees, the Lair of the Shadow Broker feels like a shot of adrenaline – WAKE UP!!! It’s time to go on a super cool secret mission with your hot blue alien GF!!! Meanwhile if you accidentally romanced Ashley or Kaidan in ME1 (which, come on, it’s almost always an accident), you go FUCK yourself. They show up and call you dumb!
“I’ve been dead 2 years and intergalactic terrorists brought me back to life to fight an existential threat, tangentially related to the Elder God Machines we were fighting in the first game.” - You
“Damn, that’s crazy… deuces” - Ashley or Kaidan, depending
Loyalty missions are, pound for pound, the best part of Mass Effect 2 – unfortunately, these don’t start unlocking til after Horizon, which is also right around when you get to Illium. Do you get what I’m saying?
Do you remember Overlord??? Do you remember the guy who turned his autistic brother into a Computer God? Because I sure do – I just played through it. Not only do these moments lack gravity, they lack staying power – on top of being, uh, genuinely nonsense representations of neurodivergent people which is another thing altogether – also, the Hammerhead is NOT a huge step up from the Mako, at all. I vastly prefer the weird early Y2k desktop background planets of ME1 to the drab, monochromatic gauntlet planets of ME2.
I have a lot to say about Arrival, so I’ll be logging that by itself here.
The final mission is easily the highlight of the game. Say what you want about the rest of the game (no, seriously, say what you want), but its last hour is Mass Effect firing on all cylinders – unfortunately, it’s not enough to elevate the rest of the game, and it is again somewhat hampered by a buttload of hidden variables and a lackluster final boss.
You pick up Legion, a Geth unaffected by Reaper indoctrination, during the penultimate mission before being thrust into the endgame. If you don’t talk to Legion before opening the Galactic Map next, you essentially cross the Point of No Return. Most games nowadays are good about letting you know when this will happen, but Mass Effect 2 neglects this courtesy; instead, I ended up doing Legion’s loyalty mission after my crew was kidnapped by Collectors and, as a result, half of them were dead by the time I leapt through the Omega 4 Relay. Oopsie.
Jacob and Samara also ended up dying in my suicide mission, which… lol? ME2’s cast does end up being more than a little oversaturated by the time you arrive on Illium. Tack on DLC characters Zaeed and Kasumi and you’ve got no less than 12 squadmates to choose from. I barely used Jacob or Samara during my playthrough and felt no real sympathy once they were cut down, sadly. Maybe the most damning criticism I can give is that I did not care all that much about most of the main cast once all was said and done. Returning characters Tali and Garrus were appreciated, and new blood Thane and Mordin were also endearing, although latecomer Legion doesn’t get much room to breathe before it’s curtains.
Could’ve been better if I wasn’t collecting teammates well into the eleventh hour, if each character felt more dynamic and alive, and if the shooting wasn’t unequivocally the dullest part of the experience. Maybe that’s just me.
On replay: my God, the first act of this game is a snoozefest, man. Remember Eden Prime from ME1? Remember the red skies? Remember the intrigue of seeing Sovereign for the first time? If you haven’t played ME2 in 5+ years – barring the opening sequence when the Collectors attack – can you even tell me the name of the first place you go to??? (I’ll give you a hint: it starts with an F)
Omega is still visually and aesthetically super recognizable, but the missions there are incredibly dry. 90% of the time I was thinking like, man, I wish I was playing Gears of War or something. At least the enemies and levels there require some strategy. Although the shooting galleries of ME2 are a cut above the copy-paste interiors of the first game, that’s hardly a high bar to clear.
I’d argue the game doesn’t even get that good until around maybe Illium which is also, coincidentally, when you meet Liara again, and get to the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. For a game that revels in all of its waist-high cover shooty sections and its admittedly dry, exposition-optional dialogue trees, the Lair of the Shadow Broker feels like a shot of adrenaline – WAKE UP!!! It’s time to go on a super cool secret mission with your hot blue alien GF!!! Meanwhile if you accidentally romanced Ashley or Kaidan in ME1 (which, come on, it’s almost always an accident), you go FUCK yourself. They show up and call you dumb!
“I’ve been dead 2 years and intergalactic terrorists brought me back to life to fight an existential threat, tangentially related to the Elder God Machines we were fighting in the first game.” - You
“Damn, that’s crazy… deuces” - Ashley or Kaidan, depending
Loyalty missions are, pound for pound, the best part of Mass Effect 2 – unfortunately, these don’t start unlocking til after Horizon, which is also right around when you get to Illium. Do you get what I’m saying?
Do you remember Overlord??? Do you remember the guy who turned his autistic brother into a Computer God? Because I sure do – I just played through it. Not only do these moments lack gravity, they lack staying power – on top of being, uh, genuinely nonsense representations of neurodivergent people which is another thing altogether – also, the Hammerhead is NOT a huge step up from the Mako, at all. I vastly prefer the weird early Y2k desktop background planets of ME1 to the drab, monochromatic gauntlet planets of ME2.
I have a lot to say about Arrival, so I’ll be logging that by itself here.
The final mission is easily the highlight of the game. Say what you want about the rest of the game (no, seriously, say what you want), but its last hour is Mass Effect firing on all cylinders – unfortunately, it’s not enough to elevate the rest of the game, and it is again somewhat hampered by a buttload of hidden variables and a lackluster final boss.
You pick up Legion, a Geth unaffected by Reaper indoctrination, during the penultimate mission before being thrust into the endgame. If you don’t talk to Legion before opening the Galactic Map next, you essentially cross the Point of No Return. Most games nowadays are good about letting you know when this will happen, but Mass Effect 2 neglects this courtesy; instead, I ended up doing Legion’s loyalty mission after my crew was kidnapped by Collectors and, as a result, half of them were dead by the time I leapt through the Omega 4 Relay. Oopsie.
Jacob and Samara also ended up dying in my suicide mission, which… lol? ME2’s cast does end up being more than a little oversaturated by the time you arrive on Illium. Tack on DLC characters Zaeed and Kasumi and you’ve got no less than 12 squadmates to choose from. I barely used Jacob or Samara during my playthrough and felt no real sympathy once they were cut down, sadly. Maybe the most damning criticism I can give is that I did not care all that much about most of the main cast once all was said and done. Returning characters Tali and Garrus were appreciated, and new blood Thane and Mordin were also endearing, although latecomer Legion doesn’t get much room to breathe before it’s curtains.
Could’ve been better if I wasn’t collecting teammates well into the eleventh hour, if each character felt more dynamic and alive, and if the shooting wasn’t unequivocally the dullest part of the experience. Maybe that’s just me.