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Making & sometimes writing about games

{top 5 are recent favs}

https://letterboxd.com/maxq/
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Favorite Games

Pentiment
Pentiment
Amnesia: The Bunker
Amnesia: The Bunker
Thief: The Black Parade
Thief: The Black Parade
Alan Wake II
Alan Wake II
Norco
Norco

153

Total Games Played

001

Played in 2024

010

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

The Finals
The Finals

Jan 17

Thief: The Black Parade
Thief: The Black Parade

Dec 21

Starfield
Starfield

Dec 03

The Invincible
The Invincible

Nov 25

Alan Wake II
Alan Wake II

Nov 12

Recently Reviewed See More

Some cool tech & snappy gameplay trapped in Free-to-play hell. We talk a lot about games being tied to & shaped by their technology but little about how they’re shaped, and hollowed out, by their revenue model: GaaS “living games” are released (and shut down) before there is any life in them.

The Finals contains the movement & sugary energy of nu-battlefield (post-Battlefield 1) wrapped in the most horrid vibes: Forza Horizon-esque npcs at their infinite party, Siege/Valorant/Hyperscape-adjacent esports mush. Embark has managed to make Unreal resemble Frostbite, including impressive physics & destruction that echoes the chaos of bad company 2, but it’s all wasted here.

Even for a tight competitive shooter, this needs a more fleshed out setting, either leaning further into the surreal elements (bodies exploding into coins) or situating it in a world that is more than a watered down squid-game/mirror's edge/DICE's entire catalog. Feels like a very polished tech-demo and I refuse to play 100 hours to unlock interesting mechanics or outfits, which has led to every character running around in the default tracksuit/pyjamas. And don't get me started on the AI voices.

I am cautiously optimistic about embark’s other beautiful but empty sci-fi project, ARC raiders, which has seemingly transformed into yet another extraction shooter.

Thief is methodically mapping space from the shadows. Thief is exploring an architecture of absurd, arcane labyrinths. Thief is rotoscoped & roughly layered 90s FMVs scored with industrial beats.

The Black Parade, a fan campaign mod for the now 25 year old Thief: The Dark Project, brings Thief into the present as an act of alternate-history building. Within the tight restrictions of the Dark Engine, this imagines what Thief could be given decades of further contemplation, or in this case, seven years of development led by famed modder Skacky.

The Black Parade echoes iconic levels: here is a mansion, or a sprawling, vertical city, a rain-swept church, a plague stricken derelict district. But everything is now denser, more honeycombed, more varied. At times you’ll be lost, but they’ve paid special attention to every room’s volume, materials, light and colour, so that your mental map is as rich as your potential targets.

Thief separates itself from other Im-Sims by refusing to be an everything-game (Deus-Ex). You are a thief. You can’t fight for shit. You can jump from carpet to carpet and knock someone out if you’re good, but you can’t do much about two guards on your tail. Thief is narrowly designed to do one thing. The Black Parade knows this and is as close to Thief 3 (5?) that we’ll ever get.

Struggled to put together my thoughts on this. Escalates from mediocre to engaging somewhere about ten hours in, followed immediately by an overwhelming sense of emptiness. All of Bethesda's quirks are here in the worst ways: dead mannequin npcs, clumsy systems that don’t quite cohere, a terrible main quest that drifts across the flimsy surface of alien artifact sci-fi stories.

But something worse about this one is the lack of texture. There are very few freaks, minor discoveries off the beaten path, companions that make you feel something (Nick <3). Everyone is so nice, the politics completely empty. Cities are so strange and dead, with sound design attempting to evoke the density of Night City but lacking any real scale - the abstraction of a fantasy setting no longer here to distract you from asking: why is this just one square block?

This must’ve been a monumental effort to produce, but why dedicate seven years to creating a pale echo of The Expanse, Mass Effect & Firefly? There are hints of another game in here - one with meaningful travel and fewer, more fleshed out worlds - that was abandoned prior to shifting to this smooth, soulless, bloated final form.