defies all laws of the universe because nothing should be this good.. even heroin gives you diarrhea. I'm new to this site but I know we all like to write essays about themes of capitalism or some stuff but I'm just here to talk about how awesome this is ... first up is the atmosphere. You are evil because you kill people and the whole game feels like it. There's an air of sinisterness throughout everything and it's perfect; especially in places like the suburb, even there feels like it's evil. Why? You're there and your evil music is playing. Jesper Kyd is a god and every time I do an action and it progresses the level and the music kicks in I go bananas! I like the new games but they feel so sanitized and they try to make 47 and the ICA to be a super spy hero to the point where it feels like the new games are made as a resume to get the James Bond IP. This has the perfect balance of feeling evil and being a silly sandbox killing game where you can dress as a bird and headbutt people. The gameplay hits that perfect balance of just passing the point of jank. Like it's very smooth and playable, and since I've been playing this game before I could talk and replaying it every day, I probably don't have much ground to stand on but it's very smooth, the controls while very contextual and somewhat controller oriented and tiny on high resolutions, work well and I never had to rebind. I actually rebound the new hitman trilogy to have the controls of this game so that's gotta say something.
Soul: 5/5
Awesomeness: 5/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

Alan Wake is all about stories and creativity, but it struggles with language. Both games center around reality-warping meta-narratives which shed light on the author’s disorganized psyche, but an abstract conflict like this is difficult to portray either visually or interactively. The visual motif it uses to do so is probably the most simplistic and traditional one of all: darkness and light. Light of goodness, shadow of despair, it’s been in use for literally thousands of years, and for a nontraditional story like this, it at least works as a familiar foundation to ground understanding. The interactive language meanwhile is equally simple, but in a way that feels less purposeful.

A game about creativity, self-doubt, and the nature of reality is, for some reason, presented by way of a third-person shooter, with a dynamic difficulty system generous enough to preclude any sense of survival horror. These shooter mechanics exist mostly as a way to create a sense of pushback, rather than actually representing the conflict that drives the narrative. However, I do have to give it some credit, as it actually does come close to doing so with the design of its enemies. Most of them are faceless shades, which stand around in the midst of other identical, but harmless, shadowy figures. At the start of the game, you’ll find yourself waving your flashlight from spot to spot, hoping to find foes amongst the fakers, but that’s as far as the mechanics ever push you. If you use a healing item, you can be certain that within two item boxes, you’ll find a replacement, and if you used all your ammo, you’ll instantly find more. The interactive language it’s using is, again, incredibly simple, just meant to slow you down, not to have much actual relevance to the story.

But of course, that’s the reason why we’re here in the first place; it’s hard to portray a struggle against the self in a way that can be experienced from without. It’s what brings us back to the darkness-and-light motif, an idea general enough for an audience to reflexively understand, but this generality creates a feeling of hollowness in its message. With this theme being the core of its visual and narrative identity, the only language it had to convey the fulfillment of a character arc was in the shedding or embracing of inner darkness, which flattens the nuance of a mature plot into a finale that feels like a kid’s cartoon, telling you to just believe in yourself.

That’s what I mean when I say the game struggles with its language; its genuinely interesting plot and narrative themes are let down by the methods chosen to communicate them. This is the same way I felt while playing Alan Wake 1 and Control as well, like Remedy’s boundary-breaking impulses are forcibly being restrained by the need to speak in marketable terms. That’s, ironically, why I’ll just keep buying these games. I want them to know that they’ve proven themselves, that they’ve reached their audience. I’m here, I’m listening. I want them to confidently say what they have in mind, to finally speak without reservation.

Small Saga really surprised me! What I expected to be a small, silly game that I'd forget about ended up being a small, silly game filled with writing and soul that speaks to the heart. While not free of rough edges, it's the equivalent of an overlooked indie film at a local viewing with some awkward acting and choppy dialogue but brings out topics you've never seen before in media. I often felt like the writer themself was speaking to me directly through Small Saga, and decorated it in a nostalgic yet fresh atmosphere.

Queerness, Irish culture and identity, anti-fascism, Small Saga brings out the big guns about topics relevant in a modern age, fitting for what feels like a classic JRPG made in the 2020s. It's so refreshing and euphoric to see a story this bold and in celebration of what makes us human in the current reactionary climate rising worldwide.

Small Saga eschews much of the in-between of a typical RPG, however, railroading you from plot point to plot point. This can make the game feel quite rushed, but in my opinion this impacts the combat the most. With such small runtime, battles don't evolve much and make you feel like you're playing the beginning 2 hours of a typical Final Fantasy game or Chrono Trigger over the course of around 10 hours. This isn't exactly a downside as the battles are fun, but you won't exactly be getting any serious turn-based gameplay or any semblance of challenge.

Despite praising its bold themes, I feel that sometimes it can be a little too in your face or opaque about them. Very little is left open for interpretation which can be a bit unsatisfying for some players. Overall, Small Saga was a fantastic time and I will cherish and love these gay little rats (and Siobhan, my beloved!) for years to come!

Calling something "good with friends" is often the cruelest thing you can ever say about a multiplayer game. Yeah, you can have fun with friends in basically anything, it turns out friends are good, not Phasmophobia. And it's so easy to see that in Lethal Company, especially from the outside looking in - some bullshit lame horror coop horror game to scream at, acting as the new steam flavour of the month game to merely moisturise the slip and slide of socialisation.

Despite the resemblance, Lethal Company is not that. Flavour of the month, maybe, but versus the thousand souless PC games out there of it's breed it's truly closer to something like Dokapon Kingdom and hell, Dark Souls, for the kinds of emotion and socialisation it brings up.

Because truly, Lethal Company is a game about having a really shit job. There's no real sugarcoating it. It's a game about being explicitly underpaid for dangerous, tedius work salvaging objects from ugly factories, where the corporation you work under and the true majesty of visiting planets and experiencing it's fauna are so stripped back and corporatised that you don't even notice it. This setting and the gameplay really sets out a very clever vibe for the game, as frankly, it on it's own, is almost deliberately not fun, but it is a wonderful way of building up a camraderie between players and really get into the boots of a worker in a bad job slacking and goofing off a bit. On my first playthrough with friends I found some extraodinary catharsis in one of the gang spending some of our quota on a jukebox playing license free music and just having a jam for a while, and likewise, a good haul which takes some of the pressure off others is appreciated, and the "man in the chair" - the guy left behind at the ship to deal with doors, turrets etc, feels both valued as part of the team, but also themselves lonely, tense, awaiting their friend's safe return.

It is also, as a more obvious point, very funny. Basically every run of this game you'll make something funny will happen. A comrade fumbles a wonky jump to their death based on bad information. You walk just inside the range of your comrade's voice to hear them screaming for help for half a second. You watch as the man in the chair as a giant red dot slowly bears down on your comrade, try to warn them and then see the red dot taking delight in eating them, and there's so much more. It's surprising really as a game with so little going on in gameplay and so limited in variety of stuff that it keeps on bringing up new stupid shit to happen.

Its rarely legitimately scary, even in the rare case you're alone amongst monsters with all your friends dead. The stakes established are just set too low, the animations a bit too goofy for the intensity to ever feel too much. And that kinda folds back in on that "shit job" thematic of the whole thing. Being almost indifferent to the surprising variety of monsters, seeing them as much as obstacles as hell demons that want to eat your face, is ultimately part of the job. Yes, the fourth angel from Evangelion wandering around whilst you slowly crouchwalk across the map to your ship is tense, but almost amusingly tense. Gotta roll with it.

It's a delightful experience, really. If you wanted to you could linger on how cobbled together the whole thing feels right now and how limited the actual gameplay really is, but they do nothing to take away from the truly great times Lethal Company sparks. The closest a game will ever get to being on the last day of your christmas contract with debenhams and just slacking with the other temps, giving people discounts on their items for no good reason and occasionally the weeping angels from doctor who come out with a giant spider and they're in the ONE hallway that leads back to the exit and Ernesto is dead, damn.