Probably my last log on this, put another 20 hours or so and got fairly deep into Act II and I just can't with this fucking game anymore. I genuinely love the core cast of characters (especially Shadowheart and Gale my queens) but everytime I have to play the videogame I end up wanting to throw my controller at the wall. There are just so many needless barriers to fun and enjoyment that I truly cannot fathom the purpose of. The rules don't ever seem consistent, and the game tries to bend to your will but mostly fails in my experience. I feel like the combat expects you to Stealth in, surprise the enemy, and then get high ground, otherwise you're just putting yourself through a worse and more gruelling encounter. In a game that's so lauded for its reactivity, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I've tried lowering the difficulty, but that doesn't change some of the fundamental design choices (that apparently are ripped straight from DnD, which I have no prior experience with). I dunno, man. I really wish I could get through the game in order to get to the character stuff but I just don't like playing it most of the time, so it feels kinda pointless to continue on. Too much jank (on a controller), too many bugs, too much tedious waiting for 50 enemies to all have their boring-ass turns one after the other while I sit there trying not to fall asleep, too much reliance on long resting to be able to actually play the game properly. I could go on and on and on. I'm also so tired of videogames that supposedly focus on narrative having half-baked, poorly lip synced character animations, especially at this scale and budget. Could you not have just made a smaller game that actually focuses some of those resources on making sure your characters are believable and... human? I dunno! But I sure as shit would've liked this a lot more if they had!

Fun to play with the gf while it was on but doesn't get much more impactful than that. I do admire how often it switches things up but I still feel like it makes it feel twice as long as it is. Story stuff also ranges from mediocre to completely insufferable, and I can't believe it ultimately ends with these two characters who are clearly terrible for each other and destroy everything in their path staying together for the kid. Yawn. There is so much potential for a more interesting and nuanced story to be told here but I guess I'm expecting too much?? Which feels kinda bad to say. Anyway, it's fine, it's too long but it's fine and I doubt I'll think about it ever again.

A game of soaring highs and absolutely soul-crushing lows. Some runs genuinely just feel insanely unfair due to just being fucked by the games RNG over and over again. There's only so much skill I can have before me winning or losing feels completely out of my hands. I really love how this game feels to play, the music is fantastic and I like the strange cosmic imagery, but I've been trying to hit credits since on and off this came out and I've never managed it. I came SO close this time but, admittedly, fucked it up. The story isn't really hitting for me either, I like an abstract vibes-based narrative but this is so obtuse that it almost comes off as obnoxious. After like 20 hours, Selene constantly spouting bizarre gibberish in logs just gets a little grating. ALSO, and maybe this contributed a fair bit to me dropping this again, but the PC port of this is pretty terrible. Constant microstuttering in a fast-paced game is so god damn annoying (and kinda nauseating), and I've had a couple of game breaking bugs that have seemingly just never been patched out.

Oh well. I will probably once again come back to this and try (and most likely fail) to beat it at some point in the future, but I've gotten almost right to the end and the story isn't enough for me to want to keep going through it all again.

Didn't get round to the Foundation expansion but did finally do the AWE one. Sets up so many small details for AW2 in a lot of the logs and in the AWE stuff, which was a nice surprise on replay post-AW2. But yeah, overall I still love it, probably even more than I did when I first played it a few years ago. Such a distinct and palpable vibe across the whole thing and the combat really holds up; especially when going deeper into the ability trees and such. Will defo get around to the other expansion at some point but wanted to move onto something else for now.

So apparently I took this way too literally and only did it dawn on me that I'm an idiot after the fact. But I do think the sentiment of dissecting and the need to understand art on a "deeper" level resonates with me, AND the whole getting extremely burnt out from creating thing also hits home as I haven't picked up a guitar (ok a few times to noodle a bit but nothing substantial) or played drums in like 7 years because the process of creating and then releasing to the world even at a small scale was terrifying and I hated it. But also wanted the validation. Idk! Pretty cool, made me feel some stuff.

interesting! definitely been thinking a lot lately about my own tastes and why i like things and why i don't a lot more, and interactivity and how much i care about it above other aspects has been a big chunk of that thought process. also the author is completely right about the medium peaking in 2005 with shadow of the colossus lmao, especially in the context of fully committing to interactivity in every element of a game.
but i do find myself questioning why i even like videogames as a medium and why i couldn't just be spending my time reading more books or watching more movies or TV shows if i just want to passively watch things unfold in front of me.

so, at the very least this gave me some nice extra food for thought on top of all the things I've been asking about myself and this medium. i do hope there's more of these in the future!

One of my favourite (open) worlds, whilst also being one of my least favourite Souls games, whilst also being the most accessible, whilst also containing some of the most frustrating encounters in any of the From games I've played. Also probably the biggest case for me not sticking ratings on media anymore because my feelings cover pretty much every area of the enjoyment spectrum. I think Elden Ring might be the last game I play made by From Software.

I've tried and failed to finish Elden Ring roughly 3 times, my first playthrough near release ended about 10 hours in, if I remember correctly I was in a period of open world fatigue (dramatic, I know, but that's what it was) and found the ways the game obfuscates so much necessary information to be offputting. The next couple of times I started again, and got further than I did before, but ultimately got burnt out and decided it just wasn't for me due to the sheer length. I almost got burnt out this time as well, but I found just taking a day or two off when that feeling started to creep in helped me keep going. I felt more motivated to see it through to the end this time, purely because I just hadn't stopped thinking about existing in this game since I first started it in 2022. The Lands Between is 1000% my favourite part of all this. This world is (mostly) a joy to inhabit and exploring it was just as mesmerising even after multiple restarts. It's gorgeous, intriguing and it just never fails to suck me in for hours on end. I had the same sort of feeling while exploring Dark Souls III, albeit in a much more linear and closed container with that entry.

But, I do think I've had my fill of Souls/From games for the forseeable future. I fear their next open world Souls entry will be twice as long and twice as hard and I have just gotten slightly tired of it all. God, this game is so fucking long. I love the slow adoption of the Breath of the Wild-like open world where your curiosity is the motivator to get around it, but I would love to see it applied in some games that don't make me want to gouge my eyes out. Seriously, the last stretch of bosses in this, while visually insane and gorgeously animated, I found straight up unfair and just WAY above my patience and skill level. I Mimic Tear'd, I summoned other players, I grinded (ground?) to get overlevelled and still just kept getting my ass beat which kinda sucked a lot of the "epic" out of it. Elden Beast and Maliketh can straight up go to hell. Dicks.

Also not particularly a fan of just how much ER obfuscates it's quests. The map markers for NPCs definitely help (and I couldn't even fucking imagine trying to get through any of them at launch without them) but there were still so many times where NPCs would just disappear and I would never find them again (Blaidd, come back to me!). The story stuff I did end up doing didn't actually do all that much for me anyway though, the characters have strong personalities but the actual lore and storytelling I think is just too sporadically paced to really hook me.

I've run out of thoughts now, but I'm glad I finally finished this. Mostly because I think it was worth doing, but also because I'm glad it's finally over.

starts off really terrifying but as soon as the creature kills you a couple times it gets old really fast. also extremely tedious trying to run around with rats AND the massive thing following you around. it's not scary to be constantly killed by the thing that's supposed to be lurking in the shadows, it's just annoying. i continue to find hide n seek horror really uninteresting. at least this is a little more involved than something like Soma, you at least have inventory/resource management management and the immersive sim elements to make it a bit more interesting than just hiding until the big thing goes away. narrative stuff is wank too. sigh.

second playthrough via The Final Draft, which gives what I consider to be the actual ending. tbh, still not sure what it all means. for me the best horror has a hidden, or not-so-hidden, layer of metaphor stemming from the human condition. I'm not entiiiiirely sure if that exists here? there are flavours of it but the plot is so complicated and the lore is so heavy that it can be hard for me to process it all into something more in depth, more meaningful. still, it's a hell of a sequel and the most remedy-ass remedy game that ever remedy'd. and i would be lying if i said I hadn't thought about it every day since finishing it the first time. I'm probably gonna be thinking about it EVEN MORE from now on.

AW2 is so unique because it feels like such a singular vision, executed in such a specfic way that only heightens that vision. it is, in some part, literally about creating something and the chaos of that process. in the context of a videogame, with hundreds of people working on it, all of them needing to click into place to make the entire thing work, that theme is inherently relevant to every single thing that happens in the not only in this game, but retrospectively everything in Remedy's previous works too.

I have so many thoughts but I really struggle to put them all into words, it's all just so much, but in the best way possible.