At once one of the worst and best games I've played in a while. I'm compelled enough to want to know what they're doing, but also the act of trying to figure out what they're doing is a fool's errand. Rebirth is exceptional when it's about hanging out. But it's weighed down so heavily by the worst case of ubisoft open world bloat I've ever put up with. Its combat system could be studied in universities for eons, it's obscenely, disgustingly, putridly brilliant. Boss fights in this game are some of the most fun and fascinating collaborations of systems and creative design I can recall, and I don't think they're getting nearly enough credit for just how intricate it is. But 95% of the fighting in this game is generic fodder enemies that turn it into a borderline-musou level of turn-off-brain-and-mash-square. The bulk of this game does disservice to everything it excels at. It bogs itself down with frivolous padding at every opportunity—every little action takes like a second and a half longer than you'd expect, making it feel sloppy and unresponsive in the hands when outside of combat, which is most of the time. The composition work on this score is some inconceivable galaxy brain stuff. We're talking minimum 200 IQ moves all over the place. I cannot wait for that big-ass CD box set, dude. That's my main takeaway from this game.

I'm way late to the party but Firewatch is an absolutely excellent game held back only by a few glaring technical flaws

The narrative and presentation are so solid I had trouble getting to sleep after playing the first half, and I will be thinking about the conclusion and what the game has to say about finding connection for a long time

But also I had to restart several game days, always frustratingly close to the end of each day, because my character got irreparably stuck on/in some level geometry, and repeating those whole days (some 10/+ mins long) kinda sapped some of the momentum out of the game

Still a banger. You've probably already played it, but if you're like me and you just had it in your backlog (heyo!) for the last 8 years, definitely make time for it. It's good!