This game is incredibly cool!! Many of these puzzle styles feel unique in a way that may mean I'm not experienced with puzzles, but may also mean this developer has found a fun new style of simple puzzles that are infinitely generatable. The presentation is top notch, the simple colors and lines along with the art museum theming is super cool, the music and sometimes narration lends to the experience, and the pacing and small touches make it super pleasant to play. There's not a ton to say, just an extremely solid puzzle game with a ton of content, if that's appealing to you play it. They got a little out of my league pretty quick, but very fun regardless.

All puzzles completed. A puzzle game in three parts, each set of scenarios in Please, Touch the Artwork is based on interaction with a piece of abstract geometric art. The three puzzle types are quite distinct - one (probably the most challenging) requiring the player to replicate a given pattern of coloured regions, with touching a region changing the colour of all adjacent regions, a second based around parsing the path of a character through a network of straight-line roads and intersections, and the final being direct navigation of line mazes. Progression through each set tells a very simple story, providing justification for the scenarios but not really adding much to the overall experience. There are a few interesting ideas here and the game is certainly well-presented, but there's certainly nothing here that advances the puzzle game genre.

Normally the heart-warming/breaking short indie game with minimal/puzzle gameplay and a great artstyle/lovely soundtrack is one of my favorite types of games to play. Old Man's Journey is another one of these, but it misses the mark.

Yes it does look and sound pretty, and it does attempt to tell a wholesome story but it really just feels shallow. Im not trying to rag on indie games too much! but this game just feels so uninspired and samey. The "emotional" story isnt really anything all that different from what we've seen plenty of times in the past. From the silent memories we see the titular old man isnt a particularly sympathetic character anyways and it makes it hard to get invested in his journey. Despite being admittedly relatively unique, the point and click-esque gameplay doesnt really do much but get in the way. All this combined makes Old Man's Journey a very unengaging 1-2 hour experience. Its not a bad time. But Its not a memorable one either.

Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #211)
Time Played: 2 hours 21 minutes
Nancymeter - 49/100
Game Completion #109 of 2022
August Completion #29

Lost holds a special place in my heart. It came out at a time in my life when I really needed some good escapism, and by the time it concluded, I was in a much better place. I love its constant plot twists and drama bombs, and the fact that it wasn't shy about just killing off main characters. It always felt like anything could happen, and it was fun to think about even when I wasn't watching it. I didn't go on message boards or listen to podcasts or anything, but all the good feelings it gave me when I needed them most made it my favorite show and I've watched it more times than I can count.

My wife knows all this about me which is why she got me Lost: Via Domus for my birthday. It jumped immediately to the top of my list and took just a couple days to roll credits. I'm glad it worked out that way because it feels appropriate to end the year with something I'm kind of uniquely qualified to appreciate.

The main reason for that, of course, is that Via Domus is pretty rough as a game. Dialog is checklist-style question-response with no consequences. There are like 4 minigames which comprise the majority of the gameplay (outside of just walking around looking at stuff; more on that below), and all of them are pretty simplistic. There's one scripted shooting segment that took me like 15 tries because you get one hit killed and the guys have laser accuracy and fire instantly. The controls in general are super sluggish and imprecise. You're constantly fighting the auto-centering camera, since most of what you interact with is on the ground. The checkpointing is dreadful, often immediately before a long unskippable cutscene.

And you know this may be the only time I ever say this: I really didn't care about the gameplay. As clunky and shallow as it was, I was having too much fun playing around on Lost Island to pay it any mind. As a game it might be bad, but as fan service, Via Domus hits a whole lot more high notes.

Several major locations from the show are lovingly recreated in the kind of meticulous detail you'd expect from a rabid fan working closely with the show's creators. The characters and locations are presented with admirable fidelity to the source material. I wish they had gotten more of the voice actors from the show's cast, but I get the impression they didn't have the budget for that and the stand-in cast they did have stepped up admirably.

Stand-in actor or not, when Jack started pulling his Mr. Bossypants routine my wife and I both said "Ugh, fuck Jack" and it was just like watching the show again. It's even structured the same; with each act set up like an episode of the show with a synopsis, cold open, title card, series of escalating clusterfucks interspersed with flashbacks, smash cut to the logo, rinse and repeat. It all feels completely authentic.

Just having the opportunity as a fan to explore those iconic spaces from the show, and type commands into the cryptic Dharma Initiative computers and see everything from new angles is very satisfying and specifically rewards those of us nerds that would notice little details like how the vent in the vault ceiling is boarded shut (because after Kate escaped through there Locke briefly mentioned off hand that he sealed it up. Obviously).

It's also fun to see the cast through the eyes of someone who isn't in the main cast, as they're all a bunch of suspicious elitist assholes. It's completely consistent characterization but isn't as big of a factor in the show since it focuses mainly on the main cast.

That's my biggest takeaway on the game's value for me as a fan: a look back with an alternative perspective. I get to revisit this warm thing from my past and see it in a new light.

I've always been a fan of New Year's; I like that it's a secular holiday and the idea of taking a little time to both reflect and anticipate resonates with me. I got some life goals done in 2023. Got off the cigarettes. Had some losses. Kept my brilliant and beautiful wife happy. Got a little sloppy writing done!

I have a lot of fun here and I appreciate everyone who shares their great reviews. And the hearts are nice; holla to my core crew who heart every ramble. Here's to 2023, a year we're never going to forget; and to 2024, another year of balls-to-the-wall backlogging!

I seriously beat the crap out of this one kid with severe self-loathing issues at his hometown while taking with me a mythical creature that he's been obsessed with all his life, only to then follow him to his own school where I then destroy his whole career in front of a live audience. Oh he tried to fight back; but he couldn't stand up to my twelve foot, one-eyed bear that unleashes a giant laser from the power of a bloodmoon, plus the very same mythical creature from earlier but now she brought a fiery spiked club with his name written on it. This is probably the funniest plot since X and Y.

They couldn't get the landing quite right with Part 2.

Structure of the DLC is pretty much the same as the base game, "do battles against boss characters in any order, then proceed to the finale". I liked the new characters enough but it feels we didn't get enough time with them. Seems like there are post game conversations to be had with them at least, even found out the red-head has a crush with one of the others. That's cute, kind of wish it was integrated into the main story among the many other interactions that I might never see. Plus the plot with Area Zero had nowhere near the punch that the base game had during its finale.

Will give credit though, this DLC doesn't mess around. I personally never came close to losing, but that's only because I'm an obsessive freak who gulps EV trains all their Pokémon, plus alters their natures and hyper trains for perfect stats. But both regular trainers and boss trainers use competitively viable Pokémon and intricate strategies that adds a level of complexity to battle that you seldom see in these games outside the post game. They will use both Pokémon with their hidden abilities and held items that makes them more dangerous. This is ontop of every fight being a double battle which allows for a lot more possibilities for both your opponents the players themselves. As an example, I used a Great Tusk with Earthquake alongside a Levitate Vikavolt with Discharge, meaning that both of their attacks hit both opponents while being immune to each other. Like any Pokémon game, you can still power level your team to crush your foes with raw numbers, but with how high leveled everyone already is it's a lot tougher then usual. What I do like about these battles the most though is that they're also great teaching tools in the ways you can use certain Pokémon. They show you how strong reflect and light screen are, how to utilize terrains and weather, and what moves are great for certain Pokémon.

The BBQ quests are kind of a huge mess and the biggest fumble here. Firstly, don't do what I did and start trying to fill up the Pokedex till you unlock these quests by doing the very first story mission you get. That was a big mistake and wasted a lot of time. These quests are simple tasks that, very slowly, award a currency that's used for basically everything. Do you want to decorate your room? Do you want to change how your player character tosses a Poke Ball? Do you want new photo filters? Do you want to unlock post-game rematches with old Gym leaders and the Elite Four? Do you want to 3D print items, up to and including Master Balls? Then you're going to be grinding out a metric ton of these quests. Every ten small ones gives you one larger quest with a extra payout. For the most part though things are reasonably priced, except for the terrarium upgrades.
SO! Based on the Part 1 of the DLC, I knew coming in that there would be a special Pokémon or two unlocked by reaching a certain percentage of Pokedex completion. That is indeed true. If you catch 200 out of 240 Pokémon, you can catch two new paradoxes. Here's the thing: despite your best efforts in catching, evolving, and trading you can only get about 160. And that's where upgrading the terrarium comes in. For each of the four biomes there is a upgrade to add several wild starter Pokémon from all the past games to catch. Cool, right? It would be if they weren't 3000 points.
Each.
A single quest earns you 20 to 40 points, while the tenth special quest can earn you up to 200 or so. You see the problem, right??
But what can you do to make this tolerable? One is beating every trainer in a biome. Every five or so earns quite a lot of points. Problem: this is one-and-done. Once you exhaust all the trainers then your out of luck. Almost. The real way to wrack up points is to play with friends. There are special multiplayer quests that will earn you an actual reasonable sum of points. What if you don't have friends who play this game or have online?... ummm...
On one hand, this is mostly only a pain for completionists. If you just want to reach the end then you'll need about 200 or so points. That's completely reasonable. On the other hand, Pokémon hasn't had such a pain in the ass economy since the Battle Frontier that gave you pennies for playing battles that feel like their cheating at points. It's a regression that feels very disappointing. I ended up upgrading two biomes and managed to trade for a few more Pokémon to reach the 200 quota. Was it worth it? I don't think so. If you have friends then it's probably much more tolerable. The quests may be short and simple, but they're not interesting challenges and they can make you run all over the place. And and and and! If you want to catch all the past legendries' in the post game, then you need at least some group quests completed. I would not be surprised if these quests get an overhaul in a future patch, cause as they are now they're a unremarkable grind.

But enough of that, can we talk about the Synchro Machine? It allows you take control of any of your Pokémon. "Is it useful?" If you're asking that question then you've already failed. You can toss a ball with ZR and play with it. You can play as a Joltik whose as big as a flea and hops around like a tiny bug. You can play as the slowest Pokémon imaginable or one who zooms through the sky. You can play as a Alolan Exeggutor, the funny tall palm tree dude. It's stupid fun and I wish more games in general had things not tied to any progression or goals but instead just allows you to fool around with something silly. As an aside, I saw online how one person controlled one of their shiny Pokémon and fooled their friends into thinking they found a glitched shiny that they couldn't catch. That's why you do stuff like this. (Also I caught my first shiny in Gen 9, a shiny, female Meowstic (https://www.serebii.net/pokedex-sv/meowstic/#))

Also did you know that Meloetta is in this DLC? Probably didn't since it some cryptic bullcrap you hear on the school playground from a kid who says he beaten every game in existence. No that's not physically possible Michael you stupid ass- erm anyway nice to see devs continuing to include some wild mysteries to their game and see how long it takes for people to find them. Not long in this case, if only this game was made a decade or so sooner then this would've been the wildest shit imaginable.

Wrapping back to the intro here, Kieran is one of the more interesting characters in Pokémon mainline. He's probably one of the more, for lack of better words, realistic characters for his age. I can somewhat emphasize with him as someone who used to have a severe inferiority complex, feeling as if there are people who are factually better then you in every possible way. When that belief embeds itself in your mind it can be hard to pull it back out, taking over every fleeting thought in your damaged head. Still, he's a kid. Completely immature and rash. Lashing out at others who try to look past and question his façade. He uses a Porygon-Z with Adaptability, a Life Orb, and Hyper Beam; in other words, completely fucking overkill. He created a persona of a tough guy when in reality he's a huge dork. He is someone who says "Wowzers" unironically, that's the level we're dealing with.
Whether you actually like him is a different story, for me I was both laughing at and with him. Anytime he gets those distressed anime eyes where his pupils shrink and his eyes bulge is really entertaining. I like the times where he breaks his "badass" caricature and is real bad at recovering from that flub. And you know, even if you do hate him then he's a good foil as he takes his losses really badly. So either way I feel he works as a character.

I will say, maybe I'm a very distrustful person but I counted three characters I was expecting to be twist villains. In hindsight I'm glad that wasn't the case since that might've been pretty lame, but apart from Kieran and his sister Carmine there's a lot of characters that don't get much, if any, satisfying developments or memorable moments. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but Pokémon can and has done better in the past. I don't need a ton of story sequences in a Pokémon game, but I feel a few more here or there would've gone a long way to make this a much more satisfying conclusion to Gen 9.

And what a Gen this has been. It's real close to the apex of the franchise, it just needs more polish in both an aesthetic and technical level. Plus I'm a big advocate for adding voice acting to these games. When there's several cutscenes that show a much a higher level of character acting with them seemingly lip synched to their dialogue, the exclusion makes it all the more baffling. Wishing the devs the best, and here's hoping Gen 10 can deliver something new and exciting.

Also I didn't make Michael up. He was a real kid at Elementary school.
Kids sure are something.

Even the most enthusiastic reviews of Chants of Sennaar seem to feel obliged to mention the forced stealth sections as a weakness of the game. Depending on the critic, these portions are either labeled as an irritating diversion from the core gameplay or a negligible shortcoming in an otherwise novel and accomplished experience. While I definitely agree that the stealth is by far the shallowest element, I also found it to be symptomatic for a deeper problem that unfortunately affects even the best aspects of the game’s design. For a title about deciphering foreign languages, Chants of Sennaar is far too concerned with translating its encounters with the unfamiliar into all too familiar frameworks of video game tropes.

The game is at its most engaging at the start of each chapter, when you encounter a lot of still unknown signs of a new language at once and in various contexts, without any one of them offering conclusive evidence to their exact meaning. You observe the same symbols appearing in different combinations: there in a dialogue between two other NPC’s, here directly addressed at your character, and yet another time as part of a title for a painting on the wall, for instance. The comparison between the respective utterances sometimes leads you to more or less educated guesses about the meaning of individual words. This approach is greatly encouraged by the game’s single best system, which lets you write down your interpretations in an in-game notebook. These hypothetical translations then appear every time you encounter the corresponding sign from that point onward. You type in your definition and return to the same situations to see if they make more sense now. Some dialogue might suddenly transport a meaning that lets you infer even more translations, while other texts appear to be off just ever so slightly which forces you to adjust your hypothesis.

This simple gameplay loop is the beating heart of Chants of Sennaar and it would have been more than enough to sustain the whole game. That’s because the process of translating any given word is rarely just a matter of choosing the right or wrong answer to a question. Sometimes, there may be several possibilities that all make sense in every example available to you. At other times, there perhaps is no single completely accurate translation for the language you are playing the game in, or the meaning itself might vary, depending on the specific context of usage. None of the five languages in the game may seem very complex with only thirty-something words each to decipher, but ambivalences and ambiguities arise naturally when these symbols are transferred into your own language and its almost infinite semantic complexity.

Things get even more interesting when you start to translate between the in-game languages. Despite their limited vocabulary, the game introduces several layers of deviation that go beyond a mere terminological equivalence of all languages. It starts with small differences, such as the indication of plural forms, but later on new languages will have entirely different sentence structures, making it almost impossible to translate them word by word. Even in cases of denotative correspondence, the terms still can hold opposite connotations. For example, the Warrior’s term to refer to the group of the Devotees carries a strictly pejorative meaning.
In general, the process of learning a new language always provides insight into the culture of the respective group. If only the Alchemists have a decimal system in their vocabulary, then because they are the only ones who frequently need to operate with exact figures. This distinction is further underlined by the fact that their words are usually composed of abstract geometric shapes, while other groups like the Devotees use a more figurative sign language. Also note how every language is taught you to differently, according to the speaker’s culture. It makes perfect sense that you learn the language of the Devotees by their religious teachings, while the Warriors mainly communicate through orders, or that the Bards express their concepts in theatre plays and the Alchemists in scientific formulars. If you stay attentive to these indicators of social structure, you’ll find that there are conversely multiple ways to decipher the languages. Every written language follows its own inherent visual logic, which usually makes it possible to differentiate between different types of words prior to knowing their exact meaning.

Chants of Sennaar deserves most of the praise it is getting for how much sophistication it creates with its simple translation mechanics. I want to make clear that these qualities are not simply outweighed by its faults before diving into the next paragraphs full of criticisms. In fact, my main frustration with the game stems from how much other stuff was added, even though it contributes almost nothing to the experience. Basically, every element that is not directly linked to the act of translating remains awfully underdeveloped, and there is surprisingly much of it. Throughout the adventure, you’ll encounter block puzzles, several labyrinths, platforming, even scripted chase sequences and some embarrassingly misplaced horror moments. The real problem with the stealth sections therefore becomes that they are only the most prominent sample of a much wider array of poor gameplay segments throughout the whole game. Why in the world is there a Flappy Bird mini game in here?

Besides being a distraction from the game’s strengths, these components also sometimes work against them. Despite language being the central feature of the experience, the world is, for the most part, curiously devoid of its presence. Instead of creating a series of dense and intimate social spaces to explore, Chants of Sennaar tries way too hard to give your adventure a grandiose sense of scale of Babylonian proportions. As a result, you mostly traverse through wide, empty spaces with only a few scraps of text to be found each area. Far too much time is spent by just walking from one point of interest to the next, and the whole layout of the tower quickly becomes so confusing that it actually discourages you from revisiting old areas to test out your hypothetical translations, regardless of the fact that this method is incentivized by the mechanics.

Above all, the bloated emptiness and stuffed gameplay features for the sake of variety make apparent a certain lack of confidence by the developers in their own genuine systems, which shines through in the design of the core mechanics as well. I completely understand the reasons behind the decision to give official, “correct” translations to every sign, especially from a practical perspective. Periodic tests of your knowledge that gradually verify the meaning of each word were probably necessary for the steady pace of progression the story aims for, without running the risk of some players getting hopelessly lost in translation at some point. The tests themselves also mostly avoid the trap of giving away the answer too easily by making you translate multiple signs at once. Yet the drawings used to illustrate the supposed “proper” sense of the corresponding word are themselves the perfect illustration for why this correspondence between signifier and signified is itself impossible.

As individual sketches, these drawings are usually inept to represent the whole range of a sign’s meaning, especially if they are meant to visualize abstract concepts. To merely criticize this, however, would miss the point that the drawings do not actually attempt to provide a definition themselves, but to facilitate the process of translating the in-game languages into your own. In fact, the use of drawings sidesteps the much more rigid method of a direct verification through your own native tongue. If the game would ask you to formulate the translation directly, it would need to account for many possible “correct” inputs from the player. Even something as seemingly simple like the sign for “I” could also be translated with words such as “me”, “myself”, “my”, “oneself”, “selfhood” etc., depending on the sentence in which it was used. The options only multiply when you take more than the English-speaking audience into account. Instead, the drawings try to be consistent with all your possible hypotheses about the specific meaning of a sign, before arbitrarily deciding the “true” translation once you associate it correctly with the drawing. These official translations remain somewhat flexible, as the game will for example conjugate verbs according to the context of a sentence.

Yet despite every precaution taken to make it less restrictive, this system still asserts clarity and plainness where there was ambiguity and complexity before. No matter how different the process of translation was for each player, Chants of Sennaar makes sure that everyone arrives at the same conclusion at the end. The price of this approach is that once any sense of ambivalence about a word’s meaning is resolved, your translations stop being a tool you use creatively to understand unknown signs, and simply start to replace the foreign language, which in turn ceases to matter once it becomes “solved”. The goal is not really to learn a previously unknown language, but to reinstate the transparency of your own language into the world. Understanding a language has little to do with being able to find correspondences between another one already familiar to you. True understanding can only be reached inside the language itself.

Of course, this process takes years with any language in the real world and might seem like a tall task to ask for a puzzle game that only takes a couple of hours to beat. But I’d argue that games have been remarkably good at making you learn to think in ways that even make almost zero sense outside the experience. Think of Portal’s catchphrase “now you’re thinking with portals”, which is another way of saying that you have become a fluent speaker in the use of portals. Every good puzzle game adheres to this core design principle in its own way. They are never simply about solving a series of well-designed problems; they also gradually augment your way of seeing and interacting with its world in a way that make these problems solvable in the first place. In comparison, Chants of Sennaar is oddly reluctant to let you use the languages you learnt for yourself. The game could have linked progression to successfully communicating with the natives, or by acting as a translator between them. While the latter is in fact the penultimate and certainly most rewarding challenge the game presents, it is also inexplicably demoted in its entirety to a side quest to reach the “true” ending. For the most part, Chants of Sennaar wants you to learn its languages not to understand or use them yourself, but rather to enable you to understand its other mechanics, even though these are already so derivative of other games that they should require the least explaining of all.

__________________
More puzzle game reviews
Cocoon
Hitman GO
Mole Mania

Got this for free via PS+ and gave it a few hours, and it was relaxing enough to begin with. Who wouldn't enjoy completely rinsing a car in five minutes with minimal effort? Unfortunately, the game gets real picky as you progress. Having to scour for that last invisible speck of dirt to fully clean a large wall or finding out which one of the sixteen identical wooden trims I had to more thoroughly investigate for every job really wore me out. Also, this might just be my experience playing on PS5 with a controller, but my right hand started aching after a half hour of constantly holding down the right trigger to continuously spray surfaces. Not a great feeling when you need a break from your gaming break!

I played this as part of my backlog-thinning project. It's been a really great kick in the pants to try some stuff that would otherwise languish.

I finished this in one sitting, which is something I basically never do. It had its hooks in me early. It's low budget enough that you know it's could go anywhere, story-wise, and that kept me interested through the sometimes-stilted dialogue and minimal gameplay segments. This is barely a game; it's as though it's all caught up in telling its story and then remembers "oh, you're here too. Well, have a button to push, I guess." Nevertheless, these moments always seemed to be added thoughtfully and I liked how they gave some tactility to the world.

The story is a relentless barrage of every kind of tragedy and injustice, to the point where it's almost comical. I spent most of the playtime asking myself "Is it earning this?" It pulls out all the stops when it comes to heaviness, and doesn't really examine any of these topics in any depth. But it's not a game about terminal illness, or racism, or poverty; those are just a few of the many dangers in this game's hostile, unpredictable world (and, I might add, the most mundane; I don't want to spoil all the wild shit that goes down in this game). Nor does it seem to be a game about processing trauma and healing, as I kind of expected in the opening hours.

I think this is a game about the big fuzzy line between childhood and adulthood. When playing as the mom most of your gameplay choices focus on the tension between setting a good, principled example for the kid and doing what needs to be done to find some kind of safety for the two of you in the short term. Playing as the kid most of the choices involve how tuned in you are to the things the adults mean but don't say. He wants (and needs) to grow up fast; she wants him to grow up right.

That's the part of it that felt the most relatable. Not directly to my experience, but just the idea that sometimes an unbelievable amount of terrible things happen all at once, and the choices you make as you navigate those moments provide the foundation that you'll build from once the worst has passed.

At the end of the game you get a little wrap-up explaining what kind of adult the kid grows up to be based on your choices. The ending I got was pretty satisfying and it did make me curious to see other forks. The game being so short makes it much more likely for that to happen, but so many heavy topics crammed into a 3 and a half hour game means I probably won't be revisiting it for a while.

That's ok though because this game definitely left an impact. Visually this reminded me of Silent Hill in the way they leveraged the low poly characters and limited environments into a very unique style with some truly beautiful scenes. Because the models are so low fi, there are no close-ups. Everything is shot from a sort of medium distance, giving it a detached, almost voyeuristic quality. The presentation is incredibly simple and sometimes feels like watching a play. The English voice acting is hit or miss, but it seems like a they did a good job prioritizing the important characters on that front so it didn't bother me. For how short and simple of a game this was, it has a huge cast. The localization wasn't always fantastic and there were some weirdly loud foley effects, but at the end of the day the arresting visuals, likable main characters and wild unpredictable story won me over.

It alright, it not subtle or nuanced, it tasteless and lukewarm.........naa that's being a bit too mean.

The truth is I did enjoy this game quite a bit, the combat is still pretty solid, the side missions feel less like filler and more like proper missions, everything with Kraven is fantastic, and side stuff with Peter's former villains are all really great and do a better job delivering the game's overall narrative themes better than the main story to an extent. I feel like the further we get into the story the worse it gets and the more rushed it feels. I genuinely believe if you gave the symbiote arc more time to breath, made Venom less of a one note villain, and actually found something for Miles to do in the main story besides getting over his anger towards Mr. Negative you could've had something really special on your hands, and I know that for a fact since Kraven is by far the best part of the game hands down, Insomniac did their homework and then some like holy shit.

All and all a perfectly serviceable sequel that I wished tried a little bit harder
(Wake me up when Arkane's Blade comes out in 4 years)

A cozy little indie game that puts you in the shoes of a tiny postman that has to traverse a small town in the midst of a forest. The art style is charming as is the music. Gameplay wise there is room for improvement. Gliding is slower than walking, the camera does not follow the player instantly when jumping which results in constantly jumping out of the viewport and you can not sprint or gain speed in any way. There is a button to walk slowly though, for whoever wants to go even slower... Your tasks are either delivery or fetch quests, nothing more, nothing less, so be prepared to traverse the same paths a few dozen times. All in all a cozy wholesome game with basic but serviceable gameplay that does not outstay its welcome.

coining 'the max payne curse' for when developers demonstrate a strong understanding of how to make third-person shooting engaging and then fail to implement at least some of those elements in their future titles. i'm really happy remedy's moving on to making survival horror now with alan wake 2; what little i played of control was wonderfully presented and narratively intriguing but came across as totally rote and obstructive, and a more restrictive genre just feels like something remedy would find more life in given their strengths and obsessions as a development stable.

anyways, alan wake's american nightmare. i played one loop and a bit and im probably not gonna finish this. it's not even like, completely awful. technically it plays better than its predecessor but it really only accomplishes this by quickening the pace and including Enemy Types. the encounter design is more or less still one-dimensional and the lenient dodge button chokes interesting decision-making by providing an easy out whenever combat gets too hectic. it deserves some credit for being a seventh-gen third person shooter that tried to forego cover but no mechanical introduction here really plays to what feels like the series' design throughline, which is constructing ludic drama around perspective. you aim closely with your flashlight at an enemy for an extended period of time to eventually be able to do damage to them, but doing so limits your movement and observation and leaves you open to flanks. simple premise and little is done to really heighten this element of surprise sadly. but there are other titles we can learn from which not only orchestrate their challenge around limited perspective but also accomplish so much more in the grand scheme of things. i am thinking in particular about a little known game called resident evil 4.

Here’s a deeply strange and mostly unnecessary quasi-sequel to an already flawed game that feels like a botched attempt by the devs at Remedy to wrestle with some conflicted feelings they have about this franchise. For instance, this game feels like at least a partial acknowledgement that original Alan Wake functioned a whole lot better as B-movie schlock than as high-minded psychological horror. But the attempt at a goofier, Twilight Zone-style tonal shift never really lands here, largely because, in both gameplay and narrative, we’re still operating with same old Alan Wake toolbox - gun, flashlight, lots of Taken, and way too much of Alan’s interminable soliloquizing.

First question: Why are the Taken even in this game? It makes zero sense, from a narrative perspective. Worse, from a gameplay perspective, it’s indicative of creative paralysis. Even with some new versions of the Taken (the ones that split in two when exposed to light are a lot of fun), the lack of enemy variety in this franchise continues to blow my mind.

Then there’s Alan, whose writing has somehow become even more pretentious since the original game. Any of the appeal of picking up manuscripts in the original is replaced here with dread - the passages are longer and more ‘philosophical’, even when they are merely lazy exposition dumps intended for people who never played the original. Then there’s the fact that, as with the original, Alan is once again writing the story we are playing through (one of the funniest possible reads of this game is that it’s Remedy’s tacit acknowledgement, finally, that Alan is a terrible writer). Most of the story beats here range from very boring (all of the fetch quests and repetition) to gross (the reliance on women as damsels in distress) to hilariously dated (a mid-2000s one hit wonder playing a key role in rewriting reality). In short, this really does feel like a story Alan Wake would write, which makes this either an extremely narrow satire or one of the least self-aware games I’ve ever played.

I actually prefer the the gun and flashlight combat in this game over the original, for the simple reason that there are more varied guns available. I enjoyed heedlessly mowing down hordes of Taken with an assault rifle or an uzi compared to the more resource-dependent combat of the main game. And therein likely lies the secret of why this is such a limp narrative experience - the real creative muscle here was deployed toward the arcade mode, toward expanding on Alan Wake’s gameplay rather than its narrative. Which is fine, I suppose. But it’s just not why I play these games.