I had this moment before this game came out where I was like, "Man, I really wish other gacha companies loved their games as much as Hoyoverse seems to." At the time, the game was like, a week away from release? I was honestly still coming off of the high that was Star Rail's 2.2 patch, despite my problems with how the company's love for their game works inversely with how gacha affects their game.

Because I was expecting this game to have a boring story with boring characters, something that Honkai Star Rail and 3rd (and Genshin, to an extent) are pretty good at not doing.

Having said that, despite this game being jankier than its competitors, I've been having fun. While it is essentially a weird cocktail of Honkai Impact 3rd (combat), Genshin Impact (mostly this with its open world exploration and a number of its systems), and Star Rail (hey there Simulated Universe and Stelle-lite), it addresses...almost specifically, a lot of problems I have with that second game.

Genshin is definitely prettier than WuWa but WuWa a lot of the times feels like it's smugly introducing a feature because it knows Genshin isn't doing it, like the skip feature or the ability to run up walls in place of the nightmare that Genshin has (which is just a worse form of what BotW did but that game felt way more fluid and less frustrating to climb in). Being able to air dash, items not having to be picked up manually, a glider that handles much better...this game was clearly made by people who played a lot of Genshin Impact.

However where this game excels is in its other parts. For instance, the combat for the game borrows a lot from Honkai Impact 3rd, and this was really funny to experience for the first time because having played HI3rd last (it's fun), I always wondered what it must've been like for fans to go from that to the much slower and less nuanced system that was in Genshin. Fighting feels great, and the addition of parries and dodges just feel good to do, especially in boss fights with strongly choreographed attacks that have a high pay off for learning them. There's also a decent amount of enemy variety which is frankly surprising and something that isn't really given as much praise as it probably deserves.

Also, the echoes. This is probably my favorite thing about the game, but I love this silly little pokemon aspect of fighting monsters, getting their echoes, and using them as attacks in battle. It reminds me a lot of the Castlevania Sorrow series in a good way, and while I'm still scratching my head over the equipment system, I generally like it so far.

Worried about those substats though.

And if it seems like I'm just glazing this game up it's because it's free, doesn't take up that much space, and I've kind of just had a good time. Yeah it has some jank, yeah the English dubbing is currently pretty bad (will likely get better in the future if this game keeps going), and yeah the story's nothing to write home about but in terms of being a fun experience? It clears Genshin Impact pretty immediately.

Anyway, don't spend your money on this. Also, fun fact I might as well end on. So, in regards to the English dub, most of the voice actors are British. In fact, if you look at some of the castings, you'll recognize some voices from Xenoblade and Final Fantasy XIV (Fiora/Tataru being a notable example). I'm bringing this up because very few characters in the game have british accents, and the few that do are NPCs. I'm bringing that up to say that the reason this dub is so odd is because of the direction, there are a lot of talented voice actors on board, and ironically the best performances in the game are NPCs. It's really noticeable, that direction bit, when you hear the main characters strain themselves to speak with some sort of American accent when that's not in their range currently, so as a result some words will come across with a strange accent or said differently than you'd expect.

Free them please. I'd just say play in Chinese or Japanese until a major patch pops up since they seem to be working on the voice work.

Oh and glad this game has punchy people. More games need punchy people. Every game needs punchy people.

Started to play this with a group of friends and, in typical D&D fashion, we could never decide on a good time where we’d all be available to play together again.

Aside from that, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a genuine masterpiece, although I don’t need to tell you this since it won like. every game award ever in 2023. I don’t think I can do this game justice with one of my own reviews so I suggest you just give this one a go yourself. Let the 50,000 trophies on Larian’s shelves for this game be a good reason to give Baldur’s Gate 3 a shot.

Started a new game the day the news broke of James McCaffrey’s death. RIP to a legend, his final performance as Max has so much to look back fondly on. The anger, disgust and defeat in his voice as he fights his way through hell, and his likeness as Max, while I of course love the Sam Lake face, the old hardened look of Max was perfect for James’ evolution of the character.

What a brutally bleak game too, the graphic gunfights, bullet wounds and body physics I remember well from playing this on release but the storyline and fate of so many characters really hit harder this time, just the constant death and bloodshed, you really feel Max’s spirit breaking each time as he stops caring for his own safety and just wants to enact revenge for whoever’s responsible for each heinous act.

Of course HEALTH’s score is incredible and everyone talks about the airport sequence at the end but all throughout the game as well it’s just pummeling and intense, pounding drums and throbbing rhythms, when bullets are whizzing and glass is shattering all around you and the music is just pumping overtop the chaos with these dark, pulsating, almost primitive beats, it’s intense as hell and at times feels almost horror-like, as if something big and scary is coming towards you. One of the best parts of the game hands down, gets you right there in action feeling like you’re surrounded by it.

Played this on Xbox 360 and I have to say I loved how the first disc, which has the artwork of Max with hair on it, ends right when he shaves his head, and the second disc, which has the shaved head and floral shirt artwork, starts immediately with the scene of him debuting that look. Well played, Rockstar, whether intentional or not.

I fucking love this game and I can’t wait for the Remedy remakes of the first two, I’m really interested as to how they’ll handle them with McCaffrey’s passing but whatever they do we all know it will honor the man’s legacy and the beloved character we all admire.

In a world where AAA gaming is dominated by C-suite mandates to create premium products made strictly by and for continuous consumption, it is a miracle we've gotten a game like Alan Wake II, with Sam Lake taking an even harder swing into the realm of the confident auteur. No concept is too obtuse, no idea too far-fetched, no mechanic too weird to attempt. To say it came together is to minimize the calculated post-modern approach to this gripping and looping narrative that Remedy Entertainment has accomplished. We are lucky to get a project like this that pushes the medium far beyond what many others are even attempting to do in this space. Alan Wake II has seriously restored my faith in what prestigious AAA gaming can and should be. Masterpiece.

...𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘱𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘰𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘰𝘯 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦...

"Show me the Champion of Light
I'll show you the Herald of Darkness"

How do you even review a game like Alan Wake II? This is a game that has been 13 years in the making. A game that many (including me) never thought we'd actually see in our lifetime. The fact it exists at all, let alone in its current state is a miracle in itself. However I ask this question for more reasons than just that. Yes, how do you even review a game like Alan Wake II because simply put there's absolutely nothing else like it in the medium of video games.

You can call Alan Wake II a postmodern detective murder mystery, an atmospheric psychological horror fever dream and a meta 4th wall shattering narrative with enough mind-bending twists, turns and revelations and layers upon layers of metaphors, meta commentary and cryptic symbolic messages to make even David Lynch, Ari Aster, Robert Eggers and Christopher Nolan proud. You can also clearly see influences and elements pulled from TV shows like Twin Peaks, True Detective and The Twilight Zone or movies like Inception, Se7ven, Hereditary, Midsommar and The VVitch, alongside games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill and even theater and rock opera, but even saying all this still doesn't do Alan Wake II justice because nothing else has ever blended all these various elements together in the same kind of way that Sam Lake and Remedy have done here and it's something you can't truly explain and just need to experience for yourself because that's what Alan Wake II is. An experience like no other.

Hell, nothing else even has the same kind of visual presentation or tells its story in the same way Alan Wake II does either. The closest thing to it would be Remedy's other hit game Control, but even then that game is so vastly different from what Alan Wake II accomplishes. We're talking in-engine graphics and cutscenes mixed with pre-rendered cutscenes mixed with tons of entirely live action sequences as well. With plenty of times when all 3 of these techniques are utilized and blended together all at once flawlessly to create a truly unique experience that only the medium of video games could ever provide.

If I could describe Alan Wake II in a single word, it would be "love" because you'd have to be blind to not see how much love went into this game at every turn while making it. The mind-blowing, revolutionary audio and visual presentation alone are proof of that, but that's far from the only thing Alan Wake II should be praised for, every single aspect of this game is mind-blowing in its own way. The budget for the game was £70 million which makes it one of the most expensive cultural products in Finnish history and it clearly shows in the sheer scope of the game and the insane and creative set-pieces, but don't let this massive budget fool you because Alan Wake II is also clearly a passion project in every sense of the word as well. A massive AAA game with the level of passion, soul and love put into it that an indie developer just starting out would put into their game.

Remedy Entertainment as a developer however aren't just starting out, no, they've been around for 20+ years and Alan Wake II is a game that truly shows this feeling like a culmination of everything Remedy have learned and done in those past 20+ years. You can clearly see elements and shades of all their previous games from Max Payne, the OG Alan Wake, Quantum Break and of course Control, but it all pales in comparison to Alan Wake II which is Sam Lake and Remedy's magnum opus and best game to date in every way possible. It's also the most Remedy game that ever Remedied and if you're a fan of the studio you'll understand what that means. Especially since this is the first Remedy game since the Remedy Connected Universe has been officially established and it has so much in-depth world-building and lore for die-hard fans who have played Remedy's other titles like Max Payne, Quantum Break and Control.

And while Alan Wake II is much more than a game, it IS still a game at its core and just like every other aspect of this experience, the gameplay is top notch as well. From the level design to the atmosphere and tension to the incredible boss fights and mind-boggling puzzles and exciting exploration which always rewards you for going off the beaten path with much needed supplies or valuable manuscript pages for extra added lore or manuscript fragments to upgrade your weapons, Alan Wake II is a master class on how to make a true blue survival horror game and feels like the closest thing we'll ever get to a modern Silent Hill 2.

Ambitious is a word that's thrown around a lot nowadays. Everyone wants to release the next game changing piece of media, but few ever do reach that level. If there's one single game that was released this year and truly deserves to be described as ambitious, it's Alan Wake II. Not only is Alan Wake II a technological marvel and the best looking game I've ever seen from a graphical standpoint, but Alan Wake II is more than a game, it's a truly one-of-a-kind multimedia EXPERIENCE that blends together cinema, literature, music and gaming all into one package in a way never before seen in this medium, but also in a way that could only ever be done in THIS medium.

Alan Wake II is simply a boundary pushing, genre defying, tour de force of creativity and innovation that would take decades of time to ever fully replicate in this same way again by anyone other than Sam Lake and Remedy and even though it took 13 years to release, the wait was more than worth it because this is the best possible version of the game we could've gotten and it was only made possible because of Remedy's own experiences making games like Quantum Break and Control leading up to Alan Wake II, which is not only a game, but an EXPERIENCE unlike any other and one that I know will stick with me for as long as I live.

During the funeral for a local shopkeeper, a firework goes off and burns up the corpse. A rookie investigator checks up on the scene and soon becomes interested in the death of a family living next to the shopkeep. Or maybe the dead family becomes interested in him.

As a puzzle game, Firework is pretty straightforward. There were maybe two puzzles that took me some thinking and one that I took wild guesses at. In the latter case, I think it must have been missing some key translation details. There's no real challenge or danger to the game and its easy to get used to ~spooky changes~ that happen to the haunted house in between different shots.

As a story however, I found this to be a phenomenal journey. Taking cues from Detention and Devotion, Firework focuses on the internal stress and strife of a the Tian family and how those problems spiraled out to numerous parties around them. While the game toys with ideas of supernatural revenge and curses, its ultimately more interested in the tragedy of Tians as people. Their addictions, their goals, and how all those factors conflict with each other in one house. This is combined with gorgeous presentation and game design that just washes you in the mentality and turmoil of the Tians.

The protagonist briefly runs the risk of becoming too hyped up by the narrative. "Oh man, here's the cool cop who can see ghosts and be the Justice that this world needs!" But when it does finally swerve over to his own inner mentality, it actually depicts an interesting character who's grappling with his own temptations and flaws. None of his own problems are truly solved by the end of the game and he can't reach real "justice" for the Tians. He can just remember what he's experienced and move forward with the knowledge that he has. Its a smart way to handle the needs of its protagonist gimmick.

The translation can be a bit flawed and sometimes it drops its clever, ambiguous presentation in favor of just characters explaining to the camera what the truth of the situation is. But when its in its groove, this game takes you on a great little 3-4 hour journey. Its well worth a nibble.