a few notes at +/- 50% of ALAN WAKE 2

in

  • A stunningly-realized horror world; the forests, especially, are terrifying – and beautiful.

  • Saga is such a great character and such a fantastic addition to the series that it makes Wake seem like even more of a raging asshole and his portions of the game a bit more of a chore. Yeah yeah, your story rewrites reality, blah blah blah. Fucking writers.

  • I'm really going to miss James McCaffery’s voice in Remedy games.

  • I was skeptical about the shared Remedy-verse, but I love how it works here. I have the Ultimate Edition of CONTROL that I want to replay soon so I'll pick up on more connections.

  • Think I'm finally understanding how Wake's Plot Board works - though I find it far less intuitive than Saga's profiling: "I have to be in the place to write..." Fucking writers.

  • That musical sequence really was something – and maddening. I love my flare gun but I hate reloading it. Or reloading anything, really... 🎶 "It couldn't be clearer... / ... something something, light / true and right..."🎶

  • Mem: you can reload while running but not while dodging.

  • Coffee World!

  • I miss Barry.

  • Have to play at night because of the location of the TV. Can't see a thing during the day. Appropriate, I suppose.

  • Fucking writers.

not a sim

in

Among the many things I appreciate about GHOSTS OF TSUSHIMA is that, while it's a spectacularly-rendered open world that thrusts you into a pulp history version of the 1274 Mongol invasion of Tsushima, it's not a spectacularly-rendered open world that thrusts you into a RED DEAD 2 pulp history version (much as I adore RDR2) of the 1274 Mongol invasion of Tsushima that forces you to eat the right amount of carbs and protein and what have you or wear the right outfit in the right weather conditions or feed your horse the right amount of apples and oats to live to slay another Mongol hoard. Nice just to ride with the wind from stand-off to stand-off to heartbreak to heartbreak accompanied by Nobu’s clop-clops and Ilan Eshkeri and Shigeru Umebayashi’s incredible score.