One thing that didn’t age well were the in-engine cutscenes, they’re models that are kind of…moving around, and they don’t blink or make eye contact. It’s real uncanny valley stuff. In motion it just feels really bad I guess.
he’s really giving it his all in alan wake 2 and it’s sad cuz he had cancer so we know now he was dying, he wanted to make his last game real special for everyone. i’m gonna cry again
i’ve barely heard it mentioned that Max Payne is like, incredibly inspired by nordic mythology. like, a guy named Alfred Woden with one blind eye in charge of the Aesir corporation? Excuse me?
I love that the setting of the game is so apocalyptically snowy, and also that you literally go to a club called Ragna-rock. And the latter part of the game (which I think I’m in) is all about descending and fiery depths and explosions and shit.
It’s the most noir thing that the world reflects the inner turmoil of the protagonist. The writing and scenario in this game…they’re good!!!
now that I’m finally getting into Alan Wake 2 I think it’s easily the most that a linear action game has impressed me in terms of overall tonal shifts and storytelling and mixed media work since like 2017-2020 when these were coming out much more regularly… feels good to be back! since a lot of more recent stuff in that department has just not felt very fresh or impressive. honestly, considering that half life alyx came out in March 2020, it almost felt like an AAA trend that was killed by the pandemic.
also remarkable considering that control arguably failed to go from good to great largely because it was so underwritten!
tempted to see it as the first actual next gen release purely on the basis that it’s required mesh shaders at last (though that in itself just seems like a slightly obnoxious way to prevent anyone playing it on hardware that doesn’t support ray tracing since both features shipped on the same generation and ray tracing has been de facto optional ever since)
in hindsight, control mostly feels like them demonstrating for the first time in 20 years that they could ship a game without it requiring a half dozen scope changes and publisher arrangements
like I remember arkane had to get over that hump with dishonored too and then they really started cooking for like a decade
Been playing Quantum Break and it’s a little bit frustrating. there are missing episodes it asks me to download mid-way, insisting that it’s a show and wants to stream something, but that doesn’t seem to work. so rather than downloading another 80GB package I just skipped them. overall my feeling on the game is: just let me get to the shooty bits please. hopefully there’s nothing important in there I missed?
