Mister Jack

All I know is the Alan Wake Remaster still isn't on Steam.

Epic is the publisher for Alan Wake 2 so I wouldn't hold my breath for ever seeing it on Steam. Anyway... Cultic This is a retro style FPS that was made pretty much entirely by one guy. It's on the short side but you know what? He did a pretty good job. While there are only ten maps, they're all pretty big and full of secrets. Excluding the final boss, each one probably took me around 20 to 30 minutes to clear on hard mode. There's a decent enemy variety and this game clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Blood, only without the bullshit hitscan enemies that game had and thank god for that. Something that impressed me was that all the weapons not only feel good, but are also useful through the entire game, and that includes the starting pistol. I only upgraded the pistol once, but it shoots fast and makes for a pretty decent midrange sniper weapon if your aim is good. You will rarely be swimming in ammo and guns have fairly low ammo caps so you're encouraged to use every tool in your arsenal. Picking one favorite and sticking with it isn't really an option, but I didn't really mind this because, like I said, they're all fun. You also get throwables in the form of TNT bundles and molotov cocktails. Fire is crazy good in this game. Once you set someone aflame they will pretty much flail around helplessly until they burn to death and will ignite anyone they touch along the way, much like they did in Blood. Headshots are also extremely satisfying. I'm talking blood geysers here. The game does end on a cliffhanger, but there's already a chapter 2 planned. Not sure if it will be DLC or a new release, but either way this game is only 10 bucks, which is more than fair for the amount of content on offer.

Alan Wake II Worth the wait. Like Ethan said, they changed it from an action horror to a more full-on survival horror kind of game. You rarely fight more than two enemies at a time, but they're now much more dangerous individually than they ever were before and I can't remember a single moment where I ever maxed out the ammo for any of my guns. The game looks great, the story answers many questions that have been hanging for over a decade, and of course it is also a technical marvel. If I have any complaints I suppose it's that sometimes it's easy to get lost and not know where to go due to the world operating on dark presence logic, which is a far cry from earthly logic. Key items will sometimes magically appear where they didn't exist before, bathrooms will take you to an entirely different floor in a building, walls will be blocked off until you change the lighting in a room, and so on. You get used to it, but there can still be moments of frustration. Even then, this is still my favorite Remedy game ever made. Can't wait to see where the DLC takes it.

Five Nights at Freddy's What a fucking mess. I wasn't expecting it to be good to begin with. I figured it'd be mediocre at best and I could just enjoy it as a campy guilty pleasure, but it's seriously all over the place. The story makes no sense even for a FNAF movie and that is really saying something because the franchise lore is already absurd to begin with. There are plot holes everywhere, character motivations are nonexistent or nonsensical, and the movie tends to just make up bullshit for the sake of having a twist. Nothing even really happens for most of the film and we get dragged along on some subplot about a guy's dreams that isn't interesting or fun. Oh yeah, and this is a PG13 horror movie so don't expect to see any cool kills either. That's really the biggest crime at the end of the day. It's boring. A real shame too, because the animatronic effects by the Jim Henson Creature Shop are actually quite charming and accurate to the source material. I really hate that the labors of such talented special effects artists were wasted on such a dogshit script.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 I already thought the first game was the best Spider-Man game ever made, but somehow they managed to make it even better. I expected just a small update with better graphics and story, but the combat and traversal has been fine-tuned so much that it almost feels like a whole new game. The biggest improvement for traversal is easily the web wings that allow you to mix gliding in with your swinging. It doesn't sound like it would change that much on paper but it really does. There are also a few new swing abilities in there as well which are all pretty useful. The best combat change is, ironically, removing the gadget wheel and instead putting them on the face buttons, usable by holding down R1 while pushing one of the buttons. While this does mean you have fewer gadgets to use, the four gadgets you do get are all useful and you don't have to pause the fight to switch between them. You also get four spider abilities assigned to L1 plus a face button, so all-in-all you have eight abilities you can use with both Peter and Miles and you never have to break up the flow of the fight to use them. It works really well. The story might be somewhat predictable, but it's delivered well and it still had a few surprising twists and cameos. I got invested enough to binge the whole campaign in a little under three days. Miles and Peter both have their own arcs and their narratives weave together quite nicely. Switching between them is nice and seamless and can be done automatically if you're approaching a mission exclusive to one character. One touch I especially liked is that sometimes when doing a side activity you'll run into the other Spider-Man who is already doing it and then the two of you can work together to finish it, complete with banter and team attacks against enemies. Even if it's a gimmick, it's a nice way to make it feel like they both have their own lives and aren't just sitting around waiting for you to switch back to them. This game is also a lot harder than the first one. They do have a super easy game journalist difficulty where you can't die if you're a wimp, but if you play on Amazing or higher you can expect to get your ass kicked a good bit even if you mastered the first game. They've introduced a new parry mechanic and some enemies have attacks that cannot be dodged and can only be parried, which means you've got one more thing to keep up with. Some enemies also have attacks that cannot be parried and can only be dodged. Chances are you're gonna screw up many times in the heat of battle while you're getting the hang of it, but once you do it feels better than any Arkham game I've played, and that's saying something. Honestly, if you own a PS5 then why haven't you already bought this game? The console is starved for exclusives. Go get it.

I can't even get IN to my Epic account because it got locked at some point and they have the world's most unhelpful support team.

I want this one but those PC requirements are insane AND it's Epic exclusive so when I get around to it I guess I'll be getting the PS5 version.

Digimon Survive This was on my backlog. Half visual novel, half tactics RPG, this has got to be the darkest game in the franchise yet. I haven't played them all, but I would be very surprised to learn otherwise. As the name implies, the story is about a bunch of middle school kids who end up in a survival situation when they are accidentally pulled into the Digimon world, and although they have their Digimon partners to protect them the fact remains that these kids can and will die horribly depending on your decisions. While the game does imply after you finish it that it's possible to save everyone, I still ended up with two fatalities by the time it was over. The story really hammers in just how much of a mental toll the situation takes on these kids and the first half of the game can be downright stressful with how much the cast is lashing out at each other due to fear. Things eventually lightened up a bit, at least in my route, but it got grim for a while. Admittedly the story gets off to a slow start and at one time I wondered if I was going to keep going with this game, but after the first death the tone shifts dramatically and I was invested until the end, even with some occasional pacing issues. The tactics gameplay? Well...it's fine. Just fine. It's not exactly Final Fantasy Tactics or even Disgaea. Maps are pretty simple and the mechanics aren't super deep, although I do appreciate that how high you can evolve the main partner Digimon and how often you get free party buffs and heals are affected by how you treat said Digimon's partners outside of battle. There's not a whole lot else to say about the combat, though. You can recruit wild Digimon by talking to them, but with success rates hovering around 20% this can be a slog at times. You'd better do it though, because there will be times when your protagonist is separated from the rest of the kids and thus cannot depend on their Digimon in battle. To be honest, I eventually turned down the combat difficulty because I was more interested in the story than the battles. I suppose that doesn't speak too well about that side of the game, but at least you have the option. You can also turn it up if the battles are what interest you. There are four endings to this game, five if you count a bad ending game over, so there's reasonable replay value here. I don't know if I'll go back to it right away, but I do want to see those other endings eventually so I probably won't delete it off my hard drive like I originally planned to do after I finished it.

Baldur's Gate 3 Man, this one came out of left field and totally surprised me. I honestly can't say enough good things about it. It's one of the best, if not THE best western RPG I've ever played with such care and attention to detail that it honestly puts other games to shame. EVERY character is fully voiced, conversations have vibrant body language instead of emotionless puppets, the voice acting is top-notch, the characters are memorable and likable, the environments are HUGE and full of surprises, and it offers tons of player choice. The turn-based combat is extremely strategic and when you get good at it you'll find plenty of opportunities to pat yourself on the back for being so clever. On more than one occasion I managed to end a boss fight by just shoving them off a cliff after they made the mistake of following me to it. You'll figure out how to effectively use choke points, objects in the environment, and even the terrain to your advantage. When you can be fighting up to 12 or more enemies, simply hitting them with your strongest attacks will not be enough. A personal favorite tactic of mine was backing up into a corner and then setting the space in front of me on fire, forcing enemies to walk through it to get to me, and once they got through I'd just have my physically strongest party member shove them right back into the flames. Worked wonders, I tell you. Criticisms? I suppose I have a few, but they in no way diminish my recommendation of this game. This is GOTY material right here, but I suppose I wish the level cap wasn't set at 12. Even for D&D that's pretty low, and I hit the cap well before I finished the game. I can only hope they chose that cap because future DLC is coming that will raise it. Each act of the game is also separated into its own region and once you move on you can never go back so you'd better make sure you complete everything you want to do on the map before you continue the story. There are also a handful of battles where there are SO many enemies that you could probably make a sandwich while waiting for your turn to come up. The final act also loses a little bit of steam at the end. Not a whole lot, but some of the quests and storylines just end kind of abruptly and feel unfinished. It makes me wonder if there's cut content that needs to be added back in. If you liked Dragon Age or Witcher than you owe it to yourself to try out this game. A friend talked me into buying it and we were constantly comparing notes and surprising each other with just how differently we approached certain situations. That's the mark of a great game right there. Oh, and if you play it make sure you have at least one party member who can talk to animals. Trust me, it's worth it.

Finally got 100% in Lies of P, and of course I did this right before they put out a big patch which makes the game easier. I'm not saying this to brag about getting it while the game was still ridiculously hard. I'm annoyed because god I should have waited.

Lies of P I have a lot to say about this one. Soulslike games are getting pretty common and a lot of them are either trash or unoriginal. This one is pretty much Bloodborne with the serial numbers filed off BUT imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and it copies the vibe of Bloodborne pretty well while still having some tricks of its own AND running at a steady 60 fps! There's so much going on here that I think it would be easier for me to make another bullet point list. The Good - Usually the whole "grimdark fairy tale" thing makes me roll my eyes, but I actually like the world this game has set up. It has a pretty interesting interpretation of the original Pinocchio story, and whether or not Pinocchio becomes a real boy depends on the choices you make during your playthrough. You even see it reflected in small things like how he starts to grunt during battle as he becomes more human and how the cat in the hub area regards you depending on how human you are. It's very clever. There's a teaser after the credits that also got me excited for DLC or a sequel. - There's some great weapon variety in here. Not only are there lots of different kinds of weapons, but you can mix and match the blades and the handles to change their movesets and speed. Is that huge, heavy axe too slow? Stick it on a fire axe handle. Dagger doesn't have enough reach for you? Put it on a spear handle. You can't disassemble the unique boss weapons, but they usually have pretty solid fable arts (weapon skills) to make up for it. - Parries and dodges are equally viable in this game, so most of the time you don't really have to choose between one or the other. Play how you want...with some exceptions. - Quite decent enemy variety. Enemies come in the form of puppets, humans, infected, or....other. Despite there being just those four subtypes, there's still a lot of different kinds of enemies within those four. - The different puppet arms you can equip on Pinocchio offer some great utility in combat and they all have their use. I definitely got the most use out of the flamethrower arm, though. - The environments are fairly linear without a ton of room for exploration, but they are really nice to look at and feel like actual places compared to something like, say, Code Vein. - Very solid performance. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I had frame drops in my playthrough of 43 hours. - If you use up all of your refillable healing items, you can still recharge one by landing enough hits, which is a great way to encourage being aggressive even when you're at a disadvantage. There is no limit to how many times you can do this. There were several bosses I probably wouldn't have been able to beat if not for this. The Bad - Once again, STR builds get the shaft. P has almost no poise, which means it's all too easy to get hit out of those heavy charge attacks and fable arts that are supposed to be the trade-off for being so slow. I would be very surprised if they don't patch this. - Not everything it copies from Bloodborne is good. For some reason you have to go to the hub area and talk to the blue fairy every time you want to level up rather than just doing it at a stargazer, which is this game's version of a campfire. The frustrating part is that you CAN level up at stargazers during the beginning and the end of the game, so it feels like they only make you do this because Bloodborne did. - In addition to leveling up, there is a separate upgrade system where you use quartz you find from elite enemies and chests to unlock upgrades like extra healing items or better mobility. This is fine, but the problem is some of the stuff you unlock are things that really should have been there from the get go, such as the ability to dodge while on the ground. No, really, I just love getting whacked to death on the floor by a shovel and not being able to do anything about it. - I don't say this often, but this game is just too damn hard. It is the hardest Soulslike I have ever played by a wide margin. In fact I'd call it inaccessible to anyone who isn't already a veteran of these games and no, Elden Ring alone is not enough. The parry window is a good bit tighter than Sekiro's, but there are bosses in this game where parrying is practically mandatory. Not just one or two hits either. Some of these bosses will flail at you in combos of 10 hits or more and you'd better get that rhythm down or they will jack you up. Unlike Sekiro, where staggering bosses two or three times will instantly kill them, staggering here just opens them up for a backstab/riposte and you still have to get that HP bar down to zero. Even then they only get stunned if you manage to land a charged heavy attack during the very small window where they are open to being staggered, which is easier said than done. Also, pretty much every boss in the second half has two phases, and by that I mean two full health bars. It's fucking sadistic. There is no posture bar either. Attacking, blocking, parrying, and dodge all share the same stamina bar so sometimes even if you parry every hit it won't leave you with much breathing room at the end. Sometimes this game just feels stacked against you in ways that are unfair, so I'm hoping the devs rebalance it a bit. As you can see, it's a little rough around the edges, but some of these issues can definitely be fixed with a patch and I still see enough potential here to be excited for the future of this franchise. For a first outing from this studio, it's pretty damn impressive.

Taking a break from Baldur's Gate for a bit to play Lies of P and ho-lee fuck this is hands down the hardest soulsborne game I have ever played and it isn't even close. You thought Sekiro was hard? You thought Bloodborne was hard? Imagine a game where every single boss is like fighting the hardest boss of a typical From game. I'm seeing From veterans getting filtered by the second boss of the game, and even the minibosses scattered around the levels frequently kick my ass. Hell, I am getting killed by normal enemies way more than I ever do in any From game. It's because the primary defense mechanic of this game is parrying, which is not only much less forgiving than Sekiro but enemies are also way more aggressive and prone to doing fast combos on you, with every hit needing to be parried with perfect timing. You'd have to be a masochistic lunatic to subject yourself to this kind of punishment. Anyway I'm on chapter 6 now so I'll probably finish it in the next few days.

Got the true ending for Armored Core VI, which requires beating NG++. This game handles NG+ cycles in a way I haven't seen before. As far as I can tell, the enemies do not get buffed at all like in other From games. Rather, during mission replays you will sometimes have new branching paths come up when you least expect it that completely change the story, and taking these new paths opens up new, much tougher missions and boss fights that would be nearly impossible on a NG run. Despite this, I still found the NG++ cycle to be the easiest one simply because by the time I got to it I had unlocked so many powerful parts that there was very little the game could throw at me that I wasn't able to handle. It was pretty satisfying to see the game desperately throw everything it had at me only to get steamrolled anyway because I had put together a monstrously lethal death machine after many hours of work. Also I painted it like a Nerf gun.

First time I've ever heard someone complain that open world games aren't empty enough.

I've been using a DS4 with my PC but the bluetooth drops out a fair bit and fucks up my game in the middle of a session. This uses a 2.4 dongle instead so I'm hoping that will improve performance.

Baldur's Gate 3. I'm having some crashing issues with the PC version that need to get sorted out, but when it works it's fantastic. It's like a next-gen, turn-based, more polished version of the original Dragon Age, but with even more freedom. Battles and skill checks are based on dice rolls, seeing that this is a D&D game and all, and a lot of times if you so choose you can find nonviolent solutions to conflict if your charisma is high enough. Actual battles can be pretty tough, and on the surface the odds can seem impossible sometimes, but with some smart thinking you can overcome battles that are stacked against you. I'll give an example. I fought a giant spider boss who would spend her turns summoning five more spiders to come and attack me, so trying to fight her head on would be insane. However, whenever she perched on one of the bridges made of spider webbing I would set the web on fire and cause her to drop down and take massive fall damage. By getting rid of the bridge I also forced the backup spiders to waste a turn teleporting across the gap to get to me, where they became easy pickings for my party. It feels deeply satisfying when you manage to win by thinking outside the box like that. You can do things like shove enemies off of cliffs, dip your weapons into nearby poison or fire, cut or shoot down hanging braziers to start fires, throw flammable chemicals at torches or campfires, electrocute water sources, and turn nearby wild animals against your enemies. As far as I can tell, it is also possible to kill every NPC you run into if you feel like being an evil bastard. At least, I haven't run into anyone yet where it did not at least give me the option. Oh, and if you play this game do yourself a favor and make sure you have someone in your party who can talk to animals because it is highly amusing, not to mention useful.

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon Technically you're supposed to play through this game three times to see everything, but I still played enough to see the first ending which I think is enough to say I beat it. This is my first AC game so I have no idea how it compares to the rest of the series. I'm going into this franchise completely fresh, so what did I think about this one? I liked it quite a bit, except for when I hated it. I'll explain. Usually I don't gel with mech games because they're either too fast and just feel like people with robot skins or they're too slow and everything feels like a slog. This game finds the perfect middle ground where you have a decent amount of agility and maneuverability, but you're not so agile that you no longer feel like you're controlling a robot. Using your boosters to fly and dodge enemy fire always feels good, and while the controls take a little getting used to, once you get the hang of it piloting your core feels like second nature. The biggest draw of the game is customizing your bot both mechanically and cosmetically, and there were several encounters where I needed to change parts and approach the situation with a different build. It feels rewarding when you figure out just the right setup to plow through whatever obstacle is in front of you. I do still have two major complaints. First off, the camera can be really disorienting if you're locked on to an enemy that's right up in your face. If it's a particularly fast enemy, there will be moments where you have no idea what's going on because of all the lasers and explosions blocking your field of view while the targeting system is jerking all over the place. It's not a constant issue, but it does crop up enough for me to feel the need to mention it. My second gripe, and the one I suspect will turn off some people, is the seriously uneven difficulty. Most of the missions in the game are fairly easy and probably anyone could clear them. However, there are a small handful of boss fights, including the very first one in the game, where the difficulty dramatically spikes up to insane levels. Not every boss is like this, mind you. I can think of maybe four or five total in my playthrough that gave me serious hell, but these spikes happen so suddenly and are usually sandwiched in between much easier bosses and missions, so it feels jarring. Some of the bosses just straight up break the rules of the game and it becomes extremely tempting to use overpowered builds just to get them out of the way. Until it gets nerfed you're bound to see a lot of people dual wielding shotguns because they just do so much stagger damage. I wouldn't say using said builds ever feels required, but it does feel like you're gimping yourself if you don't in these instances. The game could use a little rebalancing and a couple of bosses definitely need to be nerfed, but other than that I had a lot of fun building and trying out all kinds of different robots, and the constant unlocking of new parts in the shop ensure you'll always have new toys to play with. If you have the determination to brute force your way through the roadblocks the game throws at you, it's a pretty cool time. I didn't try the PVP mode but I highly suspect it's full of shotgun users right now.

"Would I ever lie to you, my son?"

You could always just get a month of Game Pass.

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition I bought this game dirt cheap to basically test out the series before taking the plunge on Baldur's Gate III. I know that it came out in 1998 so I wasn't expecting to know exactly what 3 will be like, but I had no idea what kind of game Baldur's Gate even was so I wanted to acquaint myself with the formula. As far as this particular entry goes, I...kind of liked it? I know it was made a long time ago, and there are good ideas in there, but boy this game did not really age all that well. Encounters often come down to trial and error or just plain luck, and I'm not kidding when I said I probably pushed the quick save and quick load buttons over a thousand times by the time I was done. You just have to save CONSTANTLY or risk losing precious progress in every single fight. I'm not against challenging mobs, but the game really feels stacked against you like it wants you to save scum. I cannot imagine trying to get through this without scumming, and that really kind of sucks. The pathfinding on your party members is also atrocious. Navigating six people through a narrow corridor is often pretty frustrating, let alone trying to fight in said corridors. Good luck using spells indoors when they have friendly fire and your people are all crammed together shoulder to shoulder. Ultimately my primary tactic was to have my archer go forward on his own, pelt an enemy with an arrow, then run away until they de-aggroed. Rinse and repeat until dead. Did it work? Usually, yeah, but I didn't like the fact it was my best option. I don't like D&D 2nd edition rules either, which this game utilizes. It's archaic, confusing, and frustrating. Most of these gripes are things I assume have been ironed out by the time the third entry was made. I like the general idea behind the series, where positioning of your party members in combat is important and battles need to be carefully planned out because every enemy is a legitimate threat. Despite how clunky this game felt (I'm sure it was great in 1998) there is a foundation of good ideas there that just needed more time and more polish to realize the franchise's potential. From what I'm hearing, that's what has happened now with Baldur's Gate 3.