Off to a pretty slow start with Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Had to stop and restart the whole thing a few times due to some screwups of my own making and had to pause it a few times for Hitman content to take priority. But from what I’ve completed so far, I’ve got to say, it’s definitely the most fun I’ve had since Black Flag at least. I think this primarily comes down more to the side content. I’ve barely touched the main campaign so far, as I want to build up my characters’ levels and abilities as much as I can before I tackle them. And so far, the side content of performing investigations and building up a street gang while taking down the dominant rival, making money all the while, is a pretty entertaining game in its own right, and probably the most enjoyable side content I’ve had yet in an AC game. Gonna be on this one a while yet, but I’m certainly loving what I’m doing while passing that time.
Been playing Mario kart 8 deluxe decided since the last wave of the booster course pass is coming out soon I would get the last unlock I’m missing the gold wheels unlocked by beating every non booster course pass developer time trial on 150 cc done two out of 48 so looking for suggestions on what track to do next I have done baby park and Excitebike Arena so yeah choose my suffering I guess
now I have done snes rainbow road Yoshi circuit twisted mansion electro dome and sunshine airport
Probably going to stop posting these but if you want to see my other ones here is my switch friend code SW-7024-6907-4021
It’s still early–I’ve only completed first set of areas–but The Talos Principle II is great, very worthy of the original.
Gameplay-wise, it plays mostly the same. Same types of connect the laser-beams puzzles, same types of how-do-you-view-the-world philosophical questions to answer. Heck, the tutorial section is basically a truncated version of the first game, complete with ELOHIM’s voice booming from the clouds.
But then the real game begins and everything’s…bigger, grander, with a ton to explore and figure out. They start introducing new mechanics to the puzzles, ones that fit in quite naturally and interact with old mechanics in novel ways. And the puzzles themselves are great. I’ve already had a number of those “Well, this one is impossible” moments followed by the “What if I…” epiphany a few minutes later when I realize there’s some aspect to one of the mechanics I hadn’t thought of before.
They’ve also updated the world-building–and I’m not talking about the puzzles that have you literally building bridges with gigantic tetronimos. There’s a hub city and actual NPCs to interact with that add a lot of life to the game. There are still terminals to read, but there’s also cats to pet, people with their own agendas, a social media site to respond to (which is less annoying than it sounds 
) and, of course, a mystery to solve, with the assistance of a small team of NPCs. (Thankfully, they leave the puzzles to you.)
Of course, it’s not perfect. There are a few too many bugs and glitches, though thankfully so far it’s all been minor visual oddities and UI weirdness. They also really need to add in options to adjust the size of all the text. There’s an option to adjust it on terminals, but the other 90% of the text in the game is much too small. And I was disappointed that it didn’t come with the photo mode I’d heard about leading up to launch, though I don’t know if that was ever anything official or just a rumor.
But so far at least, it’s a fantastic game that stands with and improves on the original.
Of course, not everyone is quite so enthusiastic. 
I really look forward playing this but I am heavily demotivated to get fancy new games with my old PC. 
What I wonder the most, as someone with interest in philosophy, I think the first game grabbed all low hanging fruit there is. Does the second game keep the bar of interesting questions?
Well, shit. That’s the end of Alan Wake 2 for me.
At least until New Game Plus comes out.
Tons of lingering questions, tons of answers and continuations from the original game, so much interpretive writing, music, and characters.
But I enjoyed every second of this game.
This is such a cool merging of video games and artistic vision!!
It took 13 years (well, for me only 8-9 years since I first played) but damn did they finally deliver on a worthy sequel.
The first game was a good cult-classic. Very far from perfect, as the main gameplay loop was extremely shallow, long, and repetitive. But was held up by a fairly engaging supernatural mystery and a tease of greater surreal ambitions, should a sequel ever come…
And that sequel has delivered on that surrealism in ways I could not have ever expected.
The writing for the main plot in AW2 is wonderfully cyclical. There are so many connecting pieces to this story that reference, reflect, echo, repeat themselves and offer many different interpretations of events, due to their vagueness.
This can either be a good thing or a bad thing for some people, but as an artist I am blown away.
All of the strange live-action pieces in the game were so strangely captivating and only added to the weird mystery, deciding what could be trusted as Fact vs. Fiction…
And for fans of Finland, they put a lot of their own culture in this too, which I find pretty cool for a developer team to do.
Saga Anderson, introduced as the newcomer’s insert to this tale, is a cool, mysterious protagonist, who seems unaffected and unsurprised by the really weird supernatural happenings of the town, as she pushes forward into the mystery.
Her gameplay is very claustrophobic as the forest environments can get a little confusing, but that adds to the spooks. Enemies often hang around different areas during/after missions while exploring, makes for tense encounters.
She also has a really engaging Case Board that we don’t see enough of in detective games.
Sure, some of it can be pretty basic “question and answer” linking, but it’s a very fun way to piece together the weird elements to the plot, act as a way to recap yourself, and see what conclusions come from it.
There are also a lot of side-collectibles that were fun to hunt down, and I found abiut 60% of each, I decided to follow a guide to get the rest before jumping into Saga’s ending 
so, I got the platinum trophy already too! Cool!
Alan Wake’s side of the story is for the Remedy die-hards. He’s inhabiting a nightmarish, noir-styled New York, and things get WEIRD. Paths to your objective don’t follow logic, as you’ll find doorways on top of roofs that open to the ground floor. You’re constantly haunted by groups of shadows, taunting you and making you question which ones are hostile and which are simple illusions. (There’s a minor bit of stealth you can do by turning off your flashlight, but it can make running into one all too easy…)
He is my favourite part of this sequel going full M-rated survival horror. He can finally drop F-bombs! And ohhh boy does he deserve it. Trapped in a nightmare, full of relentless torture from his own mind and the darkness around him, it was great to hear him and other characters swear in fear when the tension gets to be too much.
I will say, that the game relies on full-screen unavoidable jumpscares too much. It always gets me. Sure, that means it works, and it can tie into the game’s psychological themes, but I think it’s used too much for what the game’s horror hook already works without, or much less…
You feel constantly under threat when you come across shadows. The environment is gorgeously dark, with neon and light echoing off of the environment.
You meet strange characters like Alex Casey, his legally-distinct Max Payne, engage with strange but neat Live-action cutscenes that further the plot, but can also confuse you even more… it is a place of dreams, nightmares, and illusions.
I’m going to be very interested in seeing what other fans have theorized so far.
There are also plenty of other connections to Control’s FBC, plus some sneaky “Not-Quantum-Break” connections using some similar actors/characters. I loved Mr. Door’s mysterious nature, and David Harewood echoed the really great late Lance Reddick – though his portrayal was still all his own.
Overall, this was a great purchase. A game that truly looks Next-Gen, with a production that far outshines what Remedy did back in the first Alan Wake. It’s impressive, and I can’t wait to see what comes next with its expansions. Didn’t get the Deluxe version, but I sure will now.
Oh yeah, and one last thing: Where the fuck is Barry Wheeler, my comic relief, Remedy??! How could they make a sequel without him, even a little? He was so fun in the original!
MEGA SPOILERS TO NOTE:
- I really enjoyed how Saga and Alan’s stories connected, both in how their “investigations” played out, and in how Alan’s connection from the Dark Place played around with time, not always running in tandem with the real world…
- Saga’s story was very long and engaging, and I really liked how it revisited a lot of the key characters from the original game – and how all Boss Taken of her story were key characters somehow in the original game.
- Alan’s story revolving around loops, repetition, and a never-ending self-torture was fun in a twisted way. Yes, I get that we kinda already had this in AW:AN but due to this darker sequel it brought some great, sad mind-fucks to this one.
I had called it after the 2/3rds of the game that he’d loop in and shoot himself trying to fix the story in the writers room, and I’m glad to have been unfortunately right. - The side-story involving revisiting Alice was very sad, though I’m glad there seems to be a silver lining in that she’s willingly trapped herself into the Dark Place to help Alan. Hopefully this means in DLC, NG+, or a sequel, we’ll see more of her have some agency in helping Alan find the right art to escape?
- it’s intereting this game once again has a scripted “dark-reflection” climax involving Saga at the end, where her doubts trap her in her own mind, much like the Hiss try to trap Jesse in Control.
- a whole lot of lingering questions about who Zane is, what’s with the possible retcons about him being a director instead of a poet, and how he looks just like Alan, or Scratch.
I’m betting that he’s some dark reflection of Alan, Scratch in disguise, trying to get Alan to work together if his plan of “take over Alan’s mind” doesn’t. He behaves in a similar laid-back way to Scratch from American Nightmare… Or, its another case of “history repeats itself, and Alan must not become Zane”. - There’s just so many layers to cut into here. I love it SO much. I really hope it gets recognized this year for some very bold writing and artistic presentation.
- I found the game to get a little bit Kojima-like in the end, with how wild and strange it got with its own plot, but that’s kind of the appeal with it, I guess?
Now to get into Spider-Man 2, in another dark-ish streak…
But man, it’s going to be really hard to find another game that can give me the same vibes and presentation as Alan Wake 2 though… this game, for good and bad reasons, is one of a kind. Great job Remedy. More people need to make games as weird and experimental as you…
He is in California producing, there are plenty of in-game text and emails stating what he is up to. When Alan gets out of the Dark Place he deliberately made sure not to contact anyone after being offered by Casey because he knew Scratch/Dark Presence got out and was still out there and didn’t wanna get anyone from 2010 involved.
All the Characters from Alan Wake had some sort of progress from the 13 year time jump. Some more than others.
The only plot thread Alan Wake 2 didn’t continue with that perplexed me was the Secret Society involving the residence of Bright Falls since they existed before the Cult of the Tree which formed post Alan Wake 1.
I mean, I know that he has some off-screen progression and affect on the Old Gods of Asgard after the first game, but man, I wish they’d gotten the actor or character back on-screen for some Wake/Wheeler bro-time. I know that it would be difficult in a dark survival horror with as many characters as it has, but damn, I was hoping for something other than just a text reference. 
If you’re talking about the Torchbearers (the people that leave all the light-reflective paint everywhere)
then, it might be interpreted that they’re all dead - and the Cult took their supplies given they also use reflective paint - or only a small few remain and are in hiding…
If we interpret Alan’s visions in New York as events that really happened/are happening – only in New York and not Bright Falls/Watery because of the weird logic of the Dark Place, then there’s a few areas in the Subway section where you can use the Torchbearers plot point for fun.
In the Collapsed Tunnel section, if you use it there, you can see a massive drawing of a tree, and what looks to be some sort of base for the group.
and later when you have to get past a derelict train, you have to use the Torchbearers point, which shows that members of the Cult targeted the Torches and burned then all alive after trapping them somehow… Or at least that’s what we’re lead to believe in some dream-like explanation…
Well there if you believe that Zane is a figment/living plot device of Departure-Initiation-Return cycle as he possibly was in the first game then it is most likely that at one point Zane was a poet who fought the DP and exists to serve as sort of a mentor figure to Alan who wrote him into the story going off of local legend and whatever is left of Barbara’s memory but that all changes with Return. It is possible that Return’s retconning of reality made Zane a filmmaker how ever it is recursive because Zane’s first and only American film is Tom The Poet, worth noting the film’s poster in Suomi Hall says the film is written by Alan. If that is true then Tom might have actually become Tom Zane the poet as The Dark Presence brings the fake move in the real book in the fake book in the real book that has been heavily edited to life.
After Alan/Scratch himself says that the process of rewriting reality takes time for The DP but there is no reason why it can’t work temporally as well, a literal re-writing of history before The DP starts rewriting current events much like how a writer might set a scene or develop a world before telling the story. The only people who are even remotely sure Tom Zane was a poet are Cynthia who directly says she remembers him being a poet because she is obsessed with him and elderly aren’t as impacted by retcons (possibly) and Ahti who quotes the same line about shadow and light that Jesse quotes in Control before she succumbs to the retcon and he remembers because he is Ahti.
It is possible Zane just simply became really desperate in the Dark Place and simply allowed Scratch to use him either because it was the only out after several decades and his original plan of using Alan (if you subscribe to that theory) went horribly pear shaped or because it played into Scratch’s biggest weakness his desire to be unbound from the DP and giving Alan material to work with, use the Dark Presence’s own rules against it by allowing the Dark Presence to make the rules.
Of course I am going mad and I will probably be getting some things wrong or I am missing some details here and there.
Hey now it isn’t just a text reference, it is also a reference to Control and if that is the case then Barry is in deep. He outright mentions associating with The Blessed, the parautilitarian militia mentioned in the AWE expansion of Control
Actually they are referenced by name in the “Real World” in one of the manuscript pages you find in the Watery lighthouse. Jaako and Ilmo point out how The Torchbearers are so old that their efficacy has diminished. This was why they created the Cult of the Woods, to create a new and more proactive anti-Taken group.
Eh it’s hard to constitute Alan’s Writing to get to murder sites as direct events that happened in the real world. It’s why we can see Alex Casey the Hard Boiled Detective die a bunch of times without it directly effecting the Agent that’s in brightfalls.
Right, I forgot about the Watery lighthouse manuscript cause it was so late into the game when you unlock that room.
I figured that was the reason why you didn’t mention it, it was worth it just to see one more of the brother’s mad lad energy ideas on more time. Seriously, it is right before the PONR if you are diligent in collecting them.
Shoot, you’re right!! When I saw that text file I got real scared for him!
Having recently played Control, I really liked reading all the info about the Chester Bless /Blessed Org. and how they’re an unstable threat to the FBC and potentially the world as a whole.
Some random group experimenting with making their own Altered Items and Objects of Power, and one that I hope will have a more prominent role in a potential Control 2, unless there’s a chance they could be set-up further in an AW2 DLC…
Speaking of Night Springs, IDK
where Swang heard details about NS being an anthology-type DLC with other characters, but that sounds like it could be interesting.
I’m really hoping that it involves more of Mr. Door, since there’s a commercial you can find about the “upcoming season” in the game that will feature Mr. Door as the Rod Serling-type narrator.
I mean all DLC details were reveal the the FaQ on the Alan Wake Website.
It should also be said the NG+ will be called “The Final Draft”
Damn even the evil paranatural entities are getting published before I do.
Just finished Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and it was pretty underwhelming. Venom was cool and it’s when the game really kicks into gear. The other 80% of the game was alright. I’ll give the game 7/10. But I’ll subtract one point due to the awful Miles Morales end game suit. 6/10. Time to sell it and buy Alan Wake II.
It’s an alright game, it makes me want to revisit Arkham Origins and Arkham Knight. The two games in the series I only played once.
The trial period for the The Last Faith DEMO ended two days ago. I was lucky to play it enough to git (relatively) gud. It’s still slated for a November 15th release. It did get quite a number of gripes about it concerning the parry mechanic and the movement of the character. Some wanted free health item refills at checkpoints… When it was more of a cap to the number you could carry (7). Then, if you wasted them on a boss - you’d have to farm them back… or couldn’t. I dunno. I didn’t do that. I saved my heals for those moments I did well at the boss.
Anyway. Here’s a playthrough I did of it - just in time too! There are 3 other main weapons you can use. 1 is an Ax already in your inventory. The other 2 are a whip (which has further reach) and a bone sword/whip (the most powerful of the weapons in the demo). My playthrough is with the sword only. There are secondary weapons you can get… Like bombs or a musket, as well as some spells and buffs for your weapons.
It’s a bit ‘speedrunnery’ without the optimization. Like when I get weapons I’ll never use, even making at least one wrong turn (I get killed).
Finally the actual GOTY of 2023
They are alright, you are better off playing Alan Wake II.
Initiation 4 is better than any moment in any insomniac Spider Man game and I’ll die on this hill.
Spider-Man 2 is alright, the two other Batman games are good. But Alan Wake II is next on the list.
Back from holidays and bought Call of Duty Modern Warfare III with some playstation points I had saved for sometime. Installed and all set up.
Got early access and tonight after dinner, I will start the first mission. Hope it is good as the 2011 version. Waiting to meet Vladimir Makarov version 2.
Alejandro Vargas was my favourite character from MW II, hope he is in this part.
