Control

It’s a Remedy game! It ends with a really good song over the credits!
Music dork shit aside, Control is pretty banging. Really hyper-kinetic shooter with a great aesthetic and narrative anchor. You explore a secret government facility called The Oldest House, HQ of the Federal Bureau of Control, a paranormal investigation unit that classifies and deals with Altered World Events and Places/Objects of Power. In Control’s world, intent can manifest in objects which imbues them with power. The telekinesis ability you get is pulled from an OoP that manifests as a floppy disk that was present in a Soviet nuclear launch silo, where it was imbued with the anxiety and desires of everyone around it that were fixated on the idea of launching something. Through this setup you get a bunch of handy third-person combat abilities that add to some already pretty nice gun play and a decent enemy roster that sees you thinking through your tactical decision fairly frequently on the fly.

The narrative hook is pretty neat too and not worth spoiling as it’s a world I think Remedy are keen to return to as they have fleshed out a lot of really nice details. It’s one of a handful of games where hunting down every scrap of lore is fun, because a lot of it is written really elegantly and makes sense in the world of Control, where a secret government facility is under siege from a malevolent frequency called the ‘Hiss’.

The absolute star of the show is the setting though, a brutalist wet dream, endless repeating cubicles and office spaces nestled inside a terrifying concrete monolith that shifts and changes at a whim. Like The Evil Within it makes great use of the fact it’s a video game, creating impossible transitions between areas, twisting corridors into weird spirals, and in probably the best set piece in a video game in recent years - a gunfight set to prog metal in a shifting, fractal smoking lounge that plays out like a cross between the action in Inception and Dr. Strange.

The only down side really is the wonky
difficulty that spikes pretty harshly at bosses and certain enemy challenges with no real signposting over the difficulty of side quests and optional content.

If you’re a fan of Weird Fiction and the playful weirdness that video games can lean into with their non-linear environment design, coupled with some pretty electrifying combat then it comes pretty highly recommended from me. A solid 8, maybe creeping into a 9 from an aesthetic point of view.

I need to get to Control at some point. Seems like the sort of thing that would be cheap fairly soon.

Doom II (Switch)

Now I'm ready for Doom 64 in November. Also, fingers crossed for a port of Final Doom.

Well that’s your Zelda: Link’s Awakening complete. It’s up there with the best of Zelda’s. Some tricky puzzles there and one or two I had to admit actually looking up as I was dumbfounded as to how to proceed. Obviously once you see it you think how could you have missed it. However obtuse the puzzles have all the visual cues you need to solve a dungeon.

The final boss...

Overall I’m going 9/10

I finished Link’s Awakening last night. It was all very cute and lovely, and I largely enjoyed it, but if it really is one of the best Zelda’s, as b0r1s has just said, I don’t see me being excited to play many more, other than BotW2. I have no desire, the way I might have with some other games, to seek out the remaining collectibles; with the exception of the very final battle, you’re massively overpowered for everything else, so I really don’t see the point. I think I’ve got one toy left to get in the trendy game, but the last couple of times I checked, it wasn’t available. I’m not so excited to find out what I get for getting them all that I’ll bother.

I archived the game after finishing. Like I say, I largely enjoyed it, but I’d be very surprised if I wanted to play it a second time, like many of you are.

(again)

Taylor Swift?

While I'm in here - Untitled Goose Game.

Most of my laughs were near the start but the kids were giggling throughout and the ending was sublime. Worth a gander.

The Haribo/Swift binge mix though

trippy wrote:

While I'm in here - Untitled Goose Game.

Most of my laughs were near the start but the kids were giggling throughout and the ending was sublime. Worth a gander.

Duuuuude. Nailed it.

I... agree.

It's back up to £18 I think, yep.  Launched at 25% off, oddly.  I thought it was great, but I played the whole thing with a hugely enthusiastic helper.

Ha, I'm not even sure if he still likes games when we play anything in co-op, he gets pissed off with everything.

Nope, even less enthusiastic about anything than retro.

Brooks only plays couch co-op with me though.