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2023 Game Log
Endgame spoilers for Paranormasight and Control.
Citizen Sleeper
Really enjoyed the first half of this game, where everything is new and you're spending your time meeting NPCs, beginning questlines, exploring the space station you're on. It's a compelling scifi premise — you're a human mind digitized and uploaded into a robot to toil in indentured servitude for a megacorp before you make your escape, and now your body is slowly degrading without the proprietary drugs needed to maintain it — paired with fantastic character designs that feel solid and lived in, and overall just a great vibe. My favorite parts were just my character settling into those daily rhythms on the Eye. The worldbuilding through the environment feels strong here.
I thought the writing was a bit clunky right off the bat (sorry but you can't make "snakey shitheads" sound like an impressive, impassioned insult), but was having a good enough time gradually unlocking new stories that I could mostly ignore it. Unfortunately, the second half makes that kind of impossible. Once I was actually finishing up questlines, I didn't feel that they actually had good payoffs. The writing is extremely not subtle, and the characters tend to speak in exactly the same style as the narration, which can make the entire thing just feel like a lecture on capitalism. Plenty of characters seemed potentially interesting, but the writing never supported them enough to actually be fully fleshed out past basic archetypes. It never grabbed me because it was so focused on its themes that I was always removed from it (for example, the DLC is beating you over the head with a refugee crisis, right-wing and centrist politics stymying progress, more ruthless corporate overreach, and two completely unlikeable main NPCs). Also, there are a looot of typos. It's definitely the weakest part of a game where unfortunately the entire premise involves you reading paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Needed a meaner editor and/or collaborator, and better QA.
Talking about questline payoff, it felt like the game tried to include too many different NPC questlines and didn't have enough time to actually pace all of them out to a satisfying conclusion. I think I would have preferred fewer main stories that had a chance to be more developed. It also felt a little weird and counter to the theme of building relationships that once you finish up an NPC's questline, you basically never talk to them again even if they're still on the Eye; the game literally erases their location markers off the map. It would have been nice to be able to occasionally still hop over and chat with them, although I know this game was developed and written by one person so that was probably very much out of scope.
One other thing about the lategame: once you've upgraded most of your skills to +2, have consistent ways to easily make money, and amassed enough resources that you're never really worried about your constantly degrading body again, it gets too easy, and that in conjunction with the writing hitting me over the head again and again made it feel like a repetitive grind just to see the endings. I don't really know how to fix that except ... never get the upgrades? Always be slightly resource-poor? But the DLC/lategame stuff expects you to be at this stage because you really need to throw a ton of stuff at the story very quickly to proceed. Idk lol. BUT, I did like the detail that you're so focused on making money at the beginning to keep yourself alive, but by the lategame, you have so many other options for resources that you barely care about getting more currency. It's a nice touch on its own.
The game's narrative impact feels like a more interactive version of The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (this is not a compliment).But I guess I did enjoy parts of the game enough to still be a little interested in seeing what the dev does next in collab with the same character designer, esp if the writing situation improves. Damn, they announced they're making Citizen Sleeper 2? I actually dunno how to feel about this lol, I think I would have preferred a new setting altogether rather than a sequel. Now I'm reevaluating the thing I said about still being interested jkasdsad
And no matter what: you will never get me to care about tired rumpled single dad and tiny gremlin daughter, we are simply NOT going to make a family together.
In Other Waters
This maybe isn't really fair because I only played around 1.5 hours of it before throwing in the towel, but whatever. I stopped because it just didn't feel good to play, and the writing wasn't compelling enough to drag me through.
It's a "nonviolent scifi" where you're an AI controlling a human scientist's deep sea divesuit, and the entire game is the divesuit's interface, which maps too many different actions to every single button on the controller. Game devs don't do this, it feels Bad. The main mechanic involves scanning the marine environment around you on a topographic map (with one button), registering new location points (with the right analog stick), then traveling point to point (with another button) and repeating the whole process again and again. It's extreeeemely slow, and the visuals feel too abstracted for something paced like that.
There's also an exploration angle where the scientist in the suit begins documenting the plants and sea creatures you spot on your scans, but that ties into my other complaint, which is that the entire game is set in the same monospaced font in light colors at a tiny size. Sorry, but I'm not reading your paragraphs of scientific documentation on seaweed. I literally CAN'T read it on a television.
Paranormasight
It's a visual novel published by Square Enix about a supernatural murder mystery set in 80s Japan. Has a very fun cast that bounces off each other pretty well. Some of them are genuinely unhinged (good for them). The time setting works well with the story, and I think leads to character designs that feel novel in a good way to 2023 eyes. I really liked the texture of the thick brush stroke lineart on the character models, and the art style in general, although I wish the game did a better job of incorporating the character art style with that of their other 2D assets. It also would have been nice if characters got at least 3-4 more expression/poses added to their model packs ... the limited amount of poses led to some really awkward looking reaction shots. But these are fairly small gripes about the visuals.
I did think some of the translated terms read a bit hokey to me and didn't quite match the real history twisted into urban legend concept, idk "soul dregs" "curse echoes" "feast of shadows" it just didn't quite fit the vibe of the story and setting. Tbh the supernatural angle of the game as a whole is like a solid It's Fine, but the murder mystery half was much more successful and interesting. Overall a pretty fun 10-13 hour game.
(SPOILERS BELOW)
Gotta say though, the twist at the end didn't really land for me because 1) it felt really abrupt and rushed even though you knew a twist had to be coming, and 2) sorry I just don't care for these meta kinds of twists in VNs. It felt like a gratuitous explanation they tacked on just because they wanted to do the jumping timelines gimmick and like, not every game needs the jumping timelines gimmick, goddammit. I'm not talking about playing multiple character routes at the same time, I mean you learning a fact in one timeline, then going into another to direct a character to make use of that fact. Who randomly just locks a fax machine up in a random cabinet of an abandoned factory like that??
The clunky puzzles that required you to turn the voice volume down or literally save the game also felt like something out of the DS era lol. Look, the 999 screen flip twist was good, but that's it!! No more!! 999 at least committed to the bit; these are just there for no reason! Don't Get Cute About This!!
Weirdest thing about true ending was Tsutsumi making nice with the janitor ... why? Ok, so without the existence of the Rite he never killed anyone with his curse, but he did still very much kill those schoolgirls way back when, and he presumably still influenced Iwai to do some heinous shit once he got out of prison. Nothing about writing the Rite out of existence really changes his personality and his hatred of Tsutsumi. Weird scene!
I did like the viciousness of the exchange between Tsutsumi and Ayame – sometimes you just gotta accept you're a terrible parent even if you love your kid, and your kid is just not interested in any of it anymore. Plus they made Ayame a straight up a sociopath lol. And I really liked that Harue's good end has her accepting that she doesn't have to measure her worth by her role as a mother doing everything for her child anymore. A good line! They should have let Harue be more unhinged though. Just let this milf kill some people, it's fine. She can self actualize and find the will to forgive herself and move on after she's burned a few bodies :)
Control
The first time I played this, the ending really soured me on it as a whole and I memory holed the game hard. I usually don't change my mind on something if I dislike the ending, so I'm glad I came away much higher on it on this replay, probably because I already knew the last bit would be bullshit and had absolutely no expectations of Remedy actually concluding things well lol.
Actually I think this game works better on a replay because you can catch the various hints they drop throughout the story (Trench talking about bringing work home, Trench describing Northmoor, etc), and I wasn't focused on getting answers to the mystery and just took my time doing all the sidequests and slowly exploring more. I really like being in this environment and reading/listening to all the documentation you find. The quality of the writing is usually a solid It's Fine (the game is extremely up its own ass sometimes), but I do enjoy the conceit of balancing reality-altering supernatural forces and rote bureaucracy/office humor.
Dylan showing up grinds the story to a complete halt though. He just isn't interesting! Did he really have to be sinisterly bald and wear the most nondescript, sadsack outfit on top of being crrrrazy?? I know Dr. Darling and the Research Dept sucked at raising him but could they not at least give him some actual clothes, how much more on the nose can this guy be.
"The real Polaris was the one inside you the entire time" is still a wet rag of a plot reveal to me. I don't even understand if it's supposed to be metaphorical or literal given the way Jesse still talks to it in the DLC. "You're so weird, Jesse" still bugs me as a throwaway line because she seems remarkably well adjusted and normal for the entirety of the game considering her past and those therapy sessions with World's Most Unethical Psychologist. Admittedly, I just don't find Jesse's execution as a character all that interesting in general. There's nothing offensive about her, but none of her emotional beats – aside from her frustration at talking to Hush!Dylan – particularly hit for me.
AWE DLC: I really enjoyed this one.The Alan Wake Hotline stuff went completely over my head, but it felt like a good tie-in and Hartman is genuinely scary as a boss. Played Alan Wake. Still think it works as a tie-in. I really liked the stuff with the Investigations Sector – it's nice to know there were at least some people in the Bureau who did actually think the Dylan stuff was more than a little messed up, and there's a lot of new story items to find. Actually, the sector's reaction to the Prime Candidate program and citing of the Ash Act makes it all the more clear just how unmoored Trench and Darling were from reality and the rest of the Bureau. Like everything else about the lategame, the puzzle and boss sequences eventually felt dragged out and repetitive, but overall I liked how the story fleshed out Trench's decline through the introduction of a new FBC Sector.
Foundation DLC: Yeah it's still bad lmao. This is supposed to the continuation of the game's main story, which ends abruptly, and the DLC follows that up by ... also ending abruptly. The most headscratching part of it was Jesse's writing. I just don't think they successfully connected the dots between her reluctance at accepting the Director role to where she is by the DLC. Every Hotline message she receives from Trench and Marshall is about how they were determined to go at things alone, and you see how that got them both killed. Then Jesse, who keeps saying how she wants to run things differently, just turns around and also insists on handling everything herself? There's clearly more to explore here, but then you just fight Marshall as the final boss and the story ends with no follow up on her argument with Emily. You can't push all of this off to Control 2, resolve the damn things in the actual current game!! Also, I wish her convo with Former was weirder and more surreal and not just ... woman standing there talking face to face with a giant worm. Kinda no wonder I was reeeally disappointed in the game the first time I played when this was basically what I ended it on.
Northmoor being imprisoned in the power plant as eternal fuel for the FBC still rules, and the Ashtray Maze is still the coolest (awoo)
Alan Wake
Ok, I didn't like it lol. Didn't enjoy the combat gameplay, and it annoyed me how you could literally feel the game design behind the very one-note levels. Every time a bridge collapses under Alan or he flips a switch and something immediately goes wrong, I just rolled my eyes like stoooop dragging this out to make the game feel longer my god. This clip of a fucking giant barrel or w/e falling down and blocking the door Alan needs to get through right as he approaches it, after HE had to be the one to hold the jank lever down so his companions could go through first, is exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe I should be less of a hater. *thinks about how I also did not vibe with the writing at all* ah well nevertheless.
And look I know the stamina meter was there because Alan was just a fragile little guy but also like ... could he not have at least swapped out his skinny jeans and extremely pointy-toed city boots for something more comfortable when he had a chance to pop into town once he realized he was going to be spending the entire game running around in the woods? Like please, just a pair of hiking boots or even running shoes would make a world of difference, Alan. Maybe you would finally be able to clamber over 3ft tall fences in your way, you bozo. DON'T YOU CARE THAT YOUR WIFE IS MISSING?
Citizen Sleeper
Really enjoyed the first half of this game, where everything is new and you're spending your time meeting NPCs, beginning questlines, exploring the space station you're on. It's a compelling scifi premise — you're a human mind digitized and uploaded into a robot to toil in indentured servitude for a megacorp before you make your escape, and now your body is slowly degrading without the proprietary drugs needed to maintain it — paired with fantastic character designs that feel solid and lived in, and overall just a great vibe. My favorite parts were just my character settling into those daily rhythms on the Eye. The worldbuilding through the environment feels strong here.
I thought the writing was a bit clunky right off the bat (sorry but you can't make "snakey shitheads" sound like an impressive, impassioned insult), but was having a good enough time gradually unlocking new stories that I could mostly ignore it. Unfortunately, the second half makes that kind of impossible. Once I was actually finishing up questlines, I didn't feel that they actually had good payoffs. The writing is extremely not subtle, and the characters tend to speak in exactly the same style as the narration, which can make the entire thing just feel like a lecture on capitalism. Plenty of characters seemed potentially interesting, but the writing never supported them enough to actually be fully fleshed out past basic archetypes. It never grabbed me because it was so focused on its themes that I was always removed from it (for example, the DLC is beating you over the head with a refugee crisis, right-wing and centrist politics stymying progress, more ruthless corporate overreach, and two completely unlikeable main NPCs). Also, there are a looot of typos. It's definitely the weakest part of a game where unfortunately the entire premise involves you reading paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Needed a meaner editor and/or collaborator, and better QA.
Talking about questline payoff, it felt like the game tried to include too many different NPC questlines and didn't have enough time to actually pace all of them out to a satisfying conclusion. I think I would have preferred fewer main stories that had a chance to be more developed. It also felt a little weird and counter to the theme of building relationships that once you finish up an NPC's questline, you basically never talk to them again even if they're still on the Eye; the game literally erases their location markers off the map. It would have been nice to be able to occasionally still hop over and chat with them, although I know this game was developed and written by one person so that was probably very much out of scope.
One other thing about the lategame: once you've upgraded most of your skills to +2, have consistent ways to easily make money, and amassed enough resources that you're never really worried about your constantly degrading body again, it gets too easy, and that in conjunction with the writing hitting me over the head again and again made it feel like a repetitive grind just to see the endings. I don't really know how to fix that except ... never get the upgrades? Always be slightly resource-poor? But the DLC/lategame stuff expects you to be at this stage because you really need to throw a ton of stuff at the story very quickly to proceed. Idk lol. BUT, I did like the detail that you're so focused on making money at the beginning to keep yourself alive, but by the lategame, you have so many other options for resources that you barely care about getting more currency. It's a nice touch on its own.
The game's narrative impact feels like a more interactive version of The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (this is not a compliment).
And no matter what: you will never get me to care about tired rumpled single dad and tiny gremlin daughter, we are simply NOT going to make a family together.
In Other Waters
This maybe isn't really fair because I only played around 1.5 hours of it before throwing in the towel, but whatever. I stopped because it just didn't feel good to play, and the writing wasn't compelling enough to drag me through.
It's a "nonviolent scifi" where you're an AI controlling a human scientist's deep sea divesuit, and the entire game is the divesuit's interface, which maps too many different actions to every single button on the controller. Game devs don't do this, it feels Bad. The main mechanic involves scanning the marine environment around you on a topographic map (with one button), registering new location points (with the right analog stick), then traveling point to point (with another button) and repeating the whole process again and again. It's extreeeemely slow, and the visuals feel too abstracted for something paced like that.
There's also an exploration angle where the scientist in the suit begins documenting the plants and sea creatures you spot on your scans, but that ties into my other complaint, which is that the entire game is set in the same monospaced font in light colors at a tiny size. Sorry, but I'm not reading your paragraphs of scientific documentation on seaweed. I literally CAN'T read it on a television.
Paranormasight
It's a visual novel published by Square Enix about a supernatural murder mystery set in 80s Japan. Has a very fun cast that bounces off each other pretty well. Some of them are genuinely unhinged (good for them). The time setting works well with the story, and I think leads to character designs that feel novel in a good way to 2023 eyes. I really liked the texture of the thick brush stroke lineart on the character models, and the art style in general, although I wish the game did a better job of incorporating the character art style with that of their other 2D assets. It also would have been nice if characters got at least 3-4 more expression/poses added to their model packs ... the limited amount of poses led to some really awkward looking reaction shots. But these are fairly small gripes about the visuals.
I did think some of the translated terms read a bit hokey to me and didn't quite match the real history twisted into urban legend concept, idk "soul dregs" "curse echoes" "feast of shadows" it just didn't quite fit the vibe of the story and setting. Tbh the supernatural angle of the game as a whole is like a solid It's Fine, but the murder mystery half was much more successful and interesting. Overall a pretty fun 10-13 hour game.
(SPOILERS BELOW)
Gotta say though, the twist at the end didn't really land for me because 1) it felt really abrupt and rushed even though you knew a twist had to be coming, and 2) sorry I just don't care for these meta kinds of twists in VNs. It felt like a gratuitous explanation they tacked on just because they wanted to do the jumping timelines gimmick and like, not every game needs the jumping timelines gimmick, goddammit. I'm not talking about playing multiple character routes at the same time, I mean you learning a fact in one timeline, then going into another to direct a character to make use of that fact. Who randomly just locks a fax machine up in a random cabinet of an abandoned factory like that??
The clunky puzzles that required you to turn the voice volume down or literally save the game also felt like something out of the DS era lol. Look, the 999 screen flip twist was good, but that's it!! No more!! 999 at least committed to the bit; these are just there for no reason! Don't Get Cute About This!!
Weirdest thing about true ending was Tsutsumi making nice with the janitor ... why? Ok, so without the existence of the Rite he never killed anyone with his curse, but he did still very much kill those schoolgirls way back when, and he presumably still influenced Iwai to do some heinous shit once he got out of prison. Nothing about writing the Rite out of existence really changes his personality and his hatred of Tsutsumi. Weird scene!
I did like the viciousness of the exchange between Tsutsumi and Ayame – sometimes you just gotta accept you're a terrible parent even if you love your kid, and your kid is just not interested in any of it anymore. Plus they made Ayame a straight up a sociopath lol. And I really liked that Harue's good end has her accepting that she doesn't have to measure her worth by her role as a mother doing everything for her child anymore. A good line! They should have let Harue be more unhinged though. Just let this milf kill some people, it's fine. She can self actualize and find the will to forgive herself and move on after she's burned a few bodies :)
Control
The first time I played this, the ending really soured me on it as a whole and I memory holed the game hard. I usually don't change my mind on something if I dislike the ending, so I'm glad I came away much higher on it on this replay, probably because I already knew the last bit would be bullshit and had absolutely no expectations of Remedy actually concluding things well lol.
Actually I think this game works better on a replay because you can catch the various hints they drop throughout the story (Trench talking about bringing work home, Trench describing Northmoor, etc), and I wasn't focused on getting answers to the mystery and just took my time doing all the sidequests and slowly exploring more. I really like being in this environment and reading/listening to all the documentation you find. The quality of the writing is usually a solid It's Fine (the game is extremely up its own ass sometimes), but I do enjoy the conceit of balancing reality-altering supernatural forces and rote bureaucracy/office humor.
Dylan showing up grinds the story to a complete halt though. He just isn't interesting! Did he really have to be sinisterly bald and wear the most nondescript, sadsack outfit on top of being crrrrazy?? I know Dr. Darling and the Research Dept sucked at raising him but could they not at least give him some actual clothes, how much more on the nose can this guy be.
"The real Polaris was the one inside you the entire time" is still a wet rag of a plot reveal to me. I don't even understand if it's supposed to be metaphorical or literal given the way Jesse still talks to it in the DLC. "You're so weird, Jesse" still bugs me as a throwaway line because she seems remarkably well adjusted and normal for the entirety of the game considering her past and those therapy sessions with World's Most Unethical Psychologist. Admittedly, I just don't find Jesse's execution as a character all that interesting in general. There's nothing offensive about her, but none of her emotional beats – aside from her frustration at talking to Hush!Dylan – particularly hit for me.
AWE DLC: I really enjoyed this one.
Foundation DLC: Yeah it's still bad lmao. This is supposed to the continuation of the game's main story, which ends abruptly, and the DLC follows that up by ... also ending abruptly. The most headscratching part of it was Jesse's writing. I just don't think they successfully connected the dots between her reluctance at accepting the Director role to where she is by the DLC. Every Hotline message she receives from Trench and Marshall is about how they were determined to go at things alone, and you see how that got them both killed. Then Jesse, who keeps saying how she wants to run things differently, just turns around and also insists on handling everything herself? There's clearly more to explore here, but then you just fight Marshall as the final boss and the story ends with no follow up on her argument with Emily. You can't push all of this off to Control 2, resolve the damn things in the actual current game!! Also, I wish her convo with Former was weirder and more surreal and not just ... woman standing there talking face to face with a giant worm. Kinda no wonder I was reeeally disappointed in the game the first time I played when this was basically what I ended it on.
Northmoor being imprisoned in the power plant as eternal fuel for the FBC still rules, and the Ashtray Maze is still the coolest (awoo)
Alan Wake
Ok, I didn't like it lol. Didn't enjoy the combat gameplay, and it annoyed me how you could literally feel the game design behind the very one-note levels. Every time a bridge collapses under Alan or he flips a switch and something immediately goes wrong, I just rolled my eyes like stoooop dragging this out to make the game feel longer my god. This clip of a fucking giant barrel or w/e falling down and blocking the door Alan needs to get through right as he approaches it, after HE had to be the one to hold the jank lever down so his companions could go through first, is exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe I should be less of a hater. *thinks about how I also did not vibe with the writing at all* ah well nevertheless.
And look I know the stamina meter was there because Alan was just a fragile little guy but also like ... could he not have at least swapped out his skinny jeans and extremely pointy-toed city boots for something more comfortable when he had a chance to pop into town once he realized he was going to be spending the entire game running around in the woods? Like please, just a pair of hiking boots or even running shoes would make a world of difference, Alan. Maybe you would finally be able to clamber over 3ft tall fences in your way, you bozo. DON'T YOU CARE THAT YOUR WIFE IS MISSING?