52 Games. 1 Year. 2024. [BacklogBeat] (2024)

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October Update - Part 1/2: 62/52

Boo! 👻

60. October 6th | Control: Ultimate Edition | Playstation 5 | 28h | ☆☆☆½(/5)
I've never really been one to go out of my way to play horror games in October, but I thought I'd make an exception this year, so to set the mood I began the month with a game that made me think about the scariest thing imaginable: Finland.

Control is a fine game. I wish it was more than that, but it is what it is. It really starts out strong, though, with a fantastic hook where you're given just enough info to be interested in it, but not nearly enough to quite understand what's going on, so right from the get go I'm interested in both protagonist Jesse's motivations, and what's going on in the Oldest House, the game's main setting which looks like a plain skyscraper from the outside, but on the inside is a constantly changing labyrinth which houses doors to other worlds, and which the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), kind of like an SCP-like organization, uses as their headquarters.

Just running through those sort of normal office spaces as you enter Oldest House that eventually start to either warp or eerily feel like they're repeating like some kind of workplace hell dimension as you run through them was really cool, and the art direction as a whole throughout Control is probably its strongest point, mixing mundanity with the supernatural in ingenious ways and making it actually feel like a functioning place where people can work at, while still being a bit askew and having the vibes of something nightmarish hiding behind every corner (and sometimes not even behind a corner in areas that haven't been kept in check by the FBC). It's rarely super flashy or anything (though with some really striking uses of red here and there throughout the game), but just damn strong art direction where Remedy knew exactly how they wanted the game to look, and executed on that vision kind of perfectly, honestly, and with some really beautiful areas where it goes more minimalistic to show off the more abstract parts of the House.

Also really loved how every time you enter a new area, the name of it comes up on screen with this large, extremely bold font (apparently ITC Avant Garde Gothic), with a sound effect that makes it feel like you've just dug too deep accompanying it. Insane mix of great sound mixing and typography that makes every new area feel just a bit more special than it otherwise would have. There are things to complain about in Control, is what I'm getting at, but it's aesthetic sensibilities are not very much not one of those things. NPC animations are definitely a bit on the clunkier side, though.

Control's not just intriguing setup and great art direction, though; it's also a third person shooter because I guess that's what every Remedy game is, and as one of those types of games, it's both really good and kind of just okay. Really good in that I love myself a good TPS that encourages constant movement, which Control definitely does, and the different abilities Jesse get over the course of the game, especially telekinesis and levitation, make for some really fun battles where you're just flinging whatever you can find at enemies while flying around to get someone shooting at you from a higher floor or get away from more aggressive enemies on the ground. It all controls (ha!) great, enemies are sufficiently dangerous, and even the gun (which is good at the beginning, but as you power up the telekinesis more and more, becomes more something you use only when your energy meter is powering up, or against flying enemies who can dodge what you throw at them) feels pretty good.

The issue with Control's combat, and maybe this is just a Remedy issue as a whole since it was kind of an issue in Alan Wake as well, is that there's just too much of it, and the design of the encounters leave a lot to be desired. When I think of good encounter design (and I'm sure many will disagree with me, and that's completely fine if so), I think of the Uncharted games where the mechanics are very simple so you know exactly how to do everything, so on higher difficulties, each time you get into combat, how to get out a fire fight alive becomes kind of a puzzle where you need to know where enemies are, which weapons they use, which ones you should kill first, where to throw grenades in order to kill the most enemies in one go, how you need to move around the area as to not get blindsided, etc., etc., and so getting through a lot of those fights feels really satisfying from the beginning of those games right up to the end.

Control doesn't feel as well thought-out in this regard at all, which is an issue when the vast majority of the game is spent fighting things. I wish I had to think more when enemies spawned, but the rooms feel so similar in layout that I often feel like I've already done these fights several times over, the enemy type variety is kind of low, and as long as you're not staying still and can aim somewhat decently, it's all so easy (and especially so after getting the different abilities) that combat just becomes a lot of bumps in the road when all I really want is to learn more about this strange setting and the mundane bureaucracy of the FBC. I don't ever need to really strategize much at all; just let telekinesis go brrr with its auto-aim, and while that can be very satisfying there's just too much of it, especially when backtracking through areas and enemies constantly respawn in certain rooms.

The plot's also kind of weirdly paced. I have no issues with the in medias res beginning, but I do take issue with how it just kind of feels like it never gets off the ground? Control is a game with, like, a million documents to pick up throughout the game that tells you some cool Oldest House and FBC lore, but Jesse's journey, from being named director of the FBC without understanding how or why in the prologue, to looking for her brother Dylan for most of the remainder of the game, never really gets off the ground. It all feels like you're in the mid-game where the premise has been made clear, but the stakes haven't quite been set yet so you're mainly getting to know the areas and the characters of the game, and then you're suddenly in the ashtray maze (by far the best part of the game, by the way), and then you're thrown into the endgame out of nowhere, fight the same few enemy types you've done before for a while before you (and by "you" I mean "me") get the very sudden ending and the credits roll at a point where it really feels like I've barely just begun, or like a big chunk of the game were missing before this final mission. Not that Control is too short or anything, but the pacing of its narrative and the plot escalation are both so off that it just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Oh well, Control's still a game I greatly enjoyed for the most part. Like I said, it's fine, but it does feel like a lot of wasted potential, which I guess is also kind of how I feel about Alan Wake (though I think overall Control is a better game). The premise is fantastic, the documents you pick up have great writing and give you some really interesting lore, the Oldest House is an all-time great setting in video games, and it looks marvelous. The combat, I want to stress, also does feel extremely good, even if there's too much of it. Hopefully Control 2 can fix at least parts of the issues I had or maybe I'm the issue here, and it'll be the same and the world will rejoice while I sit in my dank corner, muttering about the same grievances yet again.

Soundtrack highlight:
Control's soundtrack is mainly just dark ambiance, and while it is good and fits the game well, it doesn't really stand out at all when listened to on its own.

61. October 12th | Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club | Nintendo Switch | 13h | ☆☆☆
I haven't played the previous two FDC games, or any other Japanese adventure games for that matter, but I guess the novelty of a PEGI 18 Nintendo developed game was enough of a draw for me. Good thing I'm can be drawn to games for such shallow reasons, because while I do have a lot of issues with Emio - The Smiling Man, it was also a pretty interesting experience.

I feel like I'm going to complain a lot here, so I do want to begin with saying that I actually did enjoy most of my time with Emio. For a game of this kind, whether you see it as an adventure game or as the pseudo-visual novel it actually is, the production value on display is really high. Like, this game looks and sounds really good throughout, with great art, a super stellar soundtrack, and a surprising amount of animation for what is, ostensibly, a very static video game.

The main premise is pretty fun, too if you're slightly into murder mysteries, though it's certainly not complicated at all; your detective bureau is tasked with helping the police with finding and capturing masked serial killer Emio, a man wearing a paper bag as a mask upon which he's made a crude drawing of a smiling face on, who's resurfaced almost two decades after his last killings, but now having killed a boy after having only targeted girls previously. Here we get a murderer with interesting iconography, a change in victims that begs the question if it's the same person, and if not, is it someone of the younger characters we get to know over the course of the game? Who can we trust, if anyone? Also, the previous murders having been committed so long ago lets the game delve into grief and societal trauma in really interesting ways.

The characters are great almost across the board, as well. We have both protagonists, [Male Protagonist] who you get to name, and Ayumi, feel like real people, bounce off each other in a pretty fun way, and have their own distinct voices so it really is noticeable every time you have to switch between them. The supporting cast is really where the game shines, though, especially in those incidental meetings you keep having, and the mundane people you need to interview to get a new lead. Emio, if anything, shines at just letting you have normal-ass conversations with normal-ass people, and talking to these people, you really do get a feel for who they are, and what they're about. You usually don't even make any progress with solving the case, but that's fine since it's just such a pleasant time getting to know these random people, and having them tell you small tidbits about the town, its history and inhabitants, really making you want to solve the case even more.

The writing of the dialogue is, fortunately, really good. I didn't really spend any time thinking about how this was written by the same man whose last writing credit was Metroid: Other M, Yoshio Sakamoto, and was instead really impressed by how natural the language felt, and how the conversations really did feel like some that you'd have while investigating a crime (and often kind of failing to make progress), where it's not like you just meet people who exist only to give out clues, but human beings you have to treat with some respect. There's a social competency, I guess, to Emio's writing that honestly not many other games have when you really start to think about them, and I personally found that kind of refreshing. People talk about how the game really earns its M ratings because of some imagery and some very dark topics it covers, but I'd honestly say the most mature thing it does is its dialogue, and how extremely stripped of any extravagance it is. Kitchen sink realism in adventure game form, sort of, and the game just sort of trusts in the player to be enticed by its naturalism and very slow pace, and if you're not, that's seemingly fine. It's not suddenly going to throw something surprising at you to get your attention again.

So this all sounds great, but, somehow, this isn't a very good game, is it?

No, it unfortunately isn't. Characters - fantastic. Dialogue - fantastic. But the plot and plot progression? Kind of bad! I'm not going to go into any specifics, but Emio is kind of bizarre in that almost every lead or new clue in the case is given to you through some bizarre coincidence and biggest stroke of luck a protagonist has ever had, which makes the investigation part really unsatisfying since I never feel like I uncovered anything on my own, and more like the game just gave it to me without me even being given the chance to figure it out on my own whatsoever. It also makes the narrative feel kind of unfinished; like Sakamoto had very clear ideas, but wasn't exactly sure how to implement them so sometimes the plot just very rapidly moves forward out of nowhere in supremely unsatisfying ways. Like, the way you actually find out about the identity and hiding place of Emio is one of the most insane things I've experienced in a game in a long while, and not in a good way.

There's also this weird thing where it kind of seems like the protagonists' boss, Utsugi, knows a lot more than he lets on, but instead of aiding with the investigation, he tells you to investigate certain things that he clearly already knew about, and I don't really get why? Like, I get it from a video game standpoint and that it's fun to discover things on your own, but you also only found out about it because he told you explicitly that this exact thing might be worth looking into. Just very weird behavior, but even stranger is how he conducts his own investigation on the case where he definitely finds out about who Emio actually is before you do, but for some reason he doesn't tell you anything of what he found out until the game's epilogue (that really should have been part of the main story, and also feels like it was planned to be at some point since you even get to play as Utsugi for, like, one scene before the game just kind of forgets about him until said epilogue).

All of this amounts to the feeling that throughout Emio's 12-13 hours, I didn't really do any successful detective work at all, and every time I made any progress, it was because something just landed in my lap because I'm the luckiest boy detective of all time, or I was told exactly what to do by someone who acts like they'd be the killer based on how much they kept to themselves for literally no reason (and probably to a criminal degree).

The gameplay's also just kind of mediocre. I get that the developers didn't want to make this a straight visual novel and have some sort of interaction from the player here and there, but having the conversations sometimes just stop to have you either "Think" about something or "Look" at some part of the room or a person's eyes to find out that they stopped talking to look at whether you had a "good soul" or not, wasn't exactly the most stimulating thing I've ever done, and more just a trial and error where I picked all options I had and hoped for the best. It's not a deal breaker, but also not exactly optimal. With a game as extremely linear as this one, I really wouldn't have had any issue if it was pure reading, and maybe some choices here and there where you need to apply the correct clue to the right situation.

And what happened with Ayumi in the second half of the game? She gets nothing to do, other than spend time with an old acquaintance of hers whose biggest regret in life, as we find out when we have to speak with him as the male protagonist, is that he didn't get to see her go through puberty, and who doesn't really have anything of note to say, mainly repeating how much he loves being a teacher and how much he's failed his students for whatever reason. Sure feels like she could have gotten some better things to do, and also sure feels like this game was written by a 65-year old man in these scenes!

Despite these issues, though, I do think Emio - The Smiling Man should probably be played by anyone interested in it. It does have some really good character and dialogue writing after all, looks and sounds fantastic, and while the detective part of the game leaves so, so much to be desired, the actual intrigue is pretty fun to follow (though be prepared for a pretty lacklustre ending). Just go into it with the mindset that it'll be a very slow burn and probably mostly about getting to know a small society and its vibes, and that solving a crime is actually secondary to that, and you'll probably have a pretty good time. This is also the only Nintendo game you'll ever play that'll ask you to type in "suicide" and then ask you if you're okay with it, and that's definitely worth something.

Soundtrack highlight:
Interviewing: Protagonist

62. October 19th | Castlevania: Lords of Shadow | PlayStation 3 | 15h | ☆☆
More like Lords of Shit!!!

No, but seriously, I didn't really enjoy Lords of Shadow at all. The first two chapters of this game are some of the most miserable hours I've spent with a video game in a long time. Like, Spider-Man 3: Invasion of the Spider-Slayers or Mystery of Atlantis are definitely worse games, but did I hate spending any time with those as much as I did with the opening parts of LoS? Not even close!

Castlevania, a series of such a strong identity, fantastic art, even more fantastic music, and just generally feeling fantastic to play, now reduced to a very poor God of War clone with some of the worst fixed camera angles you'll ever experience in a game like this, attacks that feel completely weightless, combos that you can barely ever pull off completely since enemies barely react to getting hit (and they all, of course, have too much health), block and dodge on the same goddamn button(!!!!!!!), with the most interesting traversal being the slowest climbing you'll ever experience (think there's too much climbing in Uncharted? Just play Lords of Shadows and immediately realize your mistake!), bizarre perspectives where you have to make jumps that look impossible but are actually the only way of progression, a companion that will keep repeating the same, like, two or three lines non-stop until you make progress, and all set in the most generic, awful 7th generation forests and swamps where you'll sometimes get interrupted from fighting the same group of boring imps and big spiders or whatever, to do godawful Shadow of the Colossus-ripoff boss fights where you need to extremely slowly climb titans and hit their weak nodes. Between each chapter, a slightly sedated Patrick Stewart also tells a story, but not really what's going on in the game. Like, he'll start talking about how protagonist, Gabriel Belmont, is blinded by rage, more beast than man, but then you get into gameplay and he's just as calm and collected (and boring) as always.

Not the best first impression. I was extremely close to just giving up on the game halfway through the swamps, but I guess there's something wrong with me because I soldiered despite not really having any good reason to do so. To Lords of Shadow's defense, it really does get better afterwards, having you run through a lot more interesting settings, and the powers and sub-weapons you get add some variety to the game, plus the non-titan (or giants? I honestly don't remember what the game calls them) boss fights are actually pretty cool, both mechanically and with some of their set piece moments. The camera keeps being terrible and fighting normal enemies feels like a giant waste of time throughout the game, but it does at least get slightly better at everything else.

I know I always write a million words about the games I play, but I really don't have much else to say about Lords of Shadow. It starts out absolutely awful, and then gets slightly better as it goes along, but I don't think it ever really reached a point where I thought it was "good". It's got decent presentation, some okay music (though most of the soundtrack is really just too Generic Epic Score™ for me), and the twist that leads to the final boss fight is kind of insane in a fun way (thought the fight itself is weirdly one of the easiest in the game), but it lacks the sauce of an actual Castlevania, instead trying to copy other games, and just kind of failing at it in most aspects. At its best, it's tolerable, and I can sort of just get through sections without having to think or feel anything at all.

Soundtrack highlight:
Belmont's Theme