The worst fate for a game is to be mediocre and unremarkable - this game suffers *none* of that. It has some of the highest highs of atmospheric environment design, storytelling and graphical prowess - but also some of the most frustrating troughs of confusing level design, bloated inventory management and other mechanics clearly designed to pad runtime instead of excite players or further gameplay. Like did we *really* need to loot % increases to our stats on every corner of the map from chests whose opening animation straight up looks like the game *used to* be designed around lootboxes and microtransactions, but then somebody sprayed the publisher's face with water and yanked that shit out of the game? And we got stuck with a boring, pointless system that encourages you to find the strongest stuff that works *for you* and just stick to the same loadout the entire game, deconstructing mods for extra currency every 5 minutes. Endgame content that's basically MMO grindquests but with more time constraint and less fun, oh and vastly higher difficulty when the game already struggles with more challenging encounters getting unfair fast. And yet, I f****ing love it. The completely bats**t insane Sam Lake(TM) story, the voice acting, the stellar graphics (I forgot the game came out 5 years ago! it looks absolutely glorious with settings maxed and no RTX), the unadulterated smoothness of combat (despite getting repetitive sometimes, esp. if you only run the broken strats) make for a game which I sometimes hate, but I can't stop myself from loving. Unique, unashamedly Remedy, immersive-to-a-fault SCP Foundation Simulator. Quantum Break walked so that Control could run.
