Let the R's fight

 

Max Payne. The great equaliser. A video game about a cop on a journey to avenge the murder of his wife through copious amounts of murder on his own end. A gaming classic, slathered in moody melodrama, heavily black and white colours and comic panel theming and the genesis of the much renowned 'Bullet Time' mechanic. It's also the major point of contact through which the struggling juggernauts of today intersect before now. Because you see, both Remedy and Rockstar games had their chance to touch the franchise with their own games for it. Whatever you have to say about Max Payne 3- Rockstar did throw their weight behind trying to continue the franchise that Remedy currently couldn't. So you might think a silly little dispute like this could be swept up in the background between companies with enough points of contact to settle this sensibly. You'd have thought incorrectly.

It seems that Remedy and Rockstar have entered into contention over the ownership of the letter R. Yes, it is a very valuable and useful letter, resplendent yet reserved, regal and rambunctious- but to be clear the actual contention is over the branding of these studio logos. Take a quick look at Remedy's logo, then mosey on over at Rockstar's. Both very minimalist, as is the style with modern day company iconography, and both featuring that all important consonant. As is ever the case with hyper-active lawsuit filers, this 'of course' means you need to be terrified over the ever present possibility of the moronic public eyeing the two brands and assuming one is the other despite- you know- the very distinct and noticeable difference in colour, the echo effect on Remedy's logo and, you know, the fact that Remedy's logo literally has the word 'Remedy' under the R. That's uh... a pretty explicit difference right there. You'd think the issue would be wrapped up by that alone.

But to be fair, I'm pretty sure the big legal departments of these massive studios are kept on tentative retainer on the expectation that they will proactively justify their own existence wherever possible. Of course, sometimes there are internal departments that are just chomping at the bit to exercise their power, flex them sore muscles. I can't appear to spot any apparent legal Department listed in Rockstar's key executives, but I'm sure I'm just missing them tucked away under someone else. Maybe Marketing. Either way, it's pretty obvious that this is a Rockstar or Take Two aggressor because in situations like this it's always them running to the court house. (And, you know, no one would be stupid enough to try and take on Rockstar in court. Except for the Florida Joker. That guy already made enough poor choices to get the fame he has, threatening to sue the most litigious company in gaming is just on-brand at that point.) They must have a tent up in the courtroom or something for often they're there!

And Remedy weren't a problem for all the many years they were nose-to-the-grindstone, trying to make Alan Wake 2 the best it can be. But show up to the Game Awards, get a little celebration under your belt and suddenly it's all "These guys are going to dilute our brand! You have to stop them!" Were we in a world of sense and logic this would be a frivolous waste of time- but Rockstar have both the size and the connections to outlaw such a world in their proceedings. If there were any legal precedent for suing people into a death sentence, Rockstar would be in contention for America's leading cause of death after drunk driving incidents- they are a company as obsessed with mastering the intricacies of game design as they are with the brusque art of legal beatdowns.

Let us not forget the time that Rockstar went out of their way to hunt down and digitally eradicate all traces of mods for Grand Theft Auto's III through to San Andreas, after facilitating something of a quiet relationship with many of the bigger mod developers beforehand. Or how about when they banned TPain from playing GTA RP because he is apparently helping with Grand Theft Auto VI's soundtrack. Why, because the guy can't be trusted with a simple NDA? You have to ban him from interacting with the community as well? Or is it because if TPain is acknowledged as being involved with GTA VI and is seen having fun in his own personal streaming career, then that might be construed as a quite approval for this unofficial way of playing GTA V? Mayhaps that be the issue?

It seems all of Rockstar's legal prickliness stems from their xenophobia over anyone experiencing their products in a way not tactically intended by the developer and it's oddly reminiscent of Nintendo's view on all things related to their properties. Only- Nintendo has the rather flimsy excuse that they're trying to protect the family friendly image of their brand from anything they don't explicitly control, which is also their excuse for debuting a modern video game console without any form of voice chat, by the way. But what's the excuse for Rockstar? They aren't shrinking violets when it comes to adult content, they court controversy with every breath and as they are happy to demonstrate in an overly zealous manner, any genuine breaches of their conduct could be surgically removed with a well-aimed lawsuit if they pleased. So what's with the scorched earth policy?

Many are eager to sprint to their defence and declare innocence on behalf of Rockstar, because all these evils are actually the purview of their parent company Take Two- but I think there's something of a misunderstanding here about how subservient Rockstar are to the boys upstairs. If Rockstar wanted to tone down the zealous nature of their image they have the power and influence to get that done- they are the single most well received video game company in the world right now and if they make a suggestion then any money-minded executive with their head on straight is going to follow the directive. Take Two's overzealous nature when it comes to these take downs is either due to rank indifference on Rockstar's end, or a harmonious conviction to lock up the IP to the public.

There's enough space in the world for two company's with largely different names that happen to share the same first initial and distinct logos. Just as there's enough space for two producers with strangely similar names such as 'Take Two' and '2K'. The reputation of fear so eagerly stoked with this muscle flexing is the same aura of terror that makes Rockstar so standoffish, which makes it so inaccessible to the public, which sours the next generation of developers who might otherwise aspire to one day lend their talents to the heroes who's games they used to take apart and backwards engineering back in the day. I just hope Rockstar fully comprehend the extent of the persona that they're building for themselves, because it's one hell of a doozy if they don't see it coming.

Crossfire X

Crisis should sue

Months upon months ago; around about seven, in fact, I remember seeing the trailer for Crossfire X, another game from one of those franchises that you've heard about before but whom always kind of linger at the periphery of own's industry-wide scope. At the time I actually picked the game out as having the potential to sustain a blog, I sometimes collect ideas like that in case I'm feeling dry on ideas, and wouldn't you know it: the only prompt I wrote down on the whole page to give me a brief reminder of what this game was is the same tag you see just above: 'Crisis should sue'. Now it's 2022 and I have to say, I was somehow right on the money because Crossfire X is upon us and of the many FPS' it shamelessly steals from, in it's pitifully bad and mercifully short campaign, Crisis is one of the most shameless. So though I am lucky enough to not have subjected myself to the torment first-hand, I have spent the past week or so just absorbing reactions across the Internet and I'd love to natter a bit about this disaster from my eyes.

So first off, I believed Crossfire X to be a Warface style game, essentially a free-to-play alternative to big shooter franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield, that swaps out the scale for charm. (I actually haven't played Warface for almost five years now. I hope it's still got that B-game charm.) And I guess that's somewhat true in the free-play department at least. Yes, provided you have an Xbox, you can play Crossfire X right now with your Game Pass subscription, or just free from the store page, apparently. Yeah, I literally just redeemed it right now, which made me wonder what the point of having a Gamepass integration even is, until I looked again and realised that Crossfire X offers it's bare bones basic online package for free, but the newly released Remedy Co-written campaign costs money or a Gamepass subscription. Woah, but back up for a second there... Remedy co-wrote this campaign? The Alan Wake, Control, Quantum Break, guys? Well that's something to write home about, right?

No. God no. CrossfireX made a single campaign for the game already without the help of Remedy, and it was all total mediocre bargain bin COD with enough faux-military dialogue drivel and gratuitously awful acting that it would make your typical Steven Segal movie just green with envy. For this sequel (kinda) plotline, Remedy took the mediocrity of that original as a direct challenge, to see if they could make something unquestionable worse. And they did exactly that, well done guys. Seriously, I need to know exactly what Remedy did to contribute to this storyline, because it is burning me up inside. Those guys are storytelling kings to many people out there! I mean, I don't particularly care for their stories to the same degree as a lot of other do, but they've never been anywhere near this bad! All I can think, is that Smilegate Entertainment periodically sent off their script to Remedy to do spelling checks, and that's the extent of this partnership. That's the only possibility which makes sense to me.

Operation Spectre, as the Remedy-assisted campaign is called, tries to marry it's poor military-fiction-written-by-teenagers plotline with some sort of sci-fi messianic prophecy story that combines about as poorly as that sounds, develops with agonising contrivance, and results in a Crisis 'homage' sequence that is so pathetic I consider it a direct insult to the game that they are ripping off! (I mean: 'paying homage to') Oh, and the acting is that special brand of lazy where you can hear the actors speaking with this harsh-yet-subdued tone, as though trying not to wake their parent's in the next room over or something. Every actor sounds like that. I don't know if it's a problem with the mixing, just crappy source audio or simply no one cared enough to try an iota in the booth. Assuming they had booths. (Nothing is a given for a game like this.)

The cutscenes are good, and here's another thing that doesn't compute with me. The animations, the movements, they're all fine- but then the voice acting is freakin' C-tier and I have to wonder why nobody found all of this objectionable. There seems to be a lobotomized head stuck on all the enemies for the way the AI seems incapable of any dynamism whatsoever (Just run to the spot you've been told to and stand there shooting- not exactly a real enemy AI set-up, now is it?) Actual shooting itself is said to be pretty bad, although there's no way for me to confirm that without picking up a controller and- yeah, I'd rather shoot myself. (The game is 55 Gigs, I'm not downloading all that just to see if the shooting is as bad as people say.) And the dialogue writing is so close to plagiarism at some points, that if I were in their shoes I'd have my lawyers deployed and on standby.  

One line really triggered me, and it was an of-hand exchange between two rando's in a level. They're enemies bemoaning how the bad guy General of the game ordered a missile strike on this position despite knowing that his people are there. They have this drawn out chat about questioning superior officers and all that jazz but all I could do was circle back to one nagging thought: This is just that iconic Modern Warfare 2 line rewritten to be less snappy. Do you remember the line about Shepard? "'Isn't this a little 'danger close' for the Task force?' 'Since when did Shepard ever care about 'Danger close?'" It's the same bloody line. They stole it and made it worse! Did they really think no one would notice an iconic line from a beloved entry in a global phenom franchise being stolen? This whole game is a maddening decent into whos, whys and hows.

What I can't understand is this: How did this game make it into the Microsoft game lineup? Seriously, this is an embarrassment. Xbox has been trying for an age and half to compete with Sony's cadre of quality first party games, and this is the best Microsoft can come up with? Exclusive rights to fisher-price COD? Is this what exclusivity looks like under Xbox? Because if not, then why wasn't this game buried under the deepest recesses of Gamepass so that it couldn't draw attention with it's vaguely impressive gameplay trailer made up of entirely hand crafted set-piece moments and surprising quality cutscenes? The profile this release had was the most noteworthy thing of the whole package, and that is owed solely to Xbox marketing. For shame, Microsoft. For shame.

It's not often that we see big 'so bad their good' games do the rounds, and that's typically because of a bunch of reasons, such as that games are usually so bad they're awful and frustrating, when we do get a bad game it's more a shame because you can see the hopefulness behind it, and that most of the titles that reside in that sweet-spot inbetween those extremes are buried beneath the deluge of Steam new release shovelware. So in that backhanded sense I suppose Microsoft have done us a solid by providing this unabashed mess of a game, with money and talent behind it, which is microtransaction strewn, for the world to laugh at. No guilty feelings here, I can point and laugh all day! There is so much more about this game which is borked, including the many lacklustre multiplayer options, but you'll have to see if for yourself from people who actually had the gumption to play the thing because this is a mess that needs to be seen to be believed. 

Alan Wake 2

This is not the story you want it to be

Sometimes dreams do come true. And sometimes so do the tortured nightmares of a fiction writer wracked with schizophrenic episodes. I can't remembered how long I've heard the cries echoed from the rafters for an Alan Wake 2 to be realised; but I can certainly say that it was a lot further back than the time that I had actually played the original game, Alan Wake. This was one of those titles that I heard of from pure reputation alone, because god-knows that the marketing wasn't doing much to throw the thing my way. A clearly loved cult classic with legions of loyalists simply begging Remedy Entertainment to go back to their most beloved IP, after Max Payne which they no longer own. Such that I could feel the excitement buzzing from behind all those computer screens around the world when they finally got that confirmation in a teaser sizzle during the Game Awards last December.

It was an huge and important announcement, one very clearly worthy of a little bit of covering on this here blog, but I- well you see the thing is I didn't actually like Alan Wake too much. Woah, woah, careful with those pitchforks- you'll have an eye out. What I mean to say is that I didn't think Alan Wake was a bad game as such, it just didn't really leave an impact on me when I played through it, to the extent where I didn't even touch the 'American Nightmare' spin-off sequel-thing despite having technically bought them both in a double pack. (Although fans of the series seem to think that sequel was varying degrees of bad so maybe I got off lightly) My nonchalant feelings could honestly stem from a number of reasons- maybe because I never grew up with shows like Twin Peaks, and was much more into 'Tales from the Crypt' as a kid than 'The Twilight zone'. As I understand it, for a lot of the fan base out there, Alan Wake keyed into the dormant childhood love for that kind of entertainment and built upon it. Love that I never had- so I guess it just didn't end up being my thing.

Which doesn't mean to say I'm not interested in what they're doing this time around. That's the thing with Remedy, they're a cosy studio who can embark on wild and weird flights of fancy in order to make these quality titles with an creative oddball edge to them, without going full artsy love-it-or-hate-it. Alan Wake, Control and even Quantum Break were all very approachable and recognisable types of games to your average gamer out there, whilst exploring wild topics like temporal displacement, SCP-like cryptids and inner-darkness personified. Remedy have made something of a name for themselves with games like that, and holding themselves back from going fully off the deep-end like some might have expected by now. Heck, even Max Payne is considerably more stylistic and narratively complex than a lot of the contemporary shooters of the time, these guys never fail to stand out.

Now Alan Wake actually did have a sequel in development around the time of the first game's release, which was a real passion project for that period of their history, and not something that Remedy wanted to do just because all other cool single games were turning into series' back then. (Although maybe that bears some looking into) Their writing process was laser focused to rope in strings and hooks that could be picked up in sequels or spin-offs, such to the extent that they even ended the story on a cliff-hanger that I totally remembered and didn't have to just look up. (Maybe I need to play that game again- it's not right for me to have literally no recollection of the things whatsoever!) Look online and you can even watch some gameplay snippets of what Alan Wake II would have been like thanks to an internal demo which was built for the team to show off some of the directions they wanted to go in. But as you can likely guess from the fact it's taken 11 years for this to even be officially announced; that project didn't quite take off.

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, weren't interested in an Alan Wake 2 when it was pitched to them, although they did want to bring Remedy aboard for something new they might create. What resulted was another step in the oh-so-weird 'games crossed over with TV shows' gimmick which was actually close to being a thing back then- Quantum Break. Break had it all, famous faces attached, flashy time bending effects and tons of action- it just didn't bring it in the gameplay department. Oh, and the extended show portions of the game kind of dragged. So fans of Remedy had to accept the bitter pill that Alan Wake was put on ice for this. Although Alan did get a tiny nod thrown into the game, perhaps as Remedy's way of showing they hadn't forgotten about their little tortured artist. Although it would still be several years and whole different game release later before Remedy would get around to actually paying off that tease.

And you know what, this may seem like something of a controversial take from me but I think the brand of Alan Wake is better off for the wait. Allowing memories and fondness to swirl and bubble into nostalgia fits a nostalgia-baking brand like this incredibly well and there's something just right about a literary-themed narrative ending on a major cliffhanger that waits a near decade to be resolved. (Or just continued, I guess. I don't think Remedy are going to kill their most beloved active franchise off just yet) Tell me that's not every book series ever- wouldn't Alan Wake, a game conceptually authored by it's own protagonist, be keeping with it's premise to follow suit? And I mean just look at that old gameplay demo for Alan Wake 2, if the project was greenlit it just would have been more of the same. I'm sure to those cult fans out there such sounds like a dream, but I and people like me wouldn't have been interested. Now the intrigue of what could be, especially after the very impressive Control, has me curious.

But what I really want to know, is what lessons will Alan Wake be taking from it's extended hiatus when it comes to horror? Because the landscape has changed substantially. When Alan Wake was king, Remedy was taking their first steps into Survival Horror and you could tell from the way they borrowed certain concepts from classics in the series whilst framing those ideas in a unique setting. But what lessons might have taken hold now? Five Nights at Freddy's, for example, is a massive series; and that has demonstrated admirably how effective it can be to take away a player's personal agency and have them simply sit and wait for the horror to find them. Resident Evil 7 bought players close and personal with the gruesome and weird, resulting in an impressively immersive and voraciously vivid experience some would call too scary. And GTFO lives off the horror of putting the player at the bottom of a very long, very unsettling and very eldritch food chain. Any one of these influences could drastically change and rewrite the experience of Alan Wake should they be weaved into II; and I think such a transformation would be perfect to justify this long awaited sequel's final appearance.

We've probably a while to go before Alan Wake II materialises, there's no release date yet, just a window, but already there's excitement drumming up from the sheer mystery awaiting. Sam Lake has made in clear in no uncertain circumstances that this will be a different kind of experience to Alan Wake 1, calling this sequel a 'Survival Horror' whereas the original was an 'action game with horror elements'. I don't know if I quite agree there, I think the first game was a survival horror, just one that focused on being creepy rather than terrifying, but I understand the sentiment. This new game is going to try new things, it won't be afraid to mess with the status quo and Remedy aren't going to just become a middle-of-the-road sequel factory like so many other video game companies in today's world already are. This won't be the last preview we get on this game, and despite my rocky recollection and lack of interest in that first title- this game might just have my attention. And so to coin Alan's parlance: To be continued... (Or Hirohiko Araki, I guess)

Controlling the Narrative

I did it! I did a pun. And you thought I didn't have it in me anymore...

Have you ever been screwed over? I'm being facetious, of course you have been. Everybody has, at some point, tasted what it feels like to have one straight trick fly under the radar and catch you unawares. It's hardly a pleasant feeling, but once it happens to you enough one reaches the point where they can begin sensing the very next grift from a mile away, either that or they become so jaded and mistrusting that they push away everyone and become something of a modern day hermit. Maybe both, I can see both. And when it comes to the entertainment industry, specifically in gaming, customers have become very well acquainted with what it feels like to have a PR team mug you in broad daylight whilst telling you that they're in the middle of cutting the finest deal imaginable with you. We've seen it all, which is why it's so baffling that the critical darling of last year, 'Control', seems to be in the middle of a blatant money grubbing scheme whilst everyone involved is acting like we're the crazy ones.

Control, if you don't remember, is a title that basically adapted the premise of the SCP Containment Breech game and turned it into a narrative adventure title. Helmed by Remedy, the team behind many a  'love it or hate it' style game like Quantum Break and the Alan Wake games, (Does 3 count as 'many'?) Control completely swept up with the critics and even was in the running for Ultimate Game of the Year. (Which, as I recall, ended up going to Sekiro.) However, these guys are cursed to make the sorts of games that never really translate over to crazy commercial success, so whilst I don't believe Control was a flop by any means, it wasn't a resounding hit either. That's a fact that fans lament as many have argued that it's easily Remedy's best title yet. Which of course paints the picture as to why the publisher would be in the market for shoring up profits with a little recycle job, now wouldn't it?

But enough beating around the bush, what exactly is the problem with Control and 505 that everyone is going on about? Well it has to do with the next gen. With the jump to a new generation of consoles there's a big conversation to be had about backwards compatibility as well as up-scaling from one generation to the next. The games which can nail this post haste are going to be essential for those first few months of the next gen's launch as a good chunk of exciting next gen titles aren't due out for a long while. This spurred Xbox's free upgrade program which allows for many next gen versions of current gen games to be automatically redeemed by their owners, and for companies like EA to wantonly spit in the face of that ideal and charge a ludicrous amount of money for an upgrade to an inferior package deal. (It's a long stupid story, I don't wanna get into it.) But perhaps the most befuddling is what's happening with Control right now.

Control has pretty much run the majority of it's life cycle right now, with the game having been released and post-launch DLC having filled the months since. There was even a 'deluxe edition' re-release of the title which bundled everything together neatly. Basically, there's not really much more life in this development cycle. Thus it makes the perfect title to port over to the next generation for people to play in it's entirety, and that's exactly what's happening; provided you're willing to buy the game again. Dubbed 'Control Ultimate Edition', the next gen upgrade will not be provided to anyone who purchased a previous version of the game, nor will they be able to buy it as an upgrade for a discounted price. Previous owners are subject to the full price alongside new comers. What's more, the price for Ultimate edition is actually 2/3rds of the full price which the deluxe edition of the game is still being charged for; thus punishing early adopters of the title and rewarding those that came to it later. Needless to say, this ruffled a few feathers.

If you want to really upset a fanbase all you have to do is mess with their money, ask them to pay too much or mess with their perceived value of something and you're practically spitting sparks into a tinder box. Whatsmore, folk don't like the idea of having loyalty and fandom punished by being asked to buy the game again for the benefit of some upscaled visuals and a frame-rate that's probably not that much better than you can already get on the Pro or One X. That's right, this new release offers absolutely no new content beyond the upgrades, which makes the 40$ asking price ridiculous for current owners. The really sad part about all of this, is that it erodes the trust between the consumers and the developers, even though it's highly likely that Remedy weren't involved with any of this nonsense beyond maybe working on the upgrades. (though they could have just as easily been outsourced) No, this is 505's web of confusion that they're spinning, and what makes things even more headscratching is the excuses that they have.

Up on the official Control website there's a little blog on the matter entitled 'Control Ultimate Edition- An explanation' which just sounds like the most ominous title in the world, doesn't it? It sounds like you've been caught cheating and decided to pen an entire power point presentation to pseudo-apologise whilst really trying to subconsciously suggest that your partner is the bad one for being upset in the first place. In this blog they confused the hell out of me, at least, by revealing that whilst Control would be backwards compatible on both new consoles, 'Control Ultimate Edition' would apparently be an entirely separate product and the only purchasable version on those console's stores. Apparently the intention was to provide an 'easy' and 'convenient' way for the entire game and all of it's content to be bought. (Okay, I'll give you 'easy' but I don't really know what's 'convenient' about this from the perspective of current fans)

And then they launch into victimising themselves. Yes, I'm being serious. These guys straight-up try to argue that they are the one's who tried to be the good-guys here and offer upgrades but they just couldn't, no matter how hard they tried! "We spent several months exploring all of our launch options for Control Ultimate Edition and no decision was taken lightly. While it is challenging bringing any game to next gen platforms, we quickly realised it was even more difficult to upgrade our current user base to next gen with full parity across platforms with our year-old game." Yes, apparently that thing which every other high profile AAA game is doing? It's really hard to do with Control because it's one whole year old. (Wow, this new tech must be space-age if resolution updates and optimisation is a noticeable headache.)

As someone who has never tried to code a game on the scale of Control, I'd have to defer to their better knowledge of the subject matter here. Let's assume everything they say is trustworthy, then here's the kicker. "Every avenue we pursued, there was some form of blocker and those blockers meant that at least one group of players ended up being left out of the upgrade for various reasons. As of today, we can’t offer an upgrade to everyone, and leaving any one group out feels unfair." So with the merit of going into as few specifics as humanely possible, the Control team are claiming that there was no one-way to upgrade all 3 versions of the game (for both consoles and for PC) which should have been obvious. For months we've been hearing how distinctly different these new generation consoles are, so it makes sense that working on games for them will be different, but somehow this hasn't stopped other games, like Cyberpunk 2077, from offering free upgrades.

You see, the problem here (and forgive me for accusing this blog of strawmanning a bit) is that the angle taken here seems to arguing that the tech isn't there, but this isn't an argument about tech, it's about policy. When Skyrim Special Edition was released it was using a very updated version of the engine which the original game ran on, making it a new SKU. But that didn't suddenly mean that Bethesda's hands were tied and they automatically had to charge owners of the old game full price to play this new one, the upgrade was free on PC. That wasn't the case for consoles, however, and I think that is what 505 is driving at, claiming that said quirk of the console marketplaces makes it difficult for them to provide an upgrades path for games with a different SKU. Kinda understandable, I guess, if warped beyond feasible comprehension. But then the other shoe drops.

505 screwed up with the launch of Ultimate Edition, they put out pre-orders but owners of the Deluxe edition of Control ended up automatically receiving the new version out of nowhere. What's more, they could launch this new version and it would open up the Deluxe version of the game. The SKU was the same, 505's excuses are starting to grow a little thin, huh? And so it seems that Control Ultimate Edition very much could have been offered to owners of the base title but actively was not in order for a quick buck. And just quick: even if that wasn't a possibility, they still could have pulled a Bethesda and made the update free on PC. This argument that "It's unfair, thus we must punish everybody equally" is so unfathomably dumb that it's hardly worth a retort. So that, if you were wondering, is what it feels like to be screwed over by a publisher. Hope you all enjoyed, as 505 are very unlikely to be the last who try something like this.

Control

Whatever you do, don't blink.

Towards the end of last year there popped out a little game from a much storied studio that garnered quite a bit of praise and even a few awards, although that didn't quite translate to sales. The Studio in question, Remedy, have always held a trajectory that I find myself at odds with in the strangest ways and whilst I celebrate their commercial victories I must admit that I cannot enjoy their games no matter how much I attempt to. Such would have been inconsequential if it hadn't been for their prominent presence at the VGA's alongside their announcement of DLC, meaning that I have to speak about this particular title at least once. (It's only fair.) Before I do, however, bear in mind that I trusted my gut and avoided this game, so all of my opinions are educated but inexperienced.

Control is a title that takes a very fringe pop culture topic and drags it into the forefront with a heavily funded AAA game. The topic in question would be the concept of Internet camp-fire stories, or as they are titled 'Creepypastas', and the specific pasta in general is the long running tale of the SCP foundation. (Secure Contain Protect.) To be clear, this isn't an a game that takes place within the canon of The Scarlett King (as far as I am aware, at least.), rather a title that mimics the setup of that story and makes something unique with it; but the similarities are too distinct for us to discount it as coincidence. Not that I condemn such an act, afterall it is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and the SCP community has had too much of a marked effect on horror culture throughout the years for us to start splitting hairs now. But I digress, let's get into what 'SCP' ostensibly is.

In it's most widely known form, SCP is a website that details the research documents of a fictional secret government agency known as the SCP foundation. It is the task of this foundation to capture and catalogue all extra-normal 'entites' in our everyday world with the ultimate goal of keeping their existence secret and protecting humanity. (For a couple SCP's in particular, the very act of keeping them secret is the thing that keeps humanity from becoming extinct.) From this amalgamation of weird and creepy horror monsters spawned a few well-received horror games that are still worthy of a playthrough today. (Although only if you have a strong constitution when it comes to horror games.)

SCP-087-B was one such game that followed the exploration of an SCP that was realized in the form of an endless downwards staircase. The deeper down you went, the more likely it became that you would never come back up again, dead or alive. (In hindsight I've having trouble figuring out how SCP both found out about and managed to contain that one. Did they relocate the entire building or just seize it and convert it into a government facility?) 'SCP Containment Breach' is probably the most famous game, however, as it takes a more traditional Horror game approach of forcing players to survive an incredibly hostile environment as they desperately attempt to escape. The entire SCP facility ended up losing it's 'secure' status and this meant that the creators had free reign to stick as many game-able SCP's into thier title as humanly possible. (Pretty sure they invented a few specifically for the game too.) But this 'Creepypasta' has had a profound effect outside of the world of gaming too.

Perhaps one of the most iconic SCP's of all time would be SCP-173, a seemingly immobile (and indistinguishable) statue that moves whenever it's not in direct line of site, ultimately resulting in death for whoever is unfortunate enough to be caught by it. Does any of that ring a bell? Mayhaps you think this whole concept is but a shameless rip off of the Weeping Angels from the 'Blink' episode of Doctor Who. A sound conclusion if it wasn't for the fact that the original SPC story predated that episode by a few months. Now, I'm not saying that Russel.T.David read that story and adapted it for his series, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone anecdotally relayed it to him in a manner that lit inspiration. Whatever the truth, Weeping Angels or 173, are some of the scariest monsters in horror and I like to think that we owe their existence to the SCP world.

But why am I talking about SCP in a blog entitled 'Control'? Well... because they are kinda one-and-the-same. The story in question revolves around a young woman who inadvertently finds herself becoming the director of the Federal Bureau of Control, a secret government branch dedicated to capturing and categorizing otherworldly threats. Unfortunately, this promotion comes at the exact same time that a large scale containment breech has swept the facility leaving the player with the unenvious task of having to "Clean house". The premise fuels the wild array of surreal imagery that the title then thrives on. (Which won it the VGA for visual design, incidentally.)

Of course, being Remedy, SCP isn't the only inspiration that this title leans on. Just like Alan Wake before it, Control borrows a lot of themes and ideas from classic shows like 'Twin Peaks' to set it's mood. Those who loved the heavy aura of mystery and uncomfortable weird shades from a show like that will find much to love about Control. (As a fellow who never watched Twin Peaks and barely even remembers X-Files, it doesn't really do much for me.) At this point Remedy have turned the act of mimicking these shows into an identity and that seems to have worked out well for them looking at the review scores for this title alone.

At the VGA's in particular, The Control team teased their brand new DLC which seemed to lean away from the 'Metroid-Vania' gameplay of the main game and into a more 'episodic' approach. (I wonder what the inspiration was there?) The 'Expiditions' DLC seems to pit the player in a variety of challenge situations that, I'd imagine, would be largely puzzle solving/ monster fighting affairs; Remedy do seem rather allergic to wrapping up thier dangling plot threads, afterall. There would certainly be an audience for that kind of content but I can imagine the bulk of consumers finding themselves disappointed with it, afterall they praised Control for being 'different', recycling models and environments to make new challenges does strain that a little bit. But if Capcom could pull it off well with Resident Evil 3 back in 1999, who's to say that Remedy couldn't do the same to a satisfying degree?