iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

in case you wondered why your amazon emails now say "Ordered 1 item: health care" instead of "your vitamins were delivered," it's because amazon doesn't want google's AI to read your email and see what you ordered for how much. it's stupid.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Ahh shit man I hope I didn't spoil anything :(

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It felt like there were supposed to be 1-2 more episodes that they didn't get the (Pun alert) green light for. I don't know if more would've helped but it would've given them time enough to deal with some of the setup and loose ends that they just shrugged off.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Just make a fuckin detective show you ding dongs. Don't fake us out by making a Green Lantern show. I'm not even a big GL fan (what up @cubiclezombie.bsky.social ) but I'm so frustrated by the way the ending went. I quite liked the show up until that point and I'm just sitting here like, that's it?

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

They had a tool that could summon any shape and, aside from a couple of instances, they just made bubbles. But more importantly, they found every excuse they could to make sure that the ring was not usable. They took it off, drained the power, whatever. If you're going to do that, why bother?

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

They set up a bunch of stuff that they never paid off or like, did the opposite of paid off. They took loans out. They wrote checks they couldn't cash. They also were either saddled with a tiny budget that they spent on casting, music, and camera work, or they were ashamed of being a comic show.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Lanterns had its finale last night. I initially was pretty happy with it, but I'm increasingly unsatisfied the further away I get. The performances, casting, and character writing were all great. But I had major, major issues with the last episode.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The bugs aren't game breaking, their both side quests. When I was playing Prince of Persia: Lost Crown, I hit a progression-halting bug that totally changed my relationship with a game i had previously been loving. These kinds of bugs that wall off even small parts of a game are so frustrating.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Any game that has linear aspects--missions, story beats, etc--that can possibly bug out needs to have rolling saves. I need to be able to jump back half an hour or whatever to unbug my game.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A follow-up on Control Resonant. I had two quests in a row bug out. I don't know if I'll be able to finish them. That's ROUGH, man. If it were anyone other than Remedy I would just try to refund the game.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

While I'm here, enjoy some cat pictures

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I feel like this is especially prevalent among Remedy/Control fans. I know so many people, myself included, have Control on 2 or 3 or more platforms, bought just so they could have the excuse to play it again.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Speaking of the CW, this is all but guaranteed to be a good read.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And so I have a hard time discerning whether some of the aspects I don't like are like that because they're poorly designed or because I wanted More Control, which even Remedy could never give me.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The thing about sequels is that its hard to hit the same way the original did. Not impossible, but very very rare. Because some part of me will always be chasing the way the first made me feel.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I still love the game. I love the traversal. It's fun to leap between rooftops and zip down streets. It's a BLAST to run up walls and on ceilings. There's still enough Control here to really work for me. I'm having fun playing it. I enjoy the side missions, the story, the voice acting, and so on.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Also, if they make a Control 3 and it has mold in it, so help me, I will write Remedy a strongly worded letter. I'm tired of looking at mold. Even if it does look tasty.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Another thing worth mentioning are the World Events. Like "Guard this box of hit points" and "jump up to this box of hit points." They feel like MMO stuff that was put in there to fill out the map. Some of them are cool and involve fighting special enemies, but many of them are boring.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

When Jesse says in the first game that she feels like she's come home, that being there feels right, that's how I felt as the player. At E3, I got to talk to Sam Lake for seven seconds. I thanked him for making a game specifically for me. Resonant can't be that.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

New York is too big, too known, to be nearly so evocative. It feels like Remedy had the same amount of work hours/assets but had to spread it over a much much wider space. It was never going to have the same feeling as The Oldest House--one of my favorite places in all of video games.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hissed-up NYC was never going to be The Oldest House. The Oldest House is a special place. When I first heard that name back in 2018 or 2019, it gave me a shiver. It promised me the unexplainable. A building that shifts and moves on its own, and is twisted by the Altered Items within.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The billboards feel incredibly generic, too. This is weird because Remedy had KILLER wall art in Control. Warning posters with sick designs all over them. Where was that design when they were making the billboards?

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This problem comes up not just with the liminal other-new-york stuff I talked about above, but it also means that every apartment you go into has the same five or ten posters up. You'll go into a child's room and see a big poster for an adult-looking movie on the wall.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

In the Max Payne games, we were always on curated maps, small sections. A few blocks at most, and with very limited exploration. In Alan Wake 2, we were traveling through abstract, but again, limited versions of New York. They looked New Yorky Enough to pass. Variety isn't a problem there.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The art direction is also a victim of ambition versus work hours. Remedy has been playing around in New York City for a quarter of a century. Both Max Payne and both Alan Wake games have spent significant time there. These guys are familiar with New York City. But there's an important difference.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

As with Control, one of the big problems here is that the world is quite vertical. It's not as layered as Control was, but it's full of Tall Stuff, and the map doesn't account for that, really.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It's also ill-suited to the task of making the world make sense. I've spent hours trying to get to a yellow square one block away, only to find out that I had to make a big circle around (or get a later traversal power in some other cases). I'm finding the world more frustrating than fun in that way

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The map in Control sucked because it was an afterthought--the real plan was for you to navigate using the signs around the environment instead of bringing up a minimap every time you get turned around. But the city is just too big for that to work the way it did in the original.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

That's what this game feels like. Less like New York and more like a believable facsimile. Having Spider-Man to compare to makes this especially apparent. Those landmarks make it easy to navigate around New York while adding visual flavor. This feels like the New York of a CW TV show.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

New York is full of notable landmarks, but as we learned when Spider-Man Remastered had to remove the Chrysler Building due to a licensing issue, using those landmarks ain't free. If you're a TV nerd at all, you'll know that a huge amount of stuff has been filmed in Vancouver BC, in Canada.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

But the map sucks--both the navigation map and the world map itself. Getting around the map is really confusing, and I've spent a lot of time lost because too many things look too similar. This is where we get into the limitations of a small team making a game set in a big map.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The pace and flexibility of combat is solid, too. You have a choice of three main weapons and three secondary weapons. I started with the daggers and whip, but switched later to the glaive and hammers, and I've enjoyed both.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Some of the art direction is killer. The resonance gives the team a way to re-use assets in a way that feels creative and fresh and properly spooky. All the FBC stuff looks great, all the monsters look great.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Remedy Vibes are immaculate. This is why I'm here. I want to go to the place where the buildings are upside down. I love the Resonants, they're gorgeous. The text snippets you collect are great, too. Many of my favorite characters are back.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I like Dylan a lot. He sounds both like a child who never got to grow up normally AND like Jesse's brother. He talks the same way Jesse does, especially to things like animals and plants and inanimate objects. He carries massive guilt and responsibility on his shoulders, but sounds too young for it.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'm a ways into Control Resonant and I have some thoughts. What I like: Dylan, the Remedy Vibes, some of the art direction, the pace of combat. What I don't like: the map, some of the art direction, parts of the open world.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

But the end result is that it FEELS gray, too. Nothing about it made me want to be in that world. This ended up being my first Stream refund ever, is how much I didn't like it. Which sucks, because I usually love goofy co-op games.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Last night, I played Funnel Runners, a coop game about storm chasers. In this game, you ransack a neighborhood for van parts, and then you leave. The game isn't very fun, though it had some funny moments. But the whole thing is very gray and very loud, as you would expect.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If you're not rich, real estate is gambling, NOT investment. It used to be, but it isn't any more. Not for at least like 20 years.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

these days my ideal burger (that I didn't make myself) is a Whopper Jr. $5.50 for a Jr. and a medium fries, and the burger itself--a good size for a quick meal, tastes significantly better than mcdonalds while costing half as much. If I want a monster burger, I can make it at home!

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

And Stranger Things. I liked that show but it was wildly uneven.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Okay, so I was wrong--Watchmen and Community are on there. But Devs is still a massive oversight. With that said, glad to see Bojack, Twin Peaks the Return, I Think You Should Leave, Broad City, Key & Peele, and Shogun get their flowers.

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

yeah it turns out i just can't read, oops

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Where's community? I read the whole list twice!

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Look at this list that doesn't have Community, Devs or HBO's Watchmen on it

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Eric Frederiksen @piratesyar.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I followed Resident Evil with Weapons, which I hadn't seen. I'm still parsing it, but I really liked it. I've been fucking with Letterboxd lately as I try to watch more movies, if anyone wants to be letterbuddies: boxd.it/7lxvx

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