Phantom Liberty is not just more of everything that was already good about the main campaign, it also delivers almost everywhere that the main game faltered and more.

It is better written and paced, it has better characters, has better gigs and side-stories with more interesting choices and unique presentation. Dogtown is physically smaller than other districts of Night City but it is far more dense with content, and has an identity that is unique from the rest of the city.

I considered talking about the gameplay more because there are some neat additions here but I feel like that really is just beating around the bush; what this expansion really offers is the single most compelling narrative experience set in this universe yet.

Solomon Reed, So Mi Songbird, President Myers, Colonel Hansen, these are the names you will learn and that you will remember for years to come after playing through this expansion. If you already like the base game then you owe it to yourself to experience this; if you don't, hell, go watch your favorite streamer play through it, just don't miss it.

This expansion is as integral to the Cyberpunk 2077 experience as Artorias of the Abyss was to Dark Souls and The Old Hunters was to Bloodborne. You are not done with Cyberpunk 2077 until you have played through this.

This review is based on the Patch 2.1 version of the game, from a playthrough started on January 1st of 2024. It is not indicative of any version prior to this patch.

Cyberpunk 2077 flies higher and further than most other games even dream of. It features one of the most wonderfully realized worlds I have ever had the pleasure of visiting and the moment to moment gameplay is engaging most of the way through, but falls just short of fully realizing its vision, spread too thin at times by too many disparate systems that are unable to hit the same level of polish and overall quality. Even so, CP2077 remains one of the most immersive and fun gaming experiences of the decade (so far).

Narrative/Writing - The world comes alive through interesting characters with complex motivations and backgrounds, side stories that explore themes pertinent to both the main narrative of the game as well as those of the genre, and a commitment to realizing and maintaining the distinct cultural flair of the setting. Two main detractors come to mind: first, there is a nagging feeling of dissonance between the driving source of conflict in the main story and the fact you are playing a 50+ hour RPG experience, within a lush city sandbox full of quests and secrets, many hidden in its disparate nooks and crannies. This ends up robbing the main narrative from any real sense of urgency, and you are only reminded every so often when the protagonist suddenly drops on the floor and starts crawling around in pain when the plot deems it necessary. Second, for all the rich and interesting characters you meet on your journey throughout Night City, the protagonist himself, V, seems to be lacking a much-need core of authenticity, and while I’ve considered that may every well be the point in some sort of nod to the themes of alienation and facade that are central to the setting, it doesn’t change the fact V is not very engaging or compelling; it mostly just leaves you wondering why do any of these much cooler and interesting characters end up giving him the time of day. One third, lesser point, is with the pacing of the story: sometimes it feels like you are dragging towards an unclear goal, then suddenly you find yourself at the next big plot beat, and while this is particularly jarring in the early to mid sections of the narrative, once things start falling into place and you are playing through some of the biggest set-pieces the game has to offer you will eventually find yourself glued to your seat and onboard all the way to one of the game’s many endings, all of which offer largely satisfying conclusions to your journey, though some more so than others.

Presentation - There is probably no game that has left me speechless at the beauty of its technical and artistic achievements as often as it has left me staring with disbelief at the third or fourth bug I have experienced in that play session alone, except for probably any Bethesda game ever made. The fact is: the game is simply at the cutting edge of graphical presentation even today, 2 to 3 years away from its original release. If you own a top end graphics card with ray tracing capabilities chances are the game might be worth the price of entry for you on that point alone. It is just hard to ignore how often a car might bug out and turn road traffic into a loud, massive pile-up completely independent of any input on your part. These are distractions that can ultimately break you away from being fully-immersed and they will do so often; but when they are not, you can easily submerge yourself in the splendor of the world, driving through the neon-lit streets of Night City, all reflected with a mirror-sheen off the body of your vehicle in real time.

Gameplay - Nothing surprised more about this game than just how solid, well-balanced, and most importantly FUN, this game turned out to be. For a studio that has spent the past few decades developing expansive 3rd Person RPG experiences with melee-focused combat, CDProjektRed delivers a primarily 1st Person Action-RPG/Shooter Hybrid experience that at the very least matches, and often surpasses, the standard set by other genre veterans. Whether you choose to play hardened Solo ninja with automatic weapon and katana expertise constantly zipping in and out of cover, a cyberrunner capable of frying most enemies where they stand before they ever get close (and tech weapon enhancements in case any manage to sneak up on you), or a chromed-out bruiser with high physical endurance for crushing your enemies with Gorilla Arms and devastating shotgun blasts at point-blank, plus way more mixed builds than I could possibly elaborate on, there is something to latch on to here for almost all players. Despite the solid core gameplay, however, there are several elements here that leave much to be desired: driving feels wonky and never quite responsive enough (at least on PC), systems such a police “wanted” system are so negligible and easy to ignore that they feel like afterthoughts even after the so-called rework that released with the 2.0 patch, and side-mission content can vary wildly between uniquely memorable and thought provoking and just another “sneak in and kill/rescue/steal the target.” It does, however, help that those places you are often sneaking into have excellent level design that lends itself to tackling the mission in more than a couple of ways, and I nevertheless found myself playing through all of the side content for a total of over 150 hours of playtime so clearly they were not all that boring.

Conclusion - Beyond the RPG genre, this has been one of my favorite gaming experiences of the decade thus far and I can’t help but to be excited to see how CDProjektRed builds upon the foundation they have laid with this in the next title, whenever that may be.

RE4 Remake manages to carve out its own identity apart from the original by nailing the careful balance of re-imagining itself for modern audiences while clearly understanding and hitting all the principal beats fans of the original would expect, ultimately creating an experience that feels respectful to the essence of the original while not being afraid to make changes that put it better in line with the gameplay expectations of a modern game.

Let’s consider combat as an illustration of this balance. In the original, you moved around with a variation of the “tank” control scheme, except with a camera locked close over-the-shoulder, unlike its predecessors. This camera would then zoom in further when aiming your weapon and would root your character in place, unable to move and shoot simultaneously. These limitations on your character’s movement, coupled with the enemy AI tendency to flank you from the sides, made for extremely tense and frenetic combat, forcing you to constantly reposition as enemies tried to surround you. Context-based melee attacks also served as effective crowd control if enemies ever got too close, activated with the press of a button after a well-placed shot, and most animations for actions such as dropping down from higher ground granted lots of invulnerability frames. All of these choices made for tense third person shooting combat unlike anything people had ever experienced before, and it served as a foundation upon which the industry iterated over the years.

What this means for RE4 Remake, however, is that many of these design conventions are no longer novel, and in some ways feel outdated by modern standards. In order to live up to the legacy of the original, they opted to tap into the essence of combat, the moment to moment experience rather than simply bringing forward the same systems with higher fidelity.

In Remake, movement and camera control is now omnidirectional, with the over-the-shoulder camera only locking behind you when aiming your weapon, and even while aiming you are capable of moving around, albeit with a penalty to accuracy; this all puts it in line with design conventions expected for a 2023 action game. You also still have all the tools you previously had, such as context sensitive melee attacks for crowd control and invulnerability during those same attacks. Remake manages to retain the same sense of tension during combat as the original by implementing much more aggressive enemy AI, they are more likely to surround you on all sides (including from the back) and they do so faster and more often. Charging attacks have greater range and they stagger much less often, even when taking a headshot, which used to guarantee a melee attack afterwards, so clearing the space around you with roundhouse kick is not as reliable as it used to be. Even animation invulnerability is not as much of a given: dropping from a rooftop directly into a crowd will have you swarmed and cut to pieces the moment you touch ground. And to account for the chaotic pace of the new combat you have new defensive options as well in the form of an improved knife with a parrying system that will give you the edge in almost any situation if you have the mind and skill to master it.

This results in the same type of frenetic, desperate combat situations that make famously memorable encounters such as the Village battle at the beginning of the game land with almost the same level of impact as they once did back in 2005. It really is an incredible achievement that should not be understated. In fact, I would say the only downside to the game is the “almost” in my previous statement above; for all of its achievements as a remake, RE4 will not be revolutionizing the industry a second time, and while I wasn’t really expecting it to it is nonetheless THE BAR that was previously set by the original, and for that I can’t honestly say they stand equal in their importance to the medium as a whole.

That being said this is EASILY one of the best action titles of the year and worth a playthrough by anyone, and whether you are a series veteran or complete newcomer, RE4 Remake will be a game you remember for years to come.

Typically, when I sit down to play a game I don't stop unless I have a reason to stop since I tend to lose track of time. On a weekend, I may drop as much as 8 hours into a single session if I dont have much else going on and maybe even more if I'm really enjoying the game. With Callisto Protocol I only stomach 5 hours of play over a weekend despite having no plans other than to marathon the whole thing.

To elaborate a bit, I found the game impressive on all technical fronts but found absolutely zero joy in its combat system. Taking turns between dodging attacks and bonking gooey dudes in the head with your baton became so mind-numbingly dull that I couldn't force myself to continue when I realized this was ALL the game had in store for me. All of the great atmosphere built by the incredible visuals and sound design would not save me from the monotony ahead. The following Monday I sat down to play and stared at the menu screen for about 15 minutes before giving up and uninstalling. I could not find in me to slog it through another 7 to 10 hours just for the sake of completion.

I've read somewhere that the passiveness of the enemy AI (they like to stand around and wait for their turn to hit you when in groups) came from a developer update, after people complained the game was too hard when enemies actually attacked as groups, so this may be an interesting case of devs breaking their own combat system to appease public opinions of the game, but regardless of any of that I am still left with the single most BORING game I played this year and I cannot recommend it to anyone based on my experience with it.

As a piece of DLC, it's maybe a bit on the short side, more like a single "level" than any sort of meaningful expansion to the main game. Don't expect anything too new or novel in terms of content, it is still reusing and color swapping enemies from the base game and Gorgon is not particularly stunning sight to behold.

Ultimately, your enjoyment will come down to how much you enjoy the writing behind the quests, your crew's reactions and comments on the procedings, and the expanded world-building, and I very much enjoyed all these pieces on my end so it is an easy recommendation on my book.

I stepped away from this game for a little while to play through Control (in preparation for AW2) and when I came back all of my saves had a performance stutter bug that I spent weeks trying to resolve before I gave up because I wasn't having all that much fun before I took a break from it anyways and there is 0% chance I'm going to restart after 66 hours of playtime.

I feel like this anecdote of why I'll never finish it is better than any detailed breakdown I could write over how boring and mid this game is.

A rock-solid action game wrapped in the skin of a bloated fantasy RPG, I couldn't help but feel there was lots of unrealized potential here on pretty much every level, from narrative, thematic, and character writing to all gameplay outside of combat, quest design, you name it; and yet I would still recommend it easily, in all of its flawed splendor, to anyone with the slightest bit of curiosity for it.

The reason this game doesn't get docked an extra half-star for this review is because for every horribly-paced fetch quest you trudge through, full of stiffly-animated NPCs and relentless backtracking, the heights this game reaches with its Eikon battles, full of bombastic music and cinematic flair, are so astronomically ascendant that it will successfully distract you from how bored or frustrated you were an hour ago as your inner-teen resurfaces and loses its mind at the insanity blasting from your screen and speakers. The spectacle ranges between the kind of cinematic scale that God of War games used to be so famous for before its reinvention for the modern era and the shounen-excess of your favorite anime battles. It's really hard to find anything else like it in the current gaming space, and I appreciate that there are developers like Creative Business Unit 3 that will make you understand "yeah, that looks like it would take half a decade and a couple hundred million $ to make" once you finally get to experience the fruits of their labor.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with this game and for how tired the side content can get I still got out of it what will likely be some of the most memorable gaming moments of this year, and will likely endure when I look back at the end of this decade to examine what stuck with me all the way through.

I had quite a fun time with this one. This is a lot closer to the original Fallout in terms of tone and explicitly only that game in the series as everything after deviated further and further from the original flavor, but that is not to say this game is just a poor attempt at recreating that flavor; it very much has an identity of its own, and that comes through in the narrative themes, world-building and writing.

I get the sense that the popular consensus that the game is "mid" has more to do with people having played it with the inflated story/narrative expectations of "New Vegas IN SPACE" than any specific issues with the game itself. I could also see some being disappointed with the limited scale of the various worlds they visited throughout their playthrough, but I found myself more than happy trading exploration for a more focused and streamlined approach to traveling and questing. From a graphical standpoint, the art direction is strong enough to make every planet and asteroid we land on feel distinct, though some are a definitely a lot more interesting to stare at than others.

That being said it aint perfect and that reflects the most in the combat, which becomes pretty trivial pretty quickly and lacks enemy variety.

Your mileage may vary but after bouncing off Starfield this felt exactly like what I was missing.