DrSlowpokePhd
I'm not even halfway done and this is already one of my favorite games of all time. Lots of games have sex appeal, but none of them have sex appeal to this degree.
2015
Saying this before playing baldurs gate 3 seems really silly but this is hands down the most interested I've ever been in a CRPG outside of like, Disco Elysium. This game and setting fucking rule.
2022
Lesbians will show you their ideal woman and it's just a handheld radio tuned to a numbers station.
2023
Its fine, way more fun with friends in regular queue, but many of the sins of Overwatch 1 are still present. Battle passes turn the game into an outright chore, so if you can, ignore them.
2022
Citizen Sleeper is the only game I can think of that accurately simulates the minutiae of day to day life as someone with a disability. Play it now. An absolute masterpiece.
This game easily has one of the single best character creators I've ever seen in a game. It passes the "can I make a clocky transfemme" test with flying colors. Playing as strider for my first playthrough, the combat feels amazing. The story is a bit dry, but incredibly fun to attempt to make sense of. Think Bayonetta with a high fantasy twist.
2022
Vampire survivors is the game that just keeps on giving. Every time I boot it up, the hours just seem to melt away. All ambition I had for the day seems to surrender itself in favor of inching ever closer towards getting all achievements for the game. Its like junk food, it tastes great, but eat it too much and you'll face dire consequences.
2020
This review contains spoilers
The hype for Cyberpunk 2077 surrounding its release was immense, and rightfully so. CD Projekt Red had garnered the goodwill of gamers with their consumer-friendly policies following the release of The Witcher 3, and gained mass appeal from gamers who would have never touched the first two witcher games due to how niche they were at the time. It quickly became Poland's largest cultural export, and all eyes were on them for their next release, an ambitious open-world RPG based on Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk 2020 TTRPG system.
I was never a huge fan of CD Projekt Red and The Witcher series as a whole, or even the cyberpunk genre (i've tried and failed to finish Neuromancer a dozen times) so I watched the whole shitshow surrounding the release of Cyberpunk 2077 shoveling popcorn into my face, calling them out for the transphobic ad they put in the game, watching glitch compilations on youtube, and I didn't pay much attention to the game until 3 years later. At this point in my life a lot had changed since the release of the game, most notable being that I started transitioning, and so I have a much different perspective on the game now.
And I have to say, in so many ways it's fucking fantastic. But I also have plenty of glaring issues with it.
Night City feels like a living, breathing organism to a degree that most other open worlds only dream of achieving. I'm astonished at the level of detail that has clearly been put into this game (sadly at the cost of worker crunch, a common issue at CD Projekt Red it seems). The only other game that has come close to feeling like this was Breath Of The Wild, and that game doesn't even come close to the density that Cyberpunk achieves.
The gameplay is remarkably similar to other first-person RPGs/Immersive Sims, combat feels great, stealth feels great, but the space in between where the more chaotic quickhacks lie are some of the best parts of this game. Its not quite at the level of something like Dishonored/Prey, but it provides a good amount of player freedom in terms of approaching combat. Driving felt okay (I mostly used a keyboard so driving was never going to feel perfect) and the fast travel system works okay, if a bit tedious at times.
But the parts where Cyberpunk 2077 surprised me the most was during the moments I least expected it to. Little things like when Misty gives you a tarot reading, or when Panam drives you across the Badlands. Moments like when Claire takes you to a picturesque view of the city and tells you she wants revenge on the man who killed her husband. Cyberpunk 2077's strength is in the moments of emotional intimacy between V and their friends, and nowhere is that more true than in Judy's last quest, Pyramid Song.
I could write a whole essay about this quest on its own but in short, the quest is a captivating display of emotional intimacy that concludes with Judy either leaving Night City altogether or entering a romance with Female V and basically U-Hauling together. This is Cyberpunk 2077 at its peak.
However, my problems with Cyberpunk extend way beyond the technical issues with it. Matter of fact, I don't mind the technical issues, my favorite game is Fallout: New Vegas, I can look past that.
My issues instead lie with the way CDPR makes games, specifically how they make RPGs that focus on *a character rather than your character (hence why I refer to the game as an immersive sim more often than not), which leads to some truly baffling decisions. The first act does not need to be 6 hours long, and I don't really see the point in spending that much time on plot points that are covered in the 15 minute cinematic trailer for the game. It's fluff that wouldn't exist if the player had more agency. Johnny Silverhand is a bit of an insufferable asshole who never really learns anything throughout the entire game, which I get is his whole shtick as a character, but it gets really grating at times. These decisions only work the way they do because V is a character you are playing, not because you* created a character named V.
You have so much control over your character in this game, how they look, where they come from, what they specialize in, etc. So why am I playing as V, and not Veronica, or Vanessa, or M, or G0DD355? The point of a Role Playing Game is to be a character you create the story for, to experience the challenges the GM has set up for you. Cyberpunk 2077 comes so close to achieving this, but it suffers from a lot of the same issues that caused me to fall off of the Witcher games.
Before I finish, I want to talk about the crafting and loot system for a bit. These systems would be much better if there was weapon durability a la BoTW. It's a controversial system but I feel like it would make loot a lot more interesting and give crafting an actual purpose as opposed to upgrading unique weapons.
I was never a huge fan of CD Projekt Red and The Witcher series as a whole, or even the cyberpunk genre (i've tried and failed to finish Neuromancer a dozen times) so I watched the whole shitshow surrounding the release of Cyberpunk 2077 shoveling popcorn into my face, calling them out for the transphobic ad they put in the game, watching glitch compilations on youtube, and I didn't pay much attention to the game until 3 years later. At this point in my life a lot had changed since the release of the game, most notable being that I started transitioning, and so I have a much different perspective on the game now.
And I have to say, in so many ways it's fucking fantastic. But I also have plenty of glaring issues with it.
Night City feels like a living, breathing organism to a degree that most other open worlds only dream of achieving. I'm astonished at the level of detail that has clearly been put into this game (sadly at the cost of worker crunch, a common issue at CD Projekt Red it seems). The only other game that has come close to feeling like this was Breath Of The Wild, and that game doesn't even come close to the density that Cyberpunk achieves.
The gameplay is remarkably similar to other first-person RPGs/Immersive Sims, combat feels great, stealth feels great, but the space in between where the more chaotic quickhacks lie are some of the best parts of this game. Its not quite at the level of something like Dishonored/Prey, but it provides a good amount of player freedom in terms of approaching combat. Driving felt okay (I mostly used a keyboard so driving was never going to feel perfect) and the fast travel system works okay, if a bit tedious at times.
But the parts where Cyberpunk 2077 surprised me the most was during the moments I least expected it to. Little things like when Misty gives you a tarot reading, or when Panam drives you across the Badlands. Moments like when Claire takes you to a picturesque view of the city and tells you she wants revenge on the man who killed her husband. Cyberpunk 2077's strength is in the moments of emotional intimacy between V and their friends, and nowhere is that more true than in Judy's last quest, Pyramid Song.
I could write a whole essay about this quest on its own but in short, the quest is a captivating display of emotional intimacy that concludes with Judy either leaving Night City altogether or entering a romance with Female V and basically U-Hauling together. This is Cyberpunk 2077 at its peak.
However, my problems with Cyberpunk extend way beyond the technical issues with it. Matter of fact, I don't mind the technical issues, my favorite game is Fallout: New Vegas, I can look past that.
My issues instead lie with the way CDPR makes games, specifically how they make RPGs that focus on *a character rather than your character (hence why I refer to the game as an immersive sim more often than not), which leads to some truly baffling decisions. The first act does not need to be 6 hours long, and I don't really see the point in spending that much time on plot points that are covered in the 15 minute cinematic trailer for the game. It's fluff that wouldn't exist if the player had more agency. Johnny Silverhand is a bit of an insufferable asshole who never really learns anything throughout the entire game, which I get is his whole shtick as a character, but it gets really grating at times. These decisions only work the way they do because V is a character you are playing, not because you* created a character named V.
You have so much control over your character in this game, how they look, where they come from, what they specialize in, etc. So why am I playing as V, and not Veronica, or Vanessa, or M, or G0DD355? The point of a Role Playing Game is to be a character you create the story for, to experience the challenges the GM has set up for you. Cyberpunk 2077 comes so close to achieving this, but it suffers from a lot of the same issues that caused me to fall off of the Witcher games.
Before I finish, I want to talk about the crafting and loot system for a bit. These systems would be much better if there was weapon durability a la BoTW. It's a controversial system but I feel like it would make loot a lot more interesting and give crafting an actual purpose as opposed to upgrading unique weapons.