the whole uproar about its premature release aside, i would say that (both collectively speaking and for myself) the primary grief with cyberpunk 2077 is its familiarity. there is—understandably, i think—a sort of unspoken and paradoxical desire for cyberpunk to simultaneously push boundaries and somehow return to what most would see as its conceptual roots: neuromancer, blade runner, and other works which set forth the feel and iconography of future worlds run by tech and overwhelming corporate power and corruption, as well as a profound posthuman interest. all of these ideas are well beyond familiar, now. this doesn't mean there aren't new frontiers for the genre... it just means that cd projekt red opted for nostalgia and pastiche. this isn't entirely a bad thing. (even those recent shadowrun games were very character-driven, nestled comfortably in their established and frankly derivative universe. and they're great!) it's a perfectly serviceable backdrop for character-driven stories, and for better or for worse, 2077 is abundant in this realm. for the most part, i think it's all really good! i mean, i really like some of these characters and enjoyed spending time with them unreservedly. to the point that... well, the culmination of my time with some of them almost left me feeling a bit empty, knowing there would be little left to look forward to outside my own imagination. (sux 2 b lonesome... heh heh.) maybe there is something "cyberpunk" about playing a game that makes one feel so forlorn in this era of everyone being so terminally online, connected by tech, yet no closer for it... seriously, i fuckin dream every night of finding someone who loves me and... uh, i kind of love those dreams despite the bittersweet aftermath of awakening.

Booker Dewitt: Into the Spiderverse is a ~10 hour brain slog of an experience that dares to ask: how can we combine fetch quests, excessively rehashed enemy encounters, and a hamfisted possibly interesting meta-narrative all into the one game.

I wasn't a fan of the first or second Bioshock, but I had heard plenty of praise for Bioshock Infinite for bringing new and interesting life into the series. What I got from it was a horrendous "take" on socio-economic and racial inequality mixed with some of the worst FPS combat in the last ten years and a "your princess is in another castle" storyline.

I would rather play Doom 2016 while drinking sriracha from the bottle than re-experience Bioshock Infinite. The game was beautiful, but man by the end of it did I grow tired of how the gameplay was the same exact loop for hours and hours upon end. Seriously, if you cut out the entire middle portion of this game and just include the arrival in Columbia and the lore dump at the end, you probably have the same experience, except you don't have to fight the same exact fight over and over again. It's not hard to realize that throwing the same enemies at your player without any variation or explanation for an entire VIDEO GAME is NOT fun.

The guns were mildly rewarding, however you never have enough ammo. The powers were pointless, you can run through the game using only one. The characters were horrible: Booker is copy cutter chad-bro, Elizabeth goes from damsel in distress to omnipotent chad being, Comstock just sucks, and the abhorrent treatment of the African-American characters and their plight is downright disturbing. Other reviewers have done a good job pointing that last part out, and it's one thing that struck me as especially despicable.

Legitimately I do not understand what the hype of this game was about. The story sucks and could and should have been simplified, the narrative which could have been cool was completely mistreated and mistold, the combat is awful, and the conversation of racial and economic opression misses the mark as hard as it could.

I cannot recommend anyone play Bioshock Infinite.

I liked this so much when it dropped, recently replayed it and ended up extremely soured on it. Most of Bioshock's, and by extension System Shock's, DNA is gone and replaced with a narrative that's too tame and gameplay too simple. There are some great things here, the anachronistic music, the world design, Songbird's design, but a lot of it ends up mired in social commentary the game doesn't have the balls to really dig into. All that said I'd play another game in Columbia, maybe one far more decayed and mired in conflict like Rapture was, but I'm chalking this one down as one of the biggest disappoints of its generation.