The majority of the past few games developed by RGG Studios have mostly been a transition for the world of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise. Kazuma Kiryu, who had been the series’ extremely popular main protagonist for nearly a decade, was essentially retired from starring in the mainline games in 2016’s Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, after being featured as the lead or co-lead in numerous entries of the series. The mainline games then shifted genres entirely with 2020’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon, going from a 3D beat-’em-up to a turn-based RPG, while the beat-’em-up gameplay was delegated to the new detective-themed Judgment spin-off series. These games each featured fantastic new protagonists with their own charming supporting casts. It felt like RGG Studios was testing the waters with these new characters and approaches to gameplay, and since the Judgment games and Yakuza: Like a Dragon went on to be successful despite not starring Kiryu, it was time to officially pass on the torch to the new generation. RGG Studios does just that with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. It’s a seminal entry for the series that eclipses just about everything that came before it in scope.

The franchise has always been defined by its large and elaborate overworlds that are filled with stunning amounts of content to discover, including substories, mini games, mini bosses, and an assortment of other fun challenges and things to do. Infinite Wealth somehow manages to take that standard to the next level. The game primarily takes place in Honolulu, Hawaii, one of the largest overworlds the series has ever seen, in addition to including the cities of Ijincho and Kamurocho from the previous games. Each of these locations has an abundance of things to do, to the point where it’s honestly a little bit overwhelming. The first half of the game in particular has several back-to-back tutorials regarding how its systems and side content works and it can be a bit difficult keeping track of it all. This is a very enormous and lengthy game though, and as long as you give yourself time and breathing room, you’ll eventually get used to… most of it.

The turn-based combat is heavily improved from the previous game, with a ton of quality of life changes. A new and vital element of combat is that you now have a limited range you can move your characters in. This allows you to position your characters in order to make the most effective use of their special attacks, adding a whole extra layer of depth to the combat. Drink Links and Bonds, which are conversations that you can have with your allies that lets you get to know them better, are a lot more important in this game. Completing them unlocks additional combo attacks, which you can perform by knocking enemies into your allies, as well as chain attacks, where your allies will perform automatic follow-up attacks after landing one of your own. I can’t stress enough how much I love these. It is indescribably satisfying having all of these different methods of attacking an enemy come together all at once. Even if your party is outnumbered, it feels like you constantly have the jump on every enemy you come across.

Despite all of the quality of life changes to combat, there is one element of it that I found to be lacking. Perfect Guards return from the previous game, where timing a button press to the enemy’s attack allows you to mitigate some damage. It has been some time since I last played Yakuza 7, so I can’t trust my memory on this, but it feels like pulling off perfect guards in Infinite Wealth is a lot harder than the previous game. The timing of the button press won’t always align with the enemy’s attack and it can be difficult determining when you’re actually supposed to press the button. In addition to that, the camera won’t always shift to the character that’s getting attacked in time for you to see the enemy’s attack itself, so you’ll have to guess when you’re supposed to press the button. This is especially frequent with attacks where the enemy will quickly bounce from ally to ally, though thankfully, there aren’t very many enemies in the game that do this, it’s mostly reserved for boss fights.

In addition to the combat, there are a bunch of other quality of life changes that I really want to highlight. The job system has been changed so that you can choose any skill from any job and assign them to a character, which allows for an insane level of character customization. Enemies spotting you in the overworld doesn’t immediately start a battle. Now a battle will only start if you remain in their field of vision for a certain amount of time, or if you just run up to them. You can also immediately take out lower level enemies with the Smackdown option, which allows you to instantly win the fight and can help save time. These are all godsend changes that I’m so thankful for.

I didn’t engage with all of the side content because there is just so much of it, but I did want to highlight Dondoko Island. This is the equivalent to the Ichiban Holdings mini game from 7. This single mini game honestly feels like a fully-fledged spin-off title in its own right. It takes extremely obvious inspiration from Animal Crossing: New Horizons where you’re customizing your own island resort by breaking trees and rocks, collecting materials, and placing all sorts of different furnishings and attractions all over the island. You can invite several guests to experience your island where they’ll spend Dondoko Bucks, a currency which can be converted into actual money. While you won’t break the economy to the same extent that you could in Yakuza 7, you get pretty damn close, and it’s a side activity that’s not only very worthwhile, but also engaging and genuinely relaxing.

Infinite Wealth’s story left me with a lot of mixed, but mostly positive feelings. I wasn’t as moved emotionally by this game as I was with Yakuza 7, which by the end had me in tears. Despite that, I still think the story is really good overall. It handles both Ichiban and Kiryu’s stories extremely well. Ichiban’s importance to the story isn’t diminished or overshadowed by Kiryu, which was a worry of mine going into this game. A major plot point is that Kiryu is suffering from cancer and doesn’t have much longer to live. One of Kiryu’s biggest flaws as a character is that he is always undertaking the brunt of burdens unto himself, rarely letting people in and sharing his own personal struggles with others. While he did originally meet Ichiban in Yakuza 7, which left a huge impression on him, it isn’t until here in Infinite Wealth where he finally starts sharing the burden with not just Ichiban, but the rest of the playable cast as well. It’s not just fantastic character development, but it really feels like a passing of the torch between these characters. The biggest downside to the story I feel is that it doesn’t do the best job at balancing the party members and the roles they play in the game. A few characters like Zhao and Joon Gi Han feel like they’re kind of just along for the ride. You still get to spend time with them with the Drink Links and Bond system though, so it’s not the biggest deal.

The game celebrates Kiryu as well as the franchise’s legacy with side content exclusive to him. I don’t want to give too much of this away, but if you’re a fan of the series, then this side content should be considered essential. It’s not just a trip down memory lane, but a way of tying up some loose ends of the series as well. Still, I really want to talk about it as well as the ending to the game, so I’ve made a spoiler Pastebin where I discuss them.

I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game with this review. Infinite Wealth is really the perfect title for this game, as it really does feel like it provides an endless treasure trove of sheer enjoyment. Time just stopped existing for me when I played it. I was locked in, having way too much fun and I couldn’t put it down. It’s a wonderful celebration of not just the series’ past, but its future as well. It’s truly incredible, and I genuinely cannot fathom how RGG Studios could possibly make a game that’s bigger and richer than this. It is overwhelmingly phenomenal.

Sigil is a set of nine new levels for the original DOOM by series co-creator John Romero, self-described as “The Unofficial Fifth Episode of DOOM”. These new levels are okay, but I wouldn’t say that I was the biggest fan of them.

I do like how elaborately designed they are. Finding the correct switches to open the way forward was really satisfying after being stuck for a while. It’s just that my least favorite types of levels in DOOM are the ones where you have to navigate in the dark, and Sigil has those kinds of levels in spades. You end up encountering enemies frequently in tight and cramped spaces, and you’re constantly ambushed by a ton of enemies all at once in areas where you can barely even see them because of hilariously cheap traps. You’ll end up dying frequently, and the levels can feel very tedious as a result.

I really like the use of textures that give this series of levels its own distinct feel, and I enjoyed the music a lot. Otherwise, I didn’t care too much for these levels. They aren't completely awful, I did enjoy a couple of the earlier levels. As a whole though, I didn’t really dig this expansion. I really hope that Sigil II tries something different from this with its levels.

I've enjoyed what I've played so far quite a bit, but the lack of a map is a real sore spot for me. The developer is currently working on an in-game map, so I've decided to just shelve this game for now and I plan to come back to it when the map update comes out.

As far as my current impressions go, movement is great once you get a few power ups, combat is kinda meh (might get better with upgrades?), and I love its retro aesthetic with its music and visuals. Nails the look of an early 3D platformer. Not much of a story from what I've seen.

Despite growing up as a lifelong fan of Marvel Comics, I knew next to nothing about the Guardians of the Galaxy until their self-titled Marvel Cinematic Universe film in 2014. All of the Guardians films are some of the best to come out of the MCU. They’re a fun and surprisingly emotional trilogy of films featuring a really enjoyable cast of ragtag mercenaries turned found family. 2021’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy video game mostly manages to capture what makes those movies a good time. Unfortunately, for almost everything this game does right, there’s a caveat that brings it down.

You would think that the game being named after the whole team means that you’d eventually end up playing as each one of the Guardians, but that isn’t the case. In this game, you only play as their leader, Star-Lord. The entire game revolves around his capability as a leader. It focuses on testing his ability to lead the Guardians and making the best use out of all of their unique powers and talents, as well as maintaining morale throughout the entire team. This concept extends to every facet of gameplay, and I really like it. I think it's a great way to approach a video game about the Guardians.

The story is definitely its strongest point. The game has its own spin on the common themes and ideas that are explored in the movies- learning how to lead, deal with loss, the positives and negatives of a found family, and opening up to those around you. It takes place in its own separate continuity from the MCU, but you can tell that it draws almost all of its inspiration from James Gunn’s interpretation in terms of portraying the characters. It manages to be just as enjoyable and funny as the films, to the point where it's almost indistinguishable from them aside from certain plot details. It surprised me with one of its plot twists, and the story as a whole actually exceeded my expectations.

Levels involve you exploring all sorts of different alien worlds and getting into skirmishes with either the local wildlife or various factions seeking to stop you from saving the universe. Exploration is fairly linear and straightforward. You generally follow a path with some light platforming until you come across a roadblock that will require one or several of the Guardians’ abilities to remove or overcome it. Platforming can feel very stiff. Star-Lord’s jumps have almost no momentum and it can lead to some embarrassing falls at times. The roadblocks always require the same Guardian ability to get past them, so you never really have to think too long about what you need to do to progress. There were times when the way forward is through a tight crevice whose entrance can be hard to see, so I was left very confused on where to go several times when exploring. It was really frustrating when this happened.

Combat is essentially that of a third person shooter. You’ll be shooting enemies while issuing commands to the Guardians. Each Guardian has unique attacks and abilities that can be used to damage or incapacitate enemies in a variety of ways, and they each have their own situational uses. It takes a little getting used to at first. I didn’t realize how much the game wanted me to utilize the Guardians’ abilities initially so combat was really difficult for a while. You’re meant to constantly be using them, otherwise you won’t do that much damage to a majority of enemies in the game. Their abilities do have a cool down, but that cool down isn’t very long, so you have to constantly be watching for when they are available again. Star-Lord also has his own unique abilities with their own cooldown periods. It can get chaotic tracking everything on screen at once. You not only have to keep track of the large amounts of enemies you’ll be facing in a fight, but you also need to constantly keep an eye on your teammates, make sure they’re not incapacitated or downed, and watch for when they can use one of their special abilities again, while also being aware of when Star-Lord’s own abilities are available. It can be overwhelming, but you eventually get used to it.

When your backs are against the wall, you can Huddle Up, which is this game’s version of a power up mechanic. When activated, the Guardians will come together and make some comments regarding how the fight is going. You’ll then have dialogue options for a short speech that’s meant to rally and empower your team, and you have to pick the correct option based on their comments. If you pick the correct option, the entire team’s health is restored and they’re all temporarily buffed, but if you pick the wrong one, only Star-Lord gets buffed. I really love this mechanic, it’s one of the most creative power ups I’ve ever seen in video games, and really captures the theme of leadership the game is trying to convey.

In-between exploring worlds, you’ll also have an opportunity to just chill in the Guardians’ ship: The Milano. Here, you can bond with your teammates and speak with them to learn more about them, as well as discuss the unfolding events of the story. This game has a lot of dialogue, and I suspect that this might get on certain people’s nerves. Personally, I found the dialogue to be entertaining, funny, and endearing most of the time. However, something you notice over the course of the game is that the Guardians yell at each other a lot. They have to yell at each other during combat since fighting is loud, but they’re also yelling and arguing amongst each other frequently during the first half of the game. While overall I enjoyed the dialogue, I won’t lie, it can get grating at times.

The game is rather long, to the point where it really overstays its welcome. Levels tend to stretch on for quite a while, enemies can take a long time to put down which drags out combat, and you revisit the same locations multiple times. The experience gets rather repetitive the longer it goes on for. By the time I reached the end, I was very ready for it to be over. There is definitely a lot of fat that could’ve been trimmed.

Graphically, the game looks absolutely gorgeous, with a really colorful artstyle that I found very pleasing to look at. However, the game itself really lacks polish, with constant visual and audio glitches. A lot of animations won’t play correctly and cause certain characters to stutter wildly at times. Drax often won’t sheathe his knives when he’s supposed to, so when he crosses his arms, it looks like he’s impaling himself with them. Dialogue in cutscenes will frequently skip or just straight up not play at all. I will say that it runs super smoothly on PC, I never had any frame drops despite all of the chaos on the screen, but the other glitches were constant and distracting, especially the audio ones.

Aesthetically, the game emulates the films’ 1980s vibes, and they do a great job doing so. There are a ton of licensed rock, metal, and pop tracks from that time period that play either after you Huddle Up in combat, or on board the Milano, and they’re all mostly great picks. Though I do have to heckle the devs for their choice of an Iron Maiden song. Seriously, you had access to the entire Iron Maiden catalog and you chose Where Eagles Dare??? Not Run to the Hills, 2 Minutes to Midnight, Aces High, or The Trooper… you chose Eagles. It’s such a disappointing and mid choice. This has no real bearing on my overall opinion, I just really like Iron Maiden’s music and was a little sad at the song they chose to be in the game. They get bonus props for creating a fictional metal band with an entire album just for this game.

It’s hard to recommend this game unless you really love the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Overall, it’s a good time, but I wouldn’t say it's a great one. It’s not the best superhero game I’ve ever played, but it's far from the worst. It has a lot of heart and a unique approach to adapting these characters into a video game fashion. I’d love a sequel that trims the repetitive fat that made the game drag, and that polishes the numerous presentation bugs. If you’re not already a fan of the Guardians, I don’t think that this game will do too much to change your mind. If you are a fan, I think you’ll find that this game offers quite a bit to enjoy, enough to make it easier to overlook its flaws. It’s definitely not a game I’d pick up for full price though.

Review of the Base Game

Phantom Liberty is an excellent expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 that condenses everything I love about the game into a dense and tight knit experience. It also experiments a little bit with 2077’s core gameplay with some fantastic new setpieces and sequences. There’s a brand new district to explore, more creative and unique quests to go on, and an immersive and heartbreaking new story featuring some truly tremendous characters. After having completed the expansion, it’s almost impossible for me to imagine 2077 without it. It provides so much emotional depth and gameplay variety that truly enriches the game.

The concept of the primary campaign takes a lot of inspiration from Escape from New York as well as the James Bond films. You have to venture into this area segmented from Night City known as Dogtown, which is governed by a militia and is a mostly decrepit and wartorn hellhole juxtaposed by pristine and modern casinos and clubs occupied by the rich and elite. V is contacted by a mysterious new character named Songbird who hires him to rescue the President of the New United States in exchange for a cure to his condition. Eventually, Songbird herself will need to be rescued, and with the aid of an agent for the Federal Intelligence Agency named Solomon Reed (Idris Elba’s character), you’ll have to complete a lot of jobs and missions that involve making deals with shady people as well as infiltrating the elite of Dogtown in order to rescue Songbird and ensure your cure.

Despite having such a simple premise, the story goes to truly unexpected places that forces you to make extremely difficult decisions that have very tangible consequences. The story does a great job of establishing a sense of paranoia regarding its characters. No one is who they appear to be, and it made deciding what to do and who to trust feel almost impossible at times. I actually came to regret one of my decisions after seeing how it played out and reloaded a save to make the opposite choice. All of the story outcomes in Phantom Liberty are bleak in some fashion, and you could have a pretty long discussion regarding what the least-worst outcome of the story is. It’s not all depressing doom and gloom like I’m making it sound, but it is extremely bittersweet, with a heavy, heavy emphasis on bitter.

Dogtown isn’t especially big compared to any of the other districts of Night City, but it is densely packed with a lot of detail, and things to discover. There aren’t as many unique stories or quests you can stumble into like in the base game, but to compensate, the gigs in Dogtown given to you by Mr. Hands are a lot more fleshed out and detailed compared to the base game gigs. There’s more of a narrative to these gigs compared to the straightforward “go here, do x, get reward” structure of the ones in the base game.

There are some unique setpieces you encounter over the course of the story that I really wish I could get into, but they’re filled with spoilers, so I can’t talk about them too much. I will say that one of them really puts a unique spin on the core gameplay. It’s really memorable since it dramatically shifts the tone of the game in a way that I totally didn’t expect.

I mentioned in my review of the base game that after three years of updates, Cyberpunk 2077 was mostly bug free. However, I did run into a frustrating and confusing softlock during Phantom Liberty where I couldn’t advance the main story. I actually had to reach out to CDPR Support who told me that I needed to complete a specific sidequest in order to advance the story. The game gives no indication that this needed to be done to continue. It was really infuriating. I’m not entirely sure whether this was a bug or an oversight, but either way, this was a pretty big stain on something that I was otherwise having a really good time with. A word of advice in case you haven’t finished Phantom Liberty yet: if you side with Reed during the “Firestarter” main job, complete the side job “Run This Town” after it to continue, otherwise you won’t be able to advance the story.

Despite the confusing softlock issue, Phantom Liberty is a very worthwhile addition to Cyberpunk 2077. It’s very substantial in terms of the amount of quality content it provides. It’s so good that it’s hard to imagine the base game without it. The story and more narrative-focused gigs are truly enriching and if you enjoy the base game, then you should consider this DLC to be absolutely essential.

Cyberpunk 2077 has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. Typically, I’m not someone that gets all that excited for western AAA releases, but this game was an exception. I have a huge taste for the cyberpunk genre as well as futuristic settings in general, and at the time of the game’s launch, the idea of a massive open world RPG within that genre and setting was immensely enticing to me. Then the game dropped with one of the most infamous video game launches of all time. It was absolutely littered with all types of bugs that ranged from hilarious to gamebreaking. Consoles were struggling to run it, and last-gen ones were getting completely bricked attempting to do so. Stories of how poorly development was managed and the horrible crunch the people working on it were put under were coming out months after release. CDPR eventually even got hacked and were threatened to pay a ransom or risk the source code of the game being leaked. To say that it was an absolute shitshow would be an understatement.

Yet despite ALL of that, weirdly enough, I was still able to enjoy my first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 quite a bit. Now to be fair, I played the PC version of the game on a rig that had been recently built. While I did run into numerous bugs and performance issues in specific areas, including numerous quests being completely broken and uncompletable, I didn’t have it nearly as bad as most console players did. It was a lot easier for me to see CDPR’s vision and enjoy the game in its mangled state, even if it didn’t turn out how it was supposed to. After the game’s horrific launch, the folks at CDPR promised that they were going to fix all of the issues with it and make it closer to their original intentions for the game, as well as supplement it with additional downloadable content. After my original playthrough, I decided that I wanted to wait a few years and come back to it once CDPR pledged to fix it, and after three years, with the launch of the 2.0 update and the Phantom Liberty expansion, I decided this was the time to give the game another go.

While there have been AAA developers in the past that have promised to fix a game after a troubled and bug-ridden launch, I struggle to think of any examples aside from maybe No Man’s Sky where a developer makes such a long term commitment to refining their game the way CDPR has with Cyberpunk 2077. They’ve shipped out numerous updates over the course of these past three years, stamping out a countless number of bugs and actually making the game playable for certain people. I do think that they were able to mostly deliver on their promise to fix the game. The old bugs and performance problems that I ran into during my first playthrough are completely gone, and the game now runs incredibly smoothly for the most part. I did still run into some bugs, but they tended to just be minor presentation ones, such as NPCs occasionally clipping through objects or floating in midair, and infrequently overlapping audio during conversations. I did run into a confusing issue with the Phantom Liberty expansion, but I’ll talk about that in my review for it.

Aside from the technical issues, a lot of the controversy surrounding the game was that to many, it turned out to not be the choice driven RPG that it was frequently marketed as, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. 2077 requires you to explore and engage with its world in order to receive opportunities to make choices that affect how the story plays out. What you could consider to be the main storyline (specifically everything that has to do with Takemura and the Arasaka family, which is required to get the point of no return) is actually rather short, railroaded, and won’t take too long to complete. At the very least, you need to complete 2077’s major side plots in order to get the most out of its narrative and the game as a whole. This will involve completing a specific series of side quests that involve certain characters or factions. There are multiple endings to choose from, but you’ll only unlock them if you’ve completed those major side plots. Otherwise, you’ll only have one single option to choose as an ending. If you only stick to the main storyline, you will miss out on not just the choices that will shape how the story concludes, but you’ll also miss out on so, so, so much excellent story, worldbuilding, and content in general. Just following the primary campaign won’t get you the most out of this game, and doing so will only result in a major disservice for yourself.

That being said though, some decisions definitely affect the game more than others. The life paths that you choose at the beginning of the game have always been one of the most disappointing aspects for me. These are essentially the origins and backgrounds of your character. The only thing that your life paths really affect is how the very beginning of the story plays out, as well as very minor dialogue options in numerous conversations. The game places a lot of importance on your choice of life path, but in all honesty, it’s not nearly as important of a choice as the game makes it out to be. It’s disappointing because I feel like there was a lot of potential for your choice of life path to affect the narrative and gameplay. Overall though, I do think this is more of a minor issue that I’d still like to see addressed in 2077’s sequel.

For me, the primary appeal of Cyberpunk 2077 is how Night City is filled to the brim with all sorts of stories that you can discover or stumble into and take part in. Getting hit by an autonomous taxi that leads to the start of the Delamain side quest, randomly bumping into the guy with the malfunctioning crotch implant who begs you to take him to a doctor, or stopping to meditate with a buddhist priest you just happen to come across on the street that mysteriously vanishes after you sit with him. There’s so many fascinating people to meet and so many different stories that you can take part in and shape all throughout Night City. You also make choices during these side quests which will shape how they turn out, such as the conclusion to the Delamain quest or the crucifixion quest with Joshua Stephenson. The quests in 2077 are all very well-written, I struggle to think of a single quest that I didn’t enjoy in some way.

Night City isn’t just a massive and pretty looking futuristic city, it’s filled with a lot of NPCs who behave in a way that really makes the city feel alive. You can find drug deals going wrong and leading to a shootout, someone consoling their friend over a breakup, people suffering from nasty hangovers, and people simply ordering food at a restaurant or making small talk at a club. These NPC interactions that you can encounter are all voice acted, and they all feel extremely natural as well, though there are some reused animations here and there that may break the immersion. This in addition to all of the stories throughout the game are what make Night City my favorite world I’ve explored in any game I’ve ever played. I love just driving my bike around the city and seeing what kind of trouble I can get mixed up in.

Aside from the narrative, roleplaying also extends to stealth, combat and interacting with the environment. You have a number of attributes and perks that you can acquire as you level up that define your approach to combat and allow you to open up additional or easier paths in certain areas in order to complete objectives. The perks you choose will shape your overall playstyle, and it’s very fluid. I’ve played through the game twice now, and while I can’t comment on every single option that the game gives to you, I can say that I had a really good time with both of my builds. I wanted my first character to essentially be built like Doomguy, so I focused on upgrading my strength via the Body attribute and choosing perks related to shotguns and explosives, which in turn limited my ability to approach things in a stealthy manner. For my most recent playthrough, I wanted to roleplay as a samurai, so I focused on upgrading the Reflexes attribute and choosing perks that affected my efficiency with blades as well as enhancing my movement with things like a dash ability and a double jump. This allowed me to dash all over the place and shred foes into ribbons like I was Vergil from Devil May Cry. You have quite frankly, an overwhelming number of options in terms of building your character, which I think is fantastic. I didn’t even touch upon the Netrunning stuff that you can do, mainly because I didn’t really choose to invest in Netrunning skills, but I still think that being able to use the environment as your plaything by hacking things like lights and vending machines to distract enemies, or even just straight up hacking enemies themselves is extremely cool.

The FPS combat in 2077 isn’t the best that I’ve ever played, but I do think that it’s still very enjoyable and satisfying for what it is. I’m not a gun snob, so to me, they felt pretty good to use. Though, since I was a samurai for this playthrough, I mainly used katanas, which were pretty decent. I do wish that the enemies reacted a bit more when they’re hit by your sword, but I still had a lot of fun slicing and dicing dudes up, and especially deflecting their bullets back at them, which can cause critical damage if you manage to do so at the correct time. There’s also the cyberware that you can install on your character that can grant you unique abilities. Admittedly, I didn’t mess around with the cyberware too much, but I did make a point of acquiring a Sandevistan, the cyberware that was featured in the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime that allows you to slow time. This cyberware can be a little OP, especially if you combine it with other cyberware that immediately lets you use it again after the time limit on it expires. I was able to use it in difficult situations to get to cover and heal up, as well as use it for stealth in order to just zoom past foes without being seen. You lose the ability to hack things at all as a trade-off for the Sandevistan, which in all honesty, is very fair.

Cyberpunk 2077 will probably always live in the shadow of its disastrous launch, and I think that’s probably for the best. I love this game, I really do. My second playthrough has solidified it as one of my favorites of all time, and I have thoroughly enjoyed both of my 80+ hour long playthroughs of it. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think that its launch should be forgotten. As much as I love the game, even my original playthrough of it, I don’t want to perpetuate the revisionist idea that it was always good. I think that CDPR should be commended for their commitment to fixing the game, but I also don’t think that they necessarily should be rewarded for doing so. The game was given an award for “Best Ongoing Game” at the 2023 Game Awards, which felt kind of disingenuous. I wouldn’t say that spending the past three years fixing a game means that the game itself is “ongoing”. No game should launch in the state that Cyberpunk 2077 did. There’s already a precedent amongst AAA publishers that it’s okay for games to launch in terrible states so long as it's fixed later down the line, and I worry that 2077’s redemption arc gives companies the idea that rushing launches and then fixing the game later is always a viable option, even if it takes two or three years to make it playable. I hope that everyone at CDPR has learned from their experiences with Cyberpunk 2077, because I really want them to continue to build upon the foundation that they’ve laid down and take the IP to even greater heights in the future. I want to return to a Night City even farther in the future, see how it's changed, meet all sorts of new people and get wrapped up in even grander stories of friendship, love, loss and corporate greed.

VA-11 Hall-A is a rather simplistic game, even in terms of being a visual novel. It’s not this complex, grandiose story that takes dozens of hours to complete. While there are some additional endings you can unlock, they’re small and really only serve to expand upon the game’s primary ending. There aren’t a whole bunch of branching paths with their own long and intricate routes. While it does have some elements of romance and mystery to it, they’re very passive, and the game isn’t particularly married to either genre. Despite the science fiction nature of its cyberpunk setting, VA-11 Hall-A is rather… mundane. And as I grow older, I gradually find myself relating to its mundanity more and more as time passes.

VA-11 Hall-A is the game for twenty-somethings. It’s the perfect game to boot up after a long day at work and just relax with. It’s not extremely long, nor is it a huge commitment. It’s just a comfy visual novel/bartender simulator with fantastic pixel art and a catchy synthwave soundtrack. It has a relatable story about the struggles of finding what makes someone happy, as well as the value of community in a world where everything sucks all the time and is gradually getting worse day by day, all lessons which are primarily learned by the main character, Jill. Jill is the perfect encapsulation of someone in their mid-twenties working a dead end job who isn’t quite sure of what they want from life. She’s intelligent, witty, charming, and sarcastic in a way that’s not obnoxious. Most importantly: she’s a very caring person, and all of these personality traits serve to really enhance the conversations she has with her patrons as a bartender.

The primary focus of the narrative is just lending an ear to the patrons that come into the bar, as they share with you the unique problems that they struggle with on a day to day basis. There’s a serious incident that takes place early on in the game, and the fallout from that incident affects a few of the regulars who frequent the bar. As a result, they’ll often talk about how this event affects them or the people close to them. Jill is of course, merely a bartender, and there isn’t much that she can do to help those people. However, she still lends her ear to those who need to talk about these things, and she does her best to offer valuable input. She doesn’t always know what to say, but it still means a lot to many of her patrons that she’s willing to hear them out, and it’s a trait of hers that I find deeply admirable and relatable. The rest of the game’s characters are mostly fantastic, even if some of them aren’t necessarily the best people. Just about every character has something about them that adds to the story, whether its exposition about how the world works, a compelling subplot, or even just fun or comedic character interactions.

There is a character in this game that I feel like I should mention ahead of time because they’re a character that has caused a lot of controversy for the game. Dorothy is a sex worker android with the mind of a 24-year-old and the body of a 13-year-old. Despite the nature of her job, she’s constantly acting bright and happy-go-lucky, and she makes numerous sex jokes over the course of her appearances. She also frequently talks about her job in vivid detail. Understandably, her character really sticks out and has made several players of this game rather uncomfortable. It’s a bit hard to see her as anything but this game’s version of the stereotypical anime loli character with the mind of an adult. Her character could have been used as the springboard for a discussion about the morality of utilizing a life-like sex worker android with such a body type, but that doesn’t really happen. Her character isn’t completely about sex, as she mentions that she’s often hired just to provide comfort to people or to pretend to be their daughter in a non-sexual way. She even gets into a philosophical discussion with Jill regarding the concept of death. Still, I don’t think that the game treats her situation or her background with enough tact to really justify it. If a character like this is a dealbreaker for you, well, I totally get it, and I don’t really blame you.

There is a bit more to the gameplay aside from simply reading through the narrative. You do actually prepare the drinks that patrons order at the bar yourself. Making drinks isn’t at all complicated. After the customer orders their drink, Jill will recall what they chose and you just look the drink up in a recipe book and follow the directions. Sometimes, a patron will order a large version of a drink, but in those cases, all you have to do is double the ingredients in the recipe. It’s that simple. It's so simple, I don't even know if there are any repercussions for getting a drink wrong because it never happened to me.

Aside from that, Jill has an apartment, and before each shift, you have the opportunity to browse the internet on your phone. When you browse the net, you can visit a news site, a blog, and a message board in order to get updates on all of the happenings that are going on in Glitch City. This is a great way to learn about the larger setting despite not experiencing a lot of the things that go on within it yourself. You can also go shopping to purchase various things, such as decorations for Jill’s apartment or additional songs that you can play in the bar’s jukebox. As the day begins, Jill will sometimes desire an item from the store, and if you don’t purchase that item, Jill will be distracted and won’t be able to immediately recall a customer’s order during that night’s shift. Jill being distracted isn’t really a problem, though. As long as you’re paying attention to what people are ordering, it’s not hard to recall a customer’s order at all. However, there are mandatory things Jill needs to pay for, such as electricity and rent for her apartment, and if she doesn’t have the money to pay for those things by a certain date, you’ll get the “bad” ending to the game, so you can’t just purchase every single thing that Jill has her eye on. You’ll have to be smart with your money. It’s worth occasionally purchasing something, but not all the time.

The game does potentially date itself by implementing a lot of mid-2010s internet culture and humor, particularly by referencing common posts from 4chan and Tumblr at that time. These references aren’t frequent, nor are they especially in your face. They’re mainly made on the message board you can browse on her phone, and you can also spot some commonly posted comments flying across the screen whenever Streaming-Chan visits the bar. After nearly a decade of these types of posts going out of style, I feel like it might be a bit hard to really recognize them unless you were someone who was on the internet at the time those posts could typically be found. The game also makes several references to YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG, which was still in development at the time VA-11 Hall-A was released. I gotta tell ya, those YIIK references really hit like a truck in the wake of its… controversial release.

For the most part, VA-11 Hall-A manages to be a consistently endearing and entertaining story, despite some distractions that may or may not take you out of the cozy atmosphere it creates. For me, the struggles that Jill goes through were ones that I could really relate to, and the overall message the game conveys really struck a chord with me. My second playthrough of the game, now that I’m older, felt so much more personal than when I first played it. Finishing the game left me with a little bit of optimism, something that I’m really struggling to muster as each day passes and the world gradually resembles the worst aspects of cyberpunk settings more and more. I feel like a lot of people could really learn from Jill. The world sucks, so we should all do what we can to make it suck a little less for those around us, even if the only thing you can do is serve a drink and lend an ear to someone who needs to talk.

The Writer is the second DLC episode for Alan Wake and immediately follows The Signal. It’s a straightforward continuation of the previous episode. It doesn’t really introduce anything new, but it continues its focus on analyzing the character of Alan Wake, and the episode is even more surreal than its predecessor.

Since it doesn’t really introduce anything new I don’t really have much to say about it that I haven’t already said in my review for The Signal. It has some very well executed story moments that actually cut pretty deep, and shines a whole new light on Alan Wake as a character. I was really invested in the story and eager to see where it went, honestly more so than the base game. While it does end on a cliffhanger, I do really like the insight it gives on Alan, and I feel like it ends on a stronger note in comparison to the base game.

The Writer and The Signal are both solid additions to Alan Wake. They’re both pretty short and I don’t feel that it was especially necessary for there to be two episodes. Still, they’re a solid time and I think they’re worth playing through if you want more context to the base game’s ending, as well as Alan himself.

The first of the DLC episodes that expands on the ending to Alan Wake and goes over the surreal experiences Wake goes through while trapped in the Dark Place. In terms of gameplay, it’s pretty much more of the same, though I do appreciate it for adding a new way to utilize the flashlight aside from just making the enemies vulnerable.

There are floating words throughout the world, and when light is shined upon them, it causes those words to materialize physical objects into the world. For example, shining your flashlight on the word “tools” causes ammo, secondary weapons, and batteries to appear. This mechanic is actually used in some pretty neat ways, as part way through the episode, you need to avoid shining your light on certain words, as they can cause hazards or even additional enemies to spawn. Alternatively, you can intentionally trigger certain hazards in order to damage groups of foes. I really like this new take on the flashlight mechanic, and I wish that it was in the base game.

The story for this episode is a character study of Alan and focuses on him as a character. It’s a lot more surreal, even in comparison to the base game, since it takes place entirely within Alan’s mind. I really like the direction the story of the DLC goes in, especially in comparison to the story of the base game. It doesn’t really spend much time paying tribute to its inspirations, instead opting to focus almost entirely on Wake himself.

I appreciate The Signal as an expansion. It has a number of aspects to it that I wish the base game had. It places a greater focus on Wake as a character while spending less time paying tribute to the media that inspired it, and it introduced a creative additional way to use the flashlight mechanic. It is quite short, but it's a decent addendum and a solid step forward from the base game.

In light of all of the buzz surrounding its 2023 sequel, I decided to give the first Alan Wake a shot knowing next to nothing about it. I found it to be an enjoyable, yet very straightforward third person shooter that didn’t really leave much of an impact on me. It does have one single mechanic that makes it more distinct compared to other third person shooters, but it reuses that mechanic all throughout its runtime without introducing different ways to utilize it, causing it to grow very stale. It further suffers from repetitive combat, linear level design, and a confusing story devoid of context unless you spend a lot of time tracking down collectables.

The game takes place in a rural town in the northwestern United States. A supernatural presence whose power thrives in the absence of light haunts the town and its locals, and has a particularly large grudge against the titular Alan Wake and his wife Alice. It kidnaps Alice, and you spend the entire game trying to rescue her. This supernatural presence can infect people as well as various objects and drive them to attack you, which is the origin of the game’s enemies, who are referred to as “The Taken”. You’ll be spending a majority of the game making your way through woods and mountain ranges trying to get to safety while surviving frequent ambushes by the Taken, who will assault you with an assortment of knives, pitchforks, sickles, and the occasional chainsaw. There isn’t really much enemy variety in the game. The Taken, the flying possessed objects, and occasionally swarms of evil crows are all of the enemies in the game. There’s no boss fights or anything of the sort.

Wake has to arm himself with whatever he can find. Thankfully, since he’s in a rural part of the U.S., it's easy to find guns lying around all over town. You do need to scrounge for ammo as well as crowd controlling secondary weapons, but in all honesty, the game showers you with such an abundance of both that it's never really an issue, so long as you’re not just shooting your gun at nothing. The game doesn’t have too many different types of guns to use, you’ll mainly be using a combination of a pistol and either a shotgun or a hunting rifle to take down foes. However, the Taken are mostly invincible save for a single weakness: they’re vulnerable to sources of light. In order to do damage to the Taken, you have to make them vulnerable by shining a flashlight on them for a certain period of time until the cloud of darkness that enshrouds and protects them is gone. After that, you can use one of your guns to finish them off. This pretty much sums up every single combat encounter in the game: you shine the flashlight on enemies until they’re vulnerable, then you shoot them. There will be times when you might be swarmed with large numbers of Taken, so to deal with them, you’ll need to utilize your secondary weapons such as a flare, which causes enemies to back away from you, or a flash grenade, which can take out groups of enemies in a single use. This is pretty much the only time you ever deviate from the typical combat loop.

The low enemy variety, the lack of different ways to take them down, as well as the small arsenal of weapons all make for a combat experience that gets really repetitive and dull as the game goes on. It’s not a bad combat loop, it is enjoyable at least. It just gets old and kind of boring as the game goes on. Combat also never gets especially challenging either. It can get a little annoying at times, however. The Taken frequently ambush you and the game alerts you to their presence by shifting the camera in slow motion to their location. However, there are times when an enemy will spawn behind you and you’ll have no idea that they’re even there until they get a potshot in on you from behind. This can lead to you getting stunlocked into a cheap death. This happened to me a couple of times, but not often enough that it's a serious issue.

Levels are very linear. They pretty much just involve following a dirt path or the yellow objective marker. There’s not really much in terms of puzzles to solve aside from activating a generator or some equivalent to open up a roadblock. There’s no mazes to navigate or anything, the levels are all just very straightforward. There are some story setpieces that serve as a break from combat, but that’s about it.

The story is rather confusing and disorienting, mostly because of its surreal nature and its lack of context to the characters, setting, and plot devices. Despite this, it is charming, and it's clear that the story is a tribute to the mystery and horror inspirations it frequently references or directly namedrops, such as Twin Peaks, The Twilight Zone, Evil Dead, Stephen King, Ozzy Osborne, and more. Now I have no issue at all when the media I experience isn’t the least bit subtle about the things that inspired it, in fact, I love it. From one media obsessed geek to a team of others, it feels like a conversation, a way to showcase the creative works that motivated people to develop their own works of art. However, I feel like Alan Wake leans a bit too heavily into paying its inspirations tribute without doing much to make itself stand out as its own work. The name drops are cute, the in-universe Twilight Zone ripoff is funny, but stuff like this is also very frequent and takes time that could’ve been spent fleshing out the game’s own characters and setting directly.

The game does flesh these elements of the story out, but in the form of the Manuscript Page collectable. These collectables will give you the context to the world that the narrative itself doesn’t really provide. Now, I did my best to explore this game as thoroughly as I could, and there were still a ton of Manuscript Pages I failed to find. I’m not exactly keen on replaying the game to find them either, and I would’ve rather the stuff that’s explained in the Manuscript Pages be told directly as opposed to locking these story elements behind a collectible. The story ends in a pretty sudden and unsatisfying manner as well. There is some DLC for the game that expands on the ending, but I don't like the fact that the game made a satisfying ending DLC.

Overall, Alan Wake is fine, albeit forgettable. While it didn’t really do much to impress me, it’s not at all a bad time. As enjoyable as the combat is, it does get old. While the game does have an interesting world, it makes learning about how that world works a chore. I fully admit that I don’t think I’d ever really give this game the time of day if it weren’t for the fact that its sequel is being so heavily praised at the time of writing this. After a little over a decade between both games, I’m really hoping that Alan Wake 2 lives up to the massive amount of hype it's garnered.

Batman: Arkham Series Reviews

You can tell that for the finale of the Arkham games, Rocksteady wanted to go all out by making the biggest and boldest game they could. Arkham Knight's overworld is open and massive, the largest in the series. It features the most extensive cast, with over a dozen members of Batman’s rogues gallery and most of the core members of the Batfamily. It's filled to the brim with hours upon hours of content. Unfortunately, I think that Batman: Arkham Knight is a testament to the notion that bigger isn’t always better. Despite being filled with so much content, most of it is quite repetitive and stretched very thin. The game is also especially hindered by being so focused on its primary gameplay innovation: the Batmobile.

Arkham Knight further refines and polishes the core gameplay mechanics of the Arkham series to a mirror shine. This is the best Batman has ever felt to control, whether he’s in combat, in predator sections, or just gliding around the city. In combat, his moveset has been adjusted to feel more satisfying than ever before. The Fear Multi-Takedown as well as new gadgets like the Voice Modifier allow for even more unique ways to tackle predator sections. Since Gotham is as big as it is, gliding and grappling to surfaces has been made faster and even more fluid. All of these core gameplay changes to Batman are fantastic, which is why it’s so frustrating that for a majority of the game, you don’t play as Batman. Instead, you’re driving around in the Batmobile, which plays an obnoxiously large role in the game. The Batmobile is the biggest new gameplay feature that Arkham Knight introduces. Back in the day, I remember fans had been clamoring for a playable Batmobile in the Arkham series, and to appease those fans, it seems like Rocksteady’s highest priority was to figure out how the Batmobile can be used as often as possible. It's like the entire game was built around it, and I dislike it a lot. I wouldn’t mind it nearly as much if so much emphasis wasn’t placed on it.

The Batmobile is shoved into almost every facet of gameplay. It can be used as a high speed way to travel through Gotham, and this is when it's at its best and least intrusive. However, Arkham Knight is littered with a ton of combat sections where you have to use the Batmobile to fight unmanned drones. During these sections, the Batmobile transforms into a slow moving tank that fires missiles at these drones while dodging their oncoming attacks. The more damage you do without taking any yourself, the faster the Batmobile can utilize one of its secondary abilities, such as an EMP that will temporarily incapacitate the drones and render them harmless, or the ability to hack a drone and turn it against its allies. There are so many of these combat sections, especially in the second half of the game, and I just do not like them. I find them to be a slog and antithetical to what I like about the Arkham games in the first place. They’re not particularly engaging or fun, they take too long to complete, and there’s just way too many of them.

You also have to use the Batmobile in certain areas to solve puzzles, many of which involve trying to get the Batmobile deeper into an area. These will involve you constantly switching back and forth between Batman and a remote-controlled Batmobile, and I also really don’t like these. It feels like the Batmobile is this really big and bothersome gadget that you can’t just carry in your utility belt, so you have to figure out how to lug it along with you. It makes the Batmobile more of a burden more than anything else.

The Batmobile plays a pivotal role in the story, it’s featured in many of the game’s side missions… it’s everywhere. You can’t escape the damn thing. I barely did any of the Riddler stuff in this game because a majority of it involves the Batmobile and I just got too sick of it to ever want to do any of his race challenges (sorry Catwoman). When you’re not in the Batmobile, the game is great. Everything carried over from the previous titles is at its peak in Arkham Knight. It's just such a shame that so much of the game is built around a gameplay mechanic that I’m really not a fan of.

In a game featuring so many Batman villains, it's pretty surprising and disappointing that the game completely forgoes boss fights. I guess that between the three previous Arkham games it’d be difficult to think of any new characters or ideas they could use for a unique boss battle. They really peaked in City and Origins. Still, it's a noticeable absence, and it feels like the game is really missing something.

The story is a mixed bag. It starts off incredibly strong and very well-paced at first. There’s a real sense of finality all throughout the narrative, and I think that tarnishing Batman’s legacy by separating him from the myth and exposing the person underneath the mask is a great motivation for Scarecrow. As the game goes on though, it really falls off about halfway through, when it more or less just boils down to doing busy work in order to track down Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, or fighting hordes of drones in the Batmobile. Speaking of the Arkham Knight, this was Rocksteady’s original character for the series that, alongside Scarecrow, was meant to be this game’s primary antagonist. There’s a huge mystery surrounding the Arkham Knight and his identity that the game makes a big deal out of. For most Batman fans, deducing the Arkham Knight’s identity is extremely easy, in fact, most fans were able to correctly guess who he was almost immediately after the character was first revealed during marketing for the game, and Rocksteady had to lie and say they were wrong. Not only that, but the game spells out his identity so clearly that even if you’re not the biggest Batman fan, it’s painfully easy figuring out who he is, to the point where there is no real mystery. He’s just handled in such an incredibly lukewarm manner. There’s a lot more that I want to say about the story, but almost all of it involves huge spoilers, so I’ve made a Pastebin where I discuss them in greater detail.

The game has a huge amount of side missions, and this is where a lot of the game’s repetition comes from. If they don’t involve the Batmobile, they usually involve a series of tasks where you do the exact same thing several times. For example, the Man Bat side mission has you track him down on three separate occasions, and each time you catch him, it plays the exact same animation of Batman bringing him to the ground and sticking a needle in him either to extract blood or administer a cure. For the Firefly side mission, you have to chase him down in the Batmobile until he realizes he can’t shake you, and then do the same quick time event where you mash the attack button to punch him when you catch up to him three separate times. It's the same thing with stopping Two Face and his bank robberies, saving the fire fighters, etc, etc. I think this problem stems from the giant open world, and needing things to actually do in it besides fight drones in the Batmobile.

I also want to touch on the Hush and Azrael side missions. These are continuations of the ones from Arkham City, and I’ve always been extremely disappointed with how they were handled. The Arkham City side missions really hyped both of these characters up and made it seem like they were going to be very important in Arkham Knight’s narrative, but they don’t actually play any significant role at all. It feels like they had more grand plans for these characters that at some point got dropped in development. I’m glad they were at least acknowledged and not dropped completely, but the way they were handled was just so miniscule and boring, and I feel like they could’ve been very interesting additions to the main story.

Arkham Knight makes a lot of gameplay and creative decisions that I do not agree with and stick out like sore thumbs to me. The refinement of the core Arkham series’ gameplay was its biggest draw, but playing through a majority of this game felt like an obligation to me. Rocksteady tried their best at making a Batman game that would please everyone, and I have nothing but respect for them and their take on Batman's world. With Arkham Knight however, they sadly ended up making a game that’s rather bloated and boring, and a narrative that has a lot of great ideas but felt really really undercooked, especially in the second half. Despite its faults, Arkham Knight does get the job of wrapping up the Arkham series done. I don’t think it does so in an especially strong fashion, but the game overall is a satisfying enough conclusion.

Batman: Arkham Series Reviews

Cold, Cold Heart is an okay DLC campaign for Batman: Arkham Origins that retells the origin story of Mr. Freeze, one of Batman’s more sympathetic enemies. It’s a step up from Arkham City’s Harley Quinn’s Revenge expansion, but it’s not that much of a step up. It’s still a fairly short campaign that doesn’t really introduce much of anything new or exciting. You do at least explore a couple of new locations, but most of the campaign takes place within just one primary area that you constantly have to backtrack through, as well as back and forth from.

One of the new locations the DLC introduces is actually the inside of Wayne Manor. This is the only time you ever get to experience the Arkhamverse’s Wayne Manor during gameplay, and sadly, you only explore it during the opening sequence. The other location where the majority of the campaign takes place is the GothCorp building. There’s some new combat and predator sections, a new enemy type that’s essentially just a brute with a freeze ray, and a final showdown with Mr. Freeze that’s more or less a repeat of his boss fight in Arkham City but in a bigger arena where you also have to deal with other enemies at the same time. It’s pretty standard stuff, and not much to really write home about.

The game does make a big deal out of Batman’s new thermal suit, but it doesn’t really do anything that Batman couldn’t already do before. You can charge up Batarangs with heat to melt icicles from the ceiling and ice-covered vantage points, you can melt ice that blocks pathways (which uses the same animation as charging something with the Electrocutioner’s gloves in the base game), and it allows Batman to survive in sub zero temperatures. That’s literally it. It doesn’t come with any significant new gameplay addition whatsoever.

The story for this expansion is just a retelling of the Batman: The Animated Series episode Heart of Ice. This is one of the most famous episodes of the show, as it revitalized the character and origin story of Mr. Freeze, and eventually became the standard portrayal of him in both the comic books, and other assorted Batman media. It’s a fine retelling, I don’t think it's better than the actual episode (though if I’m speaking truthfully, I haven’t seen the episode in quite some time). It does end pretty suddenly and unsatisfyingly though.

Unlike Harley Quinn’s Revenge, whose quality I could forgive since its bundled with re-releases of Batman: Arkham City, I can’t really do the same for Cold, Cold Heart, since it never got the same treatment. Still, I think that for all things concerned, it is better in comparison to Harley Quinn’s Revenge since at the very least, it's (mostly) new content. If you don’t already own the season pass for Arkham Origins, this is not at all a must buy or a must experience. It’s pretty much just a worse retelling of one of the most famous episodes of Batman: The Animated Series with some new combat and predator encounters and a slightly different version of the Mr. Freeze fight from Arkham City. There’s not much else to it.