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"Just focus on tying up all your loose ends - then you and I are leaving this city once and for all." ~ Judy Álvarez

For many, Cyberpunk 2077 will always be remembered as the game with arguably the worst launch next to No Man's Sky. It was a bugfest and the console experience was so bad that refunds were provided from the developers themselves. But I'm not here to talk about the launch - instead I would like to share my personal experience after ~100 hours of playing and getting all available endings, entirely in patch 2.1 and right off the bat with Phantom Liberty (which I reviewed already).

Cyberpunk really shines in terms of presentation. The vibes are incredible, Night City nails the feeling of a dystopian and futuristic metropolis perfectly. You know, flashy neon lights and advertisements are plastered all over the city and the streets are always busy. Another thing that really helps the immersion here is the lighting. An often overlooked aspect, but it's probably the best ambient lighting I've ever seen in a game alongside Red Dead Redemption 2. Do yourself a favor and cruise through Night City on a rainy night, you'll see what I'm talking about. By the way, this is without Raytracing. RTX enabled is a whole different beast, but I didn't keep it on for long, because it was taking a serious toll on my frames and I'm a person who likes to enjoy games with a smooth framerate over graphical fidelity all day.

The main story is solid, albeit not very long. You could probably finish it under 20 hours in total if you're beelining the main quests and ignore the side content. Despite the short runtime, you'll find yourself in a lot of cool setpieces and get acquainted to many great characters, each with their own individual questline. I would definitely recommend playing those quests, since they're a lot more personal than the overarching narrative and really help understanding the struggles and personalities of V's friends better. Speaking of those friends, I think the fluff text messages you get every now and then are a great feature. Makes the world feel more alive and it's always nice to see characters being relevant outside of their own contained substories. Romance is also a neat little mechanic - I really like how CDPR provides extra text messages for your partner, so they ask about V's life every now and then. There's an unique quest where you can also hang out with them at your apartment and talk about stuff, this is repeatable, but unfortunately the dialogue repeats after the first time. Just use your imagination here and you're golden.

Cyberpunk's side content is mainly divided into two different mission types - gigs and side jobs. Gigs are one-time missions where you do a quick job for a fixer of choice, like breaking into an apartment to retrieve some data for a client. How you handle those missions is entirely up to you (unless there's an optional objective you'd like to complete), so you could opt for a stealthy approach or just shoot your way through the enemies. Combat in general is very diverse, you can have Mantis Blade implants inside your arms or blind enemies with hacks - there are so many possible builds. I went with a Netrunner/Gunslinger build, since not many games offer you the opportunity to weaken your opponents by just hacking them! And pistols just feel like the most comfy ranged option to me - a silenced one for stealth and another unsilenced one for loud combat. If you're still unsure on a build, I'd recommend testing some of the iconic weapons (basically the "legendary" weapons of this game), since they come with unique perks. There's a lot of them, so I'm sure some of them will appeal to you. Now, I didn't go in detail about the side jobs, but that's because they're more narrative-driven quests. Some of them feel like the Stranger quests in RDR2, while others have more complex tales to tell. So basically they are a great pastime if you're looking for more worldbuilding in Night City.

If you found yourself asking the whole time "But what about the bugs?", while reading this, then I'll gladly answer that for you. In my 97 hours of playtime I only had a single crash happen (right before writing this review ironically), but since the game autosaves often enough, it was a loss of like 3 minutes only. I haven't encountered a single game-breaking bug, just some small immersion-breakers every now and then, alongside two "real" bugs. This includes various items clipping into the hands of NPCs when they were supposed to put them away and NPCs in general teleporting on rooftops where they aren't supposed to be. The "real" bugs were my V glitching through a wall after a character crashed my car into that wall in a scripted cutscene (had to reload my save) and I've also had enemies walk through a closed garage door once - but that one was rather funny, despite being unfair. There's another problem I'd like to address, but I'm not entirely sure if it's a bug, so I'm not going to label it as one. It's related to quests starting through calls of certain characters. The game explicitly tells you "Wait a day until this character calls you back." and then sometime they just don't call at all, despite 24 hours having passed in-game. Worst offender was when I tried to start the follow-up mission to the companion mission "Off the Leash", the quest giver was supposed to call after one in-game day but it took me two real-time hours (after several virtual days passed already) for that character to call. For your own sanity I recommend doing other gigs or side jobs inbetween, because I'm very sure the calls will come on time if you don't just try to exploit the waiting feature to skip to those quests instantly. Try to let it play out naturally.

Are you a fan of the Edgerunners anime? Well, good news for you! The world of Cyberpunk 2077 also includes small nods to the series, like the graves of the deceased characters at the cemetery. There's also a side job where you can get David's iconic jacket and you can find Rebecca's famous shotgun out in the world too (if you remember the spot she left it in the anime).

The final point I'd like to address in this review is the soundtrack. (Yeah, there are other songs besides I Really Want To Stay At Your House.) While the OST in The Witcher 3 had a calmer, more comforting vibe, Cyberpunk's music fits the high octane combat accordingly, but some of the best tracks come from the sad and serious moments in the game. For car rides, the different radio stations allow you to listen to your music genre of choice. Speaking of the cars, I find it a lot more satisfying to drive to quest locations than to just quick travel there (which I regrettably did a lot in like the first 20 hours of my playthrough). It's just a lot more immersive and driving feels great if you have a car you like. (My personal favorite ride is the Outlaw, great speed and handles well.)

I have talked a lot about this game now. That's because I love it. So if you would ask me if Cyberpunk is worth it, I would definitely recommend you to pick up the base game on sale sometime and go for Phantom Liberty if you want to spend more time in this fantastic world. It's pretty much in a fixed state now and if what I described in this review seems interesting to you, why not give it a go? There were very few moments where I was actually bored, even the beginning is great and brings you pretty fast into the action (unlike a certain cowboy game I have named several times in this review already).

That's all I wanted to share - thanks for reading.

Oh hey I made this game
That's pretty cool

Resident Evil is the pinnacle of horror.

The atmosphere is thick with tension, the quiet music that would normally be soothing serves to heighten your anxiety as you navigate the maze like halls of the Spencer Mansion.

Resident Evil is terrifying.

A juggernaut of the genre, of video games as a whole. Very few games have managed to capture the same feelings that this game generates. It is truly one of a kind, and a masterpiece.

There's a whole lotta ass showing going on in the Backloggd review section for Separate Ways! I know you kids love to whinge, but Separate Ways wasn't "free in the original" and if we wanted to play it we had to buy the whole game again on a different platform. There's still time to edit those reviews, folks! You don't want to be WRONG ONLINE do you? About VIDEOGAMES? We both know that being right about videogames online is all you've got!

Now that this DLC has finally been released I can admit that I never played the original DLC. Don't ask me why, maybe because I'm not the biggest fan of the original game due to the increase in action and the lack of horror.

After thoroughly enjoying the Resident 4 Remake, I was excited to finally play Separate Ways. One of the biggest reason was Ada Wong. Because I always found her very interesting but never really knew what kind of character she is.

To cut it short, yes I really enjoyed this DLC but let's go into detail.
I already liked Luis a lot in the main game and his relationship with Ada in the DLC is great. His dance at the beginning is alone worth the 9,99€.
It was also interesting to see that Ada has a robot eye with which she can track footsteps and other stuff. I liked this gameplay mechanic even if it wasn't too extensive.

One of the reasons why the remake is one of the strongest Goty contenders of this years is how extremely detailed the game is and this DLC is no exception. For example you can see the tracking transmitter on the back from Luis. Another example is that you can hear Ashley cry while you are outside on the roof of the church.
It was interesting how they implemented Ada's infection and in one scene she says that "the Raccon City night has changed her". Many games just throw stuff like that into your face but now really show it. But you can see the consequences and how she has changed in her actions, the dialogue and in her facial expressions. Besides that Ada is freaking badass, I enjoyed the gameplay with her grapple-hook and her acrobatic abilities. Sadly the DLC was a little but too dark especially in the lab in chapter 6 and 7. I turned the brightness all the way up and sometimes I still couldn't see anything. But maybe the daylight from my window was the problem.
One of the boss enemies called "Pesanta" was a pain in the ass and I think I bought the rocket launcher after dying a few times. Wesker is also back and it was cool to see in 4k with good facial expressions. They also included content that they cut from the main game in this DLC like for example the Skilift. Saddler on the other hand was kinda underwelming but maybe that was because I fully upgraded the Crossbow all the way to max. Which is awesome btw. it was my favorite weapon alongside the Red 9. Or maybe he was so underwelming because Ada is just a side character, just like myself in real life.

Overall is Separate Ways really incredible, it's the best DLC from this year for one of, if not the best game this year. Huge recommendation and it's worth every penny.

This is exactly how the Second Run in RE2R should've been!

Separate Ways is an interesting spin on an already intriguing narrative paired with great gameplay and fun new mechanics (grappling hook!). The new bosses and levels are pretty amazing and it even comes with 50 new challenges AND new costumes for Ada and Luis!

Amazing value for just 10 bucks, an easy recommendation from my side.

The most necessarily unnecessary remake that manages to not replace the original game, but to stand as equal to it with its own interpretation and in certain areas, even more realizable than the original telling.

But also it can whoop your ass for the fun of it so don’t be too stupid

FYI: you can play this on your PC with decent-ish FPS right now using an xbox 360 emulator called xenia.

Snake

1997

A ground-breaking narrative feat that is the pinnacle of in-game storytelling. Sharing the themes of Greek myths 'The Fall of Icarus' and 'Sisyphus', this title blends its simple gameplay loop with a symbolic story about how the players own actions, in an attempt to reach their goal, causes their greed and pride to grow, eventually resulting in their downfall, leading them back to where they started.

Each step you take toward your objective only brings you closer to your inevitable demise; the snake growing bigger with each dot increasing your chances of failure. It's notable that no matter how many times you play, improving your strategy and learning from your mistakes, no matter how good you get, no-one can ever win the game of Snake, only lose it.

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