Yultimona
2012
The following is an excerpt from my list Errant Thoughts on Games I've Never Played Before/Haven't Played Too Much
Angry Birds Trilogy is a strange, strange beast. This is a perfect example of the corrupting power that money has. All three of these games were sold at a price of at least two dollars originally. In this collection that originally cost in the range of thirty dollars, they blend together into this unchanging homunculus of early-touchscreen era artifacts. I can see the Wii port having some value attached, as the potential use of pointer controls might have threatened to mirror the touchscreen controls in an interesting way. Still, that doesn't justify this.
And yet, yet...
This is a perfect piece of game preservation. Unlike many of its contemporaries, all three of the games in this collection are not butchered to run on other platforms. Purely, this is Angry Birds and two of its sequel projects as they were in 2012, and that's what they put on the back of the box. What they likely didn't was "this might be the only way you can play Angry Birds and its sequels, as they were in 2012, twenty years from now." There's a smartphone game that IGN once gave a 10/10 that you can't play anymore, and the original Angry Birds was nearly dealt a similar killing blow early last year. My point is, the iOS is not a safe place for games if you want to view them as more than disposable products. In a way, knowing this devalues collections like Angry Birds Trilogy somewhat. But, if you have the mindset of a preservationist, this has a reason to exist. Finally.
Angry Birds Trilogy is a strange, strange beast. This is a perfect example of the corrupting power that money has. All three of these games were sold at a price of at least two dollars originally. In this collection that originally cost in the range of thirty dollars, they blend together into this unchanging homunculus of early-touchscreen era artifacts. I can see the Wii port having some value attached, as the potential use of pointer controls might have threatened to mirror the touchscreen controls in an interesting way. Still, that doesn't justify this.
And yet, yet...
This is a perfect piece of game preservation. Unlike many of its contemporaries, all three of the games in this collection are not butchered to run on other platforms. Purely, this is Angry Birds and two of its sequel projects as they were in 2012, and that's what they put on the back of the box. What they likely didn't was "this might be the only way you can play Angry Birds and its sequels, as they were in 2012, twenty years from now." There's a smartphone game that IGN once gave a 10/10 that you can't play anymore, and the original Angry Birds was nearly dealt a similar killing blow early last year. My point is, the iOS is not a safe place for games if you want to view them as more than disposable products. In a way, knowing this devalues collections like Angry Birds Trilogy somewhat. But, if you have the mindset of a preservationist, this has a reason to exist. Finally.
2014
In the past, I've written (and rewritten) about this game, and none of those musings exist anymore because they bordered on being too personal. I don't have much to say about that. If I have to apologize for being a bit too nervous, I will!
None of that has any bearing on my current score for Town of Salem. My personal recommendation is, if you're looking for this kind of experience, play the sequel. The New User Experience is ass and nobody bothers to help you, but there are more people playing it...
and less of them are as flagrantly racist, ableist, and just straight-up shitty as they are in its predecessor. Yeah, the first Town of Salem is like that now. I've seen people pretty much admit to making alts because their previous accounts were banned for using racial slurs, and I don't know if any of them have ever adequately been punished for it. The volume of it is just that high at the moment.
I will say, points to the game for no longer allowing the use of that ableist slur in its chat. But that hasn't stopped people from using shorthands instead.
My own struggles as a person aside, play another game.
None of that has any bearing on my current score for Town of Salem. My personal recommendation is, if you're looking for this kind of experience, play the sequel. The New User Experience is ass and nobody bothers to help you, but there are more people playing it...
and less of them are as flagrantly racist, ableist, and just straight-up shitty as they are in its predecessor. Yeah, the first Town of Salem is like that now. I've seen people pretty much admit to making alts because their previous accounts were banned for using racial slurs, and I don't know if any of them have ever adequately been punished for it. The volume of it is just that high at the moment.
I will say, points to the game for no longer allowing the use of that ableist slur in its chat. But that hasn't stopped people from using shorthands instead.
My own struggles as a person aside, play another game.
2022
Burnhouse Lane occasionally represents an uneasy marriage between the staples of a classic point-and-click and the combat sections of a 90s cinematic action platformer somehow made jankier. If Rocketbirds' reverence for the style through the lens of a flash game filtered you, I cannot say you will have an enjoyable time with this for a quarter of its runtime. Thankfully, those combat sections are incredibly brief in comparison to the real meat and potatoes of this game. The puzzles in this ain't half bad! Unfortunately, there are some bafflingly contrived puzzles in here that serve as choices you don't know you're making until it's too late—I'm not going to call it padding to get you to do a second playthrough, but it certainly feels that way to me. Otherwise, it's all pretty simple stuff that indulges in the fun of inventory puzzles without resorting to moon logic on a whim. If you're afraid of playing these kinds of games because you're bad at puzzles, Burnhouse Lane (mostly) has you covered.
As for the rest of the game (the reason I really wish I could give this at least four stars), it's mostly incredible work. The art style and music, for one, do a fantastic job of pulling you into the game. As soon as you start the game, both of these things are on display in a stunningly simple, and yet perfect, menu screen. Once you step into the game itself, the landscapes, lighting, and character portraits tie it together wonderfully. I can't speak to the cohesion of the narrative, since I keep forgetting to finish this. But, having played through all but the last chapter, it's fairly compelling stuff! If you're expecting more subtlety in your horror games, or if being beaten over the head with exposition over the course of the first act doesn't suffice for you, I can't say this is an absolute winner. But speaking purely from my point-of-view, it utilizes both of those thoughtfully enough for it to avoid derailing itself altogether.
One last thing before I go: there is a damn good reason so few people have gotten the Goddess of the Axe achievement. If you're looking to 100% this, I would save that for another playthrough, because it really takes away from the whole experience the first time around. The main reason I haven't finished this yet is because I still feel burnt out after getting it.
As for the rest of the game (the reason I really wish I could give this at least four stars), it's mostly incredible work. The art style and music, for one, do a fantastic job of pulling you into the game. As soon as you start the game, both of these things are on display in a stunningly simple, and yet perfect, menu screen. Once you step into the game itself, the landscapes, lighting, and character portraits tie it together wonderfully. I can't speak to the cohesion of the narrative, since I keep forgetting to finish this. But, having played through all but the last chapter, it's fairly compelling stuff! If you're expecting more subtlety in your horror games, or if being beaten over the head with exposition over the course of the first act doesn't suffice for you, I can't say this is an absolute winner. But speaking purely from my point-of-view, it utilizes both of those thoughtfully enough for it to avoid derailing itself altogether.
One last thing before I go: there is a damn good reason so few people have gotten the Goddess of the Axe achievement. If you're looking to 100% this, I would save that for another playthrough, because it really takes away from the whole experience the first time around. The main reason I haven't finished this yet is because I still feel burnt out after getting it.
There's a lot that can be said about how the police chases that Cyperpunk's 2.0 update adds to the game can be genuinely thrilling (if you let them escalate enough and drive in first person) and how the car combat might be best-in-class in terms of its functionality. And I will let others say that for me because that's not why I'm giving this nearly five stars.
I never knew how much I needed a Stealth game where you have the ability to absolutely fucking yeet the shit out of the guards you knock out before this. Mix that with some absolutely comical gore, and it's damn near perfect.
That right there is the most fun I've had with a game all year. Typically, fist-only runs get written off as jokes because guns are more practical, and many of the setpieces you see in games elevate that from subtext to plain as day, printed in the NYT text. It's fun to see a developer not only encourage that but also make it one of the most entertaining ways to engage with their game. What makes it such a treat is that the new systems that add for cyberware here feel finely tuned enough to be rewarding as a separate method of progression without feeling needless in its implementation. Really, that's how I'd sum this entire update up: it doesn't feel like they've rewritten Cyberpunk here. Filler is still very much a part of the overall package; improvements and all, the crafting system remains a superfluous addition. But Cyberpunk has always managed to be better than the sum of its parts, and without running the risk of pushing that over the edge, they've delivered the most optimal version of that yet.
And it's still really fun to double-jump everywhere. I cannot emphasize that enough. Pair that with the ground pound (another reason to immediately dump all of your points into the Body tree), and the entire thing almost begins to resemble a beat-em-up that sometimes has guns in it, or something.
But mostly, my takeaway from this is that if more games let me throw bodies into walls so hard that hands pop off like corks, they'd all be ten outta tennnnnns
I never knew how much I needed a Stealth game where you have the ability to absolutely fucking yeet the shit out of the guards you knock out before this. Mix that with some absolutely comical gore, and it's damn near perfect.
That right there is the most fun I've had with a game all year. Typically, fist-only runs get written off as jokes because guns are more practical, and many of the setpieces you see in games elevate that from subtext to plain as day, printed in the NYT text. It's fun to see a developer not only encourage that but also make it one of the most entertaining ways to engage with their game. What makes it such a treat is that the new systems that add for cyberware here feel finely tuned enough to be rewarding as a separate method of progression without feeling needless in its implementation. Really, that's how I'd sum this entire update up: it doesn't feel like they've rewritten Cyberpunk here. Filler is still very much a part of the overall package; improvements and all, the crafting system remains a superfluous addition. But Cyberpunk has always managed to be better than the sum of its parts, and without running the risk of pushing that over the edge, they've delivered the most optimal version of that yet.
And it's still really fun to double-jump everywhere. I cannot emphasize that enough. Pair that with the ground pound (another reason to immediately dump all of your points into the Body tree), and the entire thing almost begins to resemble a beat-em-up that sometimes has guns in it, or something.
But mostly, my takeaway from this is that if more games let me throw bodies into walls so hard that hands pop off like corks, they'd all be ten outta tennnnnns
2023
The following is an excerpt from my list Errant Thoughts on Games I've Never Played Before/Haven't Played Too Much
I actually wouldn't have minded a solid zombie extraction shooter that played like a more polished version of Deadzone! It's a shame that that's not how they sold this and that the developers are clearly frauds and plagiarists. You thought Redfall was bad? This is where redemption arcs (or, collectively known in the gaming sphere as "DAE NO MAN'S SKY?!1/!:/1?!???"") go to rot.
And really, that's just the kicker, isn't it? I started out my impressions by comparing this negatively to a Roblox game from ten fucking years ago. As much as I loved Deadzone back then, you'd really have to put in a herculean effort to make a modernized version feel less like the Americanized Eurojank it is. Nevermind false advertising, or bugs, or shady volunteer work, or a suspicious trademark dispute—your game being worse than the slop we used to enjoy on Roblox? Ouch, a Band-Aid isn't going to stop that bleeding.
I actually wouldn't have minded a solid zombie extraction shooter that played like a more polished version of Deadzone! It's a shame that that's not how they sold this and that the developers are clearly frauds and plagiarists. You thought Redfall was bad? This is where redemption arcs (or, collectively known in the gaming sphere as "DAE NO MAN'S SKY?!1/!:/1?!???"") go to rot.
And really, that's just the kicker, isn't it? I started out my impressions by comparing this negatively to a Roblox game from ten fucking years ago. As much as I loved Deadzone back then, you'd really have to put in a herculean effort to make a modernized version feel less like the Americanized Eurojank it is. Nevermind false advertising, or bugs, or shady volunteer work, or a suspicious trademark dispute—your game being worse than the slop we used to enjoy on Roblox? Ouch, a Band-Aid isn't going to stop that bleeding.
2011
this is why i don't drink coffee
2018
BitLife is so hip that I created a character who was an 80-year-old grandmother, formerly a hitman-turned-captain for the Yakuza with a body count in the 50s, and she still found time to watch gaming YouTubers with her friends. At first, this is very funny in a jarring, somewhat dissonant way. But after seeing it just a couple of times, the charm wears off quickly. BitLife feels every bit like the hollow imitation it is. The primary source of woe for me here is that BitLife never, ever escapes its artifice. The emergent gameplay that makes The Sims stand out feels entirely pre-canned here, and the relationship mechanics on display are this stunningly noxious blend of one-dimensional and high-maintenance, so there's no real drama to be found, either. BitLife feels too clean, too manufactured, to stand out as little more than a version of The Sims on your phone with less clunky controls.
This is perfectly fine if you just need to kill time on a train ride, but since the most entertaining thing about it (being able to escape prison within a second by breaking the puzzle sequence with keyboard controls) has been patched out, and most of the mechanics that might threaten to redeem the experience are locked behind a paywall, there really isn't much sustainability past that. I originally wrote that I would have been happy to pay twenty to thirty bucks for this instead of having to deal with those microtransactions, but this, at best, is worth ten dollars.
This is perfectly fine if you just need to kill time on a train ride, but since the most entertaining thing about it (being able to escape prison within a second by breaking the puzzle sequence with keyboard controls) has been patched out, and most of the mechanics that might threaten to redeem the experience are locked behind a paywall, there really isn't much sustainability past that. I originally wrote that I would have been happy to pay twenty to thirty bucks for this instead of having to deal with those microtransactions, but this, at best, is worth ten dollars.
Happy (belated) Halloween!
I go into this in more detail here, but the SparkNotes of that long-post is that these devs were well and truly fucked. It's never been said in any official capacity, but it doesn't take too much intuition to assume that that was the outcome. They wanted to make one of their dream projects on UE4 but were lacking in budget and talent. A big-name company like Atari swoops in and gives them the opportunity to learn more of the ropes, hone their craft, and get paid for it! Woohoo! They then proceed to pay each of the developers they have working under their belt, not by the pound, but in pounds. Development fees add up, and when the money dries up, you can't have your hands tied for much longer. One glorified pre-alpha and twenty-six Steam reviews later, I can see what these developers were going for—but I can't buy their game. Unceremoniously and without much reason, Haunted House: Cryptic Graves was Alan Smithee'd from existence. Its store page might still be up, but that's about it, really. Perhaps a cautionary tale about vetting your business partners a little more before accepting any deal offered to you; Dreampainters is fucking lucky to still be around after this, and I'm not mincing words there.
I pity them, but I don't hate the artist forced to show their hand out of necessity.
I go into this in more detail here, but the SparkNotes of that long-post is that these devs were well and truly fucked. It's never been said in any official capacity, but it doesn't take too much intuition to assume that that was the outcome. They wanted to make one of their dream projects on UE4 but were lacking in budget and talent. A big-name company like Atari swoops in and gives them the opportunity to learn more of the ropes, hone their craft, and get paid for it! Woohoo! They then proceed to pay each of the developers they have working under their belt, not by the pound, but in pounds. Development fees add up, and when the money dries up, you can't have your hands tied for much longer. One glorified pre-alpha and twenty-six Steam reviews later, I can see what these developers were going for—but I can't buy their game. Unceremoniously and without much reason, Haunted House: Cryptic Graves was Alan Smithee'd from existence. Its store page might still be up, but that's about it, really. Perhaps a cautionary tale about vetting your business partners a little more before accepting any deal offered to you; Dreampainters is fucking lucky to still be around after this, and I'm not mincing words there.
I pity them, but I don't hate the artist forced to show their hand out of necessity.
2017
I have never understood Fortnite.
I get why people love it so much. My siblings, god bless their hearts, fell in love with this thing a year ago, so I've played with them a few times and seen the dances they bought for their characters and the skins they've unlocked. And I get the appeal of that. I don't get the appeal of the game itself.
I like the individual aspects on display. The respawn mechanic would be a great idea in a game with smaller maps and more to do (See: The Finals). The little side-quests and distractions are cute and add a lot of flavor to what is otherwise a pretty bland experience. The art style is very well-developed, and each area on the map is distinct enough to serve as a fun little playground on its own. I love the shrinking circle mechanic—again, give me smaller maps, and I'll appreciate it more.
Put all of those aspects together, though, and... I don't know, it just feels kind of unfocused? There are certainly rounds where everything clicks into place, and there's a high-voltage rush to the finish line that permeates through every shot fired. But there are twice as many rounds where over half the time you spend playing is dicking around, waiting for conflict to happen. And then conflict does happen; everybody dies, game over, and the next round is the exact same fucking thing. Ad nauseam. The last five minutes of those rounds are suuuper fun, if you ignore the fact that everything before them was just whatever.
As someone who tried to get into Fortnite to play with my siblings, I also have to say that I'm not a fan of the bots. Listen, I loved playing botmatches on Unreal Tournament 3 and TimeSplitters Future Perfect back then. The thing is, I chose to have those experiences. I was given an option. It's called an option, a fucking option. If you want newer players to play around with bots so they get used to the game, encourage that. Please, don't hoist your 10 IQ, braindead bots on the siblings of those who just want to connect with their family. It's not fun, and it makes me appreciate your game less because it shows you have absolutely no confidence in giving me any choice. Also, what if I wanted to play with bots more often after I escaped the bot gulag? Why is it "We add bots to fill a lobby sometimes" and not, "Hey, if you wanted to play exclusively with bots, there's a mode for that"? You might say that Fortnite is targeting a much younger audience than Unreal or TimeSplitters, to which I have to respond that I played both as a child.
I don't know. I guess I like this game? But I don't love it. I can tell it's the sort of thing that's more fun after you've poured a ton of time into it on your own. The battle passes in this weren't influential enough for every multiplayer game following its smashing success to have one for no reason. But I dunno; I just don't feel like it. It doesn't click with me, and that's a real shame.
I get why people love it so much. My siblings, god bless their hearts, fell in love with this thing a year ago, so I've played with them a few times and seen the dances they bought for their characters and the skins they've unlocked. And I get the appeal of that. I don't get the appeal of the game itself.
I like the individual aspects on display. The respawn mechanic would be a great idea in a game with smaller maps and more to do (See: The Finals). The little side-quests and distractions are cute and add a lot of flavor to what is otherwise a pretty bland experience. The art style is very well-developed, and each area on the map is distinct enough to serve as a fun little playground on its own. I love the shrinking circle mechanic—again, give me smaller maps, and I'll appreciate it more.
Put all of those aspects together, though, and... I don't know, it just feels kind of unfocused? There are certainly rounds where everything clicks into place, and there's a high-voltage rush to the finish line that permeates through every shot fired. But there are twice as many rounds where over half the time you spend playing is dicking around, waiting for conflict to happen. And then conflict does happen; everybody dies, game over, and the next round is the exact same fucking thing. Ad nauseam. The last five minutes of those rounds are suuuper fun, if you ignore the fact that everything before them was just whatever.
As someone who tried to get into Fortnite to play with my siblings, I also have to say that I'm not a fan of the bots. Listen, I loved playing botmatches on Unreal Tournament 3 and TimeSplitters Future Perfect back then. The thing is, I chose to have those experiences. I was given an option. It's called an option, a fucking option. If you want newer players to play around with bots so they get used to the game, encourage that. Please, don't hoist your 10 IQ, braindead bots on the siblings of those who just want to connect with their family. It's not fun, and it makes me appreciate your game less because it shows you have absolutely no confidence in giving me any choice. Also, what if I wanted to play with bots more often after I escaped the bot gulag? Why is it "We add bots to fill a lobby sometimes" and not, "Hey, if you wanted to play exclusively with bots, there's a mode for that"? You might say that Fortnite is targeting a much younger audience than Unreal or TimeSplitters, to which I have to respond that I played both as a child.
I don't know. I guess I like this game? But I don't love it. I can tell it's the sort of thing that's more fun after you've poured a ton of time into it on your own. The battle passes in this weren't influential enough for every multiplayer game following its smashing success to have one for no reason. But I dunno; I just don't feel like it. It doesn't click with me, and that's a real shame.
2023
The Finals is the redeeming last five minutes of a boring-as-fuck Fortnite round stretched out to cover the entirety of enthralling, nail-biting rounds that make you feel triumphant for every small victory you make. This is the kind of game that will make a follower a leader on a whim, and it feels great. The core gameplay loop here is kinda perfection, in that it's simple enough to describe to somebody who has no idea what this game looks like, but can get exceedingly complex in action. And this blunt intricacy spans more than one mode, too. The Final's take on Kill Confirmed is just as chaotic and cathartic as the main mode and feels like a welcome addition rather than a lazy afterthought. I'm genuinely pumped to see what else they add to this because they're clearly bringing their A-Game to it.
Get two of your friends (or family) on voice comms, and this is great fun. But the magic of a good teamwork-centric multiplayer title like this is that it works just as fine if you're playing with complete strangers several continents ahead of you who don't even speak your language. I can't say with certainty that it's as fun here, but going off of the few rounds I've played on my lonesome, it's been more than possible and, in some cases, just as fun.
Playing The Finals, I feel as enthusiastic as my siblings did when they got into TF2 over a decade ago. I never thought I'd have my moment, but I have.
EDIT: Had to knock off a star because of the AI shit that's apparently in the game. I'm grateful that this game is free so I don't have to have any conscience issues with supporting it, but it's still kinda scummy.
Get two of your friends (or family) on voice comms, and this is great fun. But the magic of a good teamwork-centric multiplayer title like this is that it works just as fine if you're playing with complete strangers several continents ahead of you who don't even speak your language. I can't say with certainty that it's as fun here, but going off of the few rounds I've played on my lonesome, it's been more than possible and, in some cases, just as fun.
Playing The Finals, I feel as enthusiastic as my siblings did when they got into TF2 over a decade ago. I never thought I'd have my moment, but I have.
EDIT: Had to knock off a star because of the AI shit that's apparently in the game. I'm grateful that this game is free so I don't have to have any conscience issues with supporting it, but it's still kinda scummy.
It's nigh impossible to describe exactly what Cyberpunk 2077's 'The Star' ending evoked in me when I first saw the game to completion on a cold December night. Speaking figuratively, I find it a much simpler task. There's this feeling you get sometimes when you're coming home from a long road trip, and the homesickness that caused you to take aspects of it for granted is starting to wear off. You have this sort of longing in you, an inescapable urge to rush back to your memories of when you saw a fresh bit of the world last to see if you can scrape something novel out of it to punctuate the dark, featureless mountaintops on the road home. I associate it with this subtle sense of coldness like someone's cracked open a window at the break of dawn right as Spring is starting to hit. Not so cold to the touch that you start to feel like an iceblock that can shoot frozen lightning out of its fingertips, but cold enough where the air around you starts to feel like it's whispering to a part of you that's inattentive for most of the day.
Needless to say, that ending is a large part of why Cyberpunk clicked with me so much when I first played through it and why, nearly three years later, I still think back on it quite fondly. Without spoiling it, the additional ending Phantom Liberty adds to the base Cyberpunk experience is one of the most profound and earnest endings I've ever seen in a game. Both incredibly bitter to the taste and yet oddly beautiful, it stands neck-in-neck with 'The Star' as perhaps one of the greatest endings I've ever seen a game have. It's simple but razor sharp, introspective in a way few endings are, and manages to pack one hell of an emotional punch without resorting to tragedy in such a real way that it not only bolsters the core characters of the base game by refusing to pull punches—it improves them. In other words, this is CDPR sticking to its guns in a way no other studio has. If this had half the heart and soul it does, it would be accurate to label such a statement bootlicking. But, flaws and all, the end result is something undeniably remarkable.
On the whole, Phantom Liberty is buoyed by fantastic, potentially career-best performances by actors such as Cherami Leigh, one of the many facets that make the experience far better than any DLC has any right to be. I was aware that these developers had somewhat of a reputation for that since the tease of DLC was somewhat hyped even before this game's release. I'm tempted to say a big, vague statement like 'there is seeing, and there is believing' because, for the most part, they knocked this out of the park.
For the most part. I wish I could say this is All Killer, No Filler, but throughout, you'll definitely see the game making a push to get you to do other things. I didn't mind that in the base game, actually. It prevents what I call 'Bethesda-itis': it is more believable to me if I have to wait a day or two for a character to read a book I just handed them than if they skim through the entire thing and immediately understand every inch of it right in front of me. Given the scale of the game surrounding Phantom Liberty, it makes a lot of sense. But due to Phantom Liberty being much smaller than the game preceding it, it's an approach that almost threatens to devalue it at times. Worse yet, only one of the two bits of repeatable content here is worthwhile. While it can veer on frustrating, as its randomized nature will sometimes give you odd pairings that feel obtuse to work around, delivering cars is a blast. Once you get accustomed to the vehicle combat, there's a lot of fun to be had there that adds a little more replayability to the overall package. I wish I could say the same about airdrops. While you're in Dogtown (the new district), every now and then, an airdrop full of supplies will be dropped that you can choose to secure by fighting off the soldiers protecting it. These always play out the same and, unlike the car delivery side-operations, fail to be a noteworthy addition to the experience as a whole. If it weren't for the bits of narrative you get in the NCPD Scanner Hustles, I'd honestly say that they're on the same level in terms of quality.
With all this said, however, Phantom Liberty was absolutely worth the wait. I said in my last review for Cyberpunk that if this team ever successfully releases a sequel, there's some real potential to be had in it. Phantom Liberty affirms that wholesale.
Needless to say, that ending is a large part of why Cyberpunk clicked with me so much when I first played through it and why, nearly three years later, I still think back on it quite fondly. Without spoiling it, the additional ending Phantom Liberty adds to the base Cyberpunk experience is one of the most profound and earnest endings I've ever seen in a game. Both incredibly bitter to the taste and yet oddly beautiful, it stands neck-in-neck with 'The Star' as perhaps one of the greatest endings I've ever seen a game have. It's simple but razor sharp, introspective in a way few endings are, and manages to pack one hell of an emotional punch without resorting to tragedy in such a real way that it not only bolsters the core characters of the base game by refusing to pull punches—it improves them. In other words, this is CDPR sticking to its guns in a way no other studio has. If this had half the heart and soul it does, it would be accurate to label such a statement bootlicking. But, flaws and all, the end result is something undeniably remarkable.
On the whole, Phantom Liberty is buoyed by fantastic, potentially career-best performances by actors such as Cherami Leigh, one of the many facets that make the experience far better than any DLC has any right to be. I was aware that these developers had somewhat of a reputation for that since the tease of DLC was somewhat hyped even before this game's release. I'm tempted to say a big, vague statement like 'there is seeing, and there is believing' because, for the most part, they knocked this out of the park.
For the most part. I wish I could say this is All Killer, No Filler, but throughout, you'll definitely see the game making a push to get you to do other things. I didn't mind that in the base game, actually. It prevents what I call 'Bethesda-itis': it is more believable to me if I have to wait a day or two for a character to read a book I just handed them than if they skim through the entire thing and immediately understand every inch of it right in front of me. Given the scale of the game surrounding Phantom Liberty, it makes a lot of sense. But due to Phantom Liberty being much smaller than the game preceding it, it's an approach that almost threatens to devalue it at times. Worse yet, only one of the two bits of repeatable content here is worthwhile. While it can veer on frustrating, as its randomized nature will sometimes give you odd pairings that feel obtuse to work around, delivering cars is a blast. Once you get accustomed to the vehicle combat, there's a lot of fun to be had there that adds a little more replayability to the overall package. I wish I could say the same about airdrops. While you're in Dogtown (the new district), every now and then, an airdrop full of supplies will be dropped that you can choose to secure by fighting off the soldiers protecting it. These always play out the same and, unlike the car delivery side-operations, fail to be a noteworthy addition to the experience as a whole. If it weren't for the bits of narrative you get in the NCPD Scanner Hustles, I'd honestly say that they're on the same level in terms of quality.
With all this said, however, Phantom Liberty was absolutely worth the wait. I said in my last review for Cyberpunk that if this team ever successfully releases a sequel, there's some real potential to be had in it. Phantom Liberty affirms that wholesale.
2023
It's genuinely funny to me that so much discussion around hype these days is surrounded by the mantra of "I hope this isn't the next Cyberpunk!" because, while I get that, more games could seriously use the level of attention to detail that Cyberpunk put toward immersing you in its world, and I'm hardly being facetious with that statement. Case in point: You can only see your feet in Starfield if you're in third-person mode. It's such a minor detail that really shouldn't matter. But it's as close of a clue as you'll get to what the overall Starfield experience is within the first five minutes or so.
What you're going to hear a lot about Starfield, and what you've likely heard already, is that, yeah, it's a Bethesda game. It's buggy and kinda janky; its main story has interesting ideas but lacks enough of a personal touch to really engross you in the potential of its overall premise. It's predicated on the belief that exploration is BALLIN', and it would be if the overly mechanical interactions you have with the world here were more sparing. The stealth system is still laughably dated, utilizing duck-and-cover methods for combat that make it more a test of patience and your reliability to quicksave at the right times than most games with tacked-on Stealth systems do. And the absolutely bonkers scale here is really just an excuse to fast travel everywhere. I shit you not; you could move in the same direction for ten minutes and not be an inch closer to your destination from where you started. It is actually just egregious. If all of these are deal-breakers for you, then Starfield is best experienced as a bonus for subscribing to Game Pass and little else. But if you're a sucker for building characters and side-questing, Starfield has you more than covered. The icing on the cake here is that the combat is pretty solid. Shotguns in this game feel like shotguns, and the typical RPG thing of enemies being spongier until you put the right amount of points into your proficiency skills doesn't do much to hinder this. Put it this way: I'm twelve hours in, and I'm still having fun using the starter pistol. I'll be damned: the First-Person Shooter part of this First-Person Shooter ain't half bad! The quality of the side content occasionally suffers, but there are still some serious winners in here. It is right to call Starfield a Bethesda game because, like most of their output, it will have you hooked if you let it.
I really wish there was more to say about this than that. I'm sure that, when I inevitably interact with systems like base building and ship customization, I will either love or loathe my time with Starfield. My impression after twelve hours so far is that this is the quintessential 7/10 game: there are enough holes in this for me to understand and relate to both opinions regarding it without resentment or reservations. Before that riles anyone up: a 7/10 is a good score, and you're missing out if you automatically assume that means a game's bad or not worth your time in any meaningful capacity.
.
Edit: Lowered my score for this by a half-star because Cyberpunk absolutely shits all over this, and it's not even funny. I hate to play the fanboy card, but revisiting that game has made me completely reevaluate how I scored this.
Lol no
.
I stopped playing after those twelve hours and have had no incentive to return to it since. While my previous comment was less of a response and more an interaction with the bitter public reception this was garnering in the light of Cyberpunk's magnificent Phantom Liberty expansion, this one comes from the heart:
Starfield is 100 GBs and, outside of its shooting, is just kind of boring.
6/10.
What you're going to hear a lot about Starfield, and what you've likely heard already, is that, yeah, it's a Bethesda game. It's buggy and kinda janky; its main story has interesting ideas but lacks enough of a personal touch to really engross you in the potential of its overall premise. It's predicated on the belief that exploration is BALLIN', and it would be if the overly mechanical interactions you have with the world here were more sparing. The stealth system is still laughably dated, utilizing duck-and-cover methods for combat that make it more a test of patience and your reliability to quicksave at the right times than most games with tacked-on Stealth systems do. And the absolutely bonkers scale here is really just an excuse to fast travel everywhere. I shit you not; you could move in the same direction for ten minutes and not be an inch closer to your destination from where you started. It is actually just egregious. If all of these are deal-breakers for you, then Starfield is best experienced as a bonus for subscribing to Game Pass and little else. But if you're a sucker for building characters and side-questing, Starfield has you more than covered. The icing on the cake here is that the combat is pretty solid. Shotguns in this game feel like shotguns, and the typical RPG thing of enemies being spongier until you put the right amount of points into your proficiency skills doesn't do much to hinder this. Put it this way: I'm twelve hours in, and I'm still having fun using the starter pistol. I'll be damned: the First-Person Shooter part of this First-Person Shooter ain't half bad! The quality of the side content occasionally suffers, but there are still some serious winners in here. It is right to call Starfield a Bethesda game because, like most of their output, it will have you hooked if you let it.
I really wish there was more to say about this than that. I'm sure that, when I inevitably interact with systems like base building and ship customization, I will either love or loathe my time with Starfield. My impression after twelve hours so far is that this is the quintessential 7/10 game: there are enough holes in this for me to understand and relate to both opinions regarding it without resentment or reservations. Before that riles anyone up: a 7/10 is a good score, and you're missing out if you automatically assume that means a game's bad or not worth your time in any meaningful capacity.
.
Lol no
.
I stopped playing after those twelve hours and have had no incentive to return to it since. While my previous comment was less of a response and more an interaction with the bitter public reception this was garnering in the light of Cyberpunk's magnificent Phantom Liberty expansion, this one comes from the heart:
Starfield is 100 GBs and, outside of its shooting, is just kind of boring.
6/10.
2013
There was a copy of this that went unsold, right next to a sealed-in-box copy of Mafia II for the PC, for years at our nearby Target. Sometimes, I wonder what brought this eyesore to the store in the first place. I wonder how long it sat there for, where it went after my Target dealt with its clearance, and where the games like it go. I can envision a time in which a con like this was successful. More peaceful times when you came home from the grocery store, hugged your child, pat them on the head, and gave them a copy of this and Big Rigs that you bought from the local Walmart as a last-minute gift. I wonder about the capitalist grief that fuels those purchases—the thought process that led to my cousins giving us GameStop gift cards every Christmas, which is why we have a UDraw Tablet for the PS3 sitting somewhere around here. I wonder about the Wii U Gamecube adapter and NES mini and SNES mini that my father had to stick his neck out to get, and I wonder if, at all, he'd go back and stop himself from the hassle, knowing full well those are all items collecting dust in cabinets we hardly ever look at anymore. And it all beckons me to ask: Is there affection in hedonism? Is it more appropriate to let our memories of such gestures settle like the wind, or should we all laugh at associating such a concept with a product as half-hearted, inherently dated, and embarrassingly corporate as 700,000 Games is? If IGDB is right, this came out in 2013. How anyone thought stocking store shelves with this 20 years after it would have been viable is fucking insane. I'm assuming it was pitched to Viva less in terms of being a successor to Action 52 and more as an attempt to bank off of the momentary success of Flash Games. I can see that pitch meeting going down in a board room, and what I would have been willing to tell the average Joe behind this if I were in the room is this: You don't understand Flash Games. You have to understand Newgrounds was popular, not because it was a nice, civil place, but because it was transgressive, abhorrent, and, at times, pornographic. You have to understand that the tamer examples, like DuckLife, Papa's Pizzeria, and Learn to Fly, were practically phone games played by kids who didn't own a phone. EdsWorld was a counter-cultural icon that never made it to TV because, sometimes, what following your dreams really means is knowing how to ingratiate yourself to a board room that will boot you off the air multiple times if the imagination of you and your crew don't provide enough dividends. What school computer is going to stock 700,000 Games on the device they use for their math or literature classes? And that's not even getting into how much of a boneheaded decision it is to name your game 700,000 GAMES. Do you think Activision or EA could make 700,000 FATHER-FUCKING GAMES if they wanted to? Do you know the absurd amount of resources that it would take for even one of those games to function in the slightest? I mean, of course, they knew. This doesn't actually have 700,000 games in it... which means that NES pirate carts with the same games repeated a million times are less intellectually dishonest than this. Think about that for a second. Holy shit.
But you know what the real crazy part of all of this is? Viva published a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game before this. Talk about range, man.
...
Hi! What you've just read is a sample from my list Errant Thoughts On Games I've Never Played Before/Haven't Played Too Much. I figured I'd share the most recent addition to that list separately because I like it enough to feel like it warrants that. I do update that list every now and then. Do be forewarned if you intend to look at it, I do get pretty political in a couple of areas. But anyway, hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Byeeeeee.
But you know what the real crazy part of all of this is? Viva published a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game before this. Talk about range, man.
...
Hi! What you've just read is a sample from my list Errant Thoughts On Games I've Never Played Before/Haven't Played Too Much. I figured I'd share the most recent addition to that list separately because I like it enough to feel like it warrants that. I do update that list every now and then. Do be forewarned if you intend to look at it, I do get pretty political in a couple of areas. But anyway, hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Byeeeeee.
2010
There's something about Just Cause 2's anarchic sensibility that still somewhat resonates with me. It cares about its world as much as you do, and thus there's an explosive barrel around almost every corner. This is the kind of game that prioritizes head-empty fun, the likes of which are stereotypically associated with 1980s' action-blockbusters usually starring Stallone or Schwarzenegger. With that in mind, I can absolutely see why both this and its successor are revered in the way that they are. Speaking as someone who originally played this as a child, that's how me and my siblings felt about this, too! But we never got that far in it, and having revisited this recently, I don't think it boggles the mind to wonder why.
See, it's fun to blow stuff up. It's fun to blow a lot of stuff up! But at some point, just blowing stuff up begins to feel kind of threadbare, and the lackluster combat and mission design really don't do this any favors. A game this simple isn't as enjoyable on a map this big. Military bases are initially exhilarating to clear, but at a certain point, it gets very annoying having to practically pixel-hunt for the one thing you didn't destroy to get a 100% completion rating. Both cars and planes are far less breezy to use than your parachute and grappling hook, with planes and helicopters feeling like the weakest of the two. But given how spread out everything is, aerial traversal becomes a necessity very early on. If this were a less ambitious game overall, I'd say it lives up to my nostalgia. But I get why we moved on to other games.
See, it's fun to blow stuff up. It's fun to blow a lot of stuff up! But at some point, just blowing stuff up begins to feel kind of threadbare, and the lackluster combat and mission design really don't do this any favors. A game this simple isn't as enjoyable on a map this big. Military bases are initially exhilarating to clear, but at a certain point, it gets very annoying having to practically pixel-hunt for the one thing you didn't destroy to get a 100% completion rating. Both cars and planes are far less breezy to use than your parachute and grappling hook, with planes and helicopters feeling like the weakest of the two. But given how spread out everything is, aerial traversal becomes a necessity very early on. If this were a less ambitious game overall, I'd say it lives up to my nostalgia. But I get why we moved on to other games.
Aporia: Beyond the Valley understands three fundamental things about Myst: not everybody picked Myst up for the puzzles(t); to a subset of players, the mystery of why they were on Myst Island was more fascinating than any answer the game could ever hope to give them; Myst was kind of scary. If you could never escape the first island but wanted to keep exploring, Aporia was made for you. That isn't to say that there isn't an emphasis on puzzle solving here—what game inspired by Myst would be replete without that? But the puzzles here are pretty simplistic and, in my experience, only require brainpower due to occasionally lacking feedback. The real draw of Aporia is its atmosphere. While being clearly made on a budget ensures that not every corner of this world looks as pleasant as others (the starting area's artificial-looking water and dreary dark corners belie how breathtaking the second area's lake is), everything from the lighting to the environment design compels you to explore and ask questions the entire time. This focus on atmosphere extends to its slow pace, lack of explicitly stated direction, and lack of spoken dialog. That lack of direction can be a double-edged sword because, while it draws you closer to its mystery, it ensures that any significant breaks taken from playing this is bound to confuse. I find the lack of dialog to be a very fascinating touch, however, as it ensures that this is a story that could only be told and understood through the lens of it being a video game. I don't want to get too pretentious sounding with my praise, but I love it when I see it.
Overall, from what I've played of Aporia, I recommend it. But I can totally see why this is so niche and has flown under so many radars. It's a bit of a bummer that the majority of the people who own this have never played it (only 28% of the people who have played it have found a map, and I'm not bullshitting those numbers). If you're one of the many who bought this with a 75% off coupon at some point or bought it for a dollar through Humble Bundle like I did back then, I recommend checking it out if you're looking for something more deliberate and laconic.
t= wording has been corrected to be more inclusive.
Overall, from what I've played of Aporia, I recommend it. But I can totally see why this is so niche and has flown under so many radars. It's a bit of a bummer that the majority of the people who own this have never played it (only 28% of the people who have played it have found a map, and I'm not bullshitting those numbers). If you're one of the many who bought this with a 75% off coupon at some point or bought it for a dollar through Humble Bundle like I did back then, I recommend checking it out if you're looking for something more deliberate and laconic.
t= wording has been corrected to be more inclusive.