I played the original Psychonauts when it came out and it was one of my favorite games of its console generation due purely to its vibrant creativity. I never really thought there would be a sequel and then Psychonauts 2 arrived 15+ years later with little fanfare. This one is even better than the first. Like the first, Psychonauts 2 uses creative exploration and manifestation of the mind, dream logic, and childhood nostalgia to explore a wide variety of themes related to mental health. While the subject matter can get quite dark, it is always handled maturely and I always felt like I was in good hands. Each mindscape feels uniquely suited to each character and evocative of that character's mental state and personality. Frankly, the combat in these games is by far their worst quality, but the platforming is solid and moving through each world and the story is pure joy for me. I probably wouldn't consider this a masterpiece if it weren't so stunningly creative, but the only game even remotely close in that regard is the first Psychonauts. I had an incredible time from start to finish and it's an experience I'll be thinking about for a long while.

I've played through this series twice in full before now, but never back-to-back-to-back in quick succession. It used to be pretty clunky transferring your character over between discs and managing DLC and whatnot. Having everything in one package makes it feel more like one grand space opera than three separate entries. I love these games dearly.

ME1 is clunky and dated now, but it remains extremely impressive how well it delivers massive amounts of lore and worldbuilding details without ever feeling like an info dump. It prepares you perfectly for ME2, which used to be my favorite of the series. The combat feels great and the backstories of each member of your squad are varied and phenomenal. The whole game is basically one big recruitment mission though, so I found myself enjoying ME3 even more this time around. The stakes feel high and the heavy story beats feel well-earned. ME3 is a damn near perfect game in my opinion outside of the very end, which is an undeniably bland way to wrap up the story. Everything leading up to that final choice is brilliant, but boiling down hours and hours of choices and character building to three very similar options is a bit disappointing. It doesn't bring the game as a whole down in my estimation though. This is an epic story, one of my favorite RPGs, and I am attached to so many of the characters. I will always love these games and I hope Bioware can make something this good again.

I am a massive fan of the Witcher franchise, including CDPR's game series. I think CDPR did a fantastic job adapting the books to the game format and exploring some bold narrative spaces within the fantasy genre. So I was hyped for their take on the cyberpunk genre.

There's a long list of things I like about this game but a slightly longer list of things I don't like. There are moments of utter brilliance but I come away feeling like there's a ton of wasted potential here. I think the biggest bummer for me is that they don't take advantage of the narrative possibilities of cyberpunk at all. They settle for a pretty generic narrative arc for V. They build intricate and beautiful scenery that feels empty once you look closer.

Ultimately, I think it's a good game with some serious flaws that I had some fun with. However, I'm looking for more right now and I just don't care to see it through. I'll return to it at some point.

UPDATE: Not really sure what prompted me exactly, but I picked this game back up around two months ago (after putting it down in January) and finally beat it recently. I think after sitting on it for a while, I was able to view the game for what it was and not what I expected it to be, and I ended up enjoying it a lot more! They did also fix pretty much all the bugs I’d encountered on release, and it was a much smoother and cleaner experience. I still agree with pretty much everything I said in my first journal entry (below), but with progressing further into the game I learned to deal with the combat and really enjoy the story. The main missions still didn’t really thrill me, but the side missions were great. I loved the cast of side characters, especially Judy and Panam (my Boo). This game is still fundamentally flawed in ways, but there’s something really charming about the story and world that pull me in. I ended up really enjoying my time with this game and I’m glad I finished it. I’ll be playing any DLC that comes out for this as well.

Old Review:
I think Cyberpunk 2077 could have been a fantastic open world RPG with one of the most interesting worlds and stories of any game in the genre. Sadly, they underdeliver on most aspects of the game, and deliver something that feels lost in its own expectations.

Even comparing it to other open world RPG’s, it’s not very good. The map is super bloated, with so many icons of things to do it’s overwhelming. There’s not much customization, with the only thing you’re able to change being clothes which are tied to armor points, taking away the only incentive of customization in the game. As of my 20 or so hours so far, the first big mission where you break into Arasaka tower was pretty cool, and every other mission has been fine. They’re pretty generic and nothing special nor bad. There’s some cool side quests like the ones where you reclaim rogue taxi’s, but even those get repetitive and boring after a couple of them.

The FPS mechanics feel clunky and not at all responsive or satisfying to play. Combat always felt like a chore in this game, even after I turned off the default settings of gradual camera turning (which was dumb to have implemented in the first place). They’ve been talking about adding a multiplayer and that honestly sounds horrible. Having competitive modes based on this combat system sounds like the opposite of fun.

The other day I walked around the heart of downtown in this game for 5 or so minutes actively looking for anything to do. I didn’t find a single thing. There wasn’t one bar, club, shop, or anything of the sort that I could actually walk into and interact with. There were a couple of shootouts in the street which seems to be one of the only dynamic events in the game. I saw a really cool neon rainbow tunnel and thought “oh wow that’s cool I want to go check that out”. Turns out it was a train station that you can’t even enter, it was just a fast travel point, and this entire structure was just for looks. This all leads into my biggest problem with the game.

The world, for how detailed, dense, and vertical it is, feels remarkably empty and without soul. I rarely felt the feeling of “oh wow that looks so cool I want to go over there and check that out” that I should feel in an open world game, since I knew it was just for looks and I probably wouldn’t be able to do so. The immersion was also broken so often by stupid AI or bugs. There’s so many beautiful, tall buildings in this game, yet there’s no way to actually utilize them. You see flying cars all the time in the sky, yet you can’t drive any of them. How cool would it be to be able to drive around on the street and have the world that’s going on down there, and also drive around in the sky and see the world from a totally different perspective up there? Like if there were a bar near the top of a tower, and there was a hangar in the side of the building to park in and go inside?That’d be so cool! They tease you with how cool flying cars are by showing you them in the main missions (even in one of the first missions in the game) but never give you access. Huge missed opportunity there.

The story as well is fine, but doesn’t seem to really do anything super special. It doesn’t take full advantage of the cyberpunk genre and all the complex themes there are to explore there.

This game makes me sad, because I see so much potential in it. It could’ve been a 4 or maybe even a 5 star game for me, but there are so many areas throughout the game where they under-deliver what clearly could have been significantly more fleshed out mechanics and concepts. I hope that maybe a Cyberpunk 2 (if they ever decide to return to this IP) can expand on the good ideas that are already here, and make a game that lives up to the hype that this one had. I’m shelving this after 20 or so hours because I’m bored and disappointed, but I plan to return in a month or so and beat it. Maybe with the upcoming updates and finishing the full game my review could go up to 3 stars.

The opening level of Prey is one of my favorite gaming experiences I have ever had. For the first few hours I really thought this was going to be one of my favorite games ever. The world building, sound design, and environmental storytelling are all some of the best I have ever experienced. You are given an incredible amount of freedom to achieve your goals in whatever way you want. There is a stunning amount of variety and choice in how you move through the game.

I really think this could have been an absolute masterpiece if it weren't for the main story. The environmental storytelling in your surroundings, emails, and audio logs is perfect but the actual main story is an overlong slog of backtracking and stupid barriers to your progress that feel artificial. It's a shame because the game feels so polished and thoughtful in every area except for the actual main quest.

Outside of that though I loved pretty much everything about this game. It is obviously very much inspired by System Shock 2 and the BioShock games and I actually liked this more than any of those, even the first BioShock.

I picked this up for the art style alone, and the art is both this game's greatest strength and greatest weakness. It's a strength because it is absolutely gorgeous and faithful to animation of old (without all the baggage, racism, etc.) but it's a weakness because the screen gets really busy and it's incredibly difficult to see what is going on at times. I cannot imagine playing this in co-op, adding another moving character and more particles and such. This chaos along with some unfortunate RNG at the end made some of the bosses artificially difficult. Fortunately, the difficulty throughout is mostly fair and the controls are as perfectly tight and responsive as they need to be. It's a great game but I would honestly recommend just watching someone play through this on YouTube rather than playing it yourself.