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NFS Hot Pursuit is a great nifty arcade racer with alot of little nusances that weigh it down a lot.
First for the positives:
+ The game has a great sense of speed and acceleration, which makes racing down the highway at 400 kph actually really thrilling and adrenaline pumping.
+ The car selection is great with many of the most iconic vehicles of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
+The AI is actually pretty decent and poses an actual challenge, if you are not perfectly driving.
For the negatives:
- The handling of the cars feels a bit imprecise, which is especially highlighted when you are trying to get through a road block which has a small opening, that is almost impossible to navigate through, due to the floaty handling.
- The progression in this game is quite strange for me, as you are constantly unlocking new vehicles but alot of the time these are just duplicates as many of the cars have a normal and a convertable version. Also after completing every event in the game the final unlock, the Gumpert Apollo, (which I really looked forward to) was still miles away from actually being unlocked, therefore I never got to drive it outside of the preview events.
- The general feel of the menus and UI is horribly sluggish. On top of that you have long loading times (even with a PCIe 4 SSD) and unskippable cutscenes for every race (you can tell the game to skip the cutscene but most of the time it will play most of the cutscene anyway). All of that feels like it wastes your time not doing what you actually want, which is racing.
- This last point may seem like a small issue but it is really not and is probably alone respobsible for why I give this a 3,5 instead of a higher rating: The Crash Cam. If you haven't played the game, let me explain what the crash cam is: It is a slow motion camera that takes away controls from you racing to look at an opponent "wreck" after every succesful action. And if I say every succesful action I literally mean EVERY single one. You hit someone with an EMP, you hit someone with a spike strip, you hit someone heavily with your car, you wreck somebody. You might think that is a rare or special occurence but in the end this will happen to you about 15 times in a 5 minute race. I get what they were going for, I know the crash cam from Burnout, they want you to enjoy the carnage that you caused when you sent an opponent into the wall and gaze upon its bend metal wreckage. BUT this does not work at all in the context of this video game, as first of all, all of these cars are licensed, which means they are not allowed to have any sort of damage model at all except for scratches and bumpers hanging off and second of all, they even use this when you use your EMP, where all that is happening is, that the opponent is lightly swaying to the side, which is like the least interesting slow motion "crash" footage I have ever seen. And you know what is the best thing about all of this, if the constant interruption of your driving with boring slow mo footage wasn't enough? Half of the time you will immediatly crash into either a wall or a traffic car afterwards, killing all of your momentum, which actually makes it a better strategy to not use your power ups in a race. And all of this could have been circumvented when they made this Remaster, where they could have just acknowledged that it was a shitty feature in the original and could have made it at least optional.
The last part developed into kind of a little rant into this little part of this game but it made me so frustrated and dampened my experience with the game heavily which is otherwise a fun arcade racer.
Who would I recommend this to? If you are looking for an old school arcade race in the style, that they are not making anymore, this is still a solid pick.
First for the positives:
+ The game has a great sense of speed and acceleration, which makes racing down the highway at 400 kph actually really thrilling and adrenaline pumping.
+ The car selection is great with many of the most iconic vehicles of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
+The AI is actually pretty decent and poses an actual challenge, if you are not perfectly driving.
For the negatives:
- The handling of the cars feels a bit imprecise, which is especially highlighted when you are trying to get through a road block which has a small opening, that is almost impossible to navigate through, due to the floaty handling.
- The progression in this game is quite strange for me, as you are constantly unlocking new vehicles but alot of the time these are just duplicates as many of the cars have a normal and a convertable version. Also after completing every event in the game the final unlock, the Gumpert Apollo, (which I really looked forward to) was still miles away from actually being unlocked, therefore I never got to drive it outside of the preview events.
- The general feel of the menus and UI is horribly sluggish. On top of that you have long loading times (even with a PCIe 4 SSD) and unskippable cutscenes for every race (you can tell the game to skip the cutscene but most of the time it will play most of the cutscene anyway). All of that feels like it wastes your time not doing what you actually want, which is racing.
- This last point may seem like a small issue but it is really not and is probably alone respobsible for why I give this a 3,5 instead of a higher rating: The Crash Cam. If you haven't played the game, let me explain what the crash cam is: It is a slow motion camera that takes away controls from you racing to look at an opponent "wreck" after every succesful action. And if I say every succesful action I literally mean EVERY single one. You hit someone with an EMP, you hit someone with a spike strip, you hit someone heavily with your car, you wreck somebody. You might think that is a rare or special occurence but in the end this will happen to you about 15 times in a 5 minute race. I get what they were going for, I know the crash cam from Burnout, they want you to enjoy the carnage that you caused when you sent an opponent into the wall and gaze upon its bend metal wreckage. BUT this does not work at all in the context of this video game, as first of all, all of these cars are licensed, which means they are not allowed to have any sort of damage model at all except for scratches and bumpers hanging off and second of all, they even use this when you use your EMP, where all that is happening is, that the opponent is lightly swaying to the side, which is like the least interesting slow motion "crash" footage I have ever seen. And you know what is the best thing about all of this, if the constant interruption of your driving with boring slow mo footage wasn't enough? Half of the time you will immediatly crash into either a wall or a traffic car afterwards, killing all of your momentum, which actually makes it a better strategy to not use your power ups in a race. And all of this could have been circumvented when they made this Remaster, where they could have just acknowledged that it was a shitty feature in the original and could have made it at least optional.
The last part developed into kind of a little rant into this little part of this game but it made me so frustrated and dampened my experience with the game heavily which is otherwise a fun arcade racer.
Who would I recommend this to? If you are looking for an old school arcade race in the style, that they are not making anymore, this is still a solid pick.
Citizen Sleeper is a story driven ressource management game. I know this sounds like someting that should not be really work and watching gameplay of it also doesn't really look compelling.
But this game achieves such a feat in telling a deep story with plenty of fleshed out characters, world buildung, choices that matter and time pressure that is supported by a great visual art style and soundtrack, that at the end of the game you will feel like you have become part of this whole ecosystem.
People that simply want action and gameplay might be dissapointed. For everyone else, even if you are usually not a fan of clicking through menus but you are someone who wants a game with a great narrative, then I would absolutely suggest this game to you.
But this game achieves such a feat in telling a deep story with plenty of fleshed out characters, world buildung, choices that matter and time pressure that is supported by a great visual art style and soundtrack, that at the end of the game you will feel like you have become part of this whole ecosystem.
People that simply want action and gameplay might be dissapointed. For everyone else, even if you are usually not a fan of clicking through menus but you are someone who wants a game with a great narrative, then I would absolutely suggest this game to you.
I have to preface this by saying that I only started playing this game after the 2.0 Update, so I cannot judge the game for its state before that. I have seen videos of old gameplay and I'm really glad that I did wait for the game to be fixed.
I'm gonna split this up into two parts: The Meh and The Good. You might ask why I don't write the bad and the good? Because I don't really have anything really negative to say about this game.
The Meh:
- Gigs
- Pedestrians
- Police
The Good:
+ Vehicles
+ Storytelling
+ Graphics and Performance
+ Gameplay
+ Game World
+ Characters
- Gigs:
I think the biggest gripe that I have with this game are the gigs, which are not to be confused with sidequests. They give you essentially mini missions, which oftentimes can be solved by just simply shooting your way through them. They often lacked any sort of depth, both in their story telling and their mechanics. But I have to admit that they at least tried to give every single one of them a bit of a backstory and there were actually a few that I quite enjoyed. Ultimately they are pretty meh but completely optional.
- Pedestrians:
Okay, this will sound strange for why this is a single point of criticism but pederstrians will for some reason always try to jump infront of your car while trying to dodge it. I know it is not a big deal and I'm just mentioning it because it was the only form of frustration I ever encountered in this game, so don't take it too seriously. But the consequence of this is that I had to deal with police more often than I wanted to, which brings me directly to my next point.
- Police:
For me personally the police never really posed a threat and was more of a nuisance rather than a fun game mechanic to engage with. But it is pretty easy to evade the police on lower heat levels, which makes this fine with me, as I didn't have to actively engage with them most of the time.
+ Vehicles:
There is a wide range of vehicles to choose from and I actually think all of them handle uniquely and have their own characteristics, which makes them feel noticably different from one another. For the purpose it serves in an Open World RPG, driving actually feels pretty good, apart from motorcycles, which I personally didn't like. But personally, I am glad that CDPR actually put the effort into the vehicles and the driving rather than making cars soley as a means of transportation. It made me (together with the game world) travel from A to B seemlessly by car, rather than constantly using the quick travel option. I finished this game without ever really using quick travel, which helped greatly in the immersion into this game world.
+ Storytelling:
Speaking of immersion, I liked that we see this whole game and its story play out in the first person view rather than in cutscenes. I know this is not a groundbreaking concept but it made the player really feel like being the main character 'V'. At points I just felt like, that the ratio of gameplay to talking might have been too much on the talking side. But at least the dialogue options were pretty fleshed out, which I know do not change anything in terms of the outcome of most conversations but it felt nice to always be able to say what was on your mind.
+ Graphics and Performance:
There is no way around it but to call Cyberpunk 2077 absolutely stunning... if you can afford it. It is a very demanding game if you want to enjoy it in all of its glory but with a decent setup and DLSS I actually got it to ruin pretty smoothly outside of very busy areas. But I want to acknowledge that consoles and mid to low performence PCs might struggle. Graphicswise I want to especially highlight the work of lighting in this game. Every scene in this game feels perfectly lit and cinematic, which I am completely amazed by. It feels like every light in this game has been placed with a purpose.
+ Gameplay:
I have to say, that I am amazed how well thought out this game is in terms of its shooter gameplay and its variety in how to engage in combat. You can either be a netrunner, who hacks everything and everyone they see or a stealthy ninja moving quickly through the shadows, taking out enemies with a precise throwing knife to the head or a heavy with machine and shotguns on your hip dealing out heaps of damage. All of these gameplay styles (and more) are supported by a wide range of skills that are available after every level up. Furthermore bodily modifications, with their added passive effects and sometimes special abilities, help you to tune your combat style even more. I personally loved a stealthy + reflex approach, where I was crouch sprinting with throwing knives until I got detected. After that I started using double jumps and speed to close the gap with a shotgun to then make a mess out of the nearest enemies. Guns feel actually powerful in this game and seem to have a real impact on the enemies that you are shooting. Shotguns or heavy machine guns, for example, just tear chunks out of people. I'm not someone who has the opinion that shooters have to be necesserily graphic or overly violent but I think it fits perfectly into the world this game is set in.
+ Game World:
Cyberpunk 2077's approach to the game world lies completely opposite of something like Starfield or many other open worlds nowadays, where the decree is: "Bigger is Better", where there are vast and seemingly infinite areas to explore but all of these areas hold just the bare minimum of content to justify their existence. Night City isn't huge but every single corner seems so detailed and hand made, with a wide variety of landscapes, like the megastructures (which are essentially towns in and of themselves) slums, suburbs, corporate monoliths, red light districts and many more. Even without an objective in mind it is sometimes nice to just stroll through the streets and explore every nook and cranny while clever NPCs exchange random but seemingly genuine conversations. The city seems like it still exists even after you turn off your PC and feels almost like a character in and off itself.
+ Characters:
This is the point, where I think the game shines the most. All of the characters in this game feel like real people. All of them have their own motivations, mannerisms and views on life. Jackie, Misty, Vik, Panam, Judy and of course Johnny Silverhand, to name a few, come to life through amazing writing and phenomenol voice acting. All of them receive their own time to develope themselves from mere colleagues/contractors/associates to genuine friends through a string of side missions. The side missions are small amazing self contained stories, where, for example, at the end of their arc I even had sympathies towards a vending machine and a self driving taxi. I genuinely formed connections to some of those characters and deeply cared about their success in life and was grateful for their support in difficult situations. At the end of the day they will remain in the back of my head whenever I will think of this game.
All in all, I deeply enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk 2077, with its amazing gunplay, immersive world and authentic characters and would recommend this game to anyone who is willing to put the time into it.
I'm gonna split this up into two parts: The Meh and The Good. You might ask why I don't write the bad and the good? Because I don't really have anything really negative to say about this game.
The Meh:
- Gigs
- Pedestrians
- Police
The Good:
+ Vehicles
+ Storytelling
+ Graphics and Performance
+ Gameplay
+ Game World
+ Characters
- Gigs:
I think the biggest gripe that I have with this game are the gigs, which are not to be confused with sidequests. They give you essentially mini missions, which oftentimes can be solved by just simply shooting your way through them. They often lacked any sort of depth, both in their story telling and their mechanics. But I have to admit that they at least tried to give every single one of them a bit of a backstory and there were actually a few that I quite enjoyed. Ultimately they are pretty meh but completely optional.
- Pedestrians:
Okay, this will sound strange for why this is a single point of criticism but pederstrians will for some reason always try to jump infront of your car while trying to dodge it. I know it is not a big deal and I'm just mentioning it because it was the only form of frustration I ever encountered in this game, so don't take it too seriously. But the consequence of this is that I had to deal with police more often than I wanted to, which brings me directly to my next point.
- Police:
For me personally the police never really posed a threat and was more of a nuisance rather than a fun game mechanic to engage with. But it is pretty easy to evade the police on lower heat levels, which makes this fine with me, as I didn't have to actively engage with them most of the time.
+ Vehicles:
There is a wide range of vehicles to choose from and I actually think all of them handle uniquely and have their own characteristics, which makes them feel noticably different from one another. For the purpose it serves in an Open World RPG, driving actually feels pretty good, apart from motorcycles, which I personally didn't like. But personally, I am glad that CDPR actually put the effort into the vehicles and the driving rather than making cars soley as a means of transportation. It made me (together with the game world) travel from A to B seemlessly by car, rather than constantly using the quick travel option. I finished this game without ever really using quick travel, which helped greatly in the immersion into this game world.
+ Storytelling:
Speaking of immersion, I liked that we see this whole game and its story play out in the first person view rather than in cutscenes. I know this is not a groundbreaking concept but it made the player really feel like being the main character 'V'. At points I just felt like, that the ratio of gameplay to talking might have been too much on the talking side. But at least the dialogue options were pretty fleshed out, which I know do not change anything in terms of the outcome of most conversations but it felt nice to always be able to say what was on your mind.
+ Graphics and Performance:
There is no way around it but to call Cyberpunk 2077 absolutely stunning... if you can afford it. It is a very demanding game if you want to enjoy it in all of its glory but with a decent setup and DLSS I actually got it to ruin pretty smoothly outside of very busy areas. But I want to acknowledge that consoles and mid to low performence PCs might struggle. Graphicswise I want to especially highlight the work of lighting in this game. Every scene in this game feels perfectly lit and cinematic, which I am completely amazed by. It feels like every light in this game has been placed with a purpose.
+ Gameplay:
I have to say, that I am amazed how well thought out this game is in terms of its shooter gameplay and its variety in how to engage in combat. You can either be a netrunner, who hacks everything and everyone they see or a stealthy ninja moving quickly through the shadows, taking out enemies with a precise throwing knife to the head or a heavy with machine and shotguns on your hip dealing out heaps of damage. All of these gameplay styles (and more) are supported by a wide range of skills that are available after every level up. Furthermore bodily modifications, with their added passive effects and sometimes special abilities, help you to tune your combat style even more. I personally loved a stealthy + reflex approach, where I was crouch sprinting with throwing knives until I got detected. After that I started using double jumps and speed to close the gap with a shotgun to then make a mess out of the nearest enemies. Guns feel actually powerful in this game and seem to have a real impact on the enemies that you are shooting. Shotguns or heavy machine guns, for example, just tear chunks out of people. I'm not someone who has the opinion that shooters have to be necesserily graphic or overly violent but I think it fits perfectly into the world this game is set in.
+ Game World:
Cyberpunk 2077's approach to the game world lies completely opposite of something like Starfield or many other open worlds nowadays, where the decree is: "Bigger is Better", where there are vast and seemingly infinite areas to explore but all of these areas hold just the bare minimum of content to justify their existence. Night City isn't huge but every single corner seems so detailed and hand made, with a wide variety of landscapes, like the megastructures (which are essentially towns in and of themselves) slums, suburbs, corporate monoliths, red light districts and many more. Even without an objective in mind it is sometimes nice to just stroll through the streets and explore every nook and cranny while clever NPCs exchange random but seemingly genuine conversations. The city seems like it still exists even after you turn off your PC and feels almost like a character in and off itself.
+ Characters:
This is the point, where I think the game shines the most. All of the characters in this game feel like real people. All of them have their own motivations, mannerisms and views on life. Jackie, Misty, Vik, Panam, Judy and of course Johnny Silverhand, to name a few, come to life through amazing writing and phenomenol voice acting. All of them receive their own time to develope themselves from mere colleagues/contractors/associates to genuine friends through a string of side missions. The side missions are small amazing self contained stories, where, for example, at the end of their arc I even had sympathies towards a vending machine and a self driving taxi. I genuinely formed connections to some of those characters and deeply cared about their success in life and was grateful for their support in difficult situations. At the end of the day they will remain in the back of my head whenever I will think of this game.
All in all, I deeply enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk 2077, with its amazing gunplay, immersive world and authentic characters and would recommend this game to anyone who is willing to put the time into it.