'Dead Synchronicity' feels like a prologue to a much bigger story that we never got to see as the project was seemingly abandoned quickly after original release. The game ends on a cliffhanger that promises a radical turn in the setting that looks a lot more interesting than the actual game. 'Dead Synchronicity' hardly includes anything unusual when it comes to the post-apocalyptic genre: disintegration of societal structures, the cost of human life brought down to 0, survival of the fittest with the meek kept in check and taken advantage of in various ways, authorities withholding information from the citizens to keep them obedient, or the toll it takes on an individual to survive in a hostile world.
The setting includes some supernatural elements which could make this particular story stand out, however in stories about the end times I'm always more interested in how people manage to 'stay human' in such adverse conditions rather than the causes for the situation. For my liking the game focuses too much on the latter, and the information we're given about the Great Wave isn't too captivating either.
The game is extremely dark with several scenes that I thought were unnecessary - whenever you create a piece of entertainment with things like refugee camps, contagious deadly diseases or state brutality, so issues that are still causing unrest in many places, you need to be very careful in the depiction of those and I felt like 'Dead Synchronicity' lacked the sensitivity required to include them successfully.
The gameplay is pretty standard - it's a point and click adventure and most time is spent solving puzzles to get to the next area. There were a few head-scratchers that I finally solved by using every object in my inventory on every interactable piece in the background - a tactic often used in this type of game, although some solutions were so absurd they felt out of place in a game so serious in tone. I was also surprised at how underused the 'flashback' mechanic was. Throughout the game the protagonist regularly experiences flashbacks that seemingly transport him in time, but it is used only once as part of a puzzle - this could've been expanded on significantly to make the gameplay more varied.
Voice acting is highly inconsistent, with a few characters particularly strong in that regard (e.g. the protagonist Michael), while other almost comically bad (e.g. Rod and some of the children). It doesn't help that a lot of the dialogue is written in an expository manner that potentially makes it more difficult to sound natural.
One last thing - on a number of occasions the choice of music was simply horrible. I'm convinced it's a bug, because I refuse to believe that someone would purposefully deflate several tense scenes by placing some generic rock in the background.

‘The Dream Machine’ is a game whose concept is built around entering people’s dreams and exploring their unconscious. The selling point of this particular point and click is its artstyle - environments and characters are physical objects created by artists using materials such as clay and cardboard. It is reminiscent of adventure titles like ‘The Neverhood’ or ‘Armikrog’, although it is distinct enough to stand on its own and be instantly recognizable. The visual side is also the strongest point of the title - the levels are wonderfully realized with the enchanted forest being the absolute highlight, both in its scope and detail. The character models are equally impressive - I can’t really think of anything similar in the gaming world. There is one, quite significant, chunk of the game that takes place in a level looking like taken out of the movie ‘Cube’ which left me unimpressed, but other than that the presentation is very strong and often I found myself looking around the levels, appreciating all the little details the artists left for the player to enjoy.

Does the story support the impressive visuals? Mostly yes. The plot is chiefly a pretext to throw Victor, the protagonist, into other people’s dreams, but what kept me engaged until the very end was the wide array of well-written NPCs that Victor encounters during the 14 or so hours it takes to finish all six chapters, my favorite being a knight who doesn’t realize he died centuries ago. I was really surprised at how dark the game gets as it progresses, with flashbacks into Edie’s past evoking the strongest emotional response. This didn’t prepare for the ending, however, which features perhaps the most disturbing scene I’ve ever encountered in a video game. I did feel at times like the final chapter was rushed and too much content was squeezed into too few levels and I definitely would’ve liked more space to fully process the last hour which was very abstract and filled with inventive metaphors.

Another thing that all point and click adventures have in common is the inclusion of puzzles. And in ‘The Dream Machine’ they’re quite uneven. There were a number of times where I felt like they were too obtuse and required scanning every single pixel on a given level. Some of them required re-learning how to use specific objects - an example I can give without hopefully spoiling too much is when finding a book for the 4th time or so the game expects the player to figure out he’s capable of tearing a page out of the book, while in the previous instances of using this type of object it was never possible. Also, some puzzles - especially towards the end of the game, where a larger portion of the game opens up - required quite a bit of going back and forward to get very little done. At one point Victor receives an object that he can use to manipulate his size - this was fun at first, but got tiresome very quickly and I was looking for a way around the level where I could use it as little as possible.

I need to mention a couple of technical problems that the game unfortunately isn’t devoid of. I’ve encountered two permanently corrupted save files (out of ten slots available) which is quite a serious error in any game, however the autosave feature in ‘The Dream Machine’ is quite generous and seemed to be working fine. The game also had problems running smoothly on my Steam Deck - the animations would sometimes freeze for a moment before continuing, the dialogue appearing on screen (the game isn’t voiced) also would appear and disappear in too few frames making it less fluid than it should’ve been.

This is the kind of game that is pretty much just pure joy. I was smiling throughout most of it simply because the levels and power ups are so wonderfully inventive I was being surprised constantly until the very end. The difficulty level is just right, meaning that most levels took me 2-3 attempts to collect every collectable, especially in the latter stages of the game. Sure, there were a handful of pretty banal levels that didn’t require too much effort and a couple that I found frustratingly difficult (thinkinking mostly of the level unlocked after beating the story and collecting all collectables - yeah, that one was tough). But the impeccable controls and the aforementioned level design kept me entertained regardless. If I had to nitpick I’d say that the search party levels felt superfluous. Also, perhaps there weren’t enough opportunities to use the full array of available power ups - I mostly stuck to 3 that I found worked best for me and managed to get through the game with relatively no issues. Oh, and the rhythm sections were fantastic, please include more of them in the next installment!

Launching this cult classic, I was expecting to require a lot more outside help during my first playthrough, which is often the case with adventure games from that era. When playing each of the chapters devoted to the main five characters I found the puzzles to be manageable, even if sometimes they veered into the more abstract category. This changed dramatically, however, in the epilogue - I honestly have no idea how anyone could achieve the ‘good’ ending without following a guide or prior knowledge of the game. The scope of that final chapter and the number of items in the inventory and interactable objects certainly don’t help. This should’ve been streamlined, or at least explained better to give players a real chance to arrive at the desired ending by themselves.

What I found a bit puzzling was the inclusion of a spiritual barometer of sorts. When the character we’re in charge of does something considered positive, e.g. helps an NPC, then it flashes green and the face of the character starts showing a faint smile. I understand that it is supposed to work in line with the overall theme of the game, which is facing one’s guilt/fear, but I’m not sure how some instances of relevant behaviors work into that. Let’s say a character is being kept hungry by AM - if they find something to eat, it also improves their situation and the meter starts glowing green. Perhaps I’m missing something, but I just failed to see consistency in the actions that were assigned meaning when pushing the characters into their best ending, which would see them face their guilty conscience.

The biggest problem I have with the game is its selection of characters and their ‘faults’. I struggle to understand why on the one hand, you’d include a literal Nazi scientist (who sold out his parents to Gestapo, no less) conducting experiments on prisoners of concentration camps and a war criminal who also might be a cannibal, and on the other hand a woman whose only fault was being raped or a man blaming himself for committing his spouse to a mental institution. I figure the common factor between all those characters is a sense of guilt that they need to overcome to finally find peace within themselves, but I found it hard to sympathize with the first kind of characters described above. Plus, they are all being subjected to unspeakable tortures by AM, regardless of whether or not they are actually guilty of anything. Those feelings were taking me out of the game at times, and what didn’t help was that some of the more mature topics, like the aforementioned rape or concentration camp, were handled poorly and without the necessary delicacy or nuance. Ellen's story especially feels out of date and in poor taste. The game also doesn’t skip out on gory details in most scenarios, which to me reads like a juvenile attempt at edginess rather than trying to comment on some important topics in a mature way. It does get slightly better in the final chapter, which leans slightly into some Freudian concepts and proves that humanity’s creations will always bear the flaws of its creators.

What I need to admit is that visually the game is still quite impressive, mostly due to the sheer variety of the levels. Each character finds themselves in a completely unique setting and each time I was eager to progress to see what else the game had to offer. The pixelart holds up really well, and it still proves to be the best way to preserve a game (unlike e.g. early 3D graphics from that time which often look hideous today). The music and voice acting are solid (even if some lines are janky), with the author of the short story Harlan Ellison stepping in to voice AM, the villain. I also appreciate the multitude of endings (not that many if you think about it, but still it’s a nice touch to have some variety in the outcomes in a point’n’click).

Let’s state the obvious first: this game is inherently broken.

My second playthrough was spread across versions 2.0 and 2.1 and while it was significantly better than the original release or even the much celebrated “one year after” version, it was still unbelievably buggy, to the extent that it often killed any sense of immersion the game desperately tried to build.

Some of my ‘favorite’ bugs included:
cars still not being able to drive around a vehicle left in the middle of the road, they simply start honking and waiting patiently in line, creating a jam; also, traffic lights and driving patterns of NPC cars are two completely separate worlds, it was actually funny;
starting a quest with an NPC while being chased by cops or a gang, and seeing e.g. Jackie taking several full magazines into his face while explaining some exposition to me, while I was hiding away from the enemies;
fixers calling in the middle of a dialogue, with V having then two separate conversations at the same time;
a number of times V’s color changed to pitch black and I wasn’t able to change it unless I restarted the game (I prefer my V’s hair blue, thank you very much);
misleading GPS that keeps changing its mind, plus the city architect’s penchant for roads with multiple lanes and exits makes it sometimes near impossible to navigate;
during open air shootouts NPCs often keep enjoying their meals, standing amidst flying bullets, and sometimes not even reacting to explosives dealing damage to them;
not being able to access my inventory and journal, because the game thought I was still in a cutscene (a restart and loading much earlier save was required)

I was surprised by how much more I enjoyed the gameplay of the game compared to its world and story (a complete opposite to my feelings after playing ‘The Witcher’ games). Cyberpunk allows both for guns blazing approach and to move stealthily, even sparing lives of enemies if we incapacitate them quickly from behind. Stealth mechanics are nothing unusual, but they’re competent and moving through a large area without alerting anyone, possibly using some non-aggressive quickhacks, can be satisfying. If enemies’ AI doesn’t start going crazy, that is.

Shootouts are surprisingly well made, given that this was CDPR’s first foray into first person shooting. There is a large variety of weapons available and they feel distinct, punchy and are simply fun to use. Although I found out rather quickly that for many enemies, the easiest way to defeat them was to get up on some nearby roof or a similar point of elevation - they tend to lose their minds then, even the ones that can easily follow V up on those roofs. I do think, however, that the number of guns looted from enemies is too high - I ended up getting rid of almost all of them, sticking to 3 or 4 favorites. An aggressive playstyle using melee weapons is also possible, although on both playthroughs I ended up focusing on stealth with a little sprinkling of pistol combat and simple netrunning on top.

Quickhacking is a welcome addition to the game - it provides a decent variety of tools, both for combat and stealth, and is definitely one of the elements that help Cyberpunk stand out (compared e.g. to Watch Dogs, I had much more fun with netrunning and hacking in CDPR’s game). There is also another type of hacking, i.e. the minigame for accessing computers and terminals. I thought it was done well and often found myself trying to solve these short puzzles for the fun of it as I didn’t care much for the eddies or crafting components they provided.

This is also the first game by the Polish developer with a driving mechanic and it turned out rather mediocre. There is a good selection of cars, but many of them slide on the road like bars of soap, especially the faster ones. I found vehicular combat rather clunky, except for one particular pseudo-tank that helped me wreak some real havoc in Night City. Surprisingly, even mowing down a couple of dozen cops didn’t reward me with the highest chase rank - honestly, I don't know what more I could’ve done to piss off the guys in blue more. Plus, the cars feel surprisingly slow - even when driving at 200mph (according to the meter, at least) I felt like I was hardly moving any faster than many cars around me.

Crafting is in the game and that’s all I can say about it. It feels extremely underdeveloped and its inclusion in the game feels like a response to the popularity of survival games with this mechanic around the time of Cyberpunk’s release. I crafted a couple of items early on just to see how the mechanic worked and later on completely forgot that it was a part of the game.

I didn’t do a lot of melee combat, but I did finish the boxing side quest and unfortunately V’s movement felt stiff (especially the dodge, which is extremely clunky, I kept crouching instead as both actions are assigned to the same button). Finishing the boxing side quests would’ve been impossible if it weren’t for the overpowered parry mechanic (way too easy to get it right, even on highest difficulty) and the fact that every single opponent seemed to have learned at the same boxing school, since they all shared the same exact moveset.

Braindances are a major letdown. They mostly boil down to clicking on the highlighted thing - not unlike ‘witcher vision’ in CDPR’s previous game, only here you get to watch a short cutscene. I think a lot more could’ve been done with this concept, as right now it only shows up a few times throughout the story and it is a very limited tool.

The game offers a decent number and variety in its quests and gigs. They usually require infiltrating an area and performing some simple action, like escorting out an NPC, installing malware or hitman jobs. They work because the gameplay is pretty fun, but the narrative background for these is weak. Writers try hard, but it’s impossible to care about these little missions. They get more complex and by extension more fun as they go along, although they rarely stray from the beaten path. The one exception to this would be the cyberpsychos - some of them are fun mini bosses, but you can’t really approach them stealthily or with much nuance, it’s always a direct confrontation. And they do get quite stale pretty quickly.

There are a number of points in the game where you’re forced to take on enemies or bosses directly. If up to that point you were building your V as a stealth hacker, you could be in trouble. This reminded me heavily of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where a similar approach proved quite problematic for players opting for a more quiet playstyle (myself included).

The main story is pretty terrible when it comes to the actual quests. A lot of time is spent on listening to exposition, being driven in a car by an NPC while listening to exposition, meeting with NPCs to discuss the next steps (which takes way more time than it needs). The actual playing time is rather limited and it feels like CDPR realized that the main storyline is too short and wanted to pad it out to make it seem more substantial. The worst offender that stuck out for me was walking around the club Clouds, trying to find someone with knowledge on Evelyn’s whereabouts - you literally go from one NPC to another, learning almost nothing until the very last person finally points to a completely different location, triggering a new quest. Same goes for the beginning of Panam’s storyline - before it really gets going (also, what a waste of a tank mission!) it takes forever. The main storyline suffers from a deficiency of memorable moments or set pieces, and in some instances they limit the player’s actions (like getting rid of snipers during Arasaka’s parade) - these parts reminded me heavily of some missions from GTA where you could reach failstate for some dumb, arbitrary reasons. Sure, there are some nice moments with particular characters (like Panam or River), but overall it feels like a slog to get through and I was putting away forwarding the story and opting for focusing on side content.

The game pretends to be an RPG, and does it with little conviction. Aside from choosing your starting point (affects the first moments in the game and some pretty insignificant dialogue choices later on) and choosing the ending of V’s story there aren’t that many opportunities to make any meaningful impact in Night City.At one point V can pretty much directly influence who will become Night City’s next mayor. This quest is quite interesting in itself, probably one of the most memorable ones from the game, but it doesn’t change the fact that its conclusion doesn’t introduce any meaningful change in Night City. Another particularly egregious example that stuck with me was the initial choice between Evelyn and Dex - who to side with prior to the big heist. It’s presented like a major choice but it ends up having no impact on the rest of the game due to the way the heist unfolds.

When it comes to the main story, I was left unimpressed. Jackie’s death
lacks the emotional punch it aims for mostly because it happens so quickly (and it was spoiled already before launch by CDPR themselves). It’s supposed to push V to strive for influence in Night City to honor Jackie’s greatest ambition, to become a legend of the town, but it falls flat despite being brought up regularly by V herself. We receive a bit more backstory on Jackie after his death, however it’s too little too late.

There are quests that feel undercooked and end abruptly. Best example for this is the Lizzy Wizzy quest - I don’t know if it’s because of Grimes’ busy schedule (she voices the popstar) or something else, but it is shockingly short and without any satisfying conclusion.

I appreciate that Johnny Silverhand is a large part of the story - not only as a catalyst for V to embark on her journey, but also as someone she can discuss current events with. I like that he often argues with V and criticizes her choices, creating an interesting dynamic. And the fact that it’s Keanu Reeves helps flesh out Johnny visually, however the actor’s performance didn’t always convince me and a some of his more emotional lines were delivered poorly, which stood out even more when you heard the talent behind some of the other major characters in the story, which were all very well voiced.

Despite the game offering a gigantic open world, it mostly feels hollow. Most shops and street vendors you can’t interact with, and the ones that you do mostly sell useless stuff - like food items, which I don’t think I ever used. There are plenty of stores with guns and clothes, but it makes little sense to spend money there since during a playthrough you’ll stumble across so many weapons and clothing that you’ll just keep selling them at the nearest drop point and keep the best ones. Those are usually found after defeating an important enemy or at particular points in the story.

Speaking of money, there’s no good use for it in Night City. It’s nice to buy an expensive car, but I mostly stuck to one or two favorites and whenever necessary I’d just steal one parked nearby. Safehouses also aren’t very useful, and they’re actually pretty cheap. By the end of the game I found myself with around 2 million eddies in the bank with nothing to spend it on.

Many NPCs still wander aimlessly, bumping into each other. I’ve encountered a number of unique (at least they seemed so) animations for NPCs around town, but they seem to be stuck in them in perpetuity, and every time you come back to the same spot you see them doing the same thing, like the two drunks outside of the elevator leading to V’s apartment. Honestly, I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature at this point.
Some other complaints I have for the story include:
Not setting up Adam Smasher as the villain properly - we see him in one braindance and for a brief moment in Johnny’s flashback, and then Johnny mentions him several times and that’s pretty much it. For someone who serves as final boss in a game aspiring to be an RPG, beating him feels simply like defeating another of many mini-bosses found in other parts of the city;
There are too many gangs and most of them blend into one, I’d rather have half the number but with more space and possibly more quests to flesh them out to be able to tell the difference in businesses/ideologies and perhaps side with some of them and fight others;
Many quests don’t seem to carry any significant, long-term consequences. Most of the time after finishing one you’ll simply receive a text from the NPC you helped and that’s it. This feels like an easy way out on developers’ part and doesn’t encourage players to become invested in this side content;
No sense of urgency in terms of V’s affliction - no matter how many relic malfunctions I witnessed during the main quests, I still couldn’t care less because I knew well that V would be alive for as long as I didn’t hit ‘Yes’ on the point of no return notification. Also, her condition doesn’t affect the gameplay in any meaningful way;
After finishing companion quests, they get super clingy (at least River was, don’t ask me why I romanced him). And the possibilities for interaction once we enter a relationship are pretty limited, as well.

The main issue I have with this game is its narrative direction.

The world feels like a very shallow attempt at satire on consumerism of the ‘western’ world. All of the TV shows, commercials, ads, and many NPCs as well - they aim for the GTA-like level of irony and satirical commentary, but even GTA V, which was far from perfect in that regard, felt like it had some more interesting things to say than Cyberpunk. Sure, there are some quests that delve a bit deeper into criticism of corporatism and mass consumption, but I can’t recall any single idea in the game that’d make me go “oh, yeah, I never thought about it that way”. Same goes for the sci-fi element of the world and narrative. There are very few quests that try to analyze the impact of potential technological advancements (unless you count “overreliance on technology is bad”, which is something that can be easily said even today), and that’s what good sci-fi should do. The world feels like a pretty standard evolution of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer with some minor tweaks, but not only does it not provide meaningful commentary, it also does not allow V to make any major dent in the status quo. No matter how many Militech convoys you destroy or whether you steal a valuable tank with the Aldecaldos, this doesn’t change anything in Night City. Same goes for Arasaka, where V has the ability to affect the corporate structure at the very top in one of the endings. Why should we care? The game shows you horrible inequalities and corporations wielding more power than politicians, but instead of allowing you to try to bring down these gigantic corporations, at least to some extent, it lets you choose (at least it initially seems that way) which spoiled rotten, detached from reality child takes over a gargantuan company that’d put Google and Facebook to shame.

You can’t really challenge the current state of affairs, you can only try to navigate throughout this world and gradually make more and more money, sometimes hearing from a fixer that “major clients are showing an interest in your services”, even when it doesn’t feel like it except for some slightly more complex gigs and a slightly better payout that you can’t even spend on anything meaningful. This would be fine for an open world action title like the aforementioned GTA, but for a game with aspirations for a deep RPG it simply isn’t acceptable. The game is perfectly content focusing on V’s struggle for survival, looking for ways to get rid of the lethal Silverhand’s engram, and feeding the player a pretty shaky story about their rise to the top of Night City. Replace the engram with some deadly disease and you could have the same plot in a completely different environment. Look, I’m not saying you should be able to follow in Johnny’s footsteps and detonate a nuke in the middle of the city, but any opportunity to shake things up in Night City would be greatly appreciated. Now this criticism of corporatization and unfettered capitalism feels like a coat of paint applied to a pretty conservative narrative, simply because this is what’s been popular in the last few years.

After a rather disappointing two playthroughs of the base game I was eager to jump into the DLC, which received widespread acclaim upon its release. My initial reaction was mixed. On the one hand, Dogtown makes a great first impression, especially the stadium filled with NPCs and interesting looking places which serve as an entrance to the large, brand new area. I also found the starting point of the plot interesting, as I seemed to have been contacted by a netrunner struggling with the same affliction as V. Also, the president of the NUSA needed to be rescued! As I went along, though, I felt more and more like I was playing an extremely generic, 2010s AAA title rather than Cyberpunk. Lots of bombastic set pieces and corridor shooting of private militia enemies (which look like something straight out of a recent Call of Duty), a B-movie like plot, where the president of the country turns out to be capable with a gun and starts mowing down enemies like it’s just another Tuesday for her. And yes, there’s even an annoying jumping section and a boss fight against a gigantic mech/tank.

I don’t know if this ‘camp’ was something that the game’s writers were aiming for but it felt slightly out of place compared to V’s main quests, which were often very somber and self-serious. A similar thing can be said about some portions of the story which quite clearly go for the James Bond type of narrative, also feeling slightly off when looking at both the DLC and the main game as a whole. The problem, however, is that most of these new missions are much more fun than wherever the base game had to offer. This is the root of my ambivalence towards ‘Phantom Liberty’ - on the one hand I was enjoying my time, but I knew well that was due to the game allowing itself to be written as a more standard AAA action title. There are definitely some more serious moments in the main quest concerning Songbird and Solomon Reed, but they’re often drowned out by the big set pieces and campy espionage shenanigans. There’s even an entire level dedicated to Alien:Isolation-like stealth horror, which was enjoyable, but drove home even further the point that the DLC was aiming for things that seemed fun rather than to present a more coherent, serious, truly cyberpunk narrative. This feeling was further exacerbated by the game frequently forcing the all guns blazing approach on the player (if you only focus on stealth, you might be in trouble) and drifting even further away from the original idea of a deep RPG presented in a complex, morally gray setting. Hell, they even introduced QTEs early on when fighting alongside president Myers.

There aren’t too many new gigs available (ten if I remember correctly), but this time around they are definitely more engaging and include a more meaningful narrative background. The way they play out is: you get a gig from Mr. Hands, you infiltrate an area (usually much bigger ones than in gigs in the base game) and at the end there is a twist that forces the player to make a choice. You won’t find anything too substantial in there, as there don’t seem to be any long term consequences for choices made in these, but they were a welcome addition as I could finally think for more than two seconds about what I wanted my V to do. I also liked the fact that some areas in Dogtown are only accessible on foot (or, if you try hard, on bike), making me pay more attention to the surrounding areas and in effect becoming more aware of the world around me.

What I didn’t enjoy at all was the addition of car theft contracts from one of the fixers. They seemed really low effort and simply have you drive a car out of Dogtown to some remote location within a given time limit, fighting off enemies on the road or delivering the car without damaging it too much. I gave up on those pretty quickly.

There are some genuinely interesting moments in ‘Phantom Liberty’, a standout for me was the youth sports ‘academy’ providing some scathing critique of the world of professional sports. Songbird’s story also turned out to be quite tragic, making me regret some of the earlier choices I made regarding her and her relationship to Reed. There’s also an alternate game ending included here, although it was rather disappointing and I don’t recommend it (although the base game endings were equally disappointing, so I don’t know).

I think this might just be the dumbest game I have ever played.

Starting off with a now legendary opening, where as Lucas Kane you need to cover up a murder you unwillingly committed in a diner restroom, the game effectively immerses you in its story. The chosen setting, a snow covered New York, plays really well with the potentially supernatural murder mystery the game seems to be going for in the beginning. I also really enjoyed the fact that you get to control both the perpetrator and the two policemen chasing him (a plot device that would return in Quantic Dream’s later games). And that’s pretty much everything positive I can say about ‘Fahrenheit’.

Before I delve deeper into the disastrous plot (especially in the second half of the game), let me quickly go over the ‘gameplay’ side of things. This is pretty much a QTE-fest with very little actual interaction available to players. Many of those button mashing sequences are ridiculously long (vide Lucas’ visions), and in some cases they appear in places they have no business being in. Why are we forced to do quick time events during an interrogation? Is it because otherwise the players would realize how shallow and poorly written this scene is? There’s also a level where we’re forced to do a painfully slow QTE sequence over a character delivering lengthy exposition. What is the purpose of this? Were the writers afraid that otherwise the players would get bored and not pay attention? If so, I hope it was caused by the writers’ awareness of the poor quality of their work rather than lack of faith in the players’ ability to focus on the game when they’re not actively mashing buttons like a maniac.

The controls are horrible and often I’d get frustrated with the controlled character for going in the total opposite direction I needed them to go in. There’s a dubious lives system that I see no other reason for being here than because it’s something that apparently should be in a video game (even though this video game tries desperately to fool you into thinking it’s more of an interactive movie). There’s also a mood meter affected by the characters’ actions and it also plays no important role in the game (other than sometimes reaching a failstate and retrying the scene). It’s just a trick to give players an illusion that what they do has some bearing on the story (oh, you’re depressed because you killed an innocent bystander? Here’s a cup of coffee, that’s +10 to mood, chin up!). You get some bonus points for ‘exploring’, which is not difficult as the levels are rather tiny and easy to navigate. There’s no other point to exploration, though, unless you enjoy opening and closing empty drawers.

Every little action - opening a drawer, then closing it, opening a door, climbing up or down a pipe or wall - is needlessly long due to the creators’ choice to have the player move the right analog stick rather than simply press a button. At times it was simply infuriating, especially in the many sections where you’re working under a time constraint. Also, the two sections with Carla walking around the police archive and the psych ward where she needs to hold her breath are simply annoying.

Returning to the story, the game takes some time to completely jump the shark, but even before it does there are a lot of serious problems with the writing. The dialogue is mostly terrible and very cliched, the characters are either a wet blanket (Lucas), a pretty offensive stereotype (Tyler) or a woman with big tits that gets undressed by the devs on numerous occasions (Carla). Most NPCs show up only for short episodes and they’re not given too much time to be developed properly. The worst part, however, is that the characters seem like total idiots. They take forever to reach the most obvious conclusions or make decisions so baffling that they would surely cause a collective burst of laughter in a movie theater. An old cop didn’t arrest a killer on the loose because he saved a kid from drowning?! Carla, a detective with years of experience, falls without a single question for Lucas’ story about ancient prophecies and secret societies?!

Another thing: the game throws in so many different inspirations from (or sometimes even blatantly copies) famous movies and tropes that it’s truly hard to keep track. We’ve got a scary psychiatric hospital, a serial killer in NYC, the chosen child who was born to save the world, The Matrix-like combat scenes with characters flying all over the city, a noir crime story, Mayan beliefs, secret military bases, alien artifacts, secret societies, the apocalypse, premonitions, ancient prophecies, rogue AIs trying to take over the world, brain controlling microchips. This is a total mess and there isn’t a writer that’d make anything coherent out of this. It seriously feels like a parody, but I have a suspicion it isn’t one, simply because Quantic Dream lack the self-awareness required. If this was turned into a movie or a series, its only hope for any relevance would be reaching a cult classic status a la ‘The Room’. You can’t even use the argument that player’s choices force them down these odd paths as until the very end of the game there aren’t any choices affecting the outcome - all this talk about ‘giving players ability to choose their story’ is just a ruse, always has been.

Fuck this game for wasting 10 hours of my life.