Finished the main story and most side quests. Few games have gripped me that much. Absolutely brilliant. The story, the telling of it, the soundtrack, the characters, the machines, the atmosphere, the strategies. Only a few crashes, performance was great throughout after the starting area. One of my favourite games of all time.
Curious to know what your attitude was before playing this game. Are you one of those PC gamers "Pah, I'd never buy a console. Those games would never interest me!" or not?
And what happens next. Horizon Forbidden West will probably not come to PC for a while, if ever. Do you get a PS5 to continue Aloy's journey? Or perhaps sub to PS Now when it appears there at some point?
I always loved the look of zero dawn - something about tribal meets sci-fi tech has always appealed along with the robot dinosaurs . I nearly bought a PS4 to play it originally.
Given the crazy price of PC hardware and complete faff of gaming issues these days, I could well be tempted.
That said, I’m not sure the experience would have been as good without a mouse and keyboard.
Just played through The Ultimate Doom & Doom 2: Hell on earth.
and all I can say is wow I did not expect to enjoy a game with about 8 pixels as much as I did, and I'd forgotten what reading walkthroughs was like too!
Stunning environment, good story focus, but some of the story arcs are really really slow and ultimately have little to do with many of the main story threads. Interesting ending, but nothing ground breaking. Controls were frustrating as hell at times. Definitely needs a refresh now.
Cyberpunk 2077 - 8/10. A really tough one to rate and I've gone points up and down from this but I think this is fair overall. I've now played 75 hours according to Steam (in game counter is a bit less as I've replayed the endings a few times). I've always loved the Cyberpunk genre so that probably influences my score.
You absolutely could ‘finish’ the main story in 30 - 35 hours but you would rob yourself of at least half of the game.
My achievement progress:
Not really a spoiler, but to be on the safe side:
TL: DR - It's a fantastic world, with a lot of great story elements and tons of things to do but it is beset by bugs as I'm sure you've heard, there were certain features that could have been included and other areas could be better balanced.
The Good:
1. The world of Night City is phenomenal, there's a lot to do when you get out of the main storyline. Some of the side missions and gigs are absolutely hilarious and there are a lot of fun characters to interact with.
2. The characters are also great. I wasn't expecting
Johnny Silverhand to be in the game so much, thought it would just be at the start.
A lot of the characters you meet through the missions are well developed with clear motivations, the animation and design of those characters is also well executed.
3. The graphics in a lot of places are breathtaking. This part is slightly mixed as there are some areas that look incredible then for some reason in others things look a little 'flat' or cardboard. Not sure if that's just due it time constraints in development.
4. Atmosphere / genre accuracy. As mentioned above I love the Cyberpunk genre, read a lot of books, watched a lot of films and played games in the genre. A lot of parts of this game nail the feeling of what I'd imagined it would be like to live in a cyberpunk world. Namely, always being on edge, never knowing if you would be betrayed, the process of setting up a run. That was all great.
5. Flexibility. I played basically in 'Rambo' / tank mode with full frontal assaults but I've seen a few alternate hacker builds and stealth builds on YouTube and it appears there are a lot of alternate ways to play.
6. Fun. There are a lot of fun activities to do on the side missions. Hacking through enemies with a katana was a real blast.
The Bad:
1. The bugs. Curiously, I didn't find all that many when playing the main storyline but as I started doing the side quests they were more apparent. Must be because CDPR used devs to play the game as the only form of QA. Only had two crashes the whole time, one very early on then much, much later everything locked up. No real issue though as the game autosaves pretty often.
I can't defend the bugs, if this sort of thing ruins a game for you then it will be a deal breaker. Most of them I just found amusing, didn't affect my enjoyment.
My bug list, just off the top of my head. May add more later:
Gun disappeared, but could still aim down sights,
Scopes stopped working (blacked out),
Vehicles sunk into the ground,
People sunk into the ground,
People floating in the air,
Corpses floating in the air,
Objects floating in the air / out of characters hands,
Clipped through scenery a few times,
Fell through the world (only happened after the hotfixes!),
Cars and items randomly dropping out of the sky,
Piles of rubbish on the streets exploding,
Motorbikes can take a stupidly unrealistic amount of damage - I've literally driven off cliffs and been fine (was pretty hilarious though),
Couldn't progress objective because an enemy clipped through the floor (was a play through of an alternate ending so didn't matter by then),
Enemies (particularly cyberpsychos) just stopping / not defending themselves,
Characters slow to continue speaking to progress the mission,
One NPC in 'T' pose,
I didn't have the 'T' pose for V until after the hotfixes! Was quite amusing when he stands on a moving motorbike seat and his pants disappear,
HUD elements remaining on screen,
Boss health bars remaining on screen,
Dropped an unconscious woman accidentally and she somehow ended up on her feet,
Called my car and another car rammed underneath it,
Talking to a major NPC and he ‘leaned’ on nothing then skated over to where he should have been leaning,
Characters talking over each other / two conversations at once,
Lighting was sometimes odd, particularly other characters’ eyes when driving. Had almost a Stargate glowing effect,
Stash doesn’t work properly, accessing it from some vehicles doesn’t show all of the items that are in it.
2. Lack of balance. Probably a 'bug' in a sense but things get unbalanced pretty quickly, you can stack armour and damage a lot so once you get past about 30 on street cred you're too strong for most enemies. Towards the end I died more being run over by cars than from the enemies. I'm not that great at games (play more for the story) but even I found it a pretty easy game.
This is also an issue in terms of overlapping systems. I didn’t use a single consumable in my 70 hour playthrough, they were irrelevant. Similarly, I used cyberware a little but it’s mostly passive, background effects. I used the time slowing to get the achievement but other than that double jump was the most useful. Gorilla arms are fun, didn’t even try mantis blades or nanowire.
3. Lack of real choice. There aren't really that many options where you can choose what you want to do during the bulk of the game. Some of the dialogue choices don't do anything really so you end up just choosing one way in the end. I think some of these could have had more options. Biggest choices are really in the endings.
4. Gangs. I didn't really watch a lot of the videos and read articles leading up to the game as I didn't want to spoil it for myself so I wasn't as affected by the hype train but I can understand why people are annoyed that the gangs don't really mean anything. There should have been some sort of 'reputation' system that affected missions offered. There's only one occasion where your previous actions are mentioned by a gang. You can slaughter hundreds of gang members (and I did) and it doesn't really affect anything.
5. The Police. I think CDPR have tried for a GTA style system but not executed it properly, it's too unfair on the spawning system and it's too easy to just run / drive away from them.
Suggested Improvements:
1. Sort out the balance. Perhaps a cap on armour, damage and the amount of loot would keep things challenging. The enemies should also have to play by the same rules with regards to the caps.
2. Sort out the Police. Should be fairly easy with a bit of tweaking.
3. Fix the bugs, obviously. I imagine this is going to take a while.
Summary:
Don't let the negatives put you off playing CP2077. The 'core' of the game is already in place and I don't think future patches can change what is already there in terms of mechanics and story, it will just add the additional polish that is missing at the moment in terms of bugs.
Will probably add to this and edit over time as I've probably missed loads of relevant points out!
Some of the pics I've taken on the journey (they're not really spoilers, just hidden in case anyone quotes):
Funny glitch from photo mode where I was trying to take the pic after this one:
The South will rise again!
I'm left with a bit of a void now in terms of gaming. There's very little on the horizon that I'm looking forward to so we'll see when the next time I play a game is.
Hard to disagree with much of this. I can’t say I’ve played a game that has immersed me this much in such a long time, it’s just a shame the bugs break immersion quite often. I honestly forget I’m playing a game sometimes and it’s been full of a fair few welcome surprises too - I too wasn’t expecting what you weren’t expecting .
Probably a 9/10 for me - with some better functioning AI, a more realistic transport system and some more choices with impact it would have been a 10/10. The story and presentation alone make up for many of its shortcomings. I’d honestly buy any dlc without a second thought and will likely play through again in future.
Glad I played on my 55’ TV, it really helped bring the game to life.
How did I miss this one? What it does it does really well. Didn’t realise it was made by respawn, they are a creative bunch, constantly new elements introduced throughout. It was short, but very enjoyable. I wouldn’t have played half of these games without game pass, it’s brilliant!
Finished Senua’s Sacrifice. Wow, that hit me right in the feels. It was spectacular in terms of audio and writing. Not much of a game, but what it does it nails. 10/10 for me. Can’t wait for the next.
I almost feel like there must be something wrong with me because I absolutely cannot find the same enjoyment literally everyone else seems to find in RDR2
It certainly seems slow to get going, but I’ll keep going because I assume it must be good - every person tells me how amazing it is, even some of the kids I was teaching today!
Finished The Medium. What a brilliant game. Intriguing story, unique game presentation, visually stunning at times, powerful immersive audio, moving story. Pretty basic gameplay, but then that’s not really the point of this one. 8.5/10.
One of, if not the best game I’ve played. An absolute masterpiece, visually, game design, breathtaking audio and soundtrack, a lovely story. I might have gotten something in my eye a couple of times. Very challenging and not usually my type of game, but it was worth persevering. Some of the chase segments were frustrating, but wow, what a game.
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. I nearly bought a PS4 to play it originally.
