Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition (CD Projekt Red, Switch 2)
It's a CD Projekt Red game, and you know what that means - a total lack of decent gameplay in favor of endless barrages of cutscenes and dialog that reads like two thirteen-year-olds on Reddit trying to sound
witty by trading stolen one-liners constantly. The fanboys love to excuse the bad writing, shallow combat and tedious follow-the-arrow-and-push-a-button mission design by claiming their favorite game's narrative is "grandiose" and "mature" and "important", when in reality it's mostly just smug, gratuitous and self-aggrandizing. Or they just point to the "pretty" graphics and amount of detail in the environments when a) it adds precisely dick to the experience beyond a few minutes of empty novelty and b) Cyberpunk looks fucking hideous anyways; it's like a 9 year old kid buzzed on Mountain Dew picked out the color palette and designed all the characters. This is literally a game where CDPR takes control away from you for several minutes at at time so they can play long, plotless cutscenes full of head-banging music and terrible self-aggrandizing narration about how badass and cool their world and characters are; how arrogant do you have to be to straight-up
tell your audience what to think instead of letting the material speak for itself? Maybe one day CDPR will create something from the heart instead of just trying to make the most profitable game possible by cribbing from everything else that's sold well over the last couple decades, but it probably won't be anytime soon. In the meantime if you absolutely must give these guys money then just go over to GOG and buy some of the better games they're lifting ideas from instead, like Krondor, Morrowind, Fallout, Ultima, Deus Ex and System Shock; because I'd rather they dedicate their resources to keeping the real classic games available than serving up their own subpar imitations.
Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster
I'll just be frank and say that I really don't see any reason to spend any amount of money on this. Or Octopath. Or Quartet. Or any of the other dozens of lame cookie-cutter classic Final Fantasy knockoffs we get every single year. I mean really, why play a shoddy copycat with ugly graphics, poor acting, bad writing, and exponentially worse encounter rates, slogging combat and more grinding than the games from the '80s and '90s it's allegedly 'paying homage' to? Just just pick up a copy of Dragon Quest 1/2 or the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters Collection and play a new twist on the real classics instead; you'll pay much less per game and have a lot more fun. Or if you really want to play something from that period that only just got a release this year: download
Infinity. You can thank me later.
Lost Soul Aside
Ten years in development for
this? A mediocre action-RPG with loose controls, combat that lacks any feeling of impact and a stock JRPG plotline? Not to mention dialog and acting so stiff and vapid it sounds like it was all generated by AI; and considering how many big-name studios have latched onto that lazy anti-creative trash, I can't rule it out here either. It looks pretty I suppose, but do you know what also had a great dark fantasy style, played way better than this and came out only two years ago? Final Fantasy XVI. This entire article is quickly turning into just me saying "just play the old classics" over and over again, but it's true; play Devil May Cry or FF16 instead and don't bother with this turkey, unless you just have a fetish for championing bland copycats with no personality of their own.
Silent Hill f
Well after I played Silent Hill 2's remake, I figured I'd finally become a fan of the series going forward. Then I played f and it immediately disabused me of that notion; what a tedious, un-fun mess. Lame chase sequences (and of course if you're slightly too slow or take a wrong turn, you just die instantly), constant combat that's just clunky, obnoxious and slows the game down way too much, and while it does have creepy imagery at times, it's constantly pushed into the background in favor of more dragging combat and bad puzzles. There's some great themes and imagery beneath it all, but like most things Silent Hill it's solid horror ruined by being wrapped in a tedious, un-fun video game. Just make a live action miniseries or something already guys, because this medium clearly ain't a good fit for what you're trying to do.
The Outer Worlds 2
The Outer Worlds was a clever and genuinely funny satire of the dark side of capitalism on the backdrop of a campy old space serial; it had its flaws for sure, but I still found it a compelling journey and an interesting character study. By contrast, the sequel is just constant grating Used Car Salesman dialog trying way too hard to outdo what came before. Brandon Adler and Leonard Boyarsky's idea of "improvement" is to just make every character their personal sock puppets, constantly belting out "Look how smart we are! Pay attention to our writing style and rapier wit!" while forgetting they have nothing to say that hasn't already been said better and funnier in the previous game. The gameplay has at least improved a little, adding in Fallout style perks upon level-up and encouraging more focused builds, though it's often frustrating to try and complete quests when you need a specific skill at a particular level and simply don't have any way around it, other than to quit out and go do more filler quests until you do. "Flaws", an interesting if undercooked concept in the first game, now seem actively engineered to screw you over by turning you into an ineffective master-of-none character; none that I encountered ever seemed to offer a benefit worth the drawback. Gunplay is just Borderlands Lite with its moddable weapons and overly spongey enemies that lack any real variety, and your comrades simply don't have much of anything in the way of customization; well, they do have upgrades you can find and perks to assign every five levels, but they have almost no tangible impact on making the combat feel any more deep or rewarding. Outer Worlds 2 is your typical self-proclaimed intellectual with no real personality and nary a novel idea in its head, but that doesn't stop it from running its mouth and laughing at its own stupid jokes for a solid sixty hours; which is about forty more than I could bear.
