Sequel axed: First of all, the game itself did a pretty poor job at selling itself as a good product during its initial reveal where it looked like a generic zombie game. The detailed system on which the whole world and gameplay thrives on wasn't revealed. Even I completely ignored the game after that reveal until I ended up playing it on PC. Press also should be blamed for the failure of this game.
It exposed a lot of those "critics" who probably reviewed the game after playing it for 5+ hours. The game is 50+ hours long. You think it's just another The Walking Dead copy in the opening hours. Yes it takes some time to pick up the pace but after a couple of hours, you start to realize how deep and well made its gameplay is and how well acted its story is.
It becomes addicting to upgrade equipment. A lot of people call it bike simulator because they complain about refueling the bike again and again which makes it clear that they haven't played the game enough to upgrade their tools. The game gets better later even during first half but it hits next level once you realize that there's entire different region towards south with its own content which gets unlocked later on. The reviews on PC were a lot better and bugs were also ironed out before release there. The game sold well on both platforms. More or less it was critics on PS4 and launch issues which brought the franchise down. I hope reception on PC helps its case in the future.
Cyberpunk 2077, just like Witcher 2, was designed for the PCs primarily where console ports were an afterthought. I do think that they should've at least showed console footage in action before release instead of keeping that broken version a secret. That was failure of marketing department but what about the game itself on its lead platform? Witcher 3 made some compromises before release so it could run on Consoles. The game still looked breathtaking but the final version was not as good looking as the one showed in earlier days of development. This time they decided to take Witcher 2's approach and push high end PCs to their limits just like how computer games used to be designed back in the day like Wing Commander, Thief, Crysis, Half Life and so on. Many new gamers might not know this trend in PC gaming which is why they expect every new game to run on ultra settings on modern hardware to get certificate of “well optimized game” instead of taking this fact into account that such games are future proof designed to age well and get better as hardware catches up.
But even on medium settings, they look better than anything else out there and also bring innovation in gameplay. PC version was not without its flaws on launch which are present in every open world RPG but for some reason other companies like Bathesda and whatnot get a free pass even though the basic physics system of games like Skyrim is still broken after all these years. Interestingly Skyrim was completely broken on PlayStation 3 during launch and hardly anyone remembers that. Cyberpunk had funny glitches here and there but there was nothing game breaking on PC when I played it for a few hours on launch back in December of 2020. However, I still decided to wait a few more months until few patches were available before continuing my journey. My current version is updated to v1.31 and I recently finished the game twice on my mid-range PC.Now I feel sorry for those who haven't played the game and riding the bandwagon along with GTA fanboys with their odd YouTube comparison videos questioning why futuristic cars, designed like mini tanks, won't take damage like modern cars or why corrupt police of Night City won't chase them like "superior" police AI of Liberty City which rams dozens of people to death while chasing one common car thief. Meanwhile an already a solid game has become even better since after updates most of the launch day glitches have been ironed out and gunplay improved. Apart from first gameplay footage, I didn't see any video of the game before playing it.
So I don't know how it was advertised. I'm just judging the game for what it is and not what I wanted it to be or expected it to be. Storyline is exactly what you expect from the studio behind it. It's dark, political and packed with amazing three dimensional characters. I'd say it's the greatest group of characters I've seen in a video game so far. Not a single character was tacked on and everyone was treated with care and respect. From friendships to love interests and adversaries, every character is well written. The game deals with many heavy subjects like meaning life and death, hope, materialism, spirituality, friendship, love, nihilism, class system, politics, child abuse, mental illness, degeneracy, neo capitalism, anarchy, privacy and so on at once and does it beautifully. It wasn't an easy thing to execute. You can play as a man or a woman or anything in between. The game gives you a choice in the beginning. Character Creator also allows you to choose one of three backgrounds for your character. You can start your journey as a Nomad, Street Kid or a Corpo Employee. I played it twice as a Nomad because I thought that Nomad philosophy is similar to my thoughts in real life as I am someone who prefers values, friendships and principles over materialism, big cities and wealth. The game has 4+ major endings. You choose those endings during finale. Then those endings have further variations which depend on the choices you make throughout the game. All secondary quests are handcrafted and there are no fetch quests or mindless grinding which you normally see in games from Ubisoft.
Your exploration and creativity is rewarded because of game's system which leaves the door opened for emergent gameplay, a design philosophy clearly inspired by the giants like Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines, Deus Ex, Ultima: Underworld, Gothic and so on. In one of the missions I had to reach a stash which in developers’ minds was possible after getting double jump upgrade. Instead I climbed nearby water pipes to reach the location. Of course, I could’ve parked a van nearby and then climbed the van to reach that location too. During my second playthrough I reached it with double jump. Everything is fair because the game allows and encourages you to be creative and think out of the box. Since it's an RPG you can upgrade your character after gaining XP through various activities. You can invest in physical strength, hacking, crafting, stealth etc. Apart from usual stat and XP based upgrades, you can also buy equipment for your character and install them in your body by visiting Ripperdocs. These upgrades enhance your character further. They allow you to jump higher, hack quicker, highlight important objects, carry more weight or use smart weapons etc. The smart weapons are quite creative as they don't require too much precision. The bullets themselves chase and hit enemies in critical areas to deal maximum damage. It's also good for flushing enemies out of cover.
The game has body mutilation system and destructive environments which make the gun fights even more entertaining. When the fight is over the area is full of broken objects, wounded enemies, dead bodies, pieces of paper and crushed skulls. Normally I don't favour open world for every game. In fact I'm tired of many franchises targeting open world because of recent trend but this is a different case. In this case both open world and rest of the game mechanics go hand in hand. I don't think this game could've worked better if it was a linear experience. Apart from usual gameplay, world design is also very immersive. I'd say it's the most immersive game since Thief 2: The Metal Age. In Grand Theft Auto games, you rarely take a hard earned car for a ride because there is a chance of it disappearing after quitting and loading the game again, unless you’ve parked it at a very specific location. This issue doesn’t exist in Cyberpunk as it almost always remembers where you parked your vehicles. You never lose them. Even if they get replaced because they were in the way of some scripted event during a story mission, auto drive brings them at your doorstep.
My favourite activity in the game is riding a bike from one corner of the city to another in first person mode. Environments are highly detailed just like the characters and the cars where each and every stitch, scratch, wear n tear and skin pore is clearly visible. Even just walking on foot at night among a huge and richly detailed crowd is a very relaxing experience, as if you were teleported to another world from a different time. Story is told with a deadly precision. Small details like shaky voice of characters, their expressions, body language and so on can expose a lot about them or their true intentions ahead of time if you pay attention. Not to mention the way main character reacts with small objects during scripted events. From grabbing a wine bottle to using a keyhole, a lot of time and effort was put into these scenes. Despite so much detail, if you're on SSD, the game loads in about 3 seconds. On HDD you can get low poly characters, missing sound effects and animations as well as low res textures which take some time to load but the game offers HDD mode which makes experience a bit better by dividing different sections of the game with loading screens instead of one giant experience. For best experience, I recommend SSD.
Cyberpunk also features a very creative mini game called braindance. It allows you to experience recent events seen through the eyes of key characters (like murder victims for example). You can rewind the whole scene multiple times and look for clues in background by switching to visual, audio and thermal mode to solve different cases. For the level of detail this game packs, I'd say it was optimised very well. It's not without its flaws. No game is. Two side quests were a bit buggy. I found a solution for the first one. I couldn't complete the other one where you have you retrieve your old car near a dump. Every other quest worked perfectly. These minor issues will also get fixed in the near future. Unlike other open world games, Cyberpunk contains its own soundtracks composed by game’s virtual bands instead of licensed songs from real world.
This just adds more to the game’s lore and it also means that in the future, the game won’t get pulled from stores because of licensing issues. Some of the songs produced by these in game bands are quite good. My favorite being Black Dog by Samurai, a forgotten band from 1920s with a tragic story. Imagine the dedication of writing team and the level of detail. People will forget everything else. In the end the only thing to remember would be characters like Judy, Panam, Johnny Silverhand, Jackie and so on. Some people asked me if switching to PC gaming is worth it for Cyberpunk 2077. After completing the game, I can easily say that yes it is. It's a system seller.
Star Citizen and Squadron 42 share same technology. The latter is over 15 hours long single player game set in Star Citizen universe ready to enter beta later this year and probably release in its entirety the next year. Star Citizen itself will follow couple of years afterwards. Sq42 will get two direct sequels called Behind Enemy Lines and [Not titled yet]. Will feature branching narrative and cutting edge technology that's finally coming together, some of which was seen in incredibly impressive 1 hour of gameplay footage from 1.5 years ago.
This first part of the video series focuses on the scale. It's a good watch for any avid gamer whether he is interested in the title and PC or not. It shows how far video games have come in terms of tech and where we are about to go next. These are exciting times. Enjoy.
Things are not looking good for System Shock 3. According to a former developer, the original team responsible for this third part is no longer working on it. Therefore, we can safely assume that we won’t be playing this immersive sim game anytime soon.
As RPGCodex member ‘Kin Corn Karn‘, a former developer of System Shock 3, said:
“The only reason I’m posting is because I saw so much confusion about the state of the company and the project. I thought some first person information would be welcome. I never suggested we were halfway done, core systems are a great foundation for a game but most of the work is content development which we were critically behind in, both in real assets and in tool support for an efficient pipeline.”
According to the former developer, the System Shock 3 would be able to offer something interesting with some fresh and innovative gameplay. That is of course if Starbreeze hadn’t gone into a crisis.
“Those high expectations drove a lot of expensive experimentation. We were a small team and knew we couldn’t compete with current immersive sims in production quality and breadth. So, we had to be creative and clever and weird. And we were on our way to make something unique and possibly fun, but probably not what the audience was hungry for.”
What’s also interesting to note is that everyone on the content side is no longer with the studio.
But what about that in-engine trailer that Otherside released a while back? According to the developer, the in-game scenes showed real gameplay. And while SS3 had its main core systems, it did not have enough content.
Otherside has not issued any official update about the game’s development!
Plan to play it again with latest patches. Should get rid of minor stutters it had on launch. Overall, loved the game, got decent frame rates on high settings.
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