Gallery: Cyberpunk 2077 (Part 1)

 

Now Playing: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a sequel to the original Hyrule Warriors (which I’ve not played) and a prequel (but not really) to Breath of the Wild. It’s hard to say exactly why it’s a prequel (but not really) without dropping some pretty major story spoilers, but I’ll do my best to explain.

Age of Calamity is set 100 years before Breath of the Wild during the Great Calamity – the events of which, if you’ve played BotW – you’ll already be familiar with. What occurred during this period was quite well explored in BotW, but if you think AoC is just that story being retold, you might be in for a surprise.

Thanks to some time travel shenanigans, the events of AoC don’t necessarily progress in the way you might expect. I can see some people not liking this approach, believing the story should have remained true to the events as presented in BotW. But as I said, that story was already explored quite adequately in BotW, so I’m more than happy for AoC to diverge and tell its own tale.

AoC is like the best BotW fan fiction in video game form. Once again, it’s hard to say why without dropping major story spoilers. All I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed the story aspects and found it quite satisfying to play. 

Visually, AoC is a near perfect recreation of the BotW art style. And it really is quite impressive how AoC incorporates so many aspects of BotW into its design from the map, weapons, runes, outfits, items, abilities, locations, enemies and characters. If you’ve played BotW – and I don’t know why you’d be playing AoC if you haven’t – then you’ll feel right at home.

You’ll begin AoC by playing as Link but your roster of playable characters will rapidly expand offering a variety of combat styles and special moves. With so many characters to play as and switch between within missions, the combat has been kept simple and uniform across every character, based on a system of light and heavy attack combos.

The way every character fights is unique – even the way they utilise the runes – and feels appropriate for them. Link is arguably the most versatile, given he can use three different weapon types with entirely different attack styles – one handed, two handed or spear. I also really enjoyed playing as Impa and Urbosa. It’s likely you won’t take to every character style, but you should find enough to enjoy and the game rarely forces you to use a particular character. 

The main quest chain of AoC is pretty substantial with many missions taking 30-40 minutes to complete (or more – if you’re as obsessive as I am about killing every enemy and finding every korok seed). If you only focus on the main missions, I think you’ll still get a good 15 or so hours out of AoC, but you’ll also be missing out on a lot of fun, additional content. There’s a massive amount of side content in AoC to explore. Missions that test your skill using particular weapons, characters or abilities. Missions that test you against the clock. And every mission will grant you various rewards that can be used to unlock new character and weapon upgrades.

I honestly wasn’t expecting this level of side content in AoC – even post-game, you’ll unlock a dozen or more new missions plus a ‘blood moon’ difficulty modifier (in addition to the existing difficulty modes). It’s an impressive range of extra content and I can easily see you dropping 50-60 hours into AoC if you want to complete it all.

But I guess that leads me into my main criticism of AoC – player fatigue. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed playing AoC, I didn’t really feel like doing all the side content. I wouldn’t say there’s too much content – more that the content can become incredibly repetitive. 

There’s not a great deal of mission variety regardless of the unique modifiers, and every mission is really just another excuse to smash thousands of enemies to pieces. That’s certainly fun, but it can get rather tiresome the more you play, and that’s probably why I preferred to play AoC in short bursts, a handful of main and side missions at a time.

I also wish AoC had expanded upon the tactical aspect of its missions. There are many missions where you can capture ‘outposts’ which will then spawn friendly troops, but they don’t really seem to have any real impact on the battlefield.

I thought it would work more like a basic RTT system where the more outposts you capture, the more friendly forces will spawn and help you overwhelm the enemy. In reality, friendly npcs don’t really do anything other than provide some background flavour to the experience. You can direct playable allies to different locations on the battlefield but, once again, they don’t really do anything until you take direct control. 

The other main issue I have with AoC is regarding its technical performance. It’s kind of strange how poor the frame rate can get during some of the early, less intensive missions, yet run far more smoothly during some of the later, more intensive ones. It’s inconsistent, to say the least. I wouldn’t say it had a particularly negative impact on my experience, but it was annoying when it dipped during a crucial moment.

Overall, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a pretty fantastic game that offers a substantial quantity of good quality content. The missions may not offer the same level of variety as the character styles, but there’s plenty here to keep you engaged. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and I can see myself returning to complete those remaining side missions in the future.

8/10

Death Stranding: First Impressions

Paperboy 3: Death Stranding is the long awaited sequel to the classic series. The titular paperboy – Sam – is now a man living in a post-apocalyptic America doing what he does best – delivering packages. Death Stranding is pretty sketchy on the details at first, but as you progress you’ll soon learn more about what happened in the past and why the world is the way it is.

Although the history may not be initially clear, your objective is – to reconnect the isolated cities and outposts across America and rebuild the country. Oh, and to rescue Sam’s sister (?) At least, I think she’s his sister. That’s one of the things I’m still not totally clear on at the moment.

Death Stranding is the name of the event that nearly destroyed the world. Although there’s still a lot I don’t yet know about it, it’s an event that saw the worlds of the living and the dead collide. America, as we know it, collapsed. Previous attempts to reunite the country failed as terrorists and fanatics sought to sow disorder and chaos. But now, as Sam, you’re attempting to pick up and pieces and finish what your sister (?) started.

You do this by traversing the land with a baby strapped to your chest, delivering packages, evading bandits and throwing your poo at ghosts. No, I’m serious – you throw your poo at ghosts. When Death Stranding introduces the wonderfully named character of Die-Hardman you might begin to wonder if the game is just being weird for the sake of being weird.

But I’m pleased to say, that doesn’t appear to be the case – silly names aside. The more you learn, the more of Death Stranding begins to make sense. It’s a pretty cool setting, at least from what I’ve experienced so far. It’s certainly different – the clash of science and the supernatural. I’m intrigued and I’m engaged and I’m curious to see where this story goes.

Visually, Death Stranding is impressive and the performance is great. What’s really striking though is the attention to detail – the way Sam moves through the environment, the way he carries his cargo, the visual degradation of your gear or vehicle over time . . . these details all build a world that feels alive and real.

The core gameplay loop – delivering a package from A to B – may not sound like the most exciting way of spending your time, but the game does a great job of continually mixing things up by regularly introducing new items and mechanics, enabling you to take on larger and heavier deliveries across longer distances and more varied terrain types.

You begin on foot with a simple backpack, but just when this slow slog across the desolate landscape starts to annoy, you get access to your first vehicle. Suddenly, you go can further and faster than before. And then you unlock a power skeleton, a floating cargo rig and another vehicle type. You unlock new weapons, but in turn, your enemies get new toys, too. Every step of the way, it feels like you’re getting new toys to play with and new ways to approach and complete your objectives.

You can also build structures and, like everything else, you’ll begin with a limited selection that soon expands. These structures can be upgraded and provide various benefits to you and the world in general – such as a charging station for vehicles. You’re not just reconnecting America – you’re rebuilding it. The first time you reconnect two outposts by investing resources in a road network is a pretty cool moment.

But if there’s one thing I didn’t enjoy it’s the online ‘sharing’ feature of Death Stranding. The concept is neat and plays nicely into the theme of connecting others and working together to rebuild. The idea is that the structures and signs other players construct can appear in your game world. You can ‘like’ them if you think they’re useful and, at least initially, they really are.

Got a deep river to cross but no ladder? It’s okay, another player has already placed one for you to use. It seems neat, at first, but it wasn’t long before I turned the feature off entirely. Why? Well, the game doesn’t do a great job of picking what to incorporate into your world and what not to. When I started having to run through about 10 signs in a row every time I left a settlement, I started getting annoyed.

And when I saw 3 bridges appear in a row across the same stretch of river which not only looked stupid but also killed the immersive nature of the world, I’d had enough and switched the sharing off. I still like the concept, but the execution is poor, particularly if, like me, you want to build your world the way you want to – and not have a landscape littered by the odd and random constructions of others.

Death Stranding is certainly one of the most unique and interesting games I’ve played in a long time. Based on what I’ve played so far I certainly don’t think it’s a game that everyone will enjoy, but I’m pretty hooked by it and I’m eager to see where it goes.

Now Playing: Cyberpunk 2077

I wrapped up my first run of Cyberpunk 2077 with 70 hours on the clock. That included the time I spent playing the alternative life path openings, and playing through all of the different endings – aside from a secret one, which I didn’t quite meet the requirements to unlock. I completed, I would estimate, around 90% of the main side quests – although it’s hard to say exactly, as I’ve not yet seen a complete list. But I probably only cleared 20-30% of the available side ‘gig’ missions or gang related events.

I didn’t want to do everything on this run because I wanted to save some content for my next. And as much as I would like to jump straight back into Cyberpunk, I’m going to wait for some patches to roll out that will hopefully fix and improve on some of the issues I’m going to discuss in this review. I also have Age of Calamity to play, so that’s going to keep me busy in the meantime.

I don’t need to tell you that Cyberpunk 2077 is buggy. It probably should have been delayed (again) rather than release in its current state, particularly on the base consoles. That said, I can’t say the bugs I encountered really impacted my experience. They were nearly always visual, or animation related. I didn’t experience a single crash in my entire time with the game, nor any broken quests.

I’ve played far more broken games than Cyberpunk at release – when I played Fallout 4, I had multiple crashes including a bug that prevented me from entering a specific area of the map. I could only progress through the quests related to that area by manually advancing the quest stages via the in-game console. And I very nearly gave up on NieR: Automata, which I now consider to be one of my favourite games ever, because of the continual crashing I experienced the first time I played that game through.

I’m not saying this to defend Cyberpunk or convince anyone that it’s not as bad as some people are claiming – just that my experience hasn’t been that bad. Maybe I just got lucky. I don’t know why I’ve not seen so many of the bugs featured in some pretty hilarious compilation videos. But I didn’t, so I can’t really complain about issues I didn’t actually experience.

But the priority for the developers now, before all else, is to polish and fix these issues. To eliminate these bugs and get everything working the way it should. Once that’s done, the next priority should really be to improve upon and fix the npc behaviour in the open world. I touched upon this in my First Impressions post, so I won’t repeat myself here. But the npc behaviour and reactions both in and out of cars needs to be totally overhauled, as does the police ‘wanted’ system.

 

Beyond this, what the game really needs is some small tweaks, fixes and additions to the existing content – a walk/run toggle for PC, the ability to assign more than 3 active weapons or a single grenade / consumable type (because f**k me, having to go into a menu in the middle of combat just to switch to a different grenade is really f**king annoying). Improvements to the UI so it doesn’t take so many steps simply to equip specific items / mods, or dissemble items into crafting components. A change to the quest log so those annoying ‘car for sale’ jobs can be hidden (including the icons on the map screen).

Even without the bugs, Cyberpunk 2077 is a game with a lot of rough edges to be smoothed out. These are mostly little things, small oversights that might not seem particularly important but would really enhance the overall experience if they were tweaked and improved. After going back and watching a lot of the preview videos, it’s weird how many little details didn’t seem to make the final cut. They are only small things – such as V raising their hands to protect against the glare of a bright floodlight – but these little details all add together to create a more immersive experience.

In my FI post, I also talked about potentially adding in mini-games or activities that you could enjoy between missions. Whilst Cyberpunk isn’t GTA, that doesn’t mean it can’t take a trick or two from that series. Gambling, 8-bit arcade machines, shooting ranges, street races (outside of the quest chain), recreational brain dances – because that mechanic isn’t taken advantage of enough – the ability to customise your appearance beyond the creation screen, including your hair, but also perhaps, more advanced cybernetic visuals such as mechanical arms / legs. Being able to preview clothing prior to purchase. Or customise your weapon skins / car.

How about unique take-down kill animations depending upon what weapon you have equipped? And I really want more inhaler types beyond just health, such as combat boosters, or reflex enhancers that trigger some kind of temporary bullet-time without requiring cyberware. Oh, and why not some actual drinking/eating animations when you’re at a bar / noodle stand?

It’s not like the game needs all of this stuff, but all of this stuff would massively enhance the overall experience. It would turn what I already consider to be an excellent game, into one of the best games ever made – a game that might even sink Skyrim as my most played game on Steam – particularly if it gets mod support.

I also wish the life path choice had more of an impact on quest related choices / endings. For the most part, it just adds a little flavour to your interactions. The same is true of the skill based dialogue / environmental checks, very few of which have a real impact on how you approach things / missions play out. Once again, they typically only add a little more flavour to conversations rather than changing the direction of how things can go. This is certainly another area the game can improve upon in future expansions.

My only other major criticism of Cyberpunk would be that the quest pacing is a little off. You tend to unlock the main side quests at the beginning of each story act, but this includes several that only unlock when you reach the ‘point of no return’. At this point, it feels kind of important to press on with the main quest for reasons I won’t spoil here, but to do so would mean ignoring some pretty lengthy and important side missions which can also have a major impact on how the endings of the game play out.

So as much as you might enjoy doing those quests, it kind of kills the momentum of the main quest just as it was building to its conclusion. It’s like you just have to put it on pause and spend another 15 hours or so wrapping up the other major side content, otherwise certain ending pathways will be unavailable to you. Some of those quests, particularly those involving Johnny and Rogue really should have unlocked earlier in the game. And too many of them seem to unlock at the same time, so you often get several messages in a row and it’s a little overwhelming as to what content to tackle next.

The main quest of Cyberpunk 2077 is a real blast. I won’t spoil anything here, but it’s an engaging tale that really hooked me from beginning to end. The character dynamic between you and Johnny is a real highlight – at times you like him, at others you hate him and you’re never quite sure if you can trust him. I’m also really impressed by the variety of endings on offer and how extensive and different each ending can play out depending upon your choice. I guess you could criticise the game for not taking that many decisions into account when it comes to the endings – it’s really just what side quests you’ve completed that ‘unlock’ the different options – but after playing through every ending and epilogue, I have to say I liked them all.

None of them are perfect. None offers an entirely ‘happy’ ending, but then you shouldn’t expect a perfect ending to a story like this. Some are more bleak than others, but even the ‘best’ ending still feels a little bittersweet. The important thing though, is that each ending feels appropriate based on the choices you made. My first ending, though kind of depressing, felt wholly appropriate for the path my Corpo V had taken.

The side content is even more extensive than the main quests, with many multi-part missions. And they offer a pretty decent variety of content ranging from action, to stealth, to just chilling out with people you’ve come to know. And you won’t mind spending time with these characters because they’re all pretty cool to hang out with. In fact, if I had one other major criticism of Cyberpunk, it would be that some of these characters feel underused.

Once again, I won’t spoil anything, but it’s a shame you only interact with some characters you encounter for a single quest because there’s so much more the game could have explored with them. The most obvious example is the Militech corpo you can choose to deal with during one of the prologue missions. You think that interaction will lead to a Militech related quest chain but sadly, it doesn’t. The Voodoo Boys also barely feature beyond a single mission. Maybe something for an expansion, eh?

Beyond the main quest and the big side quests are the side ‘gigs’. These are essentially one-shot mini-missions in the open world revolving around killing a target, rescuing someone or stealing something. They’re like small, Deus Ex puzzles you can approach and solve your own way. You might think they’re just ‘filler’ type content, but I disagree.

I thoroughly enjoyed every side gig I tried because each has its own unique story attached to it, with it’s own unique location, enemies and objective. And you do meet and interact with unique characters during some of these missions, not to mention optional objectives to increase your pay. They may not seem particularly deep compared to the main side quests, but I can honestly say I had more fun with the majority of these than the main missions in various other games – I’m looking at you, The Outer Worlds.

In fact, I’m glad I played and reviewed TOW before Cyberpunk because I would have probably been more harsh on it than I was. I will say it does the whole dialogue based skill checks a lot better than Cyberpunk, but that’s about it. And I’ve seen a lot of people criticise Cyberpunk for not comparing to the incredible open world of RDR2. I won’t disagree with that criticism, but if you’re going to compare both games, then you should also compare mission design in which Cyberpunk is miles ahead.

For all the excellence of its open world, the missions of RDR2 could be boring as all f**k and vehemently opposed to any kind of player creativity or initiative. There’s a reason I finished with RDR2 after 55 hours or so and never want to bother with it again, whereas I immediately want to jump back into Cyberpunk after 70 despite all the bugs and other issues. And I can see so much potential for Cyberpunk going forward, so much it can build upon, expand and improve.

I guess the only other thing to talk about is the combat. I don’t think anyone expected the combat of Cyberpunk to be as good as it is – seriously, this is a great first person shooter. Once I unlocked the slow motion cyberware and the ‘shoot whilst sliding / dodging’ perks I was zipping about blasting goons like I was in a crazy Vanquish / Titanfall crossover – particularly when I had my ‘smart’ pistol equipped. Add in the double jump cyberware and all that’s missing is a wall run ability.

There’s a lot of versatility to the combat, with a lot of different weapon types and options based around your perks. The weapons all feel punchy and satisfying to use. Even the melee combat is pretty decent, especially if you use a sword. Although I opted for stealth / hacking in the majority of the main story / side missions, the smaller side ‘gigs’ and gang events were a perfect opportunity to cut loose and wreak some havoc.

My only real issue with the combat is the aforementioned lack of active weapon / grenade slots. I know it’s not DOOM, but I really want to be able to switch between my weapons / grenades more easily in combat than having to enter and exit a bloody menu. I get that a controller may have limited buttons, but I’ve got lots on a keyboard I’d love to assign if the game would f**king let me. There is a radial menu that lets you switch grenades / inhalers, but it still pauses the game and it also doesn’t let you switch out weapons or – what would be really f**king handy – attachments, such as a silencer on a pistol. I have so many keys, let me use them!

Quick hacks are also useful in combat. You can blind enemies, disable their weapon, and even trigger a fatal neural shock. It’s kind of fantastic how dangerous / overpowered you can become by really focusing on hacks and their supported perks / cyberware mods.

Anything else? The driving in the game is also pretty good. The cars all handle differently and feel different to drive. It’s kind of funny how a developer that hasn’t made anything with first person shooting or third person driving has done such a great job. Honestly, the combat in Cyberpunk is better than a lot of shooters I’ve played and that’s something I never would have expected. I thought it would be fine and functional at best. But it’s really f**king fun and it lets you be creative in all the ways I appreciate.

Visually, Cyberpunk 2077 can look stunning, even when it’s not running on the fanciest settings. I was playing on mostly High settings at 1080p and as I described in my FI post, my performance wasn’t perfect but perfectly playable. And I hope, with patches, it will only improve. The VA in the game is excellent and, contrary to what some others might think, I thought Reeves was great as Johnny Silverhand. I thought he fit the character perfectly.

Cyberpunk also has a great soundtrack, particularly the combat tracks that are suitably pumping. The radio stuff is also really good, although it seems strangely limited given how often I kept hearing the same tracks. That said, I never got tired of Chippin’ In kicking in whilst driving.

Okay, let’s wrap this one up. It’s pretty hard for me to recommend Cyberpunk 2077 in its current state. I’ve really loved it, but your experience may not be quite as smooth as mine. A friend of mine couldn’t even launch the game, let alone play it. So no, I can’t recommend it. Or, I’d say it’s currently a ‘play at your own risk’ kind of situation. If you can wait, I’d say wait. If not, you’d better accept this is far from perfect in its current state.

But that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. I did. I had an absolute blast. And if the developers can patch those bugs, smooth out those rough edges, reintegrate a lot of those little immersive features they apparently cut and introduce the new kind of content I’ve described here, it will go down as one of the best games ever made. I guess the question is: can they do it? I sure hope so.

8/10