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

The Clayton Awards 2020

Game of the Year 2020 – Half-Life: Alyx

'Half-Life: Alyx is an excellent game, an excellent prequel to Half-Life 2, and an excellent set up to Half-Life 3 which, given the post credit scene, now feels like the inevitable next step, VR or not.'

'If you already own a VR system then it’s a must buy – it’s a new standard by which all VR games will be compared.' (Full Review)

Most Disappointing Game of 2020 – Metro: Exodus

'Exodus, if I’m being really harsh, feels like a mistake from start to finish. A mistake in terms of story, mission design and level progression. It feels like the developers realised their mistake at some point but by that time it was too late to turn back, so we end up with a messy game that feels cobbled together with inconsistent quality and a rushed and unsatisfying conclusion. ' (Full Review)

Now Playing: The Outer Worlds

If you’ve read my initial impressions of The Outer Worlds you’ll know that, despite liking the RPG mechanics and finding a lot to like about its setting and style, I wasn’t really enjoying the way the game structured its quests, and I wasn’t finding myself particularly engaged by its narrative or characters. I was hoping that, as the game progressed, The Outer Worlds would finally draw me in and make me care about this world and the people within it. Unfortunately, The Outer Worlds never quite managed to do so.

I don’t want to spend this entire reviewing dunking on The Outer Worlds because there is a lot I like about it. As I said in my First Impressions post, the way the game handles the various player skills and ties these into both dialogue and quest choices is very impressive. I love how many options the game gives you as to how you can go about completing the various quests. I also really like the dual nature of the main quest line which is essentially split – if you’ll excuse the simplification – between the ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ path.

As disappointed as I am by The Outer Worlds it’s still a game I might return to again in the future to play through that ‘bad guy’ path and see just how much I can f**k up the game world. I liked the little ‘epilogue’ scenes at the end which give you a sense of how your choices impacted the future of the Halcyon colony and, perhaps more importantly, the people you met along the way. Purely from an RPG standpoint of choices and consequences, I can’t really fault The Outer Worlds. It has some of the best quest variety determined by player choice / dialogue / skills I’ve seen in a long time.

The real problem with The Outer Worlds is that, despite the cool, Firefly inspired ‘space western’ setting, the impressive RPG systems and the solid, if not particularly inspired combat, very little of it is interesting to play from a narrative standpoint. It is, to put it simply – kind of boring.

Although I like the setting and the humorous approach to characters and quests, it results in a story that you can’t really take seriously because the game never really takes anything seriously. It’s far too glib for its own good. Firefly was a show full of humorous touches and characters who could see the funny side of serious situations. But it knew when to tone down that humour and casual approach because, like The Outer Worlds, it was, at heart, a pretty dark setting where bad shit goes down more often than not.

 

The Outer Worlds lacks that serious, darker edge that would really complete and make this a world worth believing in and – more importantly – fighting for. It’s just so tongue-in-cheek about everything to the point that if the game doesn’t really care, why should you?

The quests, as I described in the FI post, typically adhere to a repetitive structure that doesn’t really evolve from one world to the next. And the game doesn’t break quests down into sub-objectives the way it really should, instead preferring to create separate quest entries based around a single location. This isn’t a major issue, more of a reoccurring annoyance, but it results in a situation where you stop caring so much about the content of a quest objective, and instead just want to clear it in order to reduce your ridiculously expanding quest log.

 

The crew you can recruit on your travels are a pretty bland and disappointing bunch. They ain’t the crew of the Serenity, that’s for sure. You only really get to work with and know two of them prior to their recruitment but the rest just kind of join you because . . . well, just because, I guess. None of the companion quests are really any good either. I wouldn’t say they’re bad, but they suffer from the same problem as so many of the quests in the game – they’re just so by the numbers and bland.

In terms of quest narratives, there’s nothing here you haven’t seen and played before. Do you recall that mission I talked about in my FI post? The one with the missing worker? Even before I entered that damn house I knew it was cannibals because of course it f**king was. It always is. The Outer Worlds never surprised me. It never really took a risk or presented me with difficult choices. It was all too obvious, too clearly structured and too damn easy.

The Outer Worlds feels like a real missed opportunity. The underlying RPG design and combat works well and I like the setting as a whole. But the game doesn’t strike the right narrative balance, it relies far too heavily on safe and familiar quest design, and it doesn’t do enough to connect you to this world or the people within it. You never really care about what’s at stake or who might live and die because the game doesn’t really seem to care, either.

 

As a result, you just run through it, disconnected from the narrative and the choices you’re making. I can appreciate the underlying systems and mechanics, but when the narrative aspect of the game is so damn dull, that doesn’t really count for much.

I’m certainly not going to write off The Outer Worlds as a bad game. It’s not. And, like I said, I might even give it another shot in the future and try out the other major path. It might be a lot easier and more enjoyable to play as a ‘bad guy’ who doesn’t care about the world, people or consequences when the game doesn’t seem to either. Hell, maybe that’s the way it’s intended to be played.

Overall, The Outer Worlds is a mixed bag of solid mechanics and an interesting setting, let down by tired, safe and predictable quests, rather shallow characters and a real lack of a darker edge that would prevent the world from feeling like a pointless joke. I’d still recommend checking it out (on sale) if you’re really into choice driven RPGs, but otherwise, give it a miss.

5/10

Cyberpunk 2077: First Impressions

With nearly 40 hours clocked, I figured it was time to drag myself away from Cyberpunk 2077 and share my initial impressions. I guess the question is: does it live up to the hype? To the 8 years of anticipation and excitement? The answer to that question will really depend upon your own expectations. What game did you want Cyberpunk 2077 to be? 

It’s not GTA: Cyberpunk. The open world isn’t a chaotic sandbox and you can’t go bowling with your cousin. It’s not Yakuza, with 101 mini-games. It’s not like The Elder Scrolls, in which you play as an entirely blank slate. Cyberpunk 2077 is, at its heart, an open world Deus Ex game with a dash of Mass Effect and (believe it or not) the original Watch_Dogs. It is, for the most part, exactly what I wanted it to be. So yes, for me, it does live up to the hype.

But does that mean it’s perfect? Hell no! I’m already compiling a list of all the things I feel the game could improve upon. Cyberpunk has plenty of rough edges – and I’m not just talking about the bugs and performance issues. In some ways, I wish Cyberpunk was a little more GTA-like, at least in the open world sandbox aspect.

The civilian npcs only seem to exist in three states – walking, fleeing or cowering in terror. And they all share the same ‘cower’ animation, so it’s pretty funny watching large groups of them all crouch and cover their heads in perfect unison. The npc car AI is also pretty terrible to the point that I wonder if it exists at all. They don’t react if you crash into them or even park your car in the middle of the road – they just stop and stare at you. They don’t try to drive around, honk their horns, yell or swear. 

And then we have the police who, if you happen to catch their attention, randomly spawn into the road and take pot shots at you until you leave their field of view at which point they forget you exist entirely. Cyberpunk 2077 could also do with some Yakuza style mini-games of its own. Some fun little activities in the world you can enjoy between missions – gambling, old-school arcade games, shooting ranges etc.

I wish I could preview clothes before I buy them. I wish I could have more than 3 active weapon slots. I wish I could customise my ride and my apartment, or change my hair style. I wish I could have more than one grenade / consumable type active at a time. I wish some characters had more to do, more missions and interactions. I wish the ‘life path’ choice actually had more of an impact on mission / dialogue choices.

 

So yes, there’s a lot of areas Cyberpunk 2077 can improve upon beyond just fixing the bugs and performance. The good news is that the core of the game – the really important stuff – the general gameplay, the story, the characters and the quests are all fantastic. The foundation is solid. It’s now just a question of how they build upon it going forward. 

I can’t say the bugs have really impacted my enjoyment of the game (at least so far) – of those I’ve encountered, only one caused an issue with a side quest in which I was unable to interact with an npc. Fortunately, it was an optional objective so I was still able to complete it. Aside from that, every other bug I’ve encountered has been visual / animation related – npcs popping into existence, characters walking through the floor, cars floating in the air, animations failing to trigger so characters appear to ‘slide’ their way to their objective and, most amusingly of all, T-Pose enemies.

Performance has been . . . okay. I’m playing at 1080p with a 1080 on High settings and getting between 45-60 FPS depending upon the environment / situation. It’s not perfect, but it’s perfectly playable and I’m pleased to say I’ve not had a single crash. That said, a friend of mine who also picked up the game couldn’t even launch it without it crashing, so your mileage may vary depending upon your hardware and your settings.

Despite all the open world issues, Night City is, without a doubt, one of the most incredible open worlds you’ll ever experience. It’s vast. It actually feels like a city. 40 hours in, and I’ve barely scratched its surface. It’s visually stunning, vibrant and the attention to detail is fantastic. And the city is absolutely full of content – so much that it’s almost overwhelming. 

And none of this content feels like the typical open world ‘filler’ that you might expect. Every side job has a story attached. Every one feels unique. Yes, they do mostly follow a similar set of core objectives revolving around killing someone, rescuing someone or stealing something, but every location and challenge is unique in how they’re set up. Some are short, but others are longer, more elaborate affairs that later lead onto more missions.

And even the ‘crime’ side content in which you must take out various gang members across the city serve a fun purpose – they give you the perfect opportunity to try out new weapons, cyberware and abilities. 40 hours clocked, and I’ve still not even cleared a single district of the city of side content. And I want to do all of it, because everything I’ve done so far feels worth doing. None of it feels like filler. None of it feels tacked on to artificially extend the experience.

I think one aspect of the game everyone was concerned about prior to release was the combat. But, funnily enough, that’s now the least of everyone’s concerns. The combat is really good. You have a great range of options available to you with regard to weapon types and abilities allowing you to build your character to fight in a way that feels fun and satisfying for you. I’ve been focusing on pistols and revolvers and having a real blast. 

The ‘hacking’ aspect feels very Watch_Dogs as you can ‘quick hack’ not only enemies but various environmental objects. You can take control of cameras, mark enemies, distract patrolling guards, trigger overloads, disable enemy weapons or even blind their optical implants. Sometimes, enemies try to hack you and do the same – although, sadly, not very often.

V, who you play as, isn’t a blank slate but more like Shepard from Mass Effect. They have their own personality, but it’s a personality you can shape through your choices. Make no mistake, V is very much a character in Cyberpunk 2077. They’re not like an Elder Scrolls / Fallout mute weirdo.

Oh hell, what else? There’s so much to talk about in Cyberpunk that I’m not sure what else I should cover here or save for my review. Maybe I should just wrap this up. I could talk about this game all day – all the things it does well, all the things it doesn’t and all the things it can improve upon. Yeah, I think I’ll leave this here. It’s a little scattershot, I know, but I’m sure I’ll be able to put together a more coherent review when I’m ready.

Now Playing: Halo 3: ODST

This is the first time I’ve played ODST and I had quite a shock when I started the game and realised that it’s played in first person. ODST originally released in 2009 on the 360 and, for a reason that now eludes me, I always believed it was a third person game.

I don’t know how ODST was sold and marketed on release but playing it today, it feels like an expansion pack to Halo 3. It’s very short, and the missions almost feel like content that was cut from Halo 3 and repackaged into this game.

ODST is set during the events of Halo 2 and the Covenant invasion of New Mombasa. I always wanted to see more of that setting in Halo 2 so I was glad to return to it here. You play as the ‘Rookie’ a new member of a squad of orbital shock troopers on a secret mission to extract a high value target from the city.

The game is structured in a way that’s kind of unnecessary and annoying. Your drop into New Mombasa doesn’t exactly go as planned and you find yourself on the streets of the city at night, separated from your squad. As you’d expect, your objective is to link up with your missing squad mates – Buck, Dutch, Romeo, Mickey and Dare.

As you move through the city and engage small groups of Covenant forces (but not any elites which I found a little odd, because weren’t the elites still fighting for the Covenant when ODST is set?) you’ll find ‘clues’ that trigger a flashback mission for each member of the squad showing what happened to them after the drop.

These missions are all fun and varied with a mixture of on foot and vehicle action. But they’re also all very short – you can blast through the missions in under 2 hours quite easily. But, when viewed as an expansion, and given the low price of entry for this PC version – only 3.99 – I’d say that’s still pretty good value given the replay value if, like me, you’ll be playing solo and in co-op on the various difficulty levels. 

My real problem with ODST is the ‘Mombasa Streets’ level you play between the proper missions. Once you complete one flashback, you’re back on those same streets with a new waypoint leading you to the next clue and the next mission. It’s an open map with various routes but it can be a real slog as you’re forced to plod your way from one end of the map to the other.

It’s easier not to bother fighting enemies on the way because it will just slow you down. I really didn’t enjoy playing the Streets level between missions. It just felt like pointless padding to drag out what is a pretty content shallow experience. All you’re doing is running from one waypoint to the next in order to unlock the next mission. I was so bored doing this and as much as I might enjoy replaying the actual missions in ODST, I don’t ever want to have to trudge my way through the Mombasa Streets level ever again.

The story is short and we don’t really get enough time to get to know our squad, but it does enough to keep you engaged and curious to see where it’s going. If you like Halo 3 then I’d certainly recommend picking ODST up, but don’t set your expectations very high.

6/10