sacreo

This game is a vibe and a half. Beautiful graphics, incredible sound design, a genuinely unique take on the character action genre, and a lovable cast of characters.

This will be a cult classic as soon as people find it. It's almost a different angle on Undertale, with some intentional similarities paired with significant subversions and Guitar Hero meets Bullet Hell gameplay. Absolute blast, time flies by.

A wonderful love letter to games like Silent Hill, with much of the fat trimmed away for better or worse. It's very linear, the puzzles are simple, and there is very little combat or danger. That said, the game builds a fantastic atmosphere, with a unique story and some of the best sound design we've had in years, as well as representing what I hope is part of a true revival of the "fixed camera angle" horror game. If you're expecting a polished AAA experience then keep looking, this is the studio's first project on this scale, but The Medium is a wonderfully modern throwback to the golden era of video game horror, as well as a path forward. If they get a sequel, I think that's going to be the one that launches this studio into ****.

The game is incredible, plain and simple. Huge scope, incredibly detailed world, excellent acting across the board, genuinely interesting characters/writing, reasonable depth to the RPG elements allowing for many builds/characters, and the overall aesthetic is gorgeous. It's unfortunate that last-gen console gamers got screwed, but Cyberpunk 2077 on PC is only as buggy as your standard open world game is at launch. Every CDPR game has this issue at launch, TW3 had them for almost a year. It's not a Skyrim-level mess by any means, occasional pop-in while driving, some funny physics glitches, worst I've experienced is once having to reload 10 minutes back due to a side quest getting stuck. I don't disagree that last-gen console gamers got done a little dirty, but that's not relevant to the PC version. A lot of people seem to have the goal of "punishing" CDPR, rather than being honest about the core product. Bugs get fixed and the studio has a track record of very effectively fixing them. Wait for that to happen if you want, but don't get swept up in the memes and miss out on a really fantastic game without making the call yourself.

Half the complaints are about launch bugs, while the other half seems to be militant conservatives just being offended that Star Wars doesn't always doesn't cater to their real-life worldview. The actual gameplay is extremely tight, with enough difference in control and aesthetic to make each ship unique. The story is higher production than expected, turning into a very standard Star Wars affair. It doesn't bring anything particularly new to the universe, but executes and entertains far better than most multiplayer-first games of today. The VR experience is highly immersive and surprisingly not nausea-inducing, but the skybox is unfortunately very blurry which does take some visual depth away. It's probably a 7 with launch bugs and a 9 after they patch it, so I'm splitting the difference at 8.

There are performance issues that need to be patched, but this is one of those rare games where that somehow adds to the charm. It's a weird, awkward janky mess of perfection, simultaneously achieving both B-movie charm and genuinely interesting characters and stories. There really isn't a similar atmosphere in gaming. I fully expect this to be an unplayable mess to half of the buyers, and GOTY for the rest.

The game essentially cannot be played offline, frequently requiring you to re-login and reconnect to the internet after a restart or two, and sometimes shutting the game down on the spot if connection is lost. There's additionally a ton of bugs, some as lazy and glaring as spending 90% of your time with a mouse cursor in the middle of the screen when using a controller. It's clear they were forced to ship this out months too early, leaving us with a product I refunded today. Not to mention the sheer concept of forcing us to simultaneously open multiple, bug-heavy launcher programs (Epic/Rockstar) in order to even boot the game up...

It's almost impressive how ignorant and pandering the average reviewer is. Of course, it would take far too much thought to realize that "Gigolo Mode" was a rather clever commentary on the lack of depth in video game romance and the typical role of the player character as a "mary sue", a peerless sex god through which one can live out childish fantasies. Far easier to just cry about the evils of sexism so you won't be crucified by misguided feminists. The comparisons to games like Devil May Cry and Revengeance are even more pathetic, and just go to show how uninformed and out of touch these people are.