wardialer

this game is NOT a MMORPG. it is a persistent open world RPG w/ up to 4-player multiplayer and GACHA elements. it can be enjoyed completely as F2P, or if you don't earn your money you can blow thousands on rolling for the desired character. the world is beautiful, the models are very cute and well animated. you can clearly tell the devs care about this game and its player base. i understand its not for everyone since there is a grind element involved in earning primogems to roll for characters/weapons you might want, but i have 18 characters in my F2P account and half of them can't be developed due to daily RESIN limitations. character development requires careful planning and execution, but for me the journey is well worth it. the story is also enjoyable and i'm looking forward to inazuma in feb. i forgot to mention that the music is also great and the sounds effects are well mixed.

CP2077 tries way too hard to be edgy and cool but fails miserably on all fronts. Night City is lame and its cast of characters is shallow and dull. The movement is janky as hell, all the floors and roads are perfectly flat, the action is very last gen, just poor execution all around. I'm pretty sure I selected ENGLISH in the menu, but my sidekick keeps trying to speak SPANISH to me to confuse the hell out me while our lives are on the line. Very uncool, unpolished, SJW-esque try-hard-fest. WEAK!

i bought the game on release day but only found time to play it in the last couple of days. i think i have enough to go on... so here is my take on it. first of all, i played GT5 a lot. i got to level 40 in a-spec and b-spec, owned every car, got back to it once i bought my G27 wheel and thoroughly enjoyed it. however GT6 is GT5. there is about 20% new content: same 8-9 hundred miatas and skylines from the previous release (which in turn had about 80% of its cars from GT4). 3 years later, it looks and feels exactly the same, for better or worse. the GT series feels stale and dated, and after having played more serious sims, it doesn't even compare as far as realism and physics are concerned. its definitely not 'the real driving simulator' but more like 'the real marketing simulator'. boasting about 1200 cars has gotten really tired and various iterations of the same track won't really fool veterans of the franchise. i think kazunori yamauchi sold out a long time ago since sony's marketing dept. is dictating the direction of the franchise... and its failing to innovate or even capture the essence of racing. i have yet to try the game w/ my G27, but i hope they fixed the degrees of rotation and steering lock when passing the wheel through centre. it just feels really, really stale... and is gonna feel even more stale if it ever comes out on PS4. its time for PD/kaz to stop resting on their laurels and actually reinvent this franchise before it falls victim to more self-important marketers.

i kept playing hoping it would pick up and actually become interesting. it didn't. great score by jesper kyd... bland plot, boring puzzles, action was pretty standard. the characters were totally forgetable and i was glad when the game was over, but felt guilty for naively playing it in hopes that something (ANYTHING!) interesting would happen. felt like the second part of a four part game series.

only about halfway done (i'm guessing) but so far the game is awesome. metacritic user scores are usually more indicative of the quality ****, and this time (i believe) both critics and users have reached a consensus. the open world is gorgeous... especially the northern lights, characters look good enough (much better than long-faced ugs in previous elder scrolls), movement and physics are good, attention to detail is huge. the game's just really engrossing and **** you in every time. load times are almost non-existent and the interface seems really polished and well thought out. bethesda got it right. you really get a sense that everyone on their team was at their best and cared about the final product. truly epic. i almost forgot... epic soundtrack as well.

i had high hopes for this game. i didn't really have any technical issues except for texture popping. the framerate was decent. i played the first 2 hours and realized that id should be paying ME for playing this linear, uninspired garbage. john carmack is not greater than the sum of id's parts, and having dispensed w/ many key contributors to the brand this becomes increasingly clear. instead of paying marketing teams huge sums of money to create "buzz" for the game and "convince" morally bankrupt reviewers to give it a good score to boost sales, they should invest in someone who cares, not only about the products they put their name on, but the customers that will be playing them. anyways. the weapons i saw so far seemed crappy and unimaginative. same goes for the few characters and bad guys who now seem more stiff (maybe bethesda's influence)... seriously, a shambler had way more SOUL and fluidity than all of the characters combined. the ATV i drove to my first mission was lame and pointless as was killing the bad guys for no apparent reason. id has been on a downward slide w/ their last few titles, and if i had my name on this product i'd be quite embarrassed.

having played Dirt 2 to 100% completion on hardest settings (except for the long croatia track), i was very excited about this game's release. it feels a lot like Dragon Age 2 compared to DAO... rushed, boring, and trying too hard to appeal to a broader demographic w/ a limited attention span. the obnoxious "awesome driving amigo! post that footage for your compadres amigo" x-games dude-banter is back in spades and totally destroys the experience. there is little variety in the environments and the almost immediate offering of DLC reaks of cashgrab. plenty of cars and the graphics engine looks and runs pretty good on my aging xeon E3110 and GTS 450... but the game lacks soul. its almost as if the publisher was telling codemasters how to "improve" their game as EA was telling bioware how to "improve on" dragon age. don't get me wrong, its still a good game... but VERY shallow. too ken block, DC product placement... less colin mcrae, and much less rally. still its better than GT5's rally in many ways which felt more like an afterthought for marketing purposes. anyways, im halfway done the dirt tour (on advanced, which is ridiculously easy btw) and don't think i'll bother going back to finish it. i expected more out of the genius that is/was codemasters.