Most of my enjoyment came from the driving. Just driving around and listening to music is pretty fun in this game for whatever reason. The story kinda sucks, almost like a very self aware MCU liberal who is desperately trying to escape the funko pop addiction wrote it.

The online component is a joke. It's really only playable solo, since Rockstar absolutely refuses to fix the myriad of issues ranging from walking around until a hacker inevitably gives you a ton of money (my favorite alternative to Shark Cards) to actual straight up cyber security risks due to the complete incompetence and/or immorality of the company as a business.

You know what? I was gonna give this a 7, but it deserves a 6 at best. Fuck this spyware ass game.

Its been down for a while now, so I'll give a little history lesson about why this game exists and the larger context of its existence.

A long time ago, there was a thriving community on a browser game called Die2Nite made by little known French company Motion Twin. The idea behind the game was that 40 survivors would group together and have to ration resources, scavenge, build, and plan to survive as many days as possible.

In the game's prime, there were several groups that would "jump" into new towns together, and they often had the most success. I was in one such group called Working Class Heroes, a group that accepted both free account members and premium members, thus the name.

Each town had its own forums, so you had to actually communicate and talk to people to get anything done. This had limited (but some) success in random towns, but the real planning often happened in irc. Yeah... It's that old.

So, eventually, Die2Nite died down in popularity. The success of Dead Cells (which presumably took up most of Motion Twin's focus), the declining popularity in forums, and the aging userbase led to it being unsupported. However, there is still a fan-led recreation of it out there... it's been a while since I checked.

So that brings us to Grimmwood. It was, in essence, meant as a successor to Die2Nite. There were some... limitations. For one, the game had a price tag on it. This is a terrible business model for something that's already unpopular and requires a constant userbase. In addition, it lacked a lot of the... Charm of Die2Nite, and the mechanics were rather half-baked in comparison.

Due to the nature of how Die2Nite worked, you would log in for 5-10 minutes and do your actions for the day, then you were done. There was no need to stay longer unless you were busy planning with others. In Grimmwood, however, it was a much smaller time scale. Instead of a limited amount of actions per day, you'd have a little energy bar that replenished every half hour or so. This was probably an attempt to make people log on more often, but in reality it just made the bar higher than it needed to be and rewarded a no-life playstyle.

The only time this game had a somewhat active community was in the first 2-3 months or so. I remember struggling to find anyone to even play with beyond that. Oh, and the amount of people in each town was much lower than before, and I don't even think there were forums. Looking back, I can't tell if it was a genuine effort or a cash grab to take advantage of Die2Nite players wanting to fill a hole.

So, that's the context of this incredibly obscure game that very few have had the privilege of playing. A failed successor that ended up being replaced by what it was succeeding anyway. It shut down within the first year or two it was up on Steam.

Broken Steel is forgettable. Basically just an answer to the "why does the game end!! omg i want to keep playing!!" complaints and nothing else.

The Pitt is fine, it's a cool setting and does a lot for worldbuilding, in addition to giving the protagonist an actual choice, but it probably could've been executed better.

Mothership Zeta is fucking awful. i'm sure they had a meeting or some shit and they were still small (ish) enough for Todd to be like "Okay guys ... Get this... What if we had aliens." and they all started like drawing funny stuff on a dry erase board while laughing. that meeting was probably a lot more fun than playing through this stupid linear corridor shooter in an RPG.

Finally, the Kino... Point Lookout. This is, i shit you not, the BEST thing Bethesda has ever made. Ever. It's better than any of their Fallout titles, better than any Elder Scrolls games, and any of the other shit they've made that nobody cares about. The atmosphere is there and stronger than ever. There are more memorable characters in this DLC than the entire main game. The writing is actually inspired. The setting is interesting. It just fucking looks and feels cool. They truly hit savant territory here. If they ever reach this level again I will eat my shoe. The winds, stars, and moons aligned all at once to create this DLC. They were a smaller studio, they were still in that kino Oblivion mindset (fuck the haters), and they must've had some ghost writers or a special team on it because there is NO way the same writers of the main game and fucking Mothership Zeta made this.

Oh, and I forgot about Operation Anchorage. Yeah, that one might be even worse than Zeta. The only positive is that it, at least, doesn't fuck around with the lore in a bad way as far as I could tell. Still a shitty corridor shooter (this time it's outside?) but with a slightly more interesting setting.

"it's like you are simply staring into a void of content." - nu_gyr0

The game is absolutely stunning from the beginning to Stormveil Castle, the latter being one of the most incredible examples of level design in video game history. Unfortunately, the game suffers a sharp dropoff in quality from that point on. If you cut out beginning stretch, I'd probably give this shit a 4/10 or maaaaybe a 5/10. There's a few highlights sprinkled throughout, but yeah...

There's a lot of copy paste content. A LOT. As in, the game would genuinely be better if they didn't bother coding in this side activity a lot. They re-use major bosses for minor side activities. Raw bosses with no variation. As much shit as Skyrim gets for the draugr dungeons, I fail to see the difference here in Elden Ring's dungeons. At least in Skyrim, you didn't have to get keys to unlock another draugr dungeon. They just let you go in as soon as you found one. +1 for more freedom in a Bethesda game. You will see the same enemies copy and pasted, with a slight reskin and maybe one new minor move you'll forget about in 5 minutes if you're lucky, throughout the game.

Once you get to the infamous "endgame," the experience becomes dreadful. Despite the wide range of tools at your disposal, the game practically forces anyone who isn't a sweaty cheeto-dusted Souls vet to utilize a small range of builds if they want to complete the game.

This is a stark contrast from the roots of the genre. Despite Elden Ring having (on paper) more variation in builds than say, Dark Souls 1, there's a wider range of playstyles that work with that game in comparison to Elden Ring. You are forced to spend most of your levels on vigor, otherwise minions will do what should be boss-level damage by the second or third area. For anyone that isn't a no-hit runner, this is pretty much the only way to progress outside of exploits.

Best part of this game is the art. Basically every single area in this game is beautiful. Not to mention the fashion. Halfway through the game you'll feel like Mark Wahlberg the way all that designer makes you drip drip. It's honestly just really pretty to look at honestly, and is probably a good 70% of the reason people give this game so much acclaim.

Addendum: Something else that's hard for me to swallow (not the game's fault) is the reaction to this. It seems to be described as a death blow to the open world genre as we know it, but... how?

Elden Ring is missing the intricate quest design, politics, and philosophy found in New Vegas, it doesn't have the level of world interactivity as Skyrim, it lacks the creativity of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, it holds your hand more than Morrowind, another Bethesda game. The ONLY thing this game does in comparison to those games is put Souls combat into an open world. That's it.

So why is it that this game, of all games, is getting this treatment? My answer: Lack of genuine engagement with the genre. If you've not played the games I described before, you'd probably be led to believe that Elden Ring is something new and innovative that leaves western developers quaking in their boots or whatever bullshit you'll read in some of the reviews on this website.

Ironically, Elden Ring is more shallow than most of the genre's best from each decade.

most half-baked Paradox launch since, i don't know, EU4? i have a laundry list of issues with this game and i'll try to touch on many of them

- In an effort to simplify war and make it less micro-heavy, they basically removed the game part. you just assign battalions to your generals and tell them to attack/defend a front and they automatically do everything for you. seriously, that's how war works lmao. I know some people had issues with how Hoi4 sort of does a (slightly) similar thing where you make battleplans for your generals, but the difference there is that making good battleplans presents an ACTUAL fun challenge. The game also gives you an option to micro without giving your generals battleplans if you so desire.

- the user interface is, with no exaggeration, the worst to be included in a Paradox title. take that in for a moment. worse than Victoria 2, worse than CK2, EU4, etc. There is so much information (some of which is rather important) that can only be accessed by hovering your mouse over an icon for two seconds, then hovering your mouse over an underlined piece of text for another two seconds, then hovering your mouse over another piece of underlying text and you get the point. CK3 handled this type of UI much more gracefully.

- they changed construction to a system similar to hoi4 for some reason, though Hoi4 once again handles it better. that means Great Britain, a country that holds territory worldwide from the beginning of the game, can only construct one building at a time. baffling step back from the previous game.

- the economic sim would be much more impressive if the information was presented more clearly. this stems from the user interface issue and the war issue. the fact that war is basically not even part of the game anymore means its better to focus your attention on economic affairs, but the information on that stuff is just not easily available.

this game's saving grace is the fact that there was a lot of genuine thought put into the meat of the economics. its just a bit difficult to really have fun with it at times due to the game's issues.

right now Victoria 3 is maybe a tier above a basic map painter as far as im concerned. Paradox has been on top of their game lately but this is an exception, bit disappointed.