eddemunken
the opening hour is fucking masterful. the louisana swamps and southern horror and mia is literally ethel cain. great mystery and increasing tension, good scares just great great great. some of the best to come out of the re series. then ur introduced to the family which is also just great this is probably capcoms best world to date and the characters are all so distinct and the house section gives me that re1 vibe but with the thoroughline of the family. also looks pretty good for 2017, but def a bit muddy. the first half is great but def needs enemy variety, the bug section is annoying and the mia and zoe choice is pretty dumb bad ending/good ending whatever. the ship section is bad and disorienting, the mia and eveline stuff is weird and i don't get it and story is servicable and the ending section is just weird, granny twist is a bit of a meaningless twist and the boss looks funny. the jack not dying gag is fun, lucas sections is good i mean it's all jus pretty good all throughout. good revival and return to survival horror. the dlc are also good and fun even though they are some story contradictions but whatever u dont play these games for the story. good!
2013
2.8??? yall CLEARLY were not there
a pretty solid game that suffers from a TON of cutscene central. if the story is ass and everyone knows it, at least let me move around during the cutscenes.
the game looks the best it's ever had, driving through the desolate suburbs and seeing striders stride (hihihi) their way across the bridge is such a feat. that one strider fight scene with dog was animated with such oomf and it was elevated bc YOU COULD MOVE AROUND, why don't games do this anymore.
it plays like half life, the gameplay is pumpy and satisfying, but i found the pacing to be a tad too long in sequences, especially the cave section. part of this was i guess valve wanted a longer game so people got more bang for their buck, but there is definetly some fat in there that is prominent on replayability. also thought some of the puzzles were a bit too obscure in this which borderlined on tedium almost, but those were far and few between. i rly wanted to blast through this game but i got stuck on the stupidest parts.
gman unveils himself as he shrouds this game in his oozy athmosphere, seeing missable glimpses of him has always been one of my fav aspects of this game but in this he takes center stage almost. mike shapiro is beyond phenomenal, same with all the other voice work here. i also wish the hunters were stronger and there were less of them, multiple of them storming you and them being kinda weak kinda deflated their threat of their opening blow. but i love the way they're designed, same with the advisors which are beyond cool all the alien stuff is so mind bogglingly great great great. story here is also very solid, and that infamous ending has and will always be engrained into my mind forever.
it plays like half life, the gameplay is pumpy and satisfying, but i found the pacing to be a tad too long in sequences, especially the cave section. part of this was i guess valve wanted a longer game so people got more bang for their buck, but there is definetly some fat in there that is prominent on replayability. also thought some of the puzzles were a bit too obscure in this which borderlined on tedium almost, but those were far and few between. i rly wanted to blast through this game but i got stuck on the stupidest parts.
gman unveils himself as he shrouds this game in his oozy athmosphere, seeing missable glimpses of him has always been one of my fav aspects of this game but in this he takes center stage almost. mike shapiro is beyond phenomenal, same with all the other voice work here. i also wish the hunters were stronger and there were less of them, multiple of them storming you and them being kinda weak kinda deflated their threat of their opening blow. but i love the way they're designed, same with the advisors which are beyond cool all the alien stuff is so mind bogglingly great great great. story here is also very solid, and that infamous ending has and will always be engrained into my mind forever.
2001
probably best atmosphere in gaming. the surreal uncanniness of everyone in this town, makes everything feel so inhuman yet totally the opposite. its that feeling you cant put your finger on utilised into a location that drains you to your core, yet the fog is so cozy and i owe that to the masterful soundtrack which i keep returning to. silent hill is a character, it's THE character and it swallows everyone within it.
everything has this lynchian dreamlike quality where nothing is explainable but it doesn't have to be because that feeling lingers and it lingers because it delves into the most human aspects of yourself. this is expressed in the cast which i wont delve into too much but the relationship between mary and james is an obvious tear jerker. just the gray zone between love and hate and feeling like a burden so you push people away yet want them to hug you tighter and wanting your life back and being unable to express your desires (pyramid head and maria being examples of stifled sexual contact), it's so messy but you understand these characters, you feel each emotion even in its sloppy and hard manuevered gameplay.
and also that last letter from mary narrated BEAUTIFULLY, the voice work in this is some of the best, so uncanny yet so somber, anyway its a very much bittersweet note that left me SOBBING, mary is such a beautifully complex person which so many conflicting emotions of helplessness and guilt that ties up their tragic relationship beautifully. ITS SO FUCKING SAD BUT ITS SO FUCKING GOOD, that james you made me happy like i actually shriveled down into a puddle girl bye.
good luck recreating this shit blooper because its never gonna fucking happen.
everything has this lynchian dreamlike quality where nothing is explainable but it doesn't have to be because that feeling lingers and it lingers because it delves into the most human aspects of yourself. this is expressed in the cast which i wont delve into too much but the relationship between mary and james is an obvious tear jerker. just the gray zone between love and hate and feeling like a burden so you push people away yet want them to hug you tighter and wanting your life back and being unable to express your desires (pyramid head and maria being examples of stifled sexual contact), it's so messy but you understand these characters, you feel each emotion even in its sloppy and hard manuevered gameplay.
and also that last letter from mary narrated BEAUTIFULLY, the voice work in this is some of the best, so uncanny yet so somber, anyway its a very much bittersweet note that left me SOBBING, mary is such a beautifully complex person which so many conflicting emotions of helplessness and guilt that ties up their tragic relationship beautifully. ITS SO FUCKING SAD BUT ITS SO FUCKING GOOD, that james you made me happy like i actually shriveled down into a puddle girl bye.
good luck recreating this shit blooper because its never gonna fucking happen.
2020
This review contains spoilers
prefacing this by saying that i’m judging this mostly by what we got. the hype only overblew what cdpr set up for this game, a game that is everything and more, which is an impossibility. cyberpunk is good, for what it is it’s pretty damn good despite it being rather underbaked. it’s def a game that grows on you.
the life paths are a bit sad, superficial illusions of choice that only change the first half hour and minute dialogue bits here and there. the street kid holds up with v’s character in the rest of the game, but the others feel like deviations of her personality. they’re fun switchups that don’t mean a whole lot. that’s the first hollow promise of an interweaving rpg system which would make your path unique, but a ton of the optional side stuff felt more like checking things off a list than choices of compromise. it’s pretty okay in the rpg aspect but nothing spectacular.
the gameplay has grown on me. while the gunplay is still kinda tacky and for the most part serviceable, stealth with silenced pistols gave me the best rush and the game also shines in its melee, jumping from buildings and slicing enemies is fun. the ai can sometimes be god awful, dumb and glitchy, the boss fights are laughable, the gameplay lacks a sense of flow, it goes for a more snappy approach but it’s like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together right. but there are spurts here and there where things click, but those are too few and far between. the skill trees were a bit confusing and i didn’t put much thought into builds, just kinda went “oh that sounds good” and unlocked it. it has a nice variety of playstyles but i didn’t notice a ton of the progression. same thing with the cyberware except maybe for double jump and melee options, i didn’t touch crafting, it was all a bit messy in my head. thank god it’s getting improved in phantom liberty
cyberpunk nails its genre and night city is the truest manifestation of it. the worldbuilding in this is some of the best i’ve seen. from a technical standpoint, roaming around night city is a feat. it has such vast verticality, the cityscapes swallow all light so it’s almost as if we’re not able to tell if it’s night or day. it has such density, trash and machinery littering the streets and the narrow alleyways and the nooks and crannies of each district. it truly is a shame that this artistry can sometimes be undermined by the ai of the npc’s and glitches and whatnot, it holds back the engulfing immersion this could’ve had but as it is it’s still really good. the graphics are often great, the character animations too, the lighting is sometimes fantastic but it’s often inconsistent and the exposure calibration is a bit off and the lighting can render sometimes flat. anyway it's an utter dystopia, scrutinizes the american dream like most cyberpunk stuff but through a lot of differing ways through side quests. every inch of humanity here is monetized property, rage brews in every corner of the slums and the empty corporal world is cold, everything is gushing excess and fucking, morality is but a distant memory. only the badlands outside feel alive. it’s nothing new, but it pays homage to the genre as a whole and there’s no game out there where you get the opportunity to live in this world at this scale. what holds it back is the fast travel system which was a bit too convenient and discouraged exploration but sometimes it was needed so whatever, the gigs are boring but fine shooting practice, the driving is still ass, the exploration is a mixed bag and i wasn’t interested in a lot of its mechanics.
the story is solid but it is nowhere near flawless. i hated v as a character at first, i thought she was annoying, corny and uninteresting. same thing with the dialogue, i thought a ton of everything towards the beginning was annoying, corny and uninteresting. but the more you play, the more you get used to it, and that turns into “wait, i actually don’t hate this”. this game kinda seeps into your marrow, cdpr aren’t incompetent writers for the most part but they’re just embracing the punk in cyberpunk. and that’s when i started appreciating it and couldn’t stop playing it, i started feeling like a part of the world almost and that’s something i’ve only felt with red dead. i still feel the prologue is too long and too short, we needed more time with jackie because his death left a massive long lasting void that wasn’t really justified by the time he was alive, the time skip was rather lazy but i understand it. in hindsight, the first three hours are pretty great with introducing the world and characters and setting the stakes, and this is also where the setpieces peaked. after that the game drags and it started feeling like a chore, the plot was pure mindless noise for me. what kept me going was the notion of cyberspace, alt’s higher being was something so interesting which i thought the game focused on more, things so advanced they are incomprehensible to the human mind which is explored a bit further on.
i hated johnny at first, but he grows on you towards the end. especially all his missions just squeezed into the ending stretch, it feels like too much johnny almost. the rebel who wants to take down the big corporations has become a bit of parody at this point, but he serves as the thing steering v towards wanting to rid the world of something so big, but it being futile in the end as whatever you do you’re nothing but a small cog in a gargantuan machine. that is the essence of cyberpunk. at some point your grief-muddled sense of justice is out of the picture and you move on to find the humanity that’s left, which is in the side missions which is the bread and butter of this game. the side missions are better than the main campaign because they focus on these contained human stories of one or two people and examine their issues and whatnot. they impact the story and i think they’re pretty great because you can fuck them up if you’re not careful and it feels like you’re changing the story because you don’t have to do them if you don’t want to but if you do it actually kinda changes things. river, panam and judy’s side quests are all the best parts of this game and actually made me feel things.
i also felt that the progression of v dying and becoming johnny felt very off because it’s only conveyed by v passing out SOOOO many times. but v becoming johnny is almost non-existent besides johnny taking over v’s body, but there was no nuance here and only extremes. it was like arthur’s tb diagnosis but stretched out an entire game and without the same impact, the pacing was all over the place here and nothing felt urgent, just annoying. i didn’t feel much of a change in v’s behavior as her death approached, which was such a missed opportunity. the endings are for the most part pretty solid and i found the dilemma between choosing death or being alive in a higher state but in the property of arasaka pretty fascinating, i like things that are otherworldly like the brainwashing conspiracy of the peralezes. no ending is really a happy ending which i like, you “die” in each one. the story overall is nothing groundbreaking or without flaws, but it’s pretty good and has some genuine and thought provoking moments. honestly feel done about talking about this game, it’s good, maybe a bit underbaked, i recommend playing it for the world and side stories alone.
8/10
the life paths are a bit sad, superficial illusions of choice that only change the first half hour and minute dialogue bits here and there. the street kid holds up with v’s character in the rest of the game, but the others feel like deviations of her personality. they’re fun switchups that don’t mean a whole lot. that’s the first hollow promise of an interweaving rpg system which would make your path unique, but a ton of the optional side stuff felt more like checking things off a list than choices of compromise. it’s pretty okay in the rpg aspect but nothing spectacular.
the gameplay has grown on me. while the gunplay is still kinda tacky and for the most part serviceable, stealth with silenced pistols gave me the best rush and the game also shines in its melee, jumping from buildings and slicing enemies is fun. the ai can sometimes be god awful, dumb and glitchy, the boss fights are laughable, the gameplay lacks a sense of flow, it goes for a more snappy approach but it’s like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together right. but there are spurts here and there where things click, but those are too few and far between. the skill trees were a bit confusing and i didn’t put much thought into builds, just kinda went “oh that sounds good” and unlocked it. it has a nice variety of playstyles but i didn’t notice a ton of the progression. same thing with the cyberware except maybe for double jump and melee options, i didn’t touch crafting, it was all a bit messy in my head. thank god it’s getting improved in phantom liberty
cyberpunk nails its genre and night city is the truest manifestation of it. the worldbuilding in this is some of the best i’ve seen. from a technical standpoint, roaming around night city is a feat. it has such vast verticality, the cityscapes swallow all light so it’s almost as if we’re not able to tell if it’s night or day. it has such density, trash and machinery littering the streets and the narrow alleyways and the nooks and crannies of each district. it truly is a shame that this artistry can sometimes be undermined by the ai of the npc’s and glitches and whatnot, it holds back the engulfing immersion this could’ve had but as it is it’s still really good. the graphics are often great, the character animations too, the lighting is sometimes fantastic but it’s often inconsistent and the exposure calibration is a bit off and the lighting can render sometimes flat. anyway it's an utter dystopia, scrutinizes the american dream like most cyberpunk stuff but through a lot of differing ways through side quests. every inch of humanity here is monetized property, rage brews in every corner of the slums and the empty corporal world is cold, everything is gushing excess and fucking, morality is but a distant memory. only the badlands outside feel alive. it’s nothing new, but it pays homage to the genre as a whole and there’s no game out there where you get the opportunity to live in this world at this scale. what holds it back is the fast travel system which was a bit too convenient and discouraged exploration but sometimes it was needed so whatever, the gigs are boring but fine shooting practice, the driving is still ass, the exploration is a mixed bag and i wasn’t interested in a lot of its mechanics.
the story is solid but it is nowhere near flawless. i hated v as a character at first, i thought she was annoying, corny and uninteresting. same thing with the dialogue, i thought a ton of everything towards the beginning was annoying, corny and uninteresting. but the more you play, the more you get used to it, and that turns into “wait, i actually don’t hate this”. this game kinda seeps into your marrow, cdpr aren’t incompetent writers for the most part but they’re just embracing the punk in cyberpunk. and that’s when i started appreciating it and couldn’t stop playing it, i started feeling like a part of the world almost and that’s something i’ve only felt with red dead. i still feel the prologue is too long and too short, we needed more time with jackie because his death left a massive long lasting void that wasn’t really justified by the time he was alive, the time skip was rather lazy but i understand it. in hindsight, the first three hours are pretty great with introducing the world and characters and setting the stakes, and this is also where the setpieces peaked. after that the game drags and it started feeling like a chore, the plot was pure mindless noise for me. what kept me going was the notion of cyberspace, alt’s higher being was something so interesting which i thought the game focused on more, things so advanced they are incomprehensible to the human mind which is explored a bit further on.
i hated johnny at first, but he grows on you towards the end. especially all his missions just squeezed into the ending stretch, it feels like too much johnny almost. the rebel who wants to take down the big corporations has become a bit of parody at this point, but he serves as the thing steering v towards wanting to rid the world of something so big, but it being futile in the end as whatever you do you’re nothing but a small cog in a gargantuan machine. that is the essence of cyberpunk. at some point your grief-muddled sense of justice is out of the picture and you move on to find the humanity that’s left, which is in the side missions which is the bread and butter of this game. the side missions are better than the main campaign because they focus on these contained human stories of one or two people and examine their issues and whatnot. they impact the story and i think they’re pretty great because you can fuck them up if you’re not careful and it feels like you’re changing the story because you don’t have to do them if you don’t want to but if you do it actually kinda changes things. river, panam and judy’s side quests are all the best parts of this game and actually made me feel things.
i also felt that the progression of v dying and becoming johnny felt very off because it’s only conveyed by v passing out SOOOO many times. but v becoming johnny is almost non-existent besides johnny taking over v’s body, but there was no nuance here and only extremes. it was like arthur’s tb diagnosis but stretched out an entire game and without the same impact, the pacing was all over the place here and nothing felt urgent, just annoying. i didn’t feel much of a change in v’s behavior as her death approached, which was such a missed opportunity. the endings are for the most part pretty solid and i found the dilemma between choosing death or being alive in a higher state but in the property of arasaka pretty fascinating, i like things that are otherworldly like the brainwashing conspiracy of the peralezes. no ending is really a happy ending which i like, you “die” in each one. the story overall is nothing groundbreaking or without flaws, but it’s pretty good and has some genuine and thought provoking moments. honestly feel done about talking about this game, it’s good, maybe a bit underbaked, i recommend playing it for the world and side stories alone.
8/10
1998
big shocker but this doesn't hold up great anymore, the mechanics can sometimes be god awful and frustrating. but there's no denying this has some serious charm despite its ugliness, despite its wayyy too long xen section god fuck, it's the og. it's iconic, the npc's are HILARIOUS, genuinenly scarier than most modern horror games, for the time it was revolutionairy and inspired gaming today so we have to give them some credit
2023
i dont want brooding serious leon i want campy and quippy leon. ramon is soooo boring now too whyyyy
2010
frustrating with all the trial and error but the puzzles are for the most part fine and neat. the world and atmosphere is engulfing and feel incomprehensible to your little guy, each shifting environment eating you whole in this endless purgatory, but the world still manages to be one of the most comforting.
2019
art direction is through the roof, such a beautiful game that runs really well, it plays phenomenal and rarely gets old, the music ohmyfucking god, don't like the new maps but i wish i played this as often as i used to. play this with friends
really slow but also fucking scary. has an unforgettable atmosphere
enjoying this until it completely veers off in its last third. southern gothic horror is just that girl, top notch art direction that encapsulates the dry humidness of a rotten tooth infested with maggots. veiled in a grounded return to the formula, it sure isn’t free of its absurdness, which just adds to this being one of the funniest games maybe ever??? (marguerite i love u forever and ever shitcocksucker) the gameplay and ai is certainly clunkier and more annoying than village, but i feel like i forgive this one more due to the overall aesthetic and cohesiveness (until the end), the concept of dividing this through a bizarre family is really fun with the sections being unique yet adhesive. again i just wished that re didn’t care for story and just threw ideas out on the table without needing to explain them, once they do all intrigue and uncertainty just dissipates. gotta admit the pt-esque section fell flat on my second playthrough and the molded are still ass enemies, but this is just so sticky i will forever love it!!!
2010
this kickstarted some mental turmoil in me as a kid
2004
half life is reinvention. when that combine told us to pick up that can, the players of 2004’s shit was rocked. valve shows off their new tech that would continue to sway gaming as we knew it into a new direction, same as it did with half life 1, and same as it would do with vr in alyx. for this reason alone, the complete overhaul of the landscape, it deserves masterpiece status but oh we’re not done.
it always treads the razor sharp line and holds its balance with mastery between progression, difficulty, pacing, story i mean it is unlike anything i’ve played. each chapter puts you in the trenches and once on the other side, you get the opportunity to fight back, it reflects the world, the story, and it feels so fucking good. valve gives you such vast gameplay opportunity, they give us permission to bend whatever rules there are and by the end i felt like i hadn’t squeezed every bit of fun this game had to offer yet. the clues are there, but it doesn’t hold our hand in solving these scenarios with the tools we’re given, it rewards the player's ingenuity and that is something almost unheard of nowadays, it’s beyond addicting.
the story puts us in an orwellian landscape as we slowly rise through the ranks but reinforcing a devastating sense of nihilism throughout. the mute freeman, a stand-in for us, acting as a messiah against earth’s oppression is proven futile again and again, despite reaching the top of the mountain we’re introduced to an infinite set of worlds that are vaster than we can comprehend, mere puppets to serve a purpose with third party forces leading us to it without our knowledge. it’s pathetic. but the act of trying to save what’s left is what keeps our flame alive and unwavering, it fuels the player. a unified humanity fighting off the combine, just all consuming monotony just for a chance to live on a bit more. that even in a land so devoid of life, i especially find comfort in these empty monochrome scapes. highway 17 is one of my favorite sections in all of gaming just because of its emptiness of its coast, it is all consuming but you get the chance to breathe in its quietness.
while it significantly dips towards the end, this is one of my favorite games and i mean just fucking play it already.
it always treads the razor sharp line and holds its balance with mastery between progression, difficulty, pacing, story i mean it is unlike anything i’ve played. each chapter puts you in the trenches and once on the other side, you get the opportunity to fight back, it reflects the world, the story, and it feels so fucking good. valve gives you such vast gameplay opportunity, they give us permission to bend whatever rules there are and by the end i felt like i hadn’t squeezed every bit of fun this game had to offer yet. the clues are there, but it doesn’t hold our hand in solving these scenarios with the tools we’re given, it rewards the player's ingenuity and that is something almost unheard of nowadays, it’s beyond addicting.
the story puts us in an orwellian landscape as we slowly rise through the ranks but reinforcing a devastating sense of nihilism throughout. the mute freeman, a stand-in for us, acting as a messiah against earth’s oppression is proven futile again and again, despite reaching the top of the mountain we’re introduced to an infinite set of worlds that are vaster than we can comprehend, mere puppets to serve a purpose with third party forces leading us to it without our knowledge. it’s pathetic. but the act of trying to save what’s left is what keeps our flame alive and unwavering, it fuels the player. a unified humanity fighting off the combine, just all consuming monotony just for a chance to live on a bit more. that even in a land so devoid of life, i especially find comfort in these empty monochrome scapes. highway 17 is one of my favorite sections in all of gaming just because of its emptiness of its coast, it is all consuming but you get the chance to breathe in its quietness.
while it significantly dips towards the end, this is one of my favorite games and i mean just fucking play it already.
