I won't be the first in line to praise the Batman Arkham series as the pinnacle of the medium or anything, but there's something to be said about how they do seem to hone in on some specific ideas. I can feel a genuine respect for Batman as a character, attention paid to how his gadgets work, interesting scenarios with his enemies and at least very competent combat.

I say all this to say that Spider-Man doesn't really have this feeling at all. I don't mean to say that it's the worst game ever, but it also feels like Insomniac lacked any spark of creativity or even the will to at least make something thrilling and fun. Not every part is bad, but the sheer amount of parts of this game that feel mediocre reflect the worst aspects of AAA development.

I haven't played one of these big budget Sony games in a while, so I was immediately taken aback by the frustrating handholding and lack of trust in the player to do anything on their own. Once I pushed past all of the obnoxious tutorializing, I did make a genuine effort to dig into the gameplay, yet I still find it pretty unrewarding. Spider-Man's combat is just plain uninteresting most of the time. His basic 4 hit combo feeling gross on it's own is one thing, so it's clear the gadgets are the emphasis, right? It seems like Insomniac thought that this was their way to add depth, but it also fails. The gadgets are all very similar to each other, some felt like they should only be used on a whim like the drone or tripwire ones which still end up being used identically to the other ones. More enemy varieties that need different gadgets to be taken down would help, but this won't mesh with the progression system (I'll get back to this). The funniest part is how missions will just tell you to use a certain gadget to fulfill a condition as if just bothering to dust off the drones for once is some kind of challenge run lmao.

Even past all of this, some of it just doesn't function very well. The dodge system isn't broken, but it also isn't polished at all. Enemy wind-ups are made fairly obvious, but the weird timing particularly on melee attacks makes just spamming dodge the ideal option. Melee enemies will often change speeds between their wind-up and attack, which can be pretty confusing and defeats the point of Spidey's agility and senses.

This emphasis on breadth of mechanics rather than depth of mechanics rears its head even more in other ways. The aforementioned progression reeks of AAA broad-appeal approach. "We can't design enemies around gadgets, because players may not care to get those gadgets. But we also want people who do want them to get them, so put activities that give you crafting points everywhere. But we also still want everyone to be able to just run into them so make it really easy to just naturally get the materials to get upgrades."

A few conflicts of interest there huh?

Getting a bit all over the place here but the point is that these activities are simultaneously unrewarding while also hurting other parts of the game. There's 30 different varieties of open world check box things to do, yet they rarely feel unique from one another. Either chase a thing or fight some guys or both, usually in the same arena every time for the same rewards. The backpacks are the closest to providing some real value, which is probably why I got all of them while also Petering out after my 5th fight with convicts or demons or sable or whatever. Credit where credit is due, the swinging makes these more fun than they should be. It was probably the area of the game with the most focus, and while it probably isn't the best Spider-Man traversal it does make taking detours something that feels quite natural and enjoyable. I also appreciate how many of the combat encounters are just naturally in the open world even though they don't make for the best arenas.

The mostly decent plot is decent but can't escape from the AAA "overload of things" in a few ways. I appreciate a lot of aspects of it, Martin Li is an interesting character and Peter's relationship with Doc Ock works quite well. Obviously the May scene at the end is great. Yet the AAA rushjob yet again permeates throughout with how choppy the pacing is. So much time is spent on Mister Negative and the demons, but it leads to a weak twist and weak conclusion as he ends up getting backseated for Doc Ock. Otto forming the Sinister 6 feels like something that happens on a whim more than anything, with like one scene before this happens. It feels like Insomniac figured we already know these characters are villains and didn't bother to explore the setup as much as they should. It ends up feeling pretty disjointed. I don't think it helps that the spectacle itself is a lot weaker than I expected. Getting back to gameplay here but the same spam web shots then press square loop for every boss feels like it undermines their uniqueness, and the flat boring arenas don't help either.

Much has been made of this game's worship of the NYPD. I don't really have anything interesting to add, but I will say that it was more eye-rolling to me than a dealbreaker. It's bad but at the same time it's nothing out of the ordinary for comics. However the odiously liberal worldview does make Spider-Man a lot less likable in that regard too. He feels less like a "neighborhood" hero than ever, just like another Batman type who flies around beating up criminals except with epic funny quips about how they should try getting real jobs. Like everything you do in this game is dealing with some sort of criminal attack and not the fun everyday stuff that comes with a more grounded hero like Spider-Man. JJJ and Silver Sable are also examples of why this portrayal is so annoying. JJJ is supposed to be some sort of right-wing crank podcast host, and Sable runs an authoritarian militia, but the game kinda operates that these people are only bad once they start hating on Spider-Man and what they do is pretty much okay otherwise. It's a shame because I really think Yuri Lowenthal's performance would've fit a more fun and grounded Spider-Man a lot more but he's constantly forced to just tell criminals that they should love jail and hate drugs. I'm not saying he hasn't been portrayed like that plenty of times but I still feel like this game chose the wrong direction.

I've written a more rambling negative review than I intended for a game I described to people as the "textbook definition of mid" but I've also expunged all of my thoughts about why this game makes me kinda sad now. I quite like Spider-Man and yet this just completely lacked his appeal for me for the most part. I really question if Insomniac ever will understand that, and even if they did, would the suits even let it happen?

The Arkham games are alright I guess.

COME TO REBIRTH WE GOT THE

- 1 gorillion animation dollar budget
- industry standard setters of cutscenes and environments
- ....
- the worst act of the original game
- far cry tower
- far cry outpost
- far cry crafting
- open world with movement worse than zelda on the n64
- seriously, it's like ps1 tomb raider
- 3(!!) great chapters
- 11 uhhh other chapters
- story reliant on having played evercrisis and the free to play mobile battle royale????
- nojima 😡😡😡
- at least 3 hours spent in the materia menu
- the same bosses you fought in remake 3 times, 3 times
- the worst fucking minigames you've ever touched
- all the most annoying characters from anywhere else in the extended series
- benches?
- every action or animation locking you in for several extra unnecessary seconds
- shipbait
- tifa and aerith randomly deciding to act like harem anime characters for like 2 cutscenes
- fans who only read the title of the game and gave 5 stars on release date (all your reviews and ratings should be deleted)
- cait sith...?
- filler filler boat filler filler filler
- michael bay audio mixing
- bloated combat
- the sphere grid for some reason (but worse)
- "ahh cloud-kun you nearly touched mmy l-l-l-lips baka" yuffie
- crate puzzles you solve in 3 seconds and then spend 3 minutes doing

This is not the worst game I ever played, but it might be the most disappointed I've ever been going blind into a sequel of a game I liked. Before leaving a comment, please read the "Common Copes (CC)" section below. Thanks in advance.

COMMON COPES

C: But the original also had this many mini-games!
A: That was a shit part of the original too.

C: But the original also had this much filler!
A: That was shit too.

C: But in the original you also had to fiddle this much with materia!
A: That was also shit. Please just be normal and don't say all these silly things

C: I think this game is awesome man!
A: You must have Gone Gaga!

CLOSING THOUGHTS

If this kind of Ubisoft remake happened to my favorite RPG my only review would be a LiveLeak video.

The crown jewel of the Kiryu saga and an incredible statement piece for the series as a whole, Yakuza 5 manages to take the both the strengths and missed potential of the previous games and makes something special out of them. By no means would I call it a masterpiece, but it's impressive how RGG managed to spin the shortcomings of Yakuza 4 into something this well crafted.

Beyond just fixing the problems of 4, Yakuza 5 manages to genuinely expand on them as well. Where 4 felt like it had one major plot line that every protagonist had to be stretched thin to connect to, 5 lets each character have their own story and still connects them together naturally. The sheer scope and length of the game plays into this quite well. Each character has their own area, their own storylines with meaningful and well made side characters and antagonists, as well as their own side content and minigames. These areas are all great, and super refreshing and unique in their own ways.

Of course most importantly each protagonist has plenty of meaningful interactions and characterization that gives them the room to breathe that they need. Saejima was a good but somewhat one-note character in 4, yet here we get to see a much more kind and sensitive side to him, a mirror of Kiryu in how he can inspire the people around him. Haruka gets her most meaningful development yet, and it's great watching the contrast between her and Kiryu's lives. Akiyama definitely takes a more minor role in this game, but he's Akiyama so of course he's awesome as always. And of course, Shinada absolutely rocks lol. His immense charm and endless positivity in the face of hardship gives him a really fresh perspective, and I love how unique his story is for this series.

One of the best aspects is 5 though is Kiryu, which sounds like a given but wasn't what I expected after 4. He goes from being shoehorned in to a central focus, and seeing his new life as well as the emphasis on his isolation makes for a bittersweet experience. This is my favorite version of him since Kiwami easily and it's impressive how compelling he is again.

One thing that helps all of this really shine is that the combat in 5 is absolutely fantastic, probably my favorite in the series so far by a good bit. Kiryu's combat feels better than ever, and I think it helps that it's the first one as well and not just thrown in later. Saejima gets fully reworked to be SO MUCH BETTER than in 4, he has a genuinely fun moveset now that takes his style and gives it a lot more versatility and some real actual combos. Akiyama fighting like a complete speed demon was an absolute blast too, felt like the perfect style to just crank up a notch and let him tear through enemies. Shinada is a bit goofy and hard to adjust to but his weapon-based combat is a good time as well. All of these styles just feel really good as well, I actually enjoy the crowd control fights in this game for once and they really go crazy with how many enemies they throw at you sometimes. The bosses are also much more enjoyable than the previous games as well, just way more balanced overall.

I would say that this game thrives a lot more on those individual stories and character moments rather than the plot itself, similar to Yakuza 3, yet the central plot is still quite enjoyable. It does an admirable job of managing to merge all these different characters together, and I was really savoring their interactions with each other. Yakuza has never really lacked for subtlety but this game is truly on the nose with its central theme sometimes lmao. Yet I enjoy it a lot and it was great seeing how each character grappled with their understanding of dreams. Almost all of these games struggle with wrapping up their finales so having a core theme be more of the focus definitely worked a lot better for me.

This game truly stands on the absolute amount of Stuff that it has, and while it occasionally does fall into quantity over quality, it really does thrive on how good so much of that Stuff is. From the cast to the sidequests and minigames, it feels like a ton of effort went into genuinely fleshing this stuff out on RGG's part, and it's obvious how committed they were to this massive vision. I can't help but say it's my favorite Yakuza so far, an ambitious and bold embodiment of the entire series.

And just to save the most important point for last, Haruka's rhythm games absolutely own by the way. If I had a nickel for every game with Rie Kugimiya as a teenage idol that I gave 4.5 stars, I would have two nickels. Hell yeah.

a game that feels severely less than the sum of its parts.

it's strange that i would feel this way about any game - games more often than not than any other piece of media are able to have fundamental flaws looked over because of how easily enjoyment can be gauged from just one aspect of the experience. whether this be the story, the gameplay loop, atmosphere, sound, or rewarding progression, it's of no surprise to anyone on this website that bloodborne excels at all of these individually.

with all of that being said, this game strangely fails to evoke any emotion from me at all. as well thought out a lot of the lovecraftian, gothic, and victorian horror ideas are to diversify the setting from prior fromsoftware games, i think this is hidetaka miyazaki's most lacking project as director to an abnormally strong degree.

i certainly wouldn't have felt this way at the start of my first playthrough. central yharnam as an introductory point is gorgeously realised and dense with captivating level design scenarios that provoke unique ways of thinking for any player regardless of their experience in the genre. this catalyst of engaging design also seamlessly allures the player to the game's subtle yet ultimately impactful slices of lore and rewards heavily in added emotional stakes for those who put in the effort to piece it together. this is capped off by two of the best initial boss encounters fromsoftware had created to that point - although i think it's been surpassed since within elden ring's opening hours, i am fully supportive in commending the opening of this game as one of the finest ways the medium has been utilised to immerse and appeal to players of any kind heading into it.

i cannot say this about the rest of the game. what followed from central yharnam felt like a shallow evolution of ideas and design that feels so intent on delivering a worldly counterpart to its small lore elements that i genuinely believe a better game could have been constructed without them.

i understand this is a confusing perspective but i'd want to justify this in probably the most understandable way first to anyone reading, i promise there's a cohesive point behind this. blood vials for example - wonderfully thought out, an idea of a healing mechanic completely in tone with the body horror elements of the game and a constant representation to the player of the negative to positive dichotomy blood holds in the lore. does this make for a better gameplay loop synonymous with the design though? absolutely not. it's ridiculous grinding for consumable healing was revisited after the initial stint with demons souls when estus flasks completely mitigated this design choice 4 years prior when dark souls was released.

odd yet understandable choices like these are at the heart of why this game fails to deliver as a project for me. the beast bosses are thematically and sonically excellent but suffer from all having the same move set because of their similarity and relation in the lore. the hunter bosses are a mechanically refreshing change of pace and encourage an aggressive style of play unlike any souls game before it but lack visual diversity or any genuinely engaging red herrings to their fights because of the lore. worst of all, the level design post central yharnam is for lack of a better word, uninteresting, to fit the condensed locale of the lore. not to be confused with underbaked, because i do believe the vision to create this world was achieved and delivered on an exceptional front to most players. however, a baffling lack of enemy variety, a weirdly intense focus on verticality and platforming, and the visual setpieces being compromised to the point of just being a different light filter because of the ps4's limited technology subverted what should have been immersive worldbuilding to me than little more than tedium. sometimes i'd find this tedium was occasionally broken up by the sudden thrill of an enemy standing by in the dark and a gatling gun positioned at you which was devastating for all the right reasons on my first encounter with them. in the 2nd half of the game these cheap jumpscare thrills exist in every room you explore and are never once implemented again in a different way.

but a lot of these viewpoints are overly sentimental and critical of the game in relation to its reception, especially when a lot of my favourite games are just as guilty of feeding the same gameplay encounters wrapped up in a slightly different visual package to you. what is the real loose end from this game that makes the various painstakingly crafted facets of this experience completely fall apart for me?

i don't like london :(

Hideo Kojima is my favorite video game director, this much was made evident to me before I even completed a single Metal Gear Solid game and all I had to go off was Death Stranding. I found myself in a bit of a slump when it came to games in my later high school and early college years, I simply do not remember playing or at the very least enjoying anything for about 4 or 5 years of my life so I never thought to upgrade my PS3 to the next generation. Even when Death Stranding came out in 2019, I wasn’t rushing to get a PS4 because of my pretty drab associations with games at the time. The covid lockdown happened a few months later and I found myself returning to several mediums that I had grown distant to because of school, and video games were one of them. After talking to several friends about what games they did or did not connect with, I was pretty dead set on playing the “boring walking simulator” game as soon as I could. I went out and bought a PS4 pro and a copy of Death Stranding as soon as I had the money to do so, and this combination of stellar hardware and a beautiful game almost single-handedly revitalized my interest in video gaming, especially ones that attempt to push the boundaries of what the medium can do artistically. No more were the days of lazy shooters, RPGs, or platformers as I ventured out to see what games truly had to offer.

I don’t think any game had spoken to me the same way that Death Stranding did, even before coming anywhere close to completing the game. I was immediately drawn into its incredibly unconventional control scheme and its ability to balance its earth-shatteringly large scale with such tender moments of genuine human emotion. Death Stranding was the first game I had ever played that felt truly important, and beyond that I just enjoyed playing it. Its slow-paced and very deliberate mission design as well as a multitude of menus and meters to constantly keep under wraps made the very simple act of walking in a video game feel significant, something I have never seen focus attributed to in even the best of platformers or Bennett Foddy games. Naturally, when my favorite video game director began hyping up an extended cut of my favorite game ever, I became excited to experience this truly unique work of art again on an even more powerful system.

Unfortunately, this game was not made with me in mind.

I will preface this by saying I did not actually complete the game again from a new save file, I got about a quarter of the way through the game before I understood it’s trajectory and ported my 100% completion save file to this updated version of the game. Something I noticed immediately is how much better the game looks and runs than its PS4 original. A higher stable framerate of 60fps made the game feel that much more fluid when exploring, the adaptive triggers gave resistance back to you when you were holding your straps and bearing a heavy load, and the intricately designed vibration allows you to feel which foot Sam is planting down and how sturdy of a place that is. These are all the biggest strengths of this Director’s Cut, the ability to raise the stakes of simply walking from A to B even further by stretching the console to its absolute limit. For the first 3 or 4 hours of the game, I was really enjoying being sent back to square one of this world that I had all but perfected, which made me have to consider my paths and my gear much more in-depth than I would if I was still in PS4 post-game. It was exciting to be vulnerable again, able to make mistakes due to a lack of gear, and able to forge my own paths again instead of following the one of least resistance. It really did feel like I was playing the game for the first time all over again, until I got one of the new missions. Die-Hardman handed me a gun and asked me to sneak into an enemy base and retrieve cargo. This did come after the first stealth section of the game where I needed to sneak into an enemy base and retrieve cargo, but the game treats these first few enemy encounters as microcosms of survival horror. You are woefully underprepared and must rely on pure stealth or melee if you get caught. No big deal right?

Along with this new mission where a non-lethal gun is put into your hands come an avalanche of things I really dislike a lot about this game. For starters, there is a new way of playing levels that rotate throughout the day. If you pick certain deliveries, there is an option to compete with other porters around the world and receive bonuses for things like perfect stealth or ammo conservation, and the winner gets a medal and bragging rights. I think this is a pretty terrible way of getting people in this game to all do the same thing as each other. The way structures, paths, and signs are laid out by other players are ALWAYS helpful and will point you in the right direction if you are feeling lost. Not only does this encourage Dark Souls-tier levels of trolling in a game about unity, but this tears away from the strand-type gameplay I have come to know and love. Beyond the fact that this makes absolutely no sense within the text of the game itself, its subtext urges players to complete deliveries and mission for the good of themselves and NOT the good of the delivery or the recipient, something I found to be powerful my first time through since your reward was almost always intangible “likes” that exist to make you feel good about what you have done. Perhaps a competitive medal could do the same for other players or would work better in other games, but it makes completing missions feel disingenuous to me.

I don’t have much to say on the reworked combat or stealth systems this game has to offer. I can count how many MULEs I knocked out with rubber bullets on one hand and after playing through the entire MGS series, I don’t have any problems with sneaking around to complete objectives. Kojima is obviously a master at directing this sort of action, so it really doesn’t make sense to harp on how it feels because it feels good, it functions as intended and there is a weight to how you knock out enemies. I do not like how this violence is encouraged and implemented so early on in the game. Like I mentioned before, these encounters with MULEs and terrorists have screeching scores and dangerous weapons attached to them which give off a very uneasy feeling that make you want to get through there as quick as you can. The base game does give you a lot of weapons to use at your disposal, but it severely punishes you for killing in the form of voidouts, so non-lethal is always the way to go...when you have to. Setting aside the powerful anti-violence subtext of this and all of Kojima’s games, sneaking is almost always more fun and rewarding because it greatly reduces the risk of damaging your BB or your cargo which is entirely how these few of many systems are meant to be micromanaged. The first two of the three missions could be completed entirely using stealth, but the very last mission has you neutralize all of the enemies in an area to advance. Putting such a high stakes, high violence mission so early on in the game not only sets players up for false expectations, but warps their perceptions of how Sam could and should act. I don’t think it's much of a stretch to say he would much prefer to deliver and be done with it, connecting people along the way, then he would to come into a camp blasting at everything that moves.

The reward for completing the VERY FIRST one of these very early extra missions rewards you with many things. The first and less notable one is the firing range located in any facility with a private room. These act as MGS VR missions and allow for Sam to show off his FoxHound skills against unsuspecting computers. I can understand the need to allow players to practice with weapons and stealth in this way, but I really do enjoy the way each mandatory boss or enemy encounter plays out. Even from the very first one with Higgs which comes in a strange place and time, it's clear that you need to think on your feet with your slow drip feed of anti-BT weapons. There is even a line poking fun at people who just wanted another epic big Kojima fight fest (as if MGS games were ever that to begin with...) when Higgs says “Aren’t you getting tired of the grind? Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for this whole time? A game over?”, a multi-faceted line that challenges Sam and his purpose as much as it does the player’s. The very slow and deliberate structure of this game has come under a lot of criticism by impatient gamers, and it’s pretty clear that Kojima understands that and taunts players with a very one-sided boss encounter where you don’t quite understand the controls or weapons. I find this to be incredibly bold and challenging, but many may find this annoying so a firing range isn’t an inherently bad idea, it just robs the encounters of their true potential before the first one even happens.

Another reward for completing this early violent mission is a support skeleton. Now, these support skeletons do add another layer of strategy onto a game that is brimming with systems and mechanics, so I do love this addition...later in the game. You do not normally receive a skeleton until you meet the Engineer who builds them, and even then they are very limited in what they can do and often specialize in one stat like cargo capacity, speed, or climbing. The support skeleton has a decent sized battery that makes every single one of these stats better far too early on in the game. This completely robbed me of that feeling of progression and power that I was talking about earlier since the rest of the game (that I played up to) feels far too easy and uneventful now. Sure, you can still take tumbles and timefall is an always present danger, but giving players such a great piece of equipment out of sequence with the other equipment feels strange. These early sections of the game are a cakewalk, and once you get to the other skeletons (much faster than previously might I add), it feels as though you didn’t even earn them by befriending Junji Ito, it just feels like an unearned bonus to make the game feel even less like it already does.

Scattered in between missions and areas are also the three new structures that can be built with PCCs and a new support buddy. These are all unlocked much later in the story, but are still available in the story, and two of them change the game in ways that I dislike tremendously. The worst offender is easily the buddy bot. This thing can traverse nearly any terrain, carry mounds of equipment, and even carry you to your destination. Sure you might need to get off every once in a while for course correction, but the world is quite literally NOT in your hands anymore. An inhuman robot, one that is nearly infallible, can handle your deliveries for you, completely ruining any sense of importance and thematic relevance to Sam’s arc as a human being. Another terrible edition is the cargo cannon, wherein you can launch cargo to a predetermined spot far away on the map so you no longer need to carry it by hand. The entire point of this game is to bear the weight of deliveries and use every tool at your disposal to carry it throughout the map, whether is be a cart, car, or skeleton, but these two completely remove the human element and fun factor of each delivery. It is possible to complete deliveries WITHOUT using these elements of the game, but playing on Very Hard difficulty and going for the highest Premium Delivery orders all but requires the use of everything at your disposal. Attempting to perfect the several new deliveries and incredibly difficult new challenges Legend of Legends of Legends has to offer is possible without this equipment, but it also feels like it was made with it in mind, at least as a last resort. Unlocking such powerful abilities that allow gamers to bypass...the...game...seems to be a step too far for my taste, especially with how it clashes with the game’s own aesthetic and values. The bonus Half-Life and Cyberpunk missions are fine, nothing noteworthy at all but I thought I’d just throw them in here because I did spend time completing them for the new items that are almost entirely just for goofing around. The racing is also sub-par, if you can believe that.

None of what I just listed is necessarily a bad thing. Almost all of it is optional and, when it isn’t, it only serves to make the gameplay more conventional and satisfying for a wider audience of people. I have severe issues with how most of these reworked systems and new items are inherently compromising the game’s very core. Words like boring and drab get thrown around a lot when describing what you literally do in the game, but what makes Death Stranding a truly unique work of art is how it builds on top of that in such bold and beautiful ways. The asynchronous multiplayer aspect of this game makes you never truly feel alone on the journey and connect players together. This directly mirrors how Sam is laying down paths for both seen and unseen NPCs, ones that exist only to do the right thing. Adding in competitive time trials for missions turns the game into one about mechanics rather than one about meaning, and while the mechanics are still one of a kind and incredibly solid, it just doesn’t carry the same weight the game did before. Allowing players to circumvent difficult ways of travelling or even carrying cargo in the first place shouldn’t even need to be analyzed to determine how detrimental to the very core themes and gameplay loop of this work are. Giving in to player’s violent desires to see Kojima shine in directing stealth and action also negates a lot of what this game is trying to say about violence and people at large, something that comes to a head beautifully in every Higgs and BT boss fight in this game. Prompting players to destroy and hurt feels very contradictory to what this entire game is about, and is not a welcome change from me.

Which leads me to my ultimate verdict...this is not a bad game. Underneath all of these horrid modernized artless changes to such a tranquil and patient game is still a game that demands to be treated with care. Had this been an expansion on the post-game and not a fundamental reworking of the game at large then I would’ve been more on board with it, but this game is unfortunately not made to please me. Creating such a passionate, unchallenged, unique, and, for seemingly the first time in his career, streamlined and unaltered version of his vision only to have the most criticism piled onto him must’ve really bothered Kojima. Since he is such a passionate and caring man, it would make sense that he would want to please as many people as possible with his works, something he did seemingly effortlessly with MGS games. It is definitely not a bad thing that he wanted more people to play this game about the good humanity can achieve through unity, but it has to sting at least a little that this was by and large rejected and ridiculed for being something new and demanding in a completely foreign way than most games. The changes to make this game less strand-like and more conventional are felt far too often during the story mode, as these are inextricably woven into the very fabric of the game. This is not just a lazy port with DLC, this is a reworked game meant to bring more people together than before by appealing to their very short-sighted and impatient interests. However, Kojima himself put it best when he said that games are not artistic because they often try to appeal to everyone without any specific person in mind. I was that person for Death Stranding. I am not that person for Director’s Cut. This is the first and hopefully last time he disappoints me.

The revisionism around Cyberpunk 2077 and the reception of this DLC makes me feel like I’m going fucking insane. It’s like everyone forgot how bad this game was because a mediocre anime launched on Netflix.

Cyberpunk 2077 had a myriad of foundational and structural issues regarding its world design, writing, quest design, and mission structure that cannot be fixed by making slight edits to the leveling system.

It wanted to be every kind of AAA game simultaneously without succeeding at any single junction (probably because it’s impossible to combine some of these game styles). It wanted to be an open-world RPG with the density of an Immersive Sim and a Grand Theft Auto-style game with bombastic, setpiece-driven missions like Call of Duty.

Phantom Liberty septuples down on the latter pairing in particular. It is a meaningless open-world that buffers what are essentially Call of Duty missions centered around set pieces, complete with walk-and-talk and press F to pay respects segments.

It’s a shame because, for all of the original game’s faults stemming from a hellish development cycle with a lack of a cohesive vision, with multiple rebooted versions of the stacked on top of one another to create a freakish AAA homunculus, Phantom Liberty offered a second chance on a fresh slate.

Instead, it’s just more of the same inharmonious game design, except this time, the characters and writing are even less interesting.

Cyberpunk 2077 was never good, and it can’t be good until CDPR makes a new game. I think people struggle to accept that CDPR dropped a massive fucking turd, and the reception to this DLC and the 2.0 version of the game is just a sunken cost fallacy for the games media hype machine.

Now that the game isn’t in a state where it’s literally falling apart at the seams, it can receive the ecstatic fanfare that people have been edging on for the past three years.

As great as Cyberpunk 2077 looks and sounds, it’s nothing more than a celebration of shallow AAA tropes and bad taste in a hollow open world. Now that the stink of its fraudulent launch has been cleaned up and laundered by an anime, post-launch support, and media fluff pieces, people can hop back to touting CDPR as an industry paragon.

If you already like this game, then Phantom Liberty and the 2.0 update will probably be up your alley. For people like me who didn’t enjoy the original game, they will not change your mind.

It’s also funny that after all of the controversy surrounding the transphobic imagery in this game, they couldn’t be fucked to remove it after three years and a “game changing” update.

Oh, I also ran into a game breaking bug that prevented me from beginning the last mission that made me have to go back two hours and replay multiple missions.

It almost feels hard to even judge the campaign. Sledgehammer had poor communication, was rushed in trying to turn this from an expansion into a full-fledged game, and apparently underwent a lot of crunch as well. That sucks!

That being said, all of this is absolutely glaring while playing through it and makes for one of the worst campaigns in a while. In absence of interesting or fun setpieces we get copy-pasted segments of Warzone gameplay on maps that don't feel tuned for a singleplayer experience with stealth at all. The shipyard and dam levels are particularly awful with this due to the complete lack of cover making it hard to avoid any enemies seeing you. The only real unique gimmick level is a copy-pasted AC-130 mission that was already in MW22. I didn't love the gimmick stuff in the past two MWs but at least it felt like something different, like a change of pace. The most original stuff here is like 10 seconds of bomb defusing at the end.

The plot suffers from all the same issues in many ways. I'm not gonna claim any COD campaign as high art, but at least the other MW games have been... coherent? This one is just a complete mess from start to finish. Makarov is rendered a total unthreatening goober by the fact that it jumps from terrorist attack to terrorist attack without any of them feeling like they had any sort of impact. The most we get is a plane sequence that ends up being more stupid and nonsensical than anything, and even that is basically cleared of consequences by virtue of it just being a stupid plan in the first place. Look, stuff like the nuke scene and No Russian in the original trilogy was silly and over the top too, but at least they had actual impact on the player and story, while this game won't have a single scene that sticks out to me in a few years days. We even get some bizarre 20 years late post 9/11 commentary that makes the other games seem nuanced in comparison with how quickly it's blown over. Beyond being incoherent it's just plain unfinished, and the lame cliffhanger ending feels like a final slap in the face to players.

As I said before I almost feel bad for Sledgehammer and I doubt they were much happier about having to ship out this mess of Warzone levels and Warzone cutscenes. Activision robbed them of a chance to make a better campaign and that really sucks. Will I still enjoy this game? Yeah probably, at least they had a good foundation to build on with multiplayer. It makes it hard for me to score this game because I do think the reboot trilogy has some of my favorite COD gameplay period and I'll likely get another 100 hours out of it. But this game just made me plain sad. Take me back to when the biggest complaints of this series were that they were making too many space games.