It’s been a bumpy road lately with my favorite gaming franchise , both Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild rank last on my 3D Zelda lists. BOTW drastically changed the series forever and while I enjoyed it tremendously, to the tune of 150 hours of play, I felt it was still an idea that needed more fleshing out. Tears of the Kingdom is everything BOTW wished it was. With breathtaking innovation and mechanics that blow my mind, Tears of the Kingdom is absolute marvel of game design and gave me all the feels I once had for Zelda. I can safely say Zelda is back on top.

In a bold choice, that most any other developer would get endless criticism for, TOTK takes the world map of BOTW and simply uses it again. It uses the same art, the same models, a lot of the same songs, the exact same controls; not even Majora’s Mask felt as direct a sequel as this game does. It should feel redundant, and yet it mostly does not. Nintendo pretty much realized exactly what I was thinking, BOTW was a great first draft, but we can make it better. What they birthed is the most mechanically interesting open world game I have ever played. They did this by giving the players more powers, more freedom than I could have even imagined and overloading the world with great content.

The powers Link gets in this game would basically break nearly any other game. Just ascend alone, being able to go through any ceiling and pop out on the other end no matter how high it is, that would break pretty much every game. That’s the least impressive power you get in this game. You can also rewind basically any moveable item as every movement is recorded. Oops I dropped cart down a mountain, recall it and watch it rewind and come right back to where it started moving. Then there is ultra hand which turns Zelda into a vehicle building game that while not as complex as Minecraft, works perfectly in this world which has a full adventure with puzzles and dungeons, something Minecraft totally lacks. All these systems work perfectly, alone and together. Want to get high up, well you can grab any platform with the hand, hold it over your head for a while, drop it, rewind it so it hovers over your head and then ascend through that platform. Anything you imagine you can do with these powers actually does work; also glitch free. I don’t understand how any one of these systems doesn’t come with a multitude of game breaking bugs, but all of them work together in harmony without any hitch in sight, it’s a miracle of game design.

BOTW to me had a downward curve of player interaction to the amount of time you played. That game starts off very interesting as it’s a part survival game with all these incredible physics and gameplay systems working together. Those beginning hours were compelling while learning the ways to keep Link warm or keep cool. Gaining better armor, getting better meals, getting more health and stamina so you can explore harsher parts of the world. That was all exciting until you reached a decent level where you had all the armors that negate status effects, high enough attack and defense to get through most enemies easily. All of a sudden all those survival elements didn’t matter anymore, the game got easier, more simple and at that point I began to lose interest.

TOTK is the opposite, it’s a game where player interaction grows as the game goes on. You start off with limited powers, you can build some rudimentary devices but most of the best devices are out of reach. As you play Link grows not just in power to defeat enemies but in abilities that grant more and more gameplay freedom. By the end I felt like a god; I could summon an army of laser drones to wipe out enemy bases. I could soar through the sky in my own flying contraption. I had every kind of damage combination fused to my swords and shields. My interaction with the world is limited only by my imagination. That push to keep seeing what else is there? How far can I push this power? That kept me engaged for over 200 hours.

Of course a game should give the player reasons to use these abilities, and this game does so in many different ways. From something as basic as helping deliver a korok to his friend or helping a guy hold up a sign, to navigating the sky islands with nothing but your own engineering to get around, it’s a game full of opportunities to use the tools given to you. The key part of the ultra hand ability are these zonai devices which are found in sort of gum ball machines throughout the world, each of these devices can greatly aid in the creation of wild contraptions. There is the very useful fan which can allow the wing device to fly, or a boat to have a motor. There are rockets which can be attached to anything and send that object soaring in whatever direction wanted. Wheels for cars, springs, auto targeting drones and many devices that have an attack which can make any vehicle into a death mobile. I was still finding new devices many many hours in, the game almost always has a shrine or quest that teaches you the basics for the item before leaving the player to then create anything they desire.

It might be more fun when the plan you had explodes in your face Wile E Coyote style than when it actually works. I cannot tell you how many times I burst out laughing at my beautiful invention catching fire and burning me alive in a death trap. That moment when you put vehicle together and it’s time to see if it actually functions is so exciting, even if the results are usually what not what you would expect. Maybe one side weighed too much, maybe a rocket was facing the wrong direction, maybe it just topples over and spins in endless circles; keep trying, eventually something will work and you will feel like a genius. Or you can look online and see what others are creating and think “yeah I’m no engineer, I’ll just copy their build”, there is no shame in that. I’ve incorporated many vehicles I saw online into my play. Still every once and in a while I get the urge to try something on my own, ultimately it’s a failure and I go back to what was working before. The point is you can spend countless hours being a make believe engineer or just follow a guide online and ignore the creative side all together. Either way they’re so much fun to be had in the near endless ways you can navigate the world and kill enemies.

I remember in BOTW stretching the limits of the gameplay to try to make combat interesting. My main go to was if there was a thunder storm I would get something metal and move it near enemies so lightning would strike, it’s impressive to see a world with that level of interactivity but still a very limited mechanic that wasn’t all that useful. Now anything and everything can be done to enemies. I don’t need a thunderstorm to create a lightning trap, I can save metal cages from around the world to my auto build, summon multiple cages from thin air and trap enemies in them, then take out a lightning device and attach it to the cage and watch them electrocute to death in a cell. But that’s too easy, why not get a bunch of metal sheets, create a sort of giant walled cage out of them, leave a space open so they could enter, lure enemies in with food, close up the open spot, then energize the walls with electricity and drop some bombs into the middle and watch the insanity of them running into electric walls to escape explosions. That’s just me being sadistically mean, I could also be efficient and just drive up in a bike that has 15 homing lasers on it and melt enemies. I can fly from above on a plane with cannons underneath and have an arial bombing run before jumping off the plane and while falling from the sky rain down bomb arrows in slow motion obliterating everything before I even land. I haven’t even talked about mechs, yeah people make entire mechs. Every day I can go online and see something that blows my mind, how can this game do all these things, how is this possible?!

I hardly even want to talk about the basic sword play because it’s mostly the same with one major upgrade, the fuse system which makes the entire breakable inventory system work so much better than BOTW. Now every sword or shield you find can be fused with nearly any item to create a better item. Want a fire sword, take the guts of a fire like like and attach it to your sword. Want a shield that shoots a cannon, attach a cannon to it. Every enemy has materials they drop when killed, these monster parts increase the base damage of your sword by significant amounts. The harder the enemy the better their parts are meaning every single time you kill a high level enemy you get a high level part, which means you get a high level weapon, any base weapon will do. No longer do you need to protect the one good sword you found in that hard to reach area in BOTW, everything you find can become a high level weapon or a situational weapon like an elemental sword, explosive sword, or maybe have one just to break rocks. The way shields work now, allowing them to be offensive as well as defensive is genius. Oh and arrows, what a difference the ability to attach anything to base arrows make. In BOTW I was struggling to find arrows, and even then you had a limited amount of each kind. Here there are arrows everywhere, a sea of arrows and you get to decide what that arrow becomes with fuse. You can make bomb arrows using just plants, or arrows with a plant that confuses enemies so they attack each other, or homing arrows by attaching the eyes of bats to them. This makes the bow and arrow a much more integral part of the combat. Overall the fuse system feels so much more alive with so many more options. At its core it’s still very basic sword play but this system makes the “loot” part feel much more rewarding.

This is Zelda, where are my puzzles and dungeons?! This game has them but it’s the area I still think needs the most work. The shrines are back and I honestly think the puzzle ones were a step back in this game. Here shrines serve as a sort of tutorial for each kind of device you can make. The first puzzle introduces the pieces you can use and how to fit them together to create something useful, like say use a fan to move wheel. The next puzzle takes it a step further and puts you in a room to create this device in such a way to escape. Now the genius part is that players can all come up with different solutions, many times forgoing the actual device and use other abilities to “cheat” their way to the goal. For instance recall can be used in so many ways that it can render building useless, for instance you can create a moving platform from nothing; just move it, the get on it and recall it. That level of freedom which allows everyone to be creative in their own way is very welcome. The problem is this game rarely ever pushes the puzzles past the first layer of complexity. There is so much they could do with any one of these mechanics, never mind the hundreds available to you. Oh and this game keeps introducing new mechanics throughout, total fresh new ideas are introduced and discarded near instantly, “woah I could do that, wait that’s it?!”. I feel Nintendo could make an entire 10 hour puzzle game exploring any one these mechanics to its fullest but instead they decided to go with quantity of various things to do but never make it too complex. Past Zelda games weren’t exactly the most complex puzzle games but at least I felt they used their items to their full potential.

One great choice Nintendo made in regards to the shrines is the removal of test of strength shrines, those extremely repetitive boring one enemy battles. Now there are proving ground shrines which serve like mini eventide challenges where you go in with only your underwear and have to use what you find to get out. I loved these, I wish there were more, especially with the fuse system making finding ways to survive so much fun. One of them was a full on MGS level, complete with alarms going off, amazing stuff. But there is a bad kind of shrine that repeats too much, the reward shrine. Normally these shrines appear after you do a specific quest in the overworld to get to the shrine, the puzzle was what you did to reach it, so inside the shrine there rests a prize. In this game way too many times I would come across a prize shrine while not doing anything interesting to earn a reward. A few times I entered a cave, broke a rock wall, found a shrine and it was just a prize shrine. This means no puzzle, no challenge; it’s such an empty gesture and clearly was there to pad the amount of shrines. If Nintendo wants to do that just get rid of shrines, they work when it’s a complex puzzle or unique combat situation, not when it’s some brain dead reward.

Enter the dungeons, or temples as this game calls them, what an improvement over the basic mundane beasts of BOTW. Themed dungeons are back! Now they don’t have the structure of past Zelda dungeons, they are still too free form and ultimately are a series of puzzles you can do in any order to unlock a boss but at least now they are designed to feel more dungeon like and make use of new powers in each one. My favorite was the fire temple which was like a rollercoaster park where you had to use mine carts to get around and rotate the track to reach where you need to go. The best dungeons of old always made you think of the entire dungeon itself as part of the puzzle and this temple does that (or you can ignore all that and use your abilities to reach each area, I choose to play it traditionally). Not only are the dungeons filled with great puzzles and new mechanics but the entire lead up to them is nearly as good. The way up to the wind temple has link traversing sky islands and bouncing on flying ship sails to launch higher and higher.
These dungeons do have a much better mix of enemies in them, it’s still not like past games but at least they aren’t mostly empty. The best part by far is that at the end you get a unique boss battle, not a stupid form of ganon, it is a brand new creature that makes use of the skills you learned like the best Zelda bosses of old. These battles are tremendous show stoppers, one of them takes place in the air, you are skydiving through the boss and navigating tornadoes while shooting arrows at it. I can’t believe the things I was doing in this game, I’m going to keep saying it.

There still could be more dungeons and they could be better dungeons. I would rather scrap the entire shrine system and have 15 good dungeons instead. At least it scratched that itch I had for more classic dungeon like moments. Hyrule is now filled with more interesting locations that almost feel like a small mini dungeons, mainly due to the sky islands and the new caves that are all over the surface. It’s crazy to think that BOTW had no caves, one of the most basic adventuring cliches of Zelda is exploring the land, finding cave and going in, that’s Zelda. So now there are a bunch of caves and sometimes it’s a basic cave, few enemies and chest, no big deal. Other times I would spend an hour in some sprawling underground tunnel. Rocks blocking so many hidden paths, mini bosses hiding in some rooms, dangerous threats and terrain in others. Here is where you will find many of the armors that Link can collect, I will admit the majority of rewards are shit but there are enough unique rewards to keep my interest going. Where you end up at the end of a cave journey is one of the highlights as it could lead you to a destination, with new points of interest and a million other things to be distracted by in this engrossing world. Every thing is hand crafted, these designers know where one cave starts and ends and where the player will end up specifically to put some point of interest in view when they pop out, it’s so well designed.

If you get bored of the surface take flight into the air and go sky island exploring. Now I wish the skies were populated with more content. As it stands, outside the first tutorial island, they feel like the small islands you would find in wind waker; but in wind waker that was the entire game, here it’s just a small percent of it. Plenty of islands do repeat their design, you will find similar structures around the world but they usually have some specific puzzle tied to it. One of my favorite sky moments was this ring of islands in low gravity and there were rockets and floating platforms which could be used to keep making rocket flights to the next island, and to the next, until I could reach this huge orb that held my prize with some great mirror and light puzzles. The sky houses some tough bosses as well which give specific rewards that can be used to upgrade your companions (oh right you gain companions, I’m not even going to get into them, this game has mechanics for days). There are also maps to find which give you a location to the treasures below… in the depths.

Oh yeah there is an entire underground the size of hyrule, that’s the attitude of this game. Most games would be selling this for all it’s worth; “a second full map!!!!”, here it’s “yeah it’s there” just another cool thing to do. The depths are the anti surface, where on the surface you can explore anywhere you want with complete untethered freedom, the depths take away your light and the ability to see. It has huge rock walls blocking paths and evil red poison everywhere. It’s such a fantastic contrast to the surface and sky and completes a sort of beautifully designed three level map system where each has a role to play which feed into each other. The depths are were you go when you need zonite, the material used to build objects using auto build and what is used to buy the crystals needed to upgrade your battery so that you may run your contraptions longer. In here you must light your way through the dark using light plants and finding these roots which are located under every shrine in the surface. In a way the depths are a sort of mirror dark version of the surface, you will find the two maps connect so well.

Ultimately there isn’t much to see down there. There are no cities, rarely you will find an NPC. It all looks the same and has repeating structures like mines, enemy bases and yiga clan hideouts. The player isn’t meant to explore it in the way you do the surface, the depths are to go in, light a path and have a goal in mind. The best weapons are found down there and special boss battles which yield many crystals are found. The Yiga clan has a great side quest which takes place below ground as you find their bases and learn their schematics to build all kinds of cool vehicles. The depths is where the game wants you to go wild with the vehicle creation because getting around on foot is too dangerous, there are stations of zonai supplies like caches to build freely. Those maps I mentioned that you find in the sky point out the location of unique armor or weapons, usually from past Zelda games. In a stroke of genius they put all the amiibo locked classic Zelda costumes from BOTW into the depths as part of the main game. Instantly I wanted to collect every Link tunic from all his games, and this time they could be upgraded to high levels to be a viable piece of armor. Finally I can play the game looking like Link should. I was absolutely hooked into finding all the classic gear, it’s like a Zelda museum down there.

So after some time in the depths you may upgrade your belt and have some new ideas for vehicles; well it’s time a to try it out on the surface where most of the game will take place. Here is where you will get most of your quests, explore towns, play mini games and ultimately just lose yourself in this massive world. It does suck that most everything is in the same place it was before. There are still three labyrinths and they are exactly in same spot but at least they are way more complex in this game. There are still just four fairy fountains and you upgrade armor in the same way. The towns are still in the same place and serve most of the same functions though there are plenty of great new quests with them. The sense of familiarity takes away from that sense of wonder that BOTW had, I wish they did more to move things around but I can’t complain much when it’s filled with so much better content and enemy variety. There are some new mini bosses, the best by far being the Gleelok which would be the best boss of many games, here it’s just an enemy you fight. A bunch of the world is still filed with the same Talus and Hinox bosses, just goes to show how basic they were compared to the new ones.

Some quest lines feel like something out of Majora’s Mask as you save entire towns from some calamity which is threatening their land. I loved exploring a Goron town that has been brain washed by some addictive poison rock. Link can get involved in a city election for mayor and play both sides to reach the best outcome. The beach town has been over run by pirates requiring Link to exterminate the threat (oh what a playground for destruction that was) and then rebuild the city. Tarry Town has a great monster picture quest with something out of Pokémon snap, as you get pictures of the rarest of monsters which becomes statues you can decorate. I really enjoyed many of the quests, I will say the rewards are usually awful, like a few coins or some item you already have 50 of but the fun is in completing it. There are some wild quests I accidentally stumbled upon that lead to entire sets of armor or even a full heart piece, I wish there were more of those but simply having some around made the exploring all the more satisfying.

Of course no Zelda game is without mini games, so many mini games. Most of these now involve building something and then using it to complete a task in a certain time. Two mini games in particular had the potential to be an entire spin off game, Zelda racers where you make a car and race it. Sadly the mini game is extremely basic and the few courses are a few check point lights you drive through for time and that’s it. They could have done an entire racing circuit, instead it is another example of an idea only explored in the most basic of ways. One clever mini game has you creating a giant contraption to hit a bell as hard as you can like in those carnival test of might games. You have play with the physics and weight of different materials to see if they could be launched or catapulted. I spent over an hour creating different ways to hit this bell, I laughed, I cried, I yelled, and eventually I triumphed. Best part is every player will have a different story to tell. I wish there were more like those, overall it’s a great selection of games but again I feel this is an aspect that can go even further.

The story is still told through flashbacks and out of order. At least the overall plot is more compelling due to an actual speaking villain in Ganondorf and a great mystery surrounding Zelda. It all comes to a head in what is maybe the best final hours of any Zelda game I’ve played. No one aspect of it might be the best but the way all the elements come together with challenging combat, big story moments, incredible music all make for a thrilling finale that had me jumping up and down in excitement. Speaking of music, oh man what a soundtrack. Every dungeon has a song that evolves with each objective you complete, it swells and swells until it hits a crescendo for the epic boss battle. The music most of the time is still understated, there are many returning tracks as well but when the game needs it the music goes hard. Also the main theme is majestic.

I cannot fathom how Nintendo got this game to work on that ancient Switch hardware but it works damn near perfectly and looks good to boot. There are some performance issues, usually when there are many characters in screen and some extra effects like rain. The game tries to stay running at 30fps and does so for most of it. Graphically it looks mostly like BOTW, clearly it’s time for an upgrade but there are moments of breathtaking beauty. I’ve played many games in my life but never have I seen a sunrise above the clouds in a sky island, light beginning to creep across the landscape begging me to leap down and fall and fall and fall not just to the surface but right into a chasm and continue to fall and fall into the underground world completely seamlessly with no loading. I am constant awe of this game despite the hardware, it’s so beautiful in its own way.

I could go on forever, there is a lot more I can talk about but it’s best to discover things on your own. I can also give you a list of hundred things I would do better, but just because something can be better doesn’t mean what I played wasn’t fantastic. This game sold me on open world Zelda, but I still want some more structure. I am a big fan of linear gameplay moments that have purpose and meaningful design, I do feel the freedom of the gameplay and those very handcrafted segments can coexist better than they do here. That’s my dream game but we aren’t there yet. So it doesn’t make it to my top Zelda games but it’s in the top 5, and honestly this makes all those Zelda games I hold dear feel so basic, they are going to feel so limited gameplay wise.

Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece in so many ways. I usually do not play games for 100 hours and if I do I’m struggling by the end to just get through it. I am well over 200 hours on this game and for the grand majority of the time I was captivated by what I was playing, what I am still playing. 200 hours and I don’t want to stop, I finished the story, I almost always just throw the game in a drawer and not think about it after I see the credits roll. This game is endlessly playable, its mechanics are genre defining. It reminds me of MGSV, a game mechanically better than anything else I’ve ever played, something I could play forever, and also in that I wish the structure of said game was more to my tastes. This sets a new standard action adventure games. This year we had Horizon 2 and in that game you can fly on a robot bird through the clouds… and you can’t even shoot an arrow, not that impressive. Here I can fly in a aircraft of my making with canons and lasers and battle a three headed dragon in the sky and then jump off and sky dive down after the dragon while firing arrows at it, this game is CRAZY! How is this game possible?! This is why I love this series, this is the feeling of magic and wonder all those Zelda games gave me years ago. Tears of the Kingdom is pure magic.

Overall score: 9.8

Very cool concept, recreating a fictional internet circa 1999 complete with hundreds of old school webpages, music files, images, games, and movie clips. Its mostly a detective puzzle game as you use the tools of your fake PC and search engine to locate "criminals" violating the programs laws. Most of the puzzles are well designed with enough direction to give you a nice push but you having full freedom to investigate on your own. I did get stuck a few times but there is an in game hint stuff for the more obscure solutions, one can become stuck and since there is so much to search it might feel like hitting a wall.

Still it remains in interesting for the 6-8 hours it lasts, it progresses well and has so much interesting side content you dont even need to read. The devs clearly put tons of effort into making this feel like a true fictional internet full of made up news, made up sports, made up products. There are fake pokemon, fake video game reviews, fake book clubs and much more. By far the best are the fake music bands and the included songs all throughout the game. Catchy jingles, so bad its great rock songs, I cannot express how incredible the soundtrack is.

Its cool, simple browser puzzle game that stands out due to the creativity on the fictional world they created.

Score 6.8

Once in awhile a landmark game comes around which sets a new standard for a genre. The Metal Gear series has been the most popular stealth game but it always had the stigma of not having great gameplay in certain areas like controls. Games like Splinter Cell and even Far Cry had more pure stealth elements which many pointed at as being a better example of a stealth game. MGSV changes that narrative, a new gameplay standard has been set that all stealth games must now try to match. Without question MGSV is a landmark title for the genre and has some of the most fun gameplay I have ever played.

What sets MGSV apart from any other stealth game is how open the game is to improvisation and strategy. In a huge departure from past MGS games this title is open world and it is used in a way to create unique experiences. This is a game all about infiltration, you get an assignment and it is completely up to the player to decide how to complete your objective. Preparation involves choosing your equipment, choosing your buddy, choosing the time of day and infiltration point. Each of these can alter how one approaches any given mission and it is what sets MGSV apart from any other game. The way all the game systems work together to create this incredible flexible emergent gameplay playground is remarkable and has kept me playing for 120 hours and counting.

It all begins with the fast responsive controls which finally puts MGS on equal footing with any third person action game, taking what worked in MGS4 and expanding on it. Movement and gunplay are fluid enough for this game to be played like a full on shooter, though it's way too difficult for that. The stealth options are vast and also very easy to use, luring guards and snatching them from corners, or using them as shields has never been easier. No matter the action it simply works well with no need for finger gymnastics.

The other side of the gameplay equation is how the world reacts to and interacts with the player; I feel that is where MGSV really sets itself apart from any other game. Messing with enemies in a MGS game has always been a joy, now put that same quirky style into a giant open ended stealth playground with perfect controls and now you have something that is magical. This is a game where failing at stealth can be as if not more enjoyable than succeeding. Once the alarms go off and all hell breaks loose crazy almost movie like scenarios could randomly breakout. I have been a part of a raid on a building where I was held up in a room while enemies would come in from all sides while I rushed to lay traps to cover my blind sides. I have chased a tank on a horse right into the middle of a military compound where I ended up in a firefight with 20+ enemies. I have gotten into impromptu sniper battles with enemy scouts that so happen to be protecting the base I am infiltrating. I've fought a helicopter with just a bunch of grenades and quiet aiding me in what felt like a scripted boss battle that wasn't.

Even though chaos is a total blast the stealth is the biggest focus of the game, far more than any past MGS game. There are elements borrowed from other series, like marking of enemies in Far Cry. There is a slow motion mode called reflex that activates when spotted for the first time allowing the player to neutralize the target before raising an alarm. Even those these elements are not new to the genre they fit perfectly into this open world construct and feel almost necessary to successfully infiltrate a base. There are simply too many eyes and sight lines to properly navigate without some guide. These bases are OPEN, some open from every direction meaning there are eyes on nearly every part of the base, all in different distances and elevations. Even with everybody marked it is still difficult to get through undetected as enemies will sometimes turn unexpectedly or Boss will accidentally make a small noise that makes one guard suspicious which could then lead to a series of events where a tank is shooting a missile at your head.

What I love most about MGS is how it has always known it is a video game first. Kojima has always embraced the gamey aspects to provide the most fun for the player. The AI is good when it wants to be but they all follow MGS rules, not real life rules. MGSV is not a realistic stealth simulator, it is a game designed to make stealth fun. Guards will have eagle eyes during day light and spot you moving from a great distance, this will lead to them investigating what they saw. If you drop and stand still this same guard will not see you until he is practically on top of you. It follows rules not reality, if you move you increase the percentage of being seen, light increases the chances, noise increases the chances and guards follow these rules. Knowing the rules makes it so that every situation makes sense in the context of the game and allows for the implementation of all kinds of crazy gadgets. For instance the famous cardboard box is better than ever with all kinds of new moves but the main function still stands, a cardboard box will not raise suspicion if it's not moving. This time you can put a poster on it of a beautiful woman and enemies will come running at you allowing for a quick CQC grab.

What some may claim to be uneven AI, I view as a deliberate game design choice that works to perfection. Yes a guard may not see you in the dark if you are right in front of them on the ground, but if they wear night vision now they can spot you. The guards adapt to the players strategy depending on what tactics are used. Enjoy easy headshots, well give it some time and soldiers will start wear helmets. Like to assault bases with heavy weapons, guards start to wear shields and heavy armor suits that are like walking tanks. Start to hang back and snipe enemies and the enemy bases will now have snipers of their own all over. It is a fantastic system that keeps the player honest and makes sure different tactics are used. The adaption system is tracked on the menu screen and can be halted through some combat deployments adding a layer of strategy.

As I mentioned before planning how to infiltrate is a big part of the gameplay freedom, part of the reason is how all bases have their own guard schedule and routines. Infiltrate at night and a base will have less guards on patrol. Wait till the day and the base will be more active but it's easier to spot enemies. Or you can go in during a guard shift while there are gaps in the patrols. Or why not simply disrupt the patrols by creating a diversion using a well placed c4 explosion. But what if that leads the base to go into high alert and call on reinforcements from nearby outposts, that could lead to more problems. Well you can disrupt the comms between bases which stops any backup from being brought in. Or before you attack a base you can hit the outposts before hand, clean them out and now when a call goes out there is no one to come help. Weather is another dynamic system which can save your ass with a random sandstorm which greatly lowers visibility, later on you gain the ability to alter the weather yourself. These are examples of multiple gameplay systems working together, all can be influenced in some way by the player which is part of why I have never felt this level of gameplay freedom before.

To add to the insane amount of options available to you, at the start of each mission one of your load out options is to choose a buddy. There are four buddies to find as you play, the first being a horse which is great to use before you have vehicles you can choose at your loadout. The wolf, DD, is your second buddy and he acts like a marking hack. DD will mark everything for you making moving around a base far easier. As you level up buddies they gain more skills and equipment for instance eventually DD could kill or stun enemies on command. The most complex and interesting buddy to use is Quiet the sniper who will not just mark enemies for you but also kill anything you want. As you unlock weapons for her she becomes ridiculously powerful, able to clear an entire outpost on her own. What I like best about quiet is how you have more control of her actions, you tell her where to scout, you tell her to shoot or not. She is excellent as a distraction as one shot from her will lure enemies from their posts to attack her allowing boss to sneak right in. The last buddy is the D-walker which is a really fun bipedal robot you get to control, great for assault missions. Even though these buddies can feel very powerful it still all works well in the context of the game. Once enemies go full armor Quiet stops being as effective for instance. They all have their uses and are fun to use and add another layer to this incredibly deep game.

The way the game is structured is very different from the traditional MGS games and is more like Peace Walker. It is an open world game that has none of the usual open world tropes. You won't find a ton of mini games and random crap to do in the world, the world is mostly empty space which is there only to create space between bases and allow the outpost to base system to work. The game has various missions to complete to advance the story, these missions are chosen from a menu while on your helicopter hub. Normally you have 2-3 missions to choose from which then unlock another set. After a few missions you reach a major story mission which leads to cutscenes and advance the story. This will be jarring to the fans of a tightly wound and fast paced MGS game, now the game is filled with pure gameplay missions with little to no story. I'll talk more about the story later, the missions though come in a variety of types that take the player to the many major bases located around the world.

Most of the objectives involve infiltrating a base and either extracting someone or thing or killing someone. Every mission had various bonus objectives which become revealed after completing the mission once which increases replay value. There is a scoring system which grades on how fast and stealthy you were, it is a flexible scoring system where lethal play can still lead to an s rank. The best missions are the ones with a heavy story component and good scripted moments, these feel like the MGS we know and love but there are not many of them. The more open missions though are a blast to replay because of the amount of options to finish a mission.

My favorites are missions with many moving parts like trying to track and stop convoys across the map or eliminating tanks in a certain amount of time. This leads to all kinds of different approaches to any one mission, maybe you want to go in guns blazing, maybe set up a huge road block, maybe put c4 on a truck and drive it into a base while jumping out then set it off. Each mission wasn't just about the action, thinking of how to get an s rank, or how to best complete that difficult objective is a big part that I love. It also helps that the various bases around the world are incredibly designed with many ways in and paths to get around. The design of the bases puts other open world games level design to shame.

Tying all the game systems together is the mother base hub and progression. Like in peace walker, Boss has a central mother base that he can grow. This base has different units to grow which leads to new perks and equipment to build, all are upgraded by fultoning soldiers out during missions. As you play missions you recruit more soldiers and earn more money and materials which allows access to better guns and new items. The flow of equipment gains is very well done with something new coming at least every hour. Growing the base can become addicting, there is always some new gadget to unlock like that new arm that can shoot a controlled rocket hand. The base serves another purpose as it goes all the game systems together. By making it a priority to Fulton soldiers alive it makes lethal play less enticing naturally. This changes the entire approach to missions where in MGS4 killing everyone was the easiest way to victory now capturing enemies is far more valuable.

Mother Base is a huge living location that the player can visit at anytime. All management is still done in menus but it is nice to walk around the base and look for new cutscenes and secrets. At a certain point in the game the Forward Operating Bases system open giving the ability to create extra mother bases to increase the level of your units (first one for free, others you need to pay actual money). Yes microtransactions are attached to this system but it is very optional, you will never have to pay to enjoy the entire game. FOB also opens the invasion online mini game which allows players to invade other mother bases to steal soldiers and resources. It's fun to infiltrate heavily defended bases and occasionally battle other players. There are limited tools in the ways you can set up defenses so it's like a strategy mini game. This mode is held back by every base having the exact same layout and the home field advantage for defending players which makes it nearly impossible to infiltrate a base with a human protector. Still this mode is addicting and totally optional, overall a huge plus to an already packed game.

I have purposefully skirted around a few areas of the game to keep the first part of the review all positive, I want to stress that this game has some of the greatest gameplay I have ever played. That said it's not my favorite MGS, not even close actually. This series is my second favorite behind only Zelda, but I would say MGS has been more consistent; 1,3 and 4 I have all given 10s to. Gameplay mechanics alone don't make a game great, the way the game creates moments for that gameplay is just as important, so is pacing. Where other MGS games were 10 hours of concentrated greatness, MGSV is 100 hours of meandering, slow developing greatness. Every time I play a Metal Gear game I expect a 10, a new top ten game of all time, I demand perfection. Using those standards MGSV has to be classified as a disappointment.

Let's begin with the defining trait of the series, the legendary boss battles. Every game sports amazing, memorable boss battles that put nearly every other game to shame. Now if you compare open world games MGSV's bosses are by far the best in the genre but compare it to past MGS games and it may have the weakest lineup of bosses the numbered series has seen. There are only five different bosses, some are reused multiple times and one of the bosses is really just a group of hard enemies that show up multiple times. There is a sniper battle that mimics the End but falls far short of that legendary boss battle because it is way too easy to find and shoot the boss. Somehow the excellent new mechanics made the bosses worse, maybe it's because having too many options didn't allow for a more focused battle. I don't think that is the reason, I feel the focus of the game went totally on free open gameplay and every element that used to be beautifully scripted was held back. I will say that the metal gear fight was epic and a great boss battle, definitely the boss highlight but it was not enough.

What also hurts is how spaced out those bosses are, this falls under the games odd structure which totally ruins the action movie adrenaline rush of past games. Missions are given out in chunks with every five or so leading to a major story mission. The majority of missions are basic objectives like extract or eliminate a target and they have loose ties to the story. Instead of a cast of interesting characters in these missions you get to "kill the squad leader" a nameless, random thug. The mission briefings fill you in on how this fits into the overall story but it's so superficial that these missions feel like random side quests. They are fun to play but they don't feel connected to an over arching story.

Speaking of the story this is the worst story in a mainline MGS. Kojima has never been a great writer but each MGS game had a theme and message that still resonated after you finished. He also understood how to create silly stories of heroes and villains battling to make the game moments more exciting. I am a gameplay first player, always have been but there is no denying the impact a great story lead in can have for a gameplay segment. Most of it falls flat, it starts to feel more like a reject virus story from a Resident Evil game than a proper MGS game. Part of that are the characters which are all lifeless, humorless, and miserable. MGS4 felt like Kojima was throwing a giant party for the grand finale of the series, it had everything a fan could want. MGSV in contrast feels like a funeral, Kojima has to be purposefully making the story this way because I cannot accept that this man suddenly lost the ability to make a compelling exciting story.

Regardless, even if it's some meta commentary on how Kojima feels the series has gone too long and now purposefully wants the fans to feel a phantom pain, it does not give the game's story a pass. What pisses me off most is how great the direction of the cutscenes have gotten, this is kojima's best work as director of a movie scene and in the few times there is action the story is fantastic. Those moments when it feels like a traditional MGS story the game is magical but soon after you get back to random virus talk and Ocelot being a monotone bore. That's the other completely crazy part of all this, the voice talent is ridiculous and yet the performances are flat. Keifer Sutherland has very few lines, Big Boss is very close to a silent protagonist and it does not work. When he does get to speak he is great so why limit him. The biggest mystery is extremely talented Tony Baker playing the always interesting Ocelot as a boring cowboy who has zero emotion. What character is this? That's not Ocelot.

Where is the rest of the cast? Where is the funny support staff? Where are the oddball cast of villains? Skull Face and Eli are the only villains who speak, the rest are well... quiet. There are still some amazing story moments, they stick out more than ever because it shows how great the entire game could have been. Also most of the important story bits are relegated to cassette tapes, these have no personality and is a poor substitute for codec conversations.

I have to get into the second half of the game, there is no way to properly review the game without doing so. The game is split into two chapters, chapter 1 is the majority of the game and plays out like the usual hero versus villain story. Chapter 2 is a strange epilogue that starts to explore Boss and his relationships. The story moments in chapter 2 are way better than the first chapter but it's all disjointed. Instead of a normal mission to mission progression the final chapter gives you one new mission and a bunch of older ones with a new difficulty mode. Finish the new story mission and do some outside requirements and pieces of the story unlock almost randomly. At some point a mission called "the truth" will simply appear in your level select list and that gives you the "end " of the game. There is no buildup, no final boss, it just happens.

Only after the game was released did we learn why chapter 2 is so strangely structured; the game was not finished. The collector's edition includes a making of video that has footage from a cut mission that shows the cut final boss and final story segment of the game. This had to be the source behind the Kojima versus Konami conflict, Konami forced an unfinished game to be released. The ugly truth about the final Kojima MGS game is that it was never finished.

There are also all sorts of things that bug me, things that I would not expect from a Kojima directed game. There is a lack of random secrets or Easter eggs out in the open world, it really is a bunch of wasted space. Side ops are a collection of 150 side missions which really boils down to like 20 different objectives done 10 times over in different locations. There is so little thought or effort put into these, why couldn't they include more score based almost VR training like objectives instead. As I mentioned before the last half of the game has you replaying old missions with new difficult modifiers, some are fun like going in with no equipment. But why is this limited to only a few missions? Why don't all missions have a hard mode, every other MGS game has hard modes. Ground Zeroes had a hard mode, in fact ground zeroes had all sorts of cool trials that are were timed and side ops that were well designed unique missions; what happened to all that? One major complaint I hear from the community is about the timers when managing the base but I played for so many hours that it never bothered me as I never had to wait, just play and things will come to you naturally.

Some of you probably read those last few paragraphs and thought to yourself "this game sounds horrible! How could it ever get a high score!". This is where personal taste comes in and why I always try to clearly explain what works for me and what might not work for others. I weigh gameplay far more than story, again I stress this is one of the most fun games to play of all time. It is a landmark game for the stealth genre. It is also a disappointing Metal Gear Solid game. It can be all those things at once; I will leave it up to you to figure out how certain aspects will shape your opinion of the game.

Kojima Productions created an entire new engine just for this game, the Fox Engine which is a technical marvel on the PS4. Yes technically this is a cross gen game and there are certain models and textures that clearly look last gen but most of the time the game is stunning to look at. MGSV runs at a perfect 60FPS with virtually no slow down, no glitches and once dropped into the world absolutely no load times. The performance is mind blowing in an era where games are released needing patches to run correctly. On the audio side of things you have some great tunes but nothing as memorable as past games. Like the story, the music also feels subdued. I touched on the voice acting before, when there is good content it's excellent but most of the time these voice actors have crap to read. One of my favorite things about the game are the 80s music classics that are found through the game world. It has a nice collection of 80s pop hits that you can play at any time or set as your helicopter arrival music, how glorious it is to have a helicopter fly in blaring "the final countdown" while it rains down missiles on enemies.

Metal Gear Solid V will be talked about for years to come. It will be debated, dissected, praised and hated. It simultaneously serves as a huge triumph for Kojima showing that he is easily one of the greatest game creators of all time and as a big failure as he couldn't finish his final Metal Gear. What I don't think can be debated is just how incredible the gameplay is, because of that MGSV is easily the best game I have played in years. The amount of content is staggering and we have yet to even try MGO which will be released soon, I will put way over 200 hours into this game, it's value is through the roof. It is such a shame that the story and certain design choices hold it back, if the story and exciting moments were at least on par with past games in the series then in all honesty this game would be my favorite game of all time.

Ghost of Tsushima is an epic game in size, in story, in scope which brings some great combat to a traditional open world. What will stand out the most is the sheer beauty of the island of Tsushima which brings ancient Japan to life in stunning fashion. The love Sucker Punch has gif samurai films bleeds in every aspect of this game right down to the black and white filter that lets you play the game as the movies of old. But please don’t do that! The colors of the flowers must be seen to be believed, I was in awe constantly at the vistas presented in this incredible open world.

The gameplay is mostly split between stealth and sword play; you may build your character to cater to one or the other but by the end you should be a master of all styles. Stealth feels just like Assassin’s Creed almost to a fault, all the same tactics used in those games can be used here. The AI isn’t great but it’s not brain dead, expect to use arrows and darts that can knock out enemies easily.

Stealth is fine but the game really shines when entering sword combat. There are four stances that can be switched on the fly which help against different enemy types, loads of different moves to learn and a special bar that will unleash some instant kill attacks. Combat flows like a modified version of the Arkham games focusing more on methodical blocking and a striking rather than constant attack. Most enemies serve as simple fodder to kill quickly but in larger groups the combat starts to shine. Also during the games staged one on one duels the game feels almost like sekiro light. The combat is not as deep as the best in the genre but it feels very authentic to the source material. As with most open world games difficulty balance and leveling up is a problem so by the 30 hour mark I felt over powered and that thrill of battle was replaced with repetitiveness.

I was enthralled by most of the story, it tells a great tale of a samurai with an identity crisis that goes against his own blood to save his country. It feels like a super hero origin story complete with tragic moments of growth, powerful stuff. The main quest holds all the best action sequences, some are big battles that really got my heart pumping, almost wish it was more of a linear game. There are about 7 major side quests that have multiple missions telling the stories of your main companions. I find this to be an excellent way to tell side stories as these stories were very intriguing and perfect for character building.

Outside of those missions though the game world of GoT is mostly the usual Ubisoft style icon fest where you just hit points of your map to get a small upgrade or dumb time wasting activity. This stuff is everywhere, it distracts from the main game by the end. At first it’s always exciting to explore and feel like you are discovering new gameplay opportunities but after seeing the same activities countless times it gets boring.

Ghost of Tsushima works as an excellent love letter to samurai movies and stories and presents one of the best recreations of feudal Japan ever seen. The large storylines all work great but the game is held back with generic open world activities and gameplay that doesn’t rise that much higher than its peers but is still pretty great.

I grew up a huge fan of the X-Wing games back in the day, the level of depth of those games were incredible. Every ship system you can think of at your command using every key on a keyboard and the flight stick. Long epic games that last many many hours with loads of missions. Squadrons doesn’t quite match that level of depth or scale but it’s the first time in decades that we have a Star Wars flight combat game that had more depth than an arcade shooter. While a bit more simplified, Squadrons is a flight sim giving you much control over the ships systems and targeting that makes shooting not the only skill. You will shift power between systems, manage shields and engines, target individual ship systems and coordinate with your squad. It’s as close to the old games as we are going to get and they nailed it.

Flying is a joy, each ship feels drastically different from one another as they should. I love the perfect balance of the x-wing and usually have the same reaction Poe had in TFA when he first flew a TIE, wow this thing can move! Combat is intense but the AI falls into some annoying patterns that are distinctly robotic. It still works as a single player game but clearly this is meant for multiplayer.

The main story is like 8 hours long which is actually far more than expected. Fully voiced, well written story with great new characters and surprises. It’s a story told between two points of view, I don’t think the main character of each side really stands out, you mostly play a mute character so I wish that could have been fleshed out more but your squad mates stories more than make up for it. The missions are varied and totally call back the more interesting missions of the old classic games. I just wish there were more of them.

I played in VR with a flight stick and holy shit it’s a dream come true. Being inside the cockpit and being able to follow an enemy ship with your head as it zips around your ship is unlike anything you can do in a normal game. There is a level or precision that can’t be matched when in VR. I wish the same could be said about the flight stick, the game launched with a terrible dead zone that ruined most stick play, it’s since been corrected but I feel it’s still off, I don’t get the precise controls as I do in a regular pad.

The core of the game is the multiplayer and here is where it actually fails for me, it’s just two simple modes and the progression system is kind of trash. On PC matches are hard to come by leading to long waits for a match to start then a bunch of people quoting so the ranked match ends up not counting meaning you don’t progress, repeat. There just isn’t enough content here to justify spending countless hours on it. Yeah the thrill of online space combat is great but like any online game I get frustrated or bored quick.

Squadrons could have been a stellar deep single player combat sim but it focused more on a multiplayer mode that does not seem to have the community support to be a long lasting game. It’s a damn shame because the gameplay and the VR mode is top notch. The game was $40 at launch and now can be found for $20, at that price any Star Wars fan should be looking to buy, I need people to play with.

Score: 8.4

First impressions of Saints and Sinners are great, they nailed the feeling of being in the Walking Dead show. Being able to grab zombies with one hand and needing to shove hard with a knife to pierce the skull is so satisfying, and perfectly recreates how Rick and company take down walkers with ease. The knife then gets stuck in the skull until you yank it out, the little things like that make you feel in the world. As more weapons become available there will be no need for hard skull breaking attacks as there will be long blades that can severe heads with ease, Michone style. Everything involving the zombies works great, I especially like that as the game progressive zombies come with armor and helmets altering how you approach killing them.

The other enemies are of course humans and this is where S and S falls into the VR jank category. Guns work and feel good its the hit reaction and how basic human AI is. Gun battles feel terrible, they tend to slightly move side to side and wait for you to shoot them. Your character can take a crazy amount of gun damage so cover isn't really needed. Clearly most of the work went into the feel of melee with the zombies.

What is this game, it's mostly a survival game with a story. There is a hub area where you can craft weapons and supplies and unlock many new schematics to create better weapons, what you need are many resources which you gather by exploring New Orleans and gathering junk and loot. You leave the hub and choose one of about 8 areas to visit, all about the same size, small areas each with 2-3 buildings to explore. You have a timer which lasts a good 20 minutes before zombies will totally overrun the area, so you explore, find junk, maybe complete a mission and try to survive. Get back to base, scrap the junk, make new gear and repeat. Each run is one day, each day the dead get more numerous and items get depleted. As days go on small random events play out in the different areas like a gun cache could be found or one of the human factions sent a death squad. I generally liked the progression of the game, the crafting tables give you plenty of goals to work toward and there are hidden schematics to find in the different areas, small riddles being your only clues.

The main story involves you helping a man trapped in the "reservoir" a bunker that houses tons of supplies which are being looked for by the two human factions that are in war with each other. You complete missions for this character and another woman to progress the story, which is basic walking dead stuff.

Here is where the game really falters, they sell it as a game where your story choices matter, like the telltale game. Early on there is a moment with a side quest where you can rescue a man captured by the rival faction, you go there to negotiate his release and come to find he followed orders that resulted in a small girl being murdered. Do you let the captures kill him, do you kill his captures (who was the brother) and free him. I thought the game would be filled with tense situations like this and the choices would matter NOPE. That and one other moment are the only real moments during the game where you have any choice and it changes almost nothing. Not until the last mission do you really have to make some life and death choices with the main story characters and all you get is about 3 lines of different dialog, no actual endings. Once you finish the post game is one week later is a test to see how long you can survive, you would think this is a perfect opportunity to see how your choices impacted the world, NOPE, nothing changes. Honestly I thought this would be one of my favorite VR games but promise of what could have been was far more interesting than what was given.

Graphically its simple cell shaded graphics, like the tell tale game. It's a VR game that runs well, that is what really matters. There is a cool bonus mode that's a score based wave survival mission that really fun.

Walking Dead Saints and Sinners nails the feel of fighting zombies better than any VR game I have played. For that alone its worth playing. It could have been something more special if the story aspect was fully developed. That said VR is desperate for great full game experiences, this one is worth trying.

Overall Score 7.7

One of the most hyped games turned into one of the most controversial in gaming history this year when Cyberpunk 2077 launched in a terrible state. We had near broken versions released for consoles and even if it ran decently it was very buggy on PC. The fires of the angry internet mob rose so high there was an unprecedented removal of the game from the PS store and the ability to request refunds after the game was played. The shitstorm is warranted but also clouds any discussion about this game. There were many positive reviews at launch, leading many to question the integrity of media reviews as that’s the accusation most people love to jump to, everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, “they were paid off!” The truth though is that many just got the best version available and were not given the more broken console versions, extremely shady and CD is paying for that in potential lawsuits. So when some reviews actually enjoyed the PC version I believe them because I enjoyed that same version on my own medium settings PC. Yes the game is buggy, yes a ton of features that were promised are not in the game, yes there are tons of problems; and still it’s very enjoyable with fantastic world building and storytelling.

This review will be a Dvader special where I will get accused of sounding very negative but give it a high score. So I will clarify this again, my score is my enjoyment level of the game, I played for nearly 100 hours and was thoroughly entertained, I think this game is GREAT! I think this game is better than Witcher 3. But my review isn’t just about me, I will describe everything I feel you guys should know about the game and there are a ton of negatives that don’t bother me as much as it may bother you. I have played horrible versions of games I adore, like Fallout New Vegas on PS4 which was practically broken, didn’t bother me. So what might be an intolerable issue for you is a minor speed bump for me.

What I don’t know is where do I start, the bad or the good... let’s do bad and get it out of the way. Let’s get the common complaints out of the way, there are plenty of YouTube videos of hilarious bugs and rants detailing bugs which you may view at any time. Yes this game is buggy even after patches and even on the PC version. I have seen characters get stuck in walls, I have seen AI driven cars crash into barriers, HUD elements randomly get stuck on the screen, and the worst of it quest lines getting stuck where a restart is the only way to continue. These issues seemed to get worse the longer I played, I did have to restart the game a good 20 times because of game stopping bugs, luckily the game auto saves constantly so it’s rare I lost lots of progress though it’s still very inconvenient. If bugs like these bother you stay away for the time being.

A larger concern is this facade of an open world GTA style game they created to house the core gameplay and story of Cyberpunk. All of the game’s media would immediately make the viewer think it looks like a futuristic GTA, you can rob cars, there is a wanted meter and so on. Well that is all BROKEN GARBAGE. The wanted meter results in police being spawned out of thin air all around you immediately firing from all sides. Attempt to barricade in a nearby store, doesn’t matter they will just spawn behind you. To escape the wanted meter you would think there would be an epic chase to escape police cars and helicopters... nope, the AI CANNOT CHASE YOU. There are no non scripted car chases in this game. All you need to do is hop in a car and drive three blocks, yes three simple blocks and the entire police force will forget you ever existed even though you might have murdered multiple officers. None of the games missions ever use the wanted meter or the open world as a mechanic because it’s there to look like it functions when it does not.

Now the worst of the major offenses in Cyberpunk is how the stats and difficulty are kind of broken. Here I was playing a good 40 hours and it felt like my character was properly growing, areas of the map remained dangerous to explore as there were much higher leveled enemies. Areas that were previously perilous became accessible as I was clearly making progress in leveling up. Loot falls like candy during every battle, the constant game of keeping your character maxed out can be time consuming but it’s a key element for any RPG. Then at some point about 50 hours in I started to notice everyone was nearly one shotting me, at first I figured I was in a tough area but it was always the same amount of damage no matter what weapon or enemy I was battling. This went on for hours, I could not ignore it any longer something was wrong. So I began to experiment, I ran into a battle naked, dick swinging in the wind, nothing changed. My armor stat was broken, not only that, every enemy was basically stuck at the same difficulty level. I did some research online and discovered many with the same issues and concluded that many of the game’s armor mods and upgrades are bugged essentially breaking the stat system. I was able to throw away any clothes I had with those mods and sort of got back to a game where the armor stat made somewhat of a difference at least.

After that realization I questioned everything, are the other stats working? NOPE. Critical hits, damage stats and more were doing nothing, just fake numbers that maybe worked at some point but ceased to for some unknown reason. Once again the source of the glitch seemed to be glitched weapon mods and even core character upgrades which involve critical % that don’t stack with the weapon mod. instead of just canceling out the the second stacked mod it breaks the entire stat system. So to summarize, Cyberpunk 2077 is an RPG where the stats don’t work. At this point I don’t blame any of you for thinking I can’t play this broken mess of a game, any one of these major issues I addressed maybe a cardinal sin for you and that’s understandable. For me I just took it in stride and powered along.

So why did I enjoy Cyberpunk, well for one it has all the same great writing, characters, and world building that made Witcher 3 so popular. Night City is teaming with interesting storylines and memorable characters. I was in awe of the level of detail in different areas of the city, from seedy bars to lively clubs, rich high rises or dirty drug filled apartment buildings, Night city is extremely impressive. I was taken out of the illusion because the NPCs are not really living a fake life, you will see them repeat lines and actions as if they are animatronics at Disney World. The game that was promised supposedly was supposed to have characters with day night cycles or even ones that react realistically to things you do, another failed promise. Night City is like a movie studio city which only looks good on the outside for the cameras but is hollow on the inside. I felt Witcher 3 was exactly the same way and yet everyone thought that game was perfect. why? Because the NPCs that were a part of the story all had memorable quests and Cyberpunk is just as good in that department.

CDPR are so great at making every quest not just an engaging story but using various methods of storytelling to flesh out the world around the player. Stuck on an elevator, well there is a tv playing the news where they maybe talking about the big mayoral elections about to take place and how heated the attacks by each candidate is getting. That may seem like background noise but later on in the game if you choose to do so there is a side quest where you are swept up in an engrossing almost spy thriller involving one of the candidates and their family. This isn’t some one off quests it’s a multi quest storyline that spans hours and introduces even more characters that have their own quest lines and stories.

Quests are everywhere scattered all around the map noted with an icon or at times an NPC will call you directly. This is one area I miss from Witcher 3, the world exploration naturally lead the player to discover a quest; here there is rarely an actual discovery, almost everything is pre marked on the map and with fast travel or vehicles to get around it doesn’t feel like you are on a quest of discovery but just doing errands in a city, which to be fair you are. Still the excitement of never knowing what crazy adventure you will go on next makes exploring the side quests the best part of the game.

I loved the variety in storylines that I would come upon. From an AI that runs a taxi cab service to a former murderer that wants to televise his crucifixion, or a vending machine that becomes sentient, there was always something interesting happening. It’s hard not to love the core companion characters which can become love interests, Judy, Panam and River who all have massive multi quest storylines with choices that can change not only your relationship with them but their relationship with others. These choices lead to a new potential ending. It’s CDPR at their best really delving deep into these three diverse characters with rich backstories and compelling conundrums where the choices aren’t morally clear and can drastically change V’s relationship with each. Also you may get to blow shit up in a tank with them, so that’s fun too. I don’t want to spoil any specific moments but all three had moments where I would get gut punched emotionally at the storyline they were involved in. Panam ended up as my woman but I would still kill for Judy and River is my bro for life. None of these are the main missions, I haven’t even mentioned the star of the show, Keanu Reeves.

The main story revolves around V who is basically a douchebag with good heart (well if you choose) and begins the game with a choice of one of three origin stories (doesn’t really matter) and ends up with a one of a kind chip in his brain that contains the AI construct of a long dead rock singing superstar turned corporate terrorist, Johnny Silverhand. Keanu’s Silverhand takes a while to get used to, at first I thought holy shit Keanu is just phoning this in. He uses some weird kind of Nic Cage tone, it doesn’t seem sincere but as the game goes on and you really get to know this character and I understood what he was going for. I loved Keanu’s performance by the end, one of many great performance scattered throughout the game. The back and forth between V and Johnny is often times funny and surprisingly becomes emotional, well as emotional as a hitman and a cocky as shit dead singer can be.

While I think the side quests do have the best plot lines, the main quest in Cyberpunk has some really great moments. Clocking in around 18 hours its short for an open world title but that allows the story to be much tighter than say Witcher 3. Choices are always a big part of CDPR games and you have some to make throughout but by the end every player reaches a final moment where there are up to three distinct final missions. Depending on your actions throughout the game you may have less missions to pick or they can include different characters but it always ends with the choice. I played all three endings and I was surprised to see how different the final mission can play out. It always leads to the same final boss (which was so easy it was basically broken for me) but then you get a totally different epilogue, it’s worth checking out all three.

Most of night city is populated with bounties and a few side activities to do. Sadly there are basically no mini games, no fun diversions like how GTA has a ton of things to do, you would think the future could have allowed for a plethora of unique fun ideas but like most of the game outside the core quests it’s shallow or broken. One quest line is the classic racing circuit, I give it props for incorporating another good side story into the standard race to win side quest but the actual racing is straight booty as clearly the AI is not designed for racing. There is a street fighting quest line that completely glitched on me which made every fight impossible. The meat and potatoes of the game world are the fixer mini quests which serve as one off jobs for a quick buck. Each city area is run by a different fixer and they each have a ton of jobs to complete, almost all involve “go there and kill this person” or “go there steal this”. Now these don’t really need to have any story to go with them but while it’s not a true side quest they do usually have in game files or environmental clues that shed light on a situation that leads to V needing to be called to kill someone. These missions also serve as an excuse to explore many different locations around the city, doesn’t matter if it’s used in a major main quest or a small job the detail in Night City astounds me.

This is probably the longest I’ve gone in any review before actually getting into the core gameplay mechanics, which for me I greatly enjoyed. Cyberpunk is basically an open world Deus Ex style game where quests almost always lead to some base or location with a bunch of enemies and some cameras/turrets laid out in different ways allowing you to tackle the small base any way you want.

Here is where Cyberpunk shines (and also breaks after some time), leveling up can lead to unique specific builds that play rather differently. The skill tree is pretty massive, there is no way to be the god of all things, you can’t max out every perk. So I decided to focus on mind hacking and melee so that I can be a a head exploding super ninja. I started off with basic skills like making enemies hear something to distract them, or giving a guy a small shock. By the end of the game I was a dark Phoenix level mind fucker, I could stroll into a room and have 3 guys heads explode, cause half the enemies to turn on each other, and infect everyone else with a poison that slowly kills them all without raising a gun. The problem as with nearly every RPG the difficulty breaks as who the hell is going to stop me. There are net runner enemies that have mind hacks of their own but this sort of hacking duel only takes place a few times and is only a threat in the middle of the game when you are still building your character, by the end nothing was a threat to me.

That end though came after over 80 hours of playtime and in those 80 hours I loved building my character up. The mind hacking could get too easy so I would purposefully mix up my combat strategies. Cyberpunk has solid gunplay, it’s not great but works as intended and some of the futuristic guns have cool perks that make the fights unique. One augmentation V can make is to use smart weapons, these are auto lock on weapons. Simply aim in the general direction of enemies and watch those bullets travel up and around cover right into their heads. Cool thing is enemies can have those weapons too, nothing makes you run around more than realizing bullets are going around the cover you are behind. Some augments allow you to slow down time, my favorite let’s you double jump which when combined with increased speed and a katana sword turns me into a head chopping Mario. Some guns let you power them up and shoot through any wall. Enemies will react accordingly, limbs will fly off, weapons will be dropped, and heads will explode in a fountain of blood. Battles can be a beautiful chaotic rush, or you can be methodical and careful, the choice is yours.

Yes the encounters can get repetitive, there are just so many variations in level layouts and enemy placements that can be designed for play over 100 hours. Even with that sense of familiarity I still I had fun doing every mission. Some missions require stealth and no kills, a problem for my V as I basically never touched the stealth skill tree. Instead I used my mind hacking to blind enemies, hack into cameras and plan my route through the level quietly. This game will not win any awards for AI, all to often the guard that is in your path just so happens to always turn around conveniently to give you a window to stealth kill, but hey it’s still damn satisfying to get through a max security night club undetected and assassinate the owner in his sky box and leave with no one noticing. Early on a mission as what I just described would take patience and smart play, but by the end of the game I could stand at the center of the club, look up and see the owner through a wall and blow his head off with my mind, walking away while never bothering to infiltrate. That’s the beauty of the power scaling, it matters and feels like it’s not just a stat increase but actual skills that make you a better conductor of the action. Also remember the stats are basically broken so thank god a lot of these skills are fun to mess around with.

I love games with combat freedom; you give me a wide range of toys , a group of guards and a nice level to mess around in and generally I can make my own fun for many hours on end. This is no MGSV, I don’t even think it’s in the same class as the new Deus Ex either but it sure as hell better than the repetitive combat of Witcher 3, which allowed almost no player freedom. I think for purists that go the crafting route and love to min/max stats this game will be a letdown (again stats are broken!). Players like me that just want a collection of deadly varied tools and skills to kill people will find plenty of fun to be had. Combine that with some of the best writing and storylines in gaming and you have the main reason why despite the mountains of problems Cyberpunk has it’s still a great impressive game.