Ugh, where to begin. I really didn't like it! Not quite as much as I didn't like the first one, but that's saying next to nothing.

- Starting with the biggie - the story. Hey, check this out - it's an incredibly simple plot (with basic ass themes) told in the most deliberately abstruse way possible to pad it out, and which ends with no resolution whatsoever except for vague DLC/sequel bait. Quick, which Remedy game from the last fifteen years did I just describe? This house style of theirs REALLY bothers me at this point. Here, let me sum up the entire plot of this one for you:

>>Alan Wake, still trapped in a nightmare dimension following the end of the first game, has been replaced in the real world by an evil doppleganger who wants to destroy reality with a magical artifact. In an attempt to stop him, Alan makes contact with psychic FBI agent Saga Anderson and sets her on the double's trail so that she can stop him, but in so doing endangers Saga's family.<<

That's fucking it. But those two sentences are stretched out over twenty-five hours and buried under layer after layer after layer of pointless, self-indulgent obfuscation and repetition that exists to make it seem like there is a lot more going on. I find it so tiresome. And man, oh man, does this game feel long.

- Everything that's initially impressive about this game is really just fluff. Tons of cool metatextual bits and visually awesome effects and FMV and mixed media stuff (in Alan's story, especially) that is, on the surface, quite engaging - but it's not accomplishing anything! It's not saying anything new! It's not moving ANYTHING forward. It's JUST masturbation - grating even if you try to overlook how much writer Sam Lake himself is right there in the middle of it, in person. You can't just be weird and outre over and over just for the sake of it, it has to dooooooo somethinggggggg

- The combat is so bad it's baffling. Just don't have it if you can't even reach the standards of the (terrible) first game. (Seriously, just cut it! This thing is like 75% puzzle-adventure game/walking sim anyway. Just go all the way!) Nothing is balanced right, your character moves like they're underwater, all enemies are laughably spongey, you can get comboed to death in seconds with a full health bar, the dodge is SOMEHOW WORSE, and to top it off the autosave is allllllll over the place in this dumb game, so if you die (and you will) be prepared to pick up a bunch of shit over again. You can and indeed should run from most combat.

- This ostensible horror series has bravely graduated from having -literally no scares- to having ... jump scares! Tons of them! To the point where the characters voice their displeasure! Awesome.

- The woman playing Saga is flat and kinda bad I didn't buy her at all. Accent slipping all over the place, dead-eyed look the entire game (maybe a quirk of performance capture), weird line misreads. Just, nope. She doesn't have it. No juice.

- For the entire game, the emotional stakes of our player characters hinge upon threats against two of their loved ones who are people that we literally never see in person. I think you call that good storytelling.

- I like the conceit that our hero Alan is ultimately just a shitty writer and a self-centered asshole who constantly wrecks everything - that's great in theory - but that doesn't make LITERALLY RUNNING AROUND INSIDE HIS HEAD FOR TEN HOURS all that compelling

- Loads of bugs and glitches, ranging from distracting to annoying to gamebreaking. Trophies fucked up, items permanently lost, combat clipping into cutscenes leading to fail states during a chapter break, broken triggers, softlocks, fuckin seriously, you name it. Glad I paid full price for this digital-only game.

- Boy they sure have a lot of Finnish people and love their Finnish culture in this Pacific Northwest small town huh

Anyway, Remedy continues to frustrate the shit out of me. (I did enjoy CONTROL, but that was mostly for the excellent gameplay. It shares many of these same hallmark problems.) I really struggled with whether or not I was even gonna play this game after my painful run back through the remaster. And I'll tell you what, as of now I don't think you could pay me to play a sequel to this. These guys have so much potential and are thinking way outside of the box presentation-wise in ways that are really exciting. But they just cannot for the motherfucking life of them tell an actual story. I feel like someone much smarter than me could write about 50 pages on how they continually break every rule in the book, starting with not even coming close to having any kind of ending. Maybe after the astroturfed Sponsored by The Game Awards fellation period for this ends, someone will tackle it in earnest.

Meanwhile, it's Remedy who's still trapped in the REAL "Dark Place" ... lodged irretreivably up their own ass.

When I think about all my complaints, they're a lot like the ones I had for the Gravity Rush games:
- Great artstyle, setting and characters
- Boring story
- Ok combat.
- Gimmicks that sound great on paper but ultimately lack polish and are poorly executed. (Celestial brushes, Gravity Shifting)

Do I love aspects about this game? Absolutely. But the gameplay actively makes me dread playing it.

My first thought was that Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was just going to be a straight spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio Future (which would have been a letdown considering my three weeks of original Jet Set Radio prep), but I'm pleasantly surprised by the blend of mechanics presented! In reality, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk takes the overall structure and aesthetic from Future while borrowing more heavily from original Jet Set Radio's tight level design and intricate scoring mechanics, and dare I say, actually improves upon certain aspects. It does have a few underdeveloped features as a result of its experimentation, but overall, not a bad first attempt by Team Reptile!

One issue that apparently escaped my notice the first time around (I replayed Future recently just to confirm this) was that Future's extremely linear and stretched-out levels resulted in tons of backtracking upon missing objectives/falling off the stage, and led to fairly rigid approaches that really tried my patience upon additional loops. This is fortunately not the case with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: levels are generally a lot more open with many more shortcuts and are spaced apart carefully to where traversal feels much more free-form. It more closely resembles original Jet Set Radio, especially when you consider how its momentum mechanics complement this design. Future made the speed fairly easy to obtain: jump onto a rail regardless of your momentum, then keep mashing trick to accelerate and never slow down. On the other hand, original Jet Set Radio became well-known for how slow your character would move about unless you actively utilized rails and grindable walls to speed up, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk takes a modern twist: you need to maintain momentum by either rail grinding and leaning into corners for speed boosts, or by using grounded manuals combined with boost (refreshed from performing tricks) to retain speed.

The momentum mechanics go hand-in-hand with the game's combo system. After thoroughly exploring levels to spray graffiti spots for "rep" and completing subsequent score and movement-tech challenges from opposing crew members, your crew must finally confront opposing crews in a crew battle, outscoring them with trick combos in their own territory. The scoring and trick system improvises upon both original Jet Set Radio and Future: in both games, the safest way to score trick points was abusing infinite grind loops and repeating the same tricks/movement over and over. However, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk turns this on its head: you don't get tons of points for doing the same tricks ad-nauseam (since trick value decreases and eventually levels off when used more and more). Instead, the main key to getting points is increasing the multiplier by utilizing unique features of the stage: that is, leaning into tight corners on grindable rails, wall-riding billboards, and going up half-pipe ramps (which are improved over the original game since you can manual up ramps and then air boost off into manuals/rail and wall-grinds, so they can function as part of a combo). The key word is "unique," since utilizing the same set-piece in a held combo will not give additional multipliers, and the same goes for graffiti spots that can now also be resprayed as one-time trick bonuses during continuous combos. As a result, the trick and multiplier staling incentivizes players to fully explore and utilize every set-piece present upon the open stages to create massive combos, made easier thanks to the mid-air dash (which also lets you alter airborne momentum once) and the manual. The only downside here is that the game's circumstances never become difficult enough to necessitate this trick optimization; the story crew battles are pretty easy and I was leapfrogging them using the above strategy (i.e. while other crews were floundering around several hundred thousand, I was well beyond a couple million in score), so unless players are trying to crack the tougher post-game score barriers for optional characters/achievements, they may never need to lean on these strategies at all.

The lack of difficulty serves as a microcosm of this game's unfortunate trend: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk certainly innovates upon many features from the Jet Set Radio games, but I find a few to be undercooked or lacking in execution. The combat's one example: it's not a bad idea in theory (using tricks to both deal damage and maintain score/momentum) and in fact has been proposed before, but its implementation leaves something to be desired. Attacking enemies feels like it has little impact because of the muffled sound-effects, akin to slapping a wet sock on a table. Also, most enemies can be defeated with a single grounded attack into an immediate "corkscrew" jump and then spray-painted in the air. While this graffiti coup de grâce never gets old, it does feel quite difficult in practice comboing in and out of this linearizing technique (since you need to be standing and off your skates to execute, breaking any combo potential), so combat never really flows and the mandatory combat sections in-story feel somewhat superfluous.

Adjacent to this is the heat system, a spin on original Jet Set Radio's enemy escalation during story stages. As your character goes about spraying graffiti, police forces begin to spawn in tougher waves: for example, wave one consists of simple grounded officers with batons and pistols, wave two activates turrets that home-in on the player with chains and slow their movement, and wave three brings in armored forces that can block attacks. I found most of these enemies to be mere nuisances: you can easily skate around and dodge most attacks (except for the turrets, which can be easily disabled with a single attack + spray), and since enemies can't be easily comboed for points and will respawn continuously upon defeat anyways, it's best to just ignore them as is. Again, this is fairly similar to original Jet Set Radio's strategy of outmanuevering enemies since foes there were active time sinks, so this doesn't bother me greatly. Unfortunately, this creates friction with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's exploration, and not just in the sense that enemies will impede progress. The game requires you to swap between the three different types of movestyle for their different abilities: skateboards can ride on extendable fire hydrants to extend them vertically and reach heights, inline skates can skid on glass to shatter specific ceilings, and bikes can open special garage doors. The only way to switch between characters/movestyles is to go to checkerboard tiles and dance, but the game prohibits switching when there's "too much heat." Thus, you have to de-escalate the heat gauge by entering orange porta-potties (unmarked on the map, so hopefully you remember their locations!). However, they also lock up after a single use, so players have to either outright leave the stages or find a different porta-potty elsewhere to reopen old porta-potties for enemy despawning. I think this could have easily been improved if the heat gauge slowly decreased over time from successful enemy evasion.

Even with my criticisms, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was definitely worth the three year wait. The story isn't anything mindblowing, but it's got some nice twists that are conveyed via these surreal platforming sequences that are a cross between the time rifts from A Hat in Time and a Psychonauts fever dream. I'm pleasantly surprised by a good chunk of the soundtrack too: Hideki Naganuma's three contributions are the obvious highlights, but other tracks like 2Mello's I Wanna Kno and Sebastian Knight's Feel the Funk more than hold their own weight. It's a good mix of upbeat sampledelia hip-hop and chill ambient tunes, with my only real complaint being the lack of guitar-heavy rock tracks like Magical Girl or Statement of Intent... RIP Guitar Vader. Finally, I more than got my playtime's worth out of 100%ing the game, considering all the hidden areas and collectibles to find and just how much fun I had figuring out new ways to string together ridiculous combos. Despite the game's various areas of improvement, I find Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to be a fantastic fresh take upon a beloved franchise that isn't just a homage to Jet Set Radio, but a love letter to classic Y2K counter-culture and skating games as a whole. If you're not a prior fan of the franchise, this might not be the game to change your mind, but if you are, then I see no reason why you wouldn't find some enjoyment out of it. It's no surprise that fans absolutely ate this up, with excitement for the franchise reaching a new fever pitch. Your move, SEGA. Let's see if you guys still understand the concept of love.

Yep, this is a classic awful Bethesda game. Janky, poor performance, terrible gameplay, nonstop garbage collecting. Stupid story. Ugly, horrible graphics. Music is nondescript. One of the worst intros I've ever seen in a game, wow I'm shooting rocks and jumping around pointlessly while NPCs talk! Every character is horrible and lifeless. If you like eating garbage like a sewer ape that doesn't deserve to live, you'll love this. If you are a human being with a divine soul, you will hate this game. I only played it because it came with my GPU.

They really took that AMD partnership seriously with how shitty the performance on Nvidia is, huh.

Anyway, literally in the first minutes of the game:

You meet nonchalant Barrett, who's just arrived and is going to give you his ship. But he doesn't tell that space pirates were actually following him

Yara yara dialogue, and then the pirates ship appear

Barrett: "I REALLY thought I lost them..."
Supervisor Lin: (angry) Barrett!

Pirate ship start landing

Supervisor Lin: "Weapons! Everybody get ready!"

A gunfight starts between your people and the pirates

You kill them, they kill a few of yours

Supervisor Lin: "Of course Barrett was being followed... Every. Time."
Barrett: (all happy and smiling) "Now that was some fine work under pressure."

Barrett goes on being cheeky and cracking jokes like nothing happened

...

I guess he doesn't care that he just got a bunch of people killed? LMAO.

I know I'm being a little bit of a cunt, but come on... it's the very first minutes. Bethesda writing, baby!

Game's feeling really boring atm. Doesn't do anything better than the games they're trying to copy. What's the point of the spaceship if I'm going to fast travel everywhere I go? And what the FUCK is that map? It actually does a disservice to the player by existing. How come Skyrim, a game that came out in 2011(!), has a better map? This doesn't feel like a game that's been in development 8 years.

I'm going to try it again in a year or so... or whenever the modders finish its development.

10/10 writing in a 3/10 game.
And "enhanced" my ass, it is LITTERED with game-breaking bugs. You literally have to skip an entire AREA (modron maze) to not completely fuck over the game. The combat is atrocious, and the alignment system is fucking bullshit.

One time, after trying my absolute best to uncover every dialogue option while speaking to one character, and then finding out I had somehow fucking missed a line of dialogue that allowed to leave the depths of hell itself, I was kind of getting sick of this game. What's that? Want to get the good ending? Wanted to use one of the items you've had since the start of the game and unlock more dialogue? I hope you have precognition, because if you don't you can enjoy reloading your save and enjoy doing the final area all over again. The ending more than makes up for it, but of course I still had to suffer through making myself invincible with console commands so I would stop getting killed during an unskippable cutscene.

The game will punish you for speaking certain dialogue choices, but also punish you for not exhausting every last one. It is impossible to know what dialogue choice will result in what, and whether you will lose out on something, change your alignment, or get blocked from speaking to the character in question any further entirely. You can miss out on entire characters and moments in the story just by doing something slightly out of order.

It's the first game to well up my eyes in a long time though. Twice. I cannot bring myself to give it any less than 4 stars. I recommend, reading, listening and looking at this game. But playing it? No.