Recent reviews by 「subtitles」百合

Tunic is perhaps the most memorable singleplayer game I've ever played. Come for the top-down action blending Zelda games and Dark Souls, stay for the amazing scene-setting and puzzles.

As you may have heard, part of this game's challenge is the fact that the manual is presented within the game itself and is rendered mostly in a fictional language. This is a major part of what gives the game its unique flair, but it also means that this is a game that requires some measure of patience. In addition to being the most memorable singleplayer game I've completed, Tunic is also the one that had me staring blankly at my ceiling for the longest time. On dozens of occasions I was very, very tempted to just look up solutions to puzzles or guides on what to do next after running in circles -- and in the end I eventually did look at a couple hints just to make sure I wasn't gaslighting myself on a couple of the more elaborate puzzles.

If you have the patience to handle the arcane process of learning a game without having any guides, Tunic is sure to be a treat for you. I've never played a game that gave me such a visceral feeling of solving a mystery before.

If you're looking for a fun co-op shooter to play with your friends, look no further. Explore dark caves, mow down waves of unfeeling insectoid killing machines, and mine valuable minerals to pay off your bar tab!

I've always enjoyed playing first-person-shooters, especially in multiplayer with my friends. I used to play a lot of Team Fortress 2, CSGO, Titanfall 2, and Rainbow Six Siege, but after awhile I got burned out of playing with and against strangers who could sometimes be jerks or cheaters. I still wanted to be able to play with my friends, but I just couldn't enjoy playing online anymore.

Fortunately, I received this game as a gift a few months ago and I have been playing it frequently ever since. Blasting the bugs is satisfying and there's enough variety in the weapons and class features between the dwarves that I can change things up and keep it feeling fresh even after playing for 250+ hours. The developers are also legit, providing free content updates to the game and including a battle-pass style bonus unlock system that is completely free. Even if you miss out on some stuff from a season, during missions you can randomly find boxes that you can bring a couple batteries to in order to unlock and receive cosmetics from past seasons!

By now everyone knows that this game is a buggy letdown. Regardless, many have said that it's still a decent if uninspired shooter with a good story to carry it that is enjoyable despite the glaring flaws. So, is it worth $60?

No. It is not worth $60. Also, CDPR has done nothing here to earn your money at all.

To give credit where it is due, the pre-animated dialogue scenes of the game are well done. They do a great job of immersing you in the scene and have a cinematic-like quality to them. The voice acting work is generally done to a high standard and the animations show a great attention to detail. If the game were nothing but a string of these carefully crafted vignettes, it might have been worth purchasing.

Instead, between these enjoyable moments is a wasteland. The city on first glance appears very detailed but when you scratch the surface, you discover there's nothing underneath. Talking to random NPCs walking around gives you a generic, one-size-fits-all response from a pool they all seem to share regardless of context. Committing crimes results in the police appearing out of thin air and shooting at you until you leave, but you can go right back afterward with no issues. The myriad shops you can visit end up being little more than places to dump your excess crap that you accumulate at an irritatingly fast pace. It's basically a glorified loading screen as you run from one story point to the next. The game is also horribly optimized, so unless your rig is a complete monster, be ready for stuttering frame rates the entire time.

Here and there you can find quests or jobs to do on the side, but these offerings are meager at best especially in comparison to the main questline's fleshed out dialogue scenes. Most of the side quests involve simply shooting some guy or sneaking in somewhere and taking something. The few that do involve some dialogue fall short in that the scenes aren't pre-animated. The NPCs don't seem to use any body language in these side conversations so the whole situation lacks the punch of the pre-animated cinematic scenes from the main questline.

The sidequests where you just blast some guys are even worse. The combat is a complete snoozefest. The AI is extremely rudimentary and full of holes. You can funnel a group of guys into a narrow killzone one by one or run right up to each one in turn and kill them while they make no attempt to flee or reposition. In fact, many times when I ran right up to enemies in combat I found they seemed to bug out and stop attacking altogether. There's also the hacking system which seems like it could add some flavor to the combat, but none of the abilities are very interesting and furthermore the AI is so stupid and ammo is so plentiful that hacking never feels like a necessity. There's also a lack of excitement to be had in the skill system. In some games finding interesting and fun builds for your character can yield lots of enjoyment, but not so in Cyberpunk. Almost every single skill is something like "do 10% more damage when you do [x]" or "regenerate [health/stamina] faster when you do [y]". The most novel new ability you can get by investing skill points is the ability to throw knives. But why do that when you can just use a silenced pistol with stealth perks to make it do 5x as much damage on a headshot when you're hidden? Ammo is much more common than knives after all.

So after all that, do you still feel like you're okay spending $60? I wouldn't judge you for saying yes, but please consider:

What on Earth was CDPR doing? This game was announced back in 2012 and has been in serious production since at least 2016. They subjected their staff to onerous crunch and delayed the release 3(!) times all the while. And this is what they have to show for it? This is unacceptable. If CDPR shareholders see profits from this, they will do this again. I regret spending $60 on this game, but even more I regret giving $60 to this development strategy. I rushed into it after it made an okay first impression, telling myself that I was fine with a "decent if uninspired shooter with a good story". But when I look at the unending parade of bugs, the horrible optimization, and the empty gameplay I realize I made a mistake. No company that dumps this much labor and time into a game that turns out like this deserves your money.

The only recommendation I have for this game is to avoid it and avoid supporting the industry practices that created it. I regret my purchase.