Recent reviews by Dat Guy

Hey you! Yes, you. Did you like Starship Troopers? Then you're gonna love Helldivers 2!

Helldivers 2 leans fully into the jingoistic tone of 1997 film and does so in a wonderfully humorous way. You take on the role of a Helldivers - an (allegedly) elite force of super soldiers defending Earth and humanity from the foes that are a threat to our democratic way of life.

The gameplay loop is simple but addicting. You pick a loadout of a primary weapon, a side-arm, a grenade (type) as well as up to four support stratagems. These stratagems vary between various airstrikes, orbital bombardments, or support weaponry. You undertake operations which are split into 1-3 missions. Each mission has a set of main objectives with some optional objectives on the planet's surface.

Upon making planetfall you will quickly realize that the Terminid and Automaton menaces hate democracy as much as we love it and they will through there considerable numbers at you in an attempt to foil you on your mission.

Battle against the seemingly endless tide of insects and robots as you liberate the galaxy one planet at a time. And don't just do it for yourself, do it for humanity, for Super Earth, and do it for Democracy!

I was someone who didn't get into the hype prior to or even at the time of the game's release. After the game had released, I read some reviews and watched videos complaining about the state of the game and how CDPR had failed to deliver on the promises they had made.

Three years on, I think it's fair to say that CDPR, while they may not have delivered on all the promises made, have gone to great lengths to make the game an enjoyable experience.

Over the course of almost 250 hours, I've done pretty much everything you can do, collected everything, and gotten all the achievements. With that I feel confident in saying that Cyberpunk 2077 is a very good game - one that I would recommend to anyone who has even the slighest interest in the cyberpunk genre. For veterans of the genre however, you'll likely enjoy the slang and references to works like Neuromancer.


You play V, a citizen of Night City, who through unfortunate circumstances end up inextricably connected to the "ghost" of Johnny Silverhand - a legendary rockerboy whose bad attitude is only matched by the terrible effect he has on your health.

Working your way up through the ranks of mercenaries in Night City, you search for a way to rid yourself of the stowaway and save your own life. Throughout your journey you will have to make some tough choices as well as grapple with philosophical questions of transhumanism, identity and AI, among other ideas.


At its core, the game is a fairly straight forward action/shooter RPG. You get to customize your character's appearance (though you rarely see your own character), their backstory (3 preset options), and their starting attribute points before you enter a prologue based on your origin meant to guide you through the game's fairly simple mechanics.

At the start of act one, you are let loose on Watson - one of the game's seven districts (the other ones being unavailable due to Watson being cordoned off). You can choose to fully explore Watson before moving on with the main story, but there's little point to doing so.

Act two is where the game picks up steam. You are introduced to a colorful cast of characters some of whom you can, if you so choose, become romantically entangled with. The remaining 6 districts become available to you and Night City is your oyster.

Gameplay-wise, you will spend most of your time killing (or incapacitating) enemies using various firearms, melee weapons, or by hacking their cybernetic implants before looting them for whatever weapons or assorted knick-knacks they may have.

Defeating enemies grants you both character experience which will net you additional attribute points and perk points, as well as skill experience that can give you passive benefits to the associated skill.

Beside the actual story elements, defeating enemies with your choice of weapons, looting them and selling or disassembling said loot constitutes the majority of the gameplay loop.

While it's enjoyable enough, it can get a bit monotonous, which is why it's such a relief that Night City is one of the best looking cityscapes ever built in a video game.


I can't even begin to imagine how much time was put into the design of Night City. Whether you're walking down the pavements and alleys of the city or cruising around in one of the many vehicles available, Night City is an absolute sight to behold.

Enabling ray tracing and exploring Night City's neon lit districts during a rainy night in the game is awe inspiring regardless of whether it's an estetic you enjoy in real life or if you loathe it.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't offer much in terms of rewards for exploring. You will sometimes come across pieces of unique clothing sets, but besides that, there's little in-game incentive to explore.

Exploration has to be done on your own terms and for the most part I'm fine with that. I just grab my favorite vehicle (Shion "Coyote"), tune the radio to my modded radio station and listen to some awesome music while cruising around or try to set a personal speed record for the hairpin bends in Santo Domingo.


While the modding community isn't as big as for games like Skyrim, there'll probably be a mod to satisfy whatever particular itch you may have and if not, you can probably make it yourself. Blasting eurobeat on your custom radio station, adding a fully functional metro system, or changing the level cap is as simple as just downloading a mod.


Cyberpunk has a couple of different ways the story can end - some available by default, others locked behind the choices you make or other "secret" mechanisms. Each ending felt rewarding in its own way. While 'The Devil' made me angry and annoyed, I treated it as a prescient vision for V (since it was the first one I completed) - a cautionary tale for the struggle to come. 'The Sun' was arguably the best ending, but the one that really tugged at my heartstrings and felt the most meaningful was 'Temperance'.

I would recommend doing a manual save during Nocturne Op55N1 and reloading that to experience as many of the different endings as you can if you don't want to do separate playthroughs for each ending. All of them are satisfactory in their own way.


As I mentioned earlier, I pretty much did everything you can do in the game (short of making cursed decisions like deciding not to help Panam). Honestly, if you had asked me to guess how many hours I had spent in Night City, I would have guessed less than half of what I actually have accumulated. I played all three origins, restarting twice before finding my desired V due to how the difficulty level scales.

The power scaling where you are very weak early on and ridiculously overpowered later on makes for great storytelling, but can be a bit jarring. It kind of forces you to either go into certain skills and perks or play very stealthily early on. While you can redistribute your perk points (for a nominal fee), you are locked into your attributes unless you use a mod to enable full respecs.

Some of the gigs felt almost a bit pointless - particularly if you do them at high levels - as it's just a matter of entering a building, blowing everyone to smithereens and leaving. In the few cases where there are additional rewards for completing the mission in a more difficult way, the reward is often worth less than the loot you would get from any random streetcorner gonk.

I'm a sucker for the unreliable narrator device, and as I moved on through the story and started realizing that some things that I had taken for granted were not quite as they seemed, I got even more invested than I already were - ready to unravel the mysteries and conspiracies afoot in Night City.

All in all though, I enjoyed every single minute I spend in and around Night City. Playing in 2023 (and onward) is a smooth and (mostly) bug free experience which allowed me to really immerse myself in the story and the philosopical quandaries presented by the game.


Pros

+ Beautifully crafted game world
+ Gripping story with multiple distinct endings
+ Fairly satisfying gameplay loop
+ Interesting lore if you take the time to read datashards
+ Mod support

Cons

- Somewhat repetitive or tedious side missions
- Lackluster rewards for defeating enemies
- Most vehicles handle like crap reducing the "viable" vehicle line-up to four or five vehicles total of the ~41 vehicles available



In 2023, I'd give this game a solid 9 out of 10. It still leaves some things to be desired, but overall, it's a thoroughly satisfying experience.

I understand Cyberpunk 2077 will be given a bit of an overhaul come patch 1.7 and Phantom Liberty and I look forward to doing a fresh playthrough to experience the new area, story, ending, and overhauled skills.

Even though it's only in Early access and it has a few bugs still, it's a really good game. I've played D&D 5E for about 3 years and I absolutely love getting to play the ruleset in a modern turn-based RPG, Larian has also added some features from the D:OS series that I really enjoy.

You should definitely try the game if you enjoy turn-based RPGs in general and Larian's games in particular. It's obviously not the same as BG1 or BG2 and so far they don't really feel connected other than by the name, but you're still playing D&D in Faerun and that's good enough for me.

If you generally like cRPGs, but didn't enjoy D:OS or games like DA:Inquisition, this game might not be for you. I'd still encourage you to watch some gameplay videos though before you make up your mind. So far, the game gets an 8/10 from me.

Having played the game for a number of hours, I really like it and it definitely appeals to the history nerd within me.

I do however get that people are complaining about the game feeling a bit hollow or light. There are no real drawbacks to expanding aggressively and at a certain point, nothing stands in your way.

While it is nowhere near as polished as EU4 or CK2, I would still recommend this game, at least if you're a history nerd or you grew up reading about the nations, Kings and heroes of antiquity.