Recent reviews by milklord

Just as strong as the the first game, if not stronger. Very disturbing. Buy.

Short as hell, but I still think about this experience years later.

Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk is a great series, set around the anime and Blade Runner inspired Night CIty's grimey goings on in a bleak future where one would do well to focus on saving themselves, versus saving the world; with a lot of cool, prescient and heady concepts. On the flip side, CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 is an unfinished game: blatant feature creep, a shoehorned in main character(Johnny), incomplete systems, incomplete exploration of story topics and concepts, obvious rewriting, extremely linear romancing, broken AI pathfinding, horrible police system, only mild outcome differences based on choices. It feels like someone tried to slap Far Cry, GTA, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, The Witcher 3's half-assed systems and Sunset Overdrive into one product without too much forethought how all these types of games would interact and come together in the final product. It reeks of last minute changes, poor project management, eurojank masked by production value and over-ambition.

You may think: "Damn, bro, that's pretty harsh.", and you would be absolutely correct. CP2077 is one of the biggest disappointments in my personal gaming history, if for anything, because of the sheer amount of potential on display at all times. One of my best friends who passed in Dec 2022, used to always try to convince me to get the game because it was a continuance of the themes in all of my favorite books, movies and games. (Also, Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the series, is a black man. This is cool because my friend and I are both black) I always talked my friend down based on the reception and gameplay I'd seen,even after that huge patch last winter/fall. It looked like a bootleg Deus Ex mixed with some ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Borderlands loot system(which is true to some degree). Seeing as I'm a massive fan of Thief, the Shock games, Deus Ex, Hitman, etc., going back to the early 2000's, I find it surprising that despite all of it's extremely glaring flaws, Cyberpunk 2077 is actually a weirdly gripping and enjoyable game.

Honestly, once you're absorbed in the main story and side missions: Night City is one of the most lovingly, completely crafted and most realistically scaled cities ever seen in gaming. the visual fidelity of this world give me a feeling I haven't felt since playing Crysis on it's highest settings at a friends house in the late 2000's. The lighting model is incredible, the texture work is masterful, the shaders are working overtime here, and they make great use of physical materials to show it off. What I can see of the Path Tracing Tech Preview on my rig is unbelievable as well: the interplay of all the neon, fog, shiny metallic surfaces, metallic people, the sounds, it all mixes into a powerful representation of a very specific vision of what games will be like in the near future.The rasterization is some of the best ever to be seen in a large commercial video game, and at times looks better than the original Ray Tracing implementation. Aesthetically, the city looks like something that would have been considered futuristic in the 2000's or early 2010's, which isn't my favorite, but still very impressive work. The characters likewise look extremely impressive at times.

I didn't have a full need for a lot of the half baked systems in the game. The crafting suffers from the same shallowness and arbitrary annoyances as The Witcher 3's, namely a way too huge amount of possible components for a way underwhelming amount of craftable items and results, and I honestly barely used it until I had already played 50+ hours. The entire phone system with side characters seems arbitrary and could've been explored much more deeply. The possible romances could have been fleshed out more deeply. V's male voice could have been made more neutral, voiceless or multiple options, as it can really break the immersion at times. Keanu Reeves is a great actor for certain types of media, I particularly love his performances in The Matrix, John Wick and A Scanner Darkly, but he falls flat here in my opinion. The character he plays and the way it affects the story makes murky the Sim in this Immersive Sim and turns it into something more set in stone narratively. This could have been a wide open exploration of the beautifully crafted Cyberpunk city that CDPR has gifted us with, a more fleshed out interpretation all of the associated themes from Mike Pondsmith's original works, and more freedom to survive that world within a narrative framework.

To anyone on the fence though: what's here is worth at least 20-30 hours of your time at a 50% or more discount. (my playtime is not accurate from afk time, I really have ~75-90 hours of gameplay) Cyberpunk gets choice in missions, stat progression, fun side missions, and a fairly enjoyable main storyline right more than not, and when this game is going good it is REALLY good. I don't forgive CDPR, and the multitude of inherent, un-patch-able design decisions that they've made, but 3 years on, I can see what CP2077 gets so right over what it gets so wrong. It has earned a shaky recommendation.

P.S. If you were really amused by how silly and chaotic Detroit: Become Human is, you'll probably have a lot of fun here

So, to me the major flaw is BL3 has some of the most abysmal writing ever put in a video game. To enjoy this game, turn the sound off for all of the voice actors and ignore all story sequences entirely. Then, if you like previous BL for solo gameplay you'll be happy and satisfied with your much crispier and more stylized gameplay experience. Enter at your own risk: this is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Gearbox Software we're talking about here.

6.5/10. Most of these new classic style shooters are kinda bland and identity-less in a way while also being full of personality and fun gameplay; it's hard to explain. Let's just say I'd rather play actual classic shoothers. Grab on sale for the novelty.

This is the least self-aware game ever. It's entertainingly poorly written, so I KINDA recommend that you try it at your own risk: but only with that disclaimer. If you want to cringe like you're watching a bad episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, then you're right at home here in 2038 Detroit. If you think this is about to be some grand, greatly written story; I'd temper that expectation. It's full of more tropes and deep-for-a-14-year-old moments than a damn Yakuza game. It's like a mediocre prime time, totally self-serious to the point of absurdity, TV show in graphical format. The graphics are very impressive though, bordering on photorealistic at times.

You kinda have to see this mess for yourself and come to your own conclusion overall, I'd say. It's like a 5.5/10 experience in the wrapper of a 10/10 experience. Also, I can't say I'm in a hurry to explore the touted flowcharts deeply again, even though the choices allowed for were sometimes compelling. I wish there was a "maybe" button on Steam.

6/10 plot masquerading as 10/10 but still worth grabbing for the gameplay, graphics and music.

vedy nice

Must play masterpiece. A perfect distillation of all RE games with a RE7 veneer.

Buy only if you know that this game will probably never be fully finished and will be sorely lacking in some promised features by 1.0. It's a great but flawed game for real life street skaters..... there's nothing else like it.

*edit*
General thoughts on 1.0:
1.0 came out severely below most Session fans' expectations after years of promises and advertising and still feels beta-like(no surprise to me, personally). In light of this information, I'd only recommend to someone who possesses 2 of 3 of the following qualities: someone who is a hardcore skater, a hardcore gamer, or into the simulation or eurojank genres.

Long term Session fan whining:
I know this game was always advertised street oriented but the seemingly arbitrary omission of grabs and inclusion of advertised features within the "Experimental" settings menu seems pretty rough and unfinished for something being touted as a finished product. I know the devs will have some sob story about the new physics system there, but I don't care, it's frustrating. The UX is insanely utilitarian and personality-less, but a definite improvement from pre-release. The missions are frustratingly broken and seem barely playtested for someone who plays all manual no alignment with medium trucks.There's no concurrent MP, no city feel, and the package overall has extremely low polish and comes off immediately as a visually noisy indie UE game. The price hike smells heavily of publisher pressure and unmet deadlines. I forgive it some small bit for having such a small team with huge ambition like this though.

Rating:
Personally, like almost all action sports games, it's a 7 or so out of 10 for me, maybe even in between 6 and 7 as a game. As an indie simulator it's basically a 10/10 for me and one of my all time most played games of the past half decade or so. The casual, general gamer with a passive interest in skateboarding games looking to get some Skate. or THPS nostalgia in in me would TRASH this game to filth though.

tl;dr:
Session: Skate Sim is hard to recommend to the general user, but I've personally enjoyed the janky world of Session so much it still gets a blue thumb from me.