For the people who finished Bloodrite and thought the base game was too cheap for how good the value was. Comes with all the music tracks between Episode 1 and 2 (including all the Alexander Brandon and licensed ones) along with artwork and a fancy new in-game UI. No real complaints to think of and again, pretty much an excuse to throw money at a developer who deserves it.
More balls than Steam would ever have with this kind of stuff.
Does CDPR deserve to be berated for crunching their staff badly? Yes Does CDPR deserve to be berated for grossly overhyping the game as "Deus Ex with GTA level wideness" when it's really more like "Witcher 3 with guns"? Yes Does 2077 deserve being criticized for being what it is, technical issues aside (which are pretty minimal at this point anyway)? Depends. If you aren't a fan of CDPR's games from the Witcher series (or more particularly, W3 due to being the fully open world one and certain aspects taken directly from it such as the itemization) then I can understand not being fond of 2077. However, it baffles me from the amount of people who screech, "W3 was such a masterpiece, where did things go wrong?" when frankly W3 was a game purely held up by its presentation and writing. The actual combat, RPG systems, open world, and pace are at best "serviceable" and at worst, about as bad as any other AAA Ubisoft trite. 2077 definitely carries over some of these traits but at least bothers to improve on a decent amount of gameplay aspects and purely the fact that it's a FPS with guns that feel good to shoot with nice sound design and feedback compared to W3's bland ass combat. Otherwise, the writing quality is still top notch (people saying this game isn't "cyberpunk" didn't do any of the side quests or missed the point of the main quest), Night City looks gorgeous, and I can bypass garbage itemization systems by investing in a reasonable crafting system. Also props for the game not being an 80s nostalgia bait take on the future. Unfortunately, the actual open world events are dull (basically W3's but distilled to just combat arenas) and the one story element that does unfortunately fail to give a real sense of urgency is a pretty big issue (not that I'm asking for a timer, just CDPR rewrite how it's presented to the player) but really, all I want is a new expansion with original content because the general ground work of this game as an action-RPG is pretty fun.
The only worthwhile AAA stealth game in years (so long as you disable hints and X-ray vision) but over five years later, IO still refuse to implement a proper offline mode so bare minimum, you don't need to be online to unlock new equipment, starting locations, outfits, etc. In other words, playing the game offline means you never unlock new content and you'll have to start with a default loadout of a regular suit and silenced pistol always. This system was disgusting on it's own, but to still have it years later and on goddamn GOG of all places shows how utterly lazy IO are at this point. Fix your shit.
>becomes one of the strongest characters on the continent >has the option to cuckold Estelle away from Joshua, Tita away from Agate, Tio away from Lloyd, etc. >now a version of himself from an alternate timeline is trying to kill him because he's too chad >awakens a new inner power to combat this alternate self, giving him heterochromia in the process >tops Japanese official popularity polls, brought his franchise to the spotlight, >made it so that the majority of the franchise's games are about him >is the writer's favorite character, writer goes on to call the previous protagonists embarrassing ... I KNEEL (also props to Durante and his company, good PC port work as always)
Probably one of the most confused games out there. After doing a decent job with TNO and TOB, it feels like Machine Games took a step in the wrong direction in almost every way possible. The biggest issue to first mention would be the overall amount of story content crammed in the player's face. A ton of cutscenes and "interactable" cutscenes generally breaks the flow of the gameplay which is bad on its own but only gets worse given it has much worse writing that the former games. The game wants to have its cake and eat it too with its portrayal of Nazis to the point where they feel like neither a threat or comedic given the obnoxiously frequent slapstick the game has. Unfortunately, even your characters either old or new feel like they have this obnoxious comedic angle as well at times to the point where it just destroys the development for people like Wyatt and Feargus from the first game. The gameplay could potentially save it but it unfortunately can't either. Gunplay itself feels good to use but the level design is so screwed now, expect to be in cover a lot if you don't want to get shredded by bullets on harder difficulties (and stealth has barely been touched on either so it's just the boring takedown system like most modern games). Perk system is there and is still as obnoxious as in TNO (in fact, you're doing even more menial tasks like just playing the game normally so you'd unlock things that you should have from the get go). Most of all, even when you feel like you can start enjoying the gameplay for what it is, the story rips you right out of that to cram its story in your face because the narrative is DEFINITELY why I play a violent over the top FPS. Just play RTCW if you want the best Wolfenstein has to offer. Better level design, actual Indiana Jones tongue and check attitude at times, and BJ at his best as a mute while not being a mopey as hell.
After AC7 was a fun but sort of disappointing game overall compared to its predecessors, I jumped back onto the PS2 games as the usual replay games for the arcade fix due to a variety of things they did better. Then comes Project Wingman from an extremely dedicated fan of the series who's been working on the PW project since 2015 or so and kicks down the door with his product and honestly, I can assuredly say I'm going to be playing this one a lot more than I'll ever replay 7. As the title of this review implies as well, I hope Project Aces are taking a few notes for whatever AC8 is. Pros: -Flight model has the right amount of weightiness to it so every aircraft feels distinct. -Gameplay in general feels on point with Ace Combat with some QoL additions like holding multiple SP weapons. -Music is ridiculously good for the budget and on par with the best of AC at times. -Banter between fellow pilots is absolutely on point with the right amount of cheese and seriousness needed to be convincing. -Conquest mode is very fun on a replay level if you like the core gameplay. -Final boss on a gameplay perspective is better than any Ace Combat final boss (bold words but I mean it). -Superplane that isn't DLC and severely nerfed for a crappy multiplayer barley anyone plays. Cons: -Story can suffer due to a lack of presentation of context and information at times. The lack of usual cutscenes were due to the small budget unfortunately. -Game sometimes have a few graphical effects that look weak or aren't covered up as well as other (though given some weather effects just outright look better than 7 at times, I'm willing to cut slack). $25 is an absolute steal for what's currently in here and the dev already has plans to add more free content with aircrafts not in the game initially (A-10, Su-47, Rafale, etc.). It'd be an absolute disservice to not support a project like this if you have any care for AC or arcade flight games.
Played it on Gamepass on launch and frankly thankful I didn't pay more than $1 for it. Comes off like the devs did the bare minimum to emulate New Vegas into Unreal Engine 4 and then basically stopped putting in effort after. General list of grievances include: -Character building seems neat at first given the amount of skills until you realize incrementally increasing skill barely do a thing and have to level them up to 20/40/60/80/100 points to have an actual important effect happen which kills what could be more mixed builds. Feats are some of the most generic live seen in a RPG period. -Too many damn items in the open world to be remotely challenging. Unless Supernova difficulty changed that (played it on Hard), I'd imagine it's a cakewalk with how easy it is to steal food and find water (hell, there's a freaking river near the first town that you can sip out of anytime). -Weapons are uncreative as there are literal "Mk2/3" versions of guns/melee weapons to find meaning there is an objectively better gun to use all the time (meaning unlike New Vegas where you can do a literal BB gun stealth run even late game, Outer Worlds has none of that due to its constricting builds and weapon variety). -Writing feels extremely subpar and world building can basically be summed up with "corporations are bad" theme without anything else to it. -Characters are mostly one dimensional with plot twists you can see a mile away if they even have one. Only ones I liked were Vicar (which is just a poor man's Virgil from Arcanum) and SAM who doesn't even get a side quest other than repair him. Only reason why I don't give it one star is that it as a game is functional and was generally bug free from my experience which given Obsidian's track record is surprising (though on the other hand, given how basic the game is, one could argue it'd be a wonder if it did have big technical issues). Also it was only 30 hours after doing most side quests so it didn't waste my time by much.
