Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world shooter/RPG, where you can explore most of the city, parkouring around rooftops and doing your utmost to get into places. Not every flat is accessible (which I guess is due to memory constraints), but every flat you can access feels lived in. The things the game excels in are the exploration, graphics and story (not ordered in terms of importance, just want to give the review some progression). The exploration in itself is excellent and in 98% of the times - if you can look inside a room, you can enter it. Sometimes that means finding your way to the roof to pry open a door which is not really obvious, other times that is as easy as pressing "use" when the "open" prompt appears. You can choose to either jump around rooftops, walk the streets or drive. You can set up how crowded the streets are, so if crowds are not your thing ... You can further own several vehicles you can select at any time, though they may not reach you EVERYWHERE (there ARE caves you know. :-)) The graphics can be just ... gorgeous, with god rays piercing the steam rising from manholes, sun reflecting off of surfaces dynamically and shadows moving as time passes by. The characters also look VERY nice. However - unless you have a high-end machine, the deeper details may not populate for you, thus I'll leave it here - it's just pretty. :-) The story is ... cruel. In the very start you are told that Night City is where dreams come to die, and that is pretty much the tone of the entire story. Saying much more would be a spoiler, suffice it to say it is emotional and impactful. The problem is, that the game WAS released sooner than it should have been - many things we take for granted nowadays (water physics for one) are simply not present and lots of content also is not present yet, with the managers promising to add it later. If this is a problem to you, I advise waiting a year or so before buying, but as the game stands - there still is LOADS of things you can do.
Carmageddon is a game, which strives to uproot stereotypes both in terms of traditional racing games, and behavioral norms. It is rude, loud and chaotic and that is good. :-) There is a lot of swearing (for a 90s non-shooter game), rather wanton murder and pure, glorious chaos as you will be rammed by the other racers left and right. It is excellent for a few minutes of non-sence mindless fun. The graphics are dated, but this is to be expected, it got released in 1997 after all. When it got released it received pretty universal praise over "daring" (see above), having decent graphics (for the time) and, in a way, diving into the human psyche of what it could be like to live in a future, when people are bored enough to call races like this "entertainment". Hell - even the pedestrians evoke the image of an extreme version of "running with the bulls" (look it up). But ..... it was made in a very different time, when devs were still experimenting with AI and "making the game needlessly frustrating" was called "added difficulty". The controls of this game are finnicky at best - you lose control of your car most of the time and get rammed (and thus cant control it some more). The AI behaves erratically, sometimes recovering and trying to disable you, other times constantly banging their car against a wall, other times turning around and running (not always when being badly damaged). You gain money from completing races, disabling the vehicles of your opponents is the most profitable way. Disable a cop and you gain an extra rank (ranks are kinda like levels, you start at 100 and work towards rank 1 with upgrades unlocked every 25 ranks), however cops are quite hard. There are only 3 upgrades - engines, hull and offense. Furthermore theres only like 4 maps, you start from different parts of maps to give you an illusion of "hey, wasnt here before!". That being said - there is not much content. This is a 4/10 game for me - below average, building only on shock and gore.
