I started playing Disco Elysium, and I initially thought it was sort of cool, until I very rapidly realized that it's really just a much more complicated and darker version of an old DOS game from the early 1990s called "Martian Memorandum". I found myself skipping over the dialogue, as it becomes very tedious very quickly. You're constantly being kvetched at by a big, deep baritone man's voice, with an annoying British accent. There's a lot of profanity, which I don't mind, but its use in this game is sort of childish and tries too hard to be "hip" by overusing it. There is too much text and endless conversation choices to click on. The game is also very slow, and new tasks are endlessly added. The leveling system is incredibly peculiar and ridiculous, and the overall atmosphere of the game is very dark, depressing, and nihilistic. The main character is hopelessly weak and pathetically fragile, and one of my games actually suddenly ended after two days of playing, when all he did was read a letter. No kidding. The main character actually instantly DIED only because he read a letter that was upsetting to him. I laughed out loud, gave up, and removed the game from my hard drive. Bear in mind, this is supposed to be a police officer, but he's the weakest, whiniest, and most unmanly cop you've ever seen. A minor insult can literally kill him, or send him into a mental hospital. As a player, I got sort of tired of the constant low self-esteem, insults, and crybaby whining of the narrating, as well as the atmosphere of hopelessness and self-loathing, and the game's childish political correctness. The game screeches out every profane word in the universe, but it censors the word "f*ggot". Overall, I wouldn't recommend it. I love Witcher 3 and RPGs in general, but this game is just tiring, sort of silly, and disturbing in a non-fun way.
This game is interesting in a way, but what you notice as you play for awhile is that the AI cheats. If you start to do better in the game, the AI will up the ante and artificially suddenly makes the game harder, and it makes it harder by refusing to do what it's supposed to do. I swear it's true. I played "The South" scenario six times and failed every time because that gangster idiot in the game kept buying my company. Finally, I took out bonds and built quickly, and took over the game very fast, but now, suddenly, the game wouldn't let me achieve a population of 60,000 in Kansas City by the end of 1892, which is your first requirement in order to continue playing. All six times previously, I easily got Kansas City to 60,000. Suddenly, now, when I'm whipping ass, the approval rate in Kansas City stays at 45%, no matter what I did, and the population shrank. I didn't do anything differently, but all of sudden my trains are breaking down, they ignore stop signals and just stop for no reason, and they all act like they're clueless. Also, tell me why a train going into a station with FOUR TRACKS has to wait forever until the single train parked in the station leaves. It's just so stupid. If things had actually worked this way in early America, we never would have grown past a third world country.
If you're looking for a game that has anything at all to do with Wolfenstein, then you can forget this thing. After playing for about 10 minutes I quit the game and immediately deleted it from my hard drive. The original Wolfenstein 3-D from 30 years ago was, of course, absolutely great. The sequel, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, was also outstanding. This game, though, is nothing but loud noise, endless fast moving cinematics, constant ridiculous shouting at you, stupid goals to achieve, and an all around feeling that you're having your hand held. It's a perfect example of how culture has changed over the years. The constant noise and dumb eye candy is annoying. The game is 45 GB when installed, and 44 GB of that must be cinematics and a huge library of very loud noises. It's really nothing like any of the previous Wolfenstein games. Sorry I bought it.
The fact is, this game is great in so many ways. The animation is stunning, and the game is absolutely beautiful to look at. The soundtrack is just superb. It's a mix of old jazz and ragtime, and it truly sounds like it's from an old cartoon from 1930. However, the gameplay has some really glaring flaws, namely, it's just too difficult. Cuphead assumes everyone is some sort of master Xbox player, who is a total shut-in and devotes his life to playing video games all day. The game puts you in situations where you have a very slim chance of getting out of it without losing a health point, and you only get a few. It seems like a purposeful setup designed to hurt the player's ability to finish the level. There are no skill settings, unless you opt for the easy setting when fighting a boss. However, you don't get to finish the game if you play it on the easy setting. There is also no way to save the game as you progress through a level, which is sort of ridiculous considering how hard this game is. So, what ends up happening is that you play the same level over and over and over, and it becomes maddening, headache-inducing, and tedious. If I were ever to devote the time required to actually finish this game, I doubt I'd ever play it again, and it would take me weeks to do it. My opinion: 1) Release a patch which allows a player to play on several different skill levels, and still allows the player to finish the game. 2) Allow saving the game while in the middle of a level, or have automatic checkpoints. If you die, give the player the choice of replaying the entire level, or starting from the last checkpoint. For instance, in the run and gun levels where you collect coins, make each coin a checkpoint. It's awfully maddening, tediously boring, and time wasting to have to go back and play an entire level all over again when I already collected 4 of 5 coins. Other than the ridiculous difficulty and repetitiveness of Cuphead, it's a really beautiful game and truly unique.
