Ghostrunner is a fun little action game centered around one big mechanics: one hit kills. You will die in one hit, but so will all the enemies. You're constantly outnumbered, but you have so many tools at your disposal that the enemies will be kind of outmatched if you're playing right. The game itself says it best. It's tough, but fair. It plays a lot like a fast paced, melee version of Superhot. However there is one big issue. Boss fights. There are 4 total (this isn't a long game) and every single one of them is terrible. Not only does it completely break up the lightning fast pacing of the game, but as you can imagine it's not fun fighting something with a health bar when you die in one hit. The boss fights completely go against the whole point of the game, and not only that, none of them are fun to fight.
Despite all the hype from youtubers/social media, the game still isn't that great. It's so much better than it was at launch but still, all they really did was turn a 2/10 game into a 5/10 game. For the good: The game gets updates frequently, there is a fairly large mod scene, and if you can get past the ugly soulless world and dull planet generation, there is a fair bit of content to keep you busy. You can probably spend a long time with base building alone. As a whole the game now resembles what was advertised back in the day. For the bad: the graphics are still ugly, there are so many bugs, the gameplay loop is a boring grind and worst of all: the planet and creature generation is still just as awful as it was at launch. Once you've landed on a handful of planets, you've basically seen everything the game has to offer. The entire gimmick of this game is the procedural generated worlds but they never let the system go wild. I've seen more landscape variety in Minecraft of all things. As a side point, I think it's really funny how people are praising Hello Games for this "redemption story". People seem to forget that the reason NMS flopped in the first place was because Sean Murray lied to everyone's faces for MONTHS, and then vanished when people realized. Yeah it's nice he eventually gave us the game he falsely advertised, but we shouldn't be letting him off the hook and treating him like a saint for being a serial liar who eventually delivered on his lies. You want a real gaming redemption story? Look up the history of Final Fantasy XIV. Unlike NMS, that's a game that really did end up becoming a masterpiece in the end
Fantastic game but massively overrated. This game has a very dedicated community fueled purely by nostalgia, and they'll have you going in believing that Morrowind is the best TES game and one of the best RPGs ever made....and it really isn't. The community also seems to have some kind of inferiority complex considering every positive review just HAS to bring up Oblivion and Skyrim as if they've got a point to prove, even though if a game really is the best you shouldn't have to compare it to anything. As for the game itself... The gameplay is a weird and janky. It's CRPG style dice roll combat, but you have free movement and it's in a first person perspective so it feels off. There's also no animations for enemies blocking or dodging attacks, so if an attack misses it just goes right through. Quest design, dungeon design and world design are horrendous compared to later titles. Dungeons especially as they are generally only a single room connected to a single hallway. Most of the quests are either a boring fetch quest or a boring escort quest. The game also really hasn't aged well graphics wise, even with mods like OpenMW. However, there is a lot of good: The setting is one of the most unique in gaming history. The story is fantastic and the lore is some of the most interesting to ever exist in an RPG. The gameplay systems, while janky and odd, allow for a lot of customization and crazy things. You've probably seen videos of people jumping from one end of the map to the other. Or one shotting god-like characters such as Vivec. In conclusion, if you've never played this before just go in knowing what to expect. Don't expecting the best game ever made, because this is not it. Don't go in expecting the amazing quests of Oblivion or the top tier world design of Skyrim. This game is almost 20 years old and it really shows. Install OpenMW, read up on how the combat systems work, and then go in expecting a dated, but still solid CRPG experience
The Outer Worlds feels like Obsidian tried their hand at making a Bethesda-style RPG, while completely forgetting what makes Bethesda games so enduring, so it just ends up feeling mediocre and soulless. The game's story, sidequests, characters and themes can all be boiled down to "CORPORATION BAD", and that's it. There's no depth, no nuance, no shades of grey. The game is written like a cartoon where a band of witty, quirky heroes take on a big bad evil corporation. Compare it to something like New Vegas where the question of which faction is best for the wasteland is a massive, diverse issue with no clear answer. Makes you wonder what happened to Obsidians writing department On top of that, the world feels dead. There's nothing to see, nothing to discover. The maps are small, and the game itself is over in only about 15-20 hours despite having an asking price of 60 dollars.
If I was a member of the CP2077 dev team I would be pissed at the CDPR marketing team. They overhyped and oversold this game so much, vastly overselling what was in it with one of the largest and most expensive marketing campaigns in video game history However, despite not being anything near what they advertised it as, it's still a solid game. The story is good, graphics are some of the best I've ever seen, combat is okay. The real gem of this game is the sidequests. Almost all of them are fantastic, some of which I'd even consider to be among the best sidequests I've ever seen in a game (Especially the Sinnerman quest chain and Dream On). Only complaints I have are: 1. The game is too short. I finished the entire main story + almost every sidequest + about a quarter of the gigs in about 30 hours. The main story especially is so short (maybe about 10 hours or less of content). you reach the point of no return very quickly. It's not bad, but it's far from the 100-200 hour long epic that Witcher 3 was. I wish CDPR just ignored the people that couldn't handle W3's length. It's crazy that people will spend thousands of hours playing games like League or WoW, but can't handle a 100 hour long single player game 2. The game is still very buggy. I've had to reload so many times because things would break, or get stuck, or wouldn't load. You'd think that things would be fine after multiple patches + all those delays. But overall it's a good game. Just don't go in expecting the GTA+Deus Ex+FNV hybrid they promised. Don't go in expecting anything groundbreaking or revolutionary. Just go in expecting a solid futuristic RPG that won't be as good as CDPRs last game.
