When seeing advertizements, there was the message that this game would be like no other. Features packed into massive gaming world full of life. Anything goes, forge your own destiny. I am only 25 hours or so in, and I have been largely unimpressed and, to be honest, saddened. The world is large, but feels so empty at the same time. The world is filled wih brainless civilians that will always, always cower and never fight back. Try to snipe an enemy and a civilian will walk in front of your rifle, stare at the wall and act like it's talking to the wall. They're just a nuisance that get in the way. Driving is atrocious. Just run from one place to the next. Variety of weapons is.... eh. While there is a variety of sorts, you'll see a good 99& of them over and over, only with different strengths and perks. Character creation was lacking. A few preset face, hair and body (sort of) presets. Not that I was hoping for 50+ options, but you only get the option of small, medium, large or none for the males. After all the publicity and bragging, somehow I was expecting more of a personalized touch for all of the body options. Give me some tweaking of the face, for crying out loud you could do that in other games that are much older than this one. So the game advertisements were on vehicles, buildings, billboards and all over the internet. There is absolutely, 100% nothing new that this game offers, which it touted (while maintaining enough of a vague description to leave your own interpretations). This is clever, but highly deceitful. I would expect this from Bethesda, Rockstar, EA and others, but CDProjekt Red, why? This game was going to be the one saving grace. The one reason for me to feel there was hope on the horizing for games, once again. Something that developers could strive to emulate in quality. After this, I'm losing hope for games and game developers altogether. Life is too short to waste falling for ploys like this, year after year. I'm moving on.
I'm not going to say this is, by any means, a horrible game. In fact, it's really quite a bit of fun. I have this on console and was excited to hear of a major update and wanted to give the PC version a try since my hardware can take it. The update has been good, from what has been seen. The new details and additions have been fun to discover. However, this game has always missed something, and it was very hard to pinpoint exactly what that thing was until recently: purpose. The planets, while diverse, start repeating in appearance very quickly. Strange, bubbly or tentacle-looking plants here and there, bouncing pineapple aliens or dinosaurs roam about aimlessly. The ruins and crahed ships all look the same the starships you can pilot recycle in appearance and the space station interiors, while somewhat populated, still seem lifeless and dull. Talking to aliens, robots and random technology yields random locations or info, then the conversation ends with either an item, reputation gain or loss but not much more than that. When I figured out what the story was, I felt there was no purpose to play and I hadn't even made much of an effort to even "beat" the game. The mishmash of information the storyline gives you can be frustrating to the point of sometimes just skipping the text just to keep finding things to do. Ships can be piloted, but they don't feel like much more than a tool. Your ship will look nearly identical to many others, and you will probably have the same weapons as the one next to you, only with or without some purchased or created boosts. This ruins the immersion and fun for me. I want to walk around my ship, enjoy the space flight and feel like what I'm doing in the game means something to the rest of the gameverse. It feels like everything you do just doesn't build up to any particular purpose. You're doing what everyone else is, with the same equipment, on the same planet/s, with the same results.
I had this game on and off of my wishlist for awhile, and ended up purchasing it here on good old GOG while it was on sale. I wasn't expecting a whole lot, since a few buyers have reviewed it saying there are bugs aplenty. The only possibe bug I have enountered was the inability to skip the intro video. That aside, this has been the most fun I have had in many years. Visually, the surroundings are absolutely gorgeous. The weapons can (and will) deteriorate in function unless you maintain them, otherwise you will have to manually cycle jams in some of the weapons. This adds to the immersion andrequirement to be smart with shot placement and use of materials, depending on the level of difficulty.
