It's a pile of hot garbage that the devs managed to scrape a thin, crusty layer of garbage off over the course of several years since release Writing and acting is top notch, but "lore-accurate" unfortunately means nothing if the lore itself is actual garbage. Dialogue is so cringy that my boomer ears occasionally just turn off, which isn't really a problem since the game on its own is impossible to understand without subtitles. Who tf abbreviates "details" to deets? Movement is garbage Driving is garbage Gunplay is stinky garbage The city's life is a poor representation of a futuristic Truman Show, and the scattered NPCs you come across are just mindless mannequins, littering the world, wandering aimlessly without motivation. There is NOTHING making this world believable or immersive. 2/5 because boobs
Visuals are mainly amazing, story is meh, characters and acting is pretty good but the motherflipping controls are what get me. You are constantly overshooting your movements, jerking back and forth, running into everything and everyone regardless if you're on foot or in a vehicle, and aiming with a controller is incredibly challenging, to put it in positive terms. It feels very Golden Eye-ish, like travelling back in time to the N64 era of controller functionality. The only real difference between mouse and keyboard and playing with a controller is that aiming is actually reasonable with the mouse. You can tweak controller settings to remove a lot of acceleration features ("bonus"), but it's a slight improvement if anything. Combat and aiming is still impossible. And by impossible I mean you 100% lack the ability to fine aim, which translates to you burning through all your AR ammo and grenades in any proper fight for dealing AOE-damage. There is one more thing that grinds my gears: the constant bombardment of sensory stimulus when you're exploring the city. The loudest fudging radios or other audiosources blasting "music" at several locations at the same time, and as you go to turn one off to chill the heck out for a second you discover there's two more playing the same junk in the area you're in. Too much constant, obnoxious clutter in the audiovisual spectrum which only feels stressful and annoying. Less clutter and more tact, please. Other than that it's pretty cool.
