Wear your stars with pride. This is a major work in conceptualization. Very intellectual. Some point-and-click choose-your-own-adventure games may be good and regular games. But you - Disco Elysium - you're the REAL sh*t. You're the gold standard, the landmark, the "named-after-you-award" that only the top achievers will dream to carry on their bird's nest. I haven't played something as good, and well-written since... Monkey Island? Instant cult classic. Worth every penny at full price. Casual gamers might not enjoy it, for it's the most dialogue-heavy game in the neighbourhood, and if you have trouble reading stuff, go play more arcade-ish games. It's an about-50-hour game to thoroughly complete (with a good ending and no loose ends in the major investigative tasks). Some minor quests may and probably will be left aside, not to mention other personality-archetype paths that allow for some replayability by choosing another archetype. Of course, the main story and mistery is not going to change, but for me it may be fun to replay it in a couple of years from now using a totally different archetype. But yeah, in those 50 hours I was able to be quite a completionist on my first run - given that I didn't choose hardcore mode and save-scummed a couple of times (face it - you may fail a 97% roll that was critical to progress). I didn't save-scum any fail below 90% though, and I let some 93+% fails slip through for the sake of immersion. But I'm a bit more on the side that any 95+% roll should be an auto-pass and any 5-% roll should be an auto-fail. On the other hand, I think that the possibility of these critical fails should make you less overconfident and add some random elements to your experience. Do check minimum requirements for the graphics to run smoothly. It won't run on any old laptop. Overall GREAT experience. Mind blown. Masterpiece. Get it! Now.
You get immersed in a huge voxel cyberpunk city with a great variety of sights and sounds. Between deliveries you can just explore and drink it all in, and indeed it's a beautiful creation, with a great soundtrack. The story goes kind of meh, it just keeps you going. The main character Rania is super annoying and politically correct, and you you don't get to choose her lines of dialog. In one of the latest patches they added the ability to dress her up in new outfits, which is nice. Fortunately, narrative-wise, more interesting characters were presented to counterbalance Ra-pain-ia, like the private eye android that talks in noir film narration style, and the City of Ghosts DLC antagonic duo Hayse the grungy not-giving-a-rat's-rump outlaw and Morpho the rookie CorpSec robot. The driving is nice too, but I had some trouble steering some curves without being able to see where the car (HOVA) is bearing, and the driver seat view isn't that helpful either. Overall, the game is not a big challenge; it's easy to complete. It's really driven by narrative and a huge cyberpunk city to explore and get immersed in. The fun was quite often interrupted by scene loading times between different parts of the city, but I guess that's a technical limitation that had to be imposed. I recommend it to anyone who just wants a beautiful and relaxing visual and sound experience, and not much of a 'gaming' experience.
I went straight for the classic puzzle mode. Most puzzles kinda make some sense but some are just plain dumb. Why am I still carrying a fire extinguisher 3 scenes ahead from whence I picked it up? Why am I carrying a broom I got from home? The tools like the screwdrivers make sense since Nathan is a hardware guy. It's also okay I can keep returning to Nathan's apartment to pick up hidden inventory, but I think it is way unnecessary to turn this into an (unlikely) inventory hoarder. I like the visuals and music, but it still feels a bit like cyberpunk for cyberpunk's sake.
Compared to This Is the Police 2, this one has got a lot less micro-management, is enough fun without the squad missions and not all calls will require decisions. Even so, there's lots of tough decison making, and the mayor is a real pain in the butt that will keep throwing you (Boyd) under the bus, which then leads you to Machiavellic scheming. Some problems with this game were addressed in the sequel, though: the investigation frames lack any text explanation, managing detective shifts is terrible and you can't say whether the frames you got make any sense at all, so I kept failing at progressing at cases and still not getting any new frames. Overall I liked it, but the sequel is better.
The game has got its style, creepiness and controversy. I was kinda badly influenced by it when I was a teenager, but I didn't shoot up my school, alright? The controls are kind of clunky, but it's okay considering it was an indie game from the 90's. It was ground-breaking and influenced many games. I consider it better than Postal 2, though.
I must say I enjoy the sci-fi RPGs more than the fantasy ones and I own quite a lot of them, so I can say that in the sci-fi / futuristic / post-apocalyptic department, this game is the gold standard and still holds the title. Vegas is cool, Wasteland 2 is mostly alright, Shadowrun Dragonfall is a masterpiece, I'm not a big fan of Deus Ex but I get it, Mad Max was super fun, Vampire MB was great, but Fallout 2 is unbeatable to this day. This game just got it right in so many aspects I wouldn't know where to begin! Be sure to play with the Restoration patch though!
The first of the Hitman franchise got elements from Thief, Metal Gear Solid and helped set the standard for Splinter Cell and the stealth genre. Graphics were outstanding for the year it was released. The downside were some bugs, no in-mission checkpoints and many occasions where the game just threw you into combat and ignored stealth completely, so it had a big arcade feel at times. Some of these missions were rebooted in Hitman Contracts because the original concepts and level design were very good but the game failed to deliver a truly polished and believable experience. In missions like the one in Colombia against the obvious Scarface character it's very likely that you'll have to wipe out every single enemy in the map apart from the mandatory boss fight against him. It's worth the sale price, but don't judge it too hard.
This is the first one in the Hitman franchise that was really polished, beautiful and pretty much bug-free, even though you'll always come across the odd complaint about the AI. For me it was a remarkable experience. I remember the dark setting, the music, the flashbacks, the excellent reboot of the missions that had been pretty crappy in Hitman 1 (Hong Kong Blue Lotus, the ship in Rotterdam, the hotel in Budapest and the Asylum), the final mission with a clear hint at Léon the Professional and other beautiful missions like the Russian submarine, the Meat King, the English Manor.
Excellent gameplay, mechanics, everything. It can be a very tough game to beat, so be aware of that.
I'll have to give it to age, because many PS1 games back then had just as clunky controls, but Last Revelation today is nearly unplayable to me even with a gamepad
