Recent reviews by Barricadas

Every year, reviews for FIFA are filled with "same game different number" remarks but I really wish that was true. Every winger has the close control that would make Ronaldinho seem like just another guy on the pitch, every midfielder's passing is better than Scholes, and every striker has finishing on par with Lewandowski. It doesn't matter if their ratings are 90 or 60, only thing that will matter is the difference between physical attributes like strength and pace. On the opposite end, defenders are truly useless and slide tackling is a coin toss between a foul or some Baresi level mastery.

Last FIFA I played was 18 and even on highest difficulty I don't remember encountering such ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ where a third division player could pinpoint 50 meter through passes between three defenders. I refrained from playing FUT on 18, as the complaints I have with FIFA 22 were common on FUT but single player and seasons mode were mostly realistic. FUT gameplay has become the only gameplay mode on 22 and the release date of this game officially marks the date this franchise is dead to me.

RIP FIFA 98-22.

I really enjoyed this game and I think that my playtime proves it. However, I feel that this enjoyment comes from being a part of a specific generation rather than the game's own strengths. When I was a kid, all of my friends stopped whatever we were doing to watch Schumi's legendary, record breaking 2002 Championship in a country where football is inconceivably more important than any other sport. I also remember a day at the mall when I found a demo Nintendo DS with Mario Kart at a store, playing and mastering it for hours while my parents were shopping. Last one is skipping school countless times to play Blur (2010) with my friends at an internet cafe, finally thinking that PC had a viable Mario Kart competitor.

If at least two of these memories somehow resonate with you, I believe that you will be enjoying F1 Race Stars for what it is, even though you won't have to squint to see its shortcomings. Still, Codemasters' charm offensive does a good job masking them at least for the first couple of hours. Each race begins with a drone-view cutscene of the track and then drivers, one by one, confirm readiness at the grid. These animations are really smooth and adds much needed character in a game like this.

On that note, I know it is a weird thing to say in a racing or kart game but one thing that really sold me on the game in my first 10 minutes was the helmet. It's not like I think about helmets in racing games much, but I would have expected races starting with helmets already on, or with a simple animation showing that the driver puts it on. Instead, developers attributed pet like behaviour to the helmet, almost making it a living being with various animations. Of course after countless races, the novelty factor wears off but it still kept me attached to a thing that serves no gameplay purpose, which I consider to be an exemplary display of good game design.

I wish the same attention to detail carried on to the power-ups. There are a few F1 related ones like DRS which allows you to push other drivers around without stuttering, a safety car that limits the speed of the driver in the first place allowing others to catch up and rain that limits speed and makes cars harder to control. Unfortunately, other power-ups are mostly generic bubbles: heat seeking bubble, ricochet bubble, trap bubble, pulse bubble et cetera. These could have been easily replaced with forced pit-stop, forced spin-out (oil leak maybe?), drop puddle. Even I can come up with these even though I haven't watched F1 in years and I don't understand why Codemasters preferred generic bubbles instead of power-ups similar to these ones.

The problems with power-ups are not limited to their authenticity. Most of the power-ups will serve the purpose to halt your speed for an extended period of time and game already fails at providing a sense of speed if you play any other class than 3000CC. If you are racing really well and start to grow a considerable distance with other drivers, you will definitely get hit with safety car and rain power-ups combined (maybe more than once if the first combo failed to close the gap) which will limit your speed to 10% of what you can normally do. Add the fact that it only takes two hits to bring your car to a crawl and shortcuts that will be available to drivers when they are behind are extremely overpowered on most tracks and will let them skip huge portions of the track, the only sensible strategy becomes keeping 4th or 5th place for most of the race and making a last minute push when there is only half length of the last lap left (incidentally, this is one of the biggest problems with Mario Kart as well).

Game is mostly bug-free and I only had two crashes (one of which was during the 8th race of Endurance II cup, the longest championship of the game resetting all my progress but no, I don't hold a grudge) so it is safe to say that QA did a relatively good job on this front. But I don't think anyone at Codemasters played their own game upon launch as there are so many balancing issues that could be easily resolved. For example, why not make safety car a situational power-up that can only be used once in one race? Or, why couldn't they make unlocked shortcuts shorter and more dangerous with added risk of falling or taking extra damage?

I started playing as Massa due to my love for Ferrari, but after much travail, I found out that bonuses granted by teams are another extremely unbalanced part of the game. Massa, for example, gets the ability to use backwards seeking bubbles, which are somewhat useful. On the other hand Red Bull drivers will get countless boosts for being in the slipstream, almost guaranteeing a second place and that is something not to be scoffed at in this game.

Years later, I still remember which AI driver tended to do better in which period in NFS: Porsche Unleashed. These rivalries with the AI is one of the most important things that single player arcade racing games can offer, as there is no other way to create your own stories or being challenged after you put in enough time to the game. With so many iconic drivers in the game, I expected AI drivers to favour some tracks and championships based on their nationalities and real life performances, putting up a greater fight points-wise but this is not the case. Coming second or third in every game will suffice to win the championship most of the time and without a driving force (pun intended) you have no reason to improve.

At this point of my playthrough, I decided to try something else. I mostly avoid time trials in racing games (if it's not a rally game) but due to its unique mechanics time trials of F1 Race Stars are extremely fun. You need to optimize your run by memorizing where the boosters are, which corners you can cut with those boosters and which cut corners provide the most bang per your boost. Even when you get the gold medal, great track design and booster placement leaves you thinking what else could have been optimized in your run, leading to more daring attempts and strategies.

Apart from my previously mentioned issues with shortcuts, track design and art style are some of the best I have seen. Especially Italy, Singapore and Monaco are a delight to look at and these three really capture the bourgeois, unreachable nature of F1 really well. Other eight are a tier below those, with muted colours that reveal the age of the graphics more, nevertheless all of them apart for Britain are extremely memorable. Applying the knowledge gained in time trial mode to the campaign also gives you a appreciation for track design during the campaign, as some shortcuts and corners are impossible to perfect due to AI meddling in campaign.

Overall, F1 Race Stars is a game of extreme highs and lows and it would have been much easier to recommend this if necessary balancing pass was made even after the launch. With the Steam Deck just around the corner, PC scene is in desperate need of a good kart game and if there is a new F1 Race Stars with more content and more attention to detail, I believe that it will do really well.

P.S. The game really needs more unlockables. I especially wanted to use the safety car in campaign but unfortunately it was not an unlockable.
P.P.S. There is a mod[www.racedepartment.com] that upgrades the lineups and teams to 2016 Championship but it does not change driver models, so it might be a bit jarring.

Disclaimer: This review also talks in length about the original ME, if you haven't played it yet skip this review but definitely give it a try over Catalyst.

First Mirror's Edge game was a revelation. I did not think that I could enjoy platformers before and as I stated in my previous review of the original, before Mirror's Edge, the only platformer that I played to completion was Prince of Persia (2003). Things changed since then and I have been more willing to give action platformers a chance, I finished and thoroughly enjoyed games like the original Psychonauts, Remember Me, and Contrast etc. and tried several others.

Original Mirror's Edge was also the game of several firsts for me. It was the first time I played a game with a truly strong, determined female protagonist that is not a male psyche ham-fisted in a female body model. It was also the game that taught me the basics of good level design, especially how designers subtly nudge players towards the right direction. Most importantly, it was my first encounter with minimalist world design on a 3D world and I still remember being stunned with how strong, bright base colours (R,G,B) contrasted with utopian, white-painted, glass and steel buildings, adding to the feeling that you, the protagonist, are disconnected from this seemingly unassuming utopia.

As a game of many firsts, it was also the first game in the series and had all the flaws that came with being the first game. Although the first game laid a solid foundation, there were what I felt like seemed obvious ways for improvement. World's lore had been laid out but not fleshed out, especially November Movement required much more emphasis for the upcoming game. Level design was tight and brilliant, but employing all our skills and experience gained throughout the game within an open world would elevate the game to another level. Interactions with the world and its people were limited and I had a feeling that an unassuming utopia would hold many secrets to be revealed.

You may have noticed that I keep avoiding the enormous white elephant in the room, which is Catalyst. There is a good reason for that. Playing Catalyst in 2021, seven years after I played Mirror's Edge, is like meeting your high school best friend after years of separation. They may look the same, they may have many resident behavioural patterns that they share with their older self, providing a sense of familiarity. But, they are definitely not the same and this makes you uneasy as you sit at a table, desperately trying to remember what you had in common with this stranger.

The worst part is this could have been completely avoided, if one of the worst decisions made in recent gaming history did not compel DICE to make a reboot rather than a direct sequel to the original. Everything that is exciting with the first game have been replaced with shadows of their former selves, especially Faith. A strong-willed woman with high self-esteem has been replaced with an easily influenced, doubtful teenager that has no redeeming qualities other than being a good runner.

Other than completely ruining her character, the most jarring part of Faith has been the phenomenon I call "Batman ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥". Faith in the first game, had no issues with blatant killing (with firearms) to achieve her goals. Catalyst has no firearms and it is implied that hand to hand combat only serves the purpose of incapacitation, with Faith proudly declaring that "I'm not an assassin" during one of the story missions. On the other hand, she does not seem to notice the hypocrisy of causing blunt force trauma by jumping with her feet out on a guy's head from five metres high, possibly causing death, coma or other physical disabilities. She also does not seem to care that her kicks often cause KrugerSec personnel to fall down from great heights, one of the especially common places being from the top of skyscrapers.

Even if we disregard "Batman ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥", Faith's aversion to violence does not make sense from an actions and consequences point of view. Faith "That cartoonishly evil company may have killed my whole family, imprisoned my friends and colleagues but I won't be radicalized because I have a moral compass that always points south" Connors should have been radicalized a long time ago. I understand that the mainstream media employed the "killing is bad" motto throughout their history to preserve the status quo, as they would be the first ones against the wall if revolution came. But even a slightly inquisitive look should also show that this motto does not apply to the class in power, as seen in how KrugerSec does not even offer a customary letter of apology printed on company stationery for the death of Faith's family and friends.

The extent of this laughable counterrevolutionary propaganda reaches a new height with characters that employ revolutionary violence are introduced not with the bombing of a military or a corporate target, but with the bombing of a mall. Even at the height of "armed propaganda" and "urban guerrilla" movements during the 70's, proponents of this course of action refrained from targeting civilians even if they worked directly for the "enemy". As seen in 1972 Springer Group bombing, civilians were made aware of the planted explosives beforehand (strikingly, similar to how Faith herself proposes at one point during a strike against a corporate building) as the only purpose was propaganda value, disruption and monetary loss. Civilian injuries or deaths during this period of violence can mostly be tracked back to security forces or upper company hierarchy not taking bomb warnings seriously.

DICE may have seen equating methods of religious fundamentalist violence with revolutionary violence as an extremely valuable opportunity for their counterrevolutionary propaganda, especially considering that ISIS's reign of terror was during was still new in people's minds when Catalyst was released. They may also have repented for the remorseless copkilling of the first game, which was untraditional for a linear singleplayer game where story and player character's actions are held to a different standard than multiplayer or open world mayhem games, especially from such a well known developer in AAA space. Anyway, this has been done so many times through various art mediums that it is not surprising anymore (nevertheless, I still maintain that Operation Mindcrime is a brilliant album).

We may not know the exact reasoning on DICE's part, but one thing is for sure, without Faith's strong convictions and her lack of determination to follow them through makes the story uncompelling. The three evils that Faith is stuck between does not need to be vantablack. I mainly focused on one side due to my political convictions and the tiredness of the subject, but rest of the options in the political landscape of the runners and in general, City of Glass are not portrayed any better. KrugerSec/Conglomerate as the representatives of the ruling class could be a lesser shade of black if it was shown to the player that they were at least providing loCaste (game's version of the proletariat) some affordable luxury goods and a general sense of class mobility. Unaffiliated runners could have been peacefully demonstrating or organizing around NGOs, instead of waiting heedlessly for their imminent annihilation. In our world, distinct shade of grey present in all political factions allows bourgeoisie their continuous rule, and its absence in Catalyst is one of the greatest reasons why the story falls flat in comparison to the first game. Catalyst's world is not an unassuming utopia anymore and the game suffers for it.

I have much more to say about Catalyst but Steam unfortunately only allows me this much space in reviews. If you want to read my other comments about the game, you can visit the comments section.

I am so conflicted about this one. Lately, reality shows in the country I live have been invaded by a parasitic subclass of middlemen called real estate investors, purchasing apartments or detached houses and "improving" those existing buildings with cheap but minimalist furniture while fixing the bare minimum. These little parasites, who are a level below of real estate developers but still higher than realtors, equipped with their petty dreams of climbing the social ladder, contributed massively to the gentrification of long standing neighbourhoods, buying people out of their homes and ultimately designing new, homogenous residential zones where no sign of diversity or poverty can be observed.

Thus a question arises: Barri, baby why did you put 14.5 hours into this game in just two days? Well, the answer is simple. I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ loved designing and decorating houses in The Sims games. Improving the only place where one can escape from most of the daily humdrum is an exciting feeling that I do not quite get from anything else. I think, for this particular reason, The Sims franchise has been one of the most unique examples in the gaming landscape, where there are thousands of fans who wouldn't engage with the core mechanics of the game but would put in countless hours to a very small subsection of mechanics and I have been one of them since the release of the first Sims game.

As these two points caused an internal conflict between my core values and what I enjoy doing while gaming, I should have expected that the rest of the game would have been conflicting in a similar manner. The reason why House Flipper is an obvious choice over The Sims (the obviously more polished and varied alternative) for me is the fact that all development and design is in first person and this is much more enjoyable as you hit some walls with a sledgehammer and see them crumble, or mount a sink and assemble it yourself, or the fact that fixing the ruined paint on the walls is going to take some time, paint and plaster. This relation between manual labour and its rewards has an effect of keeping things grounded for a while, and much more preferable to moving around the plot like an omnipotent god creating havoc over land, only limited by a menial thing called budget.

Nevertheless, this first person POV engagement with rewards of manual labour comes with its own detriments. It is not possible to dig the ground and lay foundations to expand the house or to add/remove floors, which is a tremendously important part of developing a plot. Inclusion of this one mechanic would have laid the foundations to more mechanics, especially bureaucratic part of the business, obtaining permits, adhering to building codes, handing out bribes, and so on. Also, due to the inherent repetitiveness of manual labour, for example, while you are painting a large room by hand like an automaton, it becomes really easy to think about the lack of inherent valuation of houses based on their location, sociocultural environment and gentrification level. While the game feels more realistic compared to The Sims, it still resides closer to fantasy on the spectrum of realism and fantasy for these reasons, surfacing another point of conflict within the game.

Nate Kiernan's brilliant article last year "Anarcute, Tonight We Riot, and the Optics of Revolution"[kritiqal.com] on Kritiqal last year has led me to think more on my own perspective about what constitutes a good game. I believe that in everyday life there exists a tangled web of economic, cultural, social relations that casts a vaguely perceivable shadow over all of us like The Citadel in City 17, but invisible. I do not expect that a game could completely untangle this web and present us a clear understanding of these relations and visible reactions of the web itself when a player interacts with it forcefully, even when the scope of the game is limited to just one of the many façades of society (in House Flipper, developing and selling houses). To be clear, I especially do not expect this from a game developed by just a 10 people team.

Improbability of achieving a complete untangling does not mean that we should not even attempt to do it. After reading Kiernan's article, Sid Meier's Pirates! had seen an exponential rise of its ranking in my list of favourite games of all time. It already had a place there due to its charm, uniqueness of period and fun, and varied gameplay mechanics but when looking at it retrospectively, it is apparent that Firaxis had made an attempt to untangle this web, and it is the primary reason why it still is a timeless masterpiece.

In Pirates!, players are able to observe the gameworld's reactions to their actions. To provide an example, a couple of sunk grain ships headed from a small settlement to a major city could cause economic downfall of the said city, which in turn could lead to a successful invasion by a major power, increasing their influence and presence in a part of the world that was not previously open to them. This happening will create further actions and their consequences. The player does not have to intervene at all for all this to happen or could just be one of the cogs that sets this chain of events into motion. This does not fully entangle the web, but at the very least shows an understanding of real life relations between economics and politics and their enjoyable translation into a simulation game. Even an endeavour at this creates complex interactions between various mechanics, which is one of the strongest arguments for building a digital sandbox.

House Flipper, due to its choice of subject, has a tremendous potential that could have created a similar experience. Housing being one of the basic necessities for human survival already provides a solid basis, adding the abstract but actual needs and desires of the people that live in those houses and their interactions with their immediate environment (neighbourhoods) would only enrich the game to the point that it would not be possible to compare it with another anymore. To observe why people want to move to a certain house, how gentrification affects the surrounding houses, limitations and change of preferences caused by economic trends even before directly interacting with the gameworld itself would make a true sandbox experience that truly befits the name. To consider that not only housing crisis is rampant in most western societies, it was also a major contributor to the economic crisis in 2008, pointing out that the game's choice of subject is not only relevant but also a current one, adding to its potential.

I think that it is now quite apparent that my frustrations are not limited to House Flipper itself but I have a culmination of annoyances over the years with the so called sandbox genre as a whole. I do not imply that House Flipper is lying about its premise, it exactly achieves what it sets out to achieve with a couple of user experience development, and more features needed here and there. If you want a first person Sims that focuses on houses themselves, this is the game. My lamentations are solely about its potential and especially about how the indie scene, where we expect creativity and bravery to be, mostly refrains from taking on larger challenges that are not directly related to programming of a game but with untangling the web. This results in an eerie feeling that is caused by a mismatch of realistic presentation (thanks to the progress in game engines in the last couple of years) while the game is located in a fantasy world that is so far away.

If I recall correctly, developers have made a couple of promises that the most of the requested features will be resolved in the upcoming Luxury DLC but I think three years after release, this is the best time for them to move on to House Flipper 2 with an actual digital sandbox.

What a surprisingly brilliant game. My expectations were extremely low when I bought this and frankly it would have continued to sit in my wishlist if it wasn't cheaper than a bottle of beer, but it would have been such a shame to miss out on this.

If you enjoy older Pixar movies Maize is a must play. If you enjoy the idea of an angry Soviet teddy bear constantly berating you, Maize is a must play. If you think that as humanity we should aim to create sentient corn as soon as possible for reasons only known to yourself, Maize is a must play. And if you think that you would not enjoy a point and click adventure game (like me) don't worry. In Maize you won't be struggling to find out what the high as a kite gamedev was thinking about when they were creating ridiculous match two items puzzles.

All creativity of Finish Line Games has been poured into the story and atmosphere and puzzles can be solved through using your common sense most of the time. This allows the player to fully appreciate wackiness of the game and makes the game so accessible without completely turning into a walking simulator. I really like the balance between gameplay and discovery the devs have achieved here and this balance should really be the gold standard for walking simulators and light adventure games.

I wish it was much more popular as I want to see more of Maize and a sequel (or a prequel) would be fantastic. Four hours I spent in this game was extremely fun but still I want more.

Corny/10

I was complaining to a friend about how Cities Skylines lacked any "soul", even after installing 724 mods. I really wanted a city builder game that oozes character and his recommendation was The Settlers, a franchise I always heard about but never had taken that final step into.

The first ten hours in the campaign where you learn the mechanics, which is practically a mix of tutorial and prologue is amazing. I felt like I could put hundreds of hours into this game as I watched my blobby peasants walk about, tending to their fields. I was completing missions around one and a half hours, which could have taken fifteen minutes if I went straight for the objective, planning streets, trying to establish optimised production lines and just watching my villagers roam. I thought that I finally found the game I have been looking for so long.

This soon changed when the game introduced victory points. I no longer had time to enjoy the atmosphere, I had to get over to the finish line before my rival did. Production lines turned sloppy, street planning flew right out the window and if I wanted to progress in the campaign I had to do nothing but rush the production of acolytes, which are no different than having an instant win button. I never imagined that I could feel hurt while playing a city builder but The Settlers 7 managed to accomplish this somehow.

Incidentally, I have to say that I hate timed missions. I hate them even more than underwater levels. Timed missions just force the player into doing a thing in a very limited way, which completely takes any incentive away from the player. The victory points system in this game is just a glorified series of timed missions, which is directly at odds with the game's relaxed, easy going nature. Watching your builders absentmindedly carry a log and a stone to build another lodge that will probably get you the last victory point to win the mission becomes no longer an enjoyable experience but an infuriating one.

I have to admit, one of the best strategy games I have ever played, Rise of Nations, also had timed missions in its campaign but the challenges and starting conditions were varied enough and the underlying design made sense to why there was a time limit. If victory conditions were more focused, for example "just deliver x amount of y to the port before your rival", The Settlers 7 could have been at least a tolerable experience, even with its timer, but the game asks you to do so many different things at the same time that the joy fleets away.

Even then, I cannot say that this is a bad game, even though I had to contact Ubisoft support because the game was not registering on my Uplay account (solution: run Steam in administrator mode for the first time that you launch the game). This is just such a missed opportunity for me and the obvious clash between artistic direction and gameplay mechanics has turned into something that I could no longer dismiss. I believe if I had a friend to play this together with, just building cities, exploiting resources (and peasants), the game would have been much better.

I hope that The Settlers 8 (if and when it is released) will not have such a glaring personality disorder. The Settlers 7, at the very least, convinced me to give it a try.

I played this in possibly the worst and nevertheless, the best time to play it, on a Sunday afternoon, when I already woke up depressed about the fact that I was going to go to work next day. Mosaic is an extremely empathetic emotional game for those of us suffering under capitalist yoke. It is depressing on the surface but you can see that there is so much more to it when you are done with the game.

Politically, there is an explicit mishmash of ideas, but not in a bad way. While playing Mosaic, I often thought about neoluddism, Jodi Dean's idea of neofeudalism and traditional Marxism and my daily suffering in relation to these political philosophies. For example, first half of the ending demonstrated a clear understanding of Marxist interpretation of relations of production but suddenly the game went back themes, which I consider as neoluddist. I believe that these discrepancies are deliberate as I often witness the same discrepancies in my immediate circle.

In recent times I have seen so many previously dedicated Marxists embracing neoluddism, placing all the blame on the "machines", and just dreaming of a day when they can move to a village and "work the earth", while still dreaming of a revolution. There is something comforting in the idea that even though the working class has incrementally lost its international ties we all still feel and do the same things and we are not alone. For a game in which one of the most prominent themes is loneliness in a modern society, subtly reminding the player the fact that "as long as we have our class positions we will never be truly alone" is such an amazing achievement of video game story telling.

It is extremely saddening to see that Mosaic mostly flew under the radar, which is perplexing since Krillbite's previous game The Plan was a relatively popular masterpiece. I believe that every worker needs to play this audiovisual masterpiece, especially if they are in dire need of some empathy or need a stimulant to think deeper about their circumstances.

This was probably my first preorder. I felt that if the game turned out to be the worst game I played or didn't even run, 10 dollars I paid for The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3 felt so much like stealing that the extra 60 would still not cover the amount I would pay for the enjoyment I got from them.

After putting 160 hours on Cyberpunk 2077 I can say that it fully deserves the full price I paid for it on its own merits and after so many disappointments in the recent AAA releases that I had, this is the highest praise that I can give to this game. I'll start by saying that I love urban spaces, I love finding alleyways that I have never seen before in my real life neighbourhood, I love seeing all those lit up windows at night and I love that there are so many details and slices of life in every corner in a city. A city, to me, is the greatest work the humanity can achieve due to its intricacy, its organic nature and how it reflects the "human condition". Since the Liberty City of GTA IV, most games have been a disappointment in this regard, for example Skyrim's cities consisted of 20 NPC's and copy pasted guards, Los Santos of GTA V was just a sanitary (and small) theme park that just could not function as a city if it was translated into real life, and San Francisco of Watch_Dogs 2 was utterly devoid of character and charm. Previous game of CD Projekt Red, The Witcher 3 came close to what I expect from a digital urban space, Novigrad (and to some extent Toussaint) were brimming with life and had all the details that a real urban space might have but failed in size.

The real protagonist of the marketing campaign for this game was the city itself, especially in Night City Wire episodes, V and his or her story was in the background and rightly so because this game, even with its minor issues has been the greatest city that has ever been built in a game. Every district, even every alleyway has so many details that I was amazed that my GTX 1070 could even run it (at a stable FPS rate too by the way!).

There is a never seen before verticality in Night City. When GTA IV came out, I was impressed how many buildings there were that you could enter but most of them were just copy paste jobs with no real character to them. In 12 years that passed since its release I had expected that this would be polished and taken further but this did not happen until now. Night City on the other hand, does not only offer tons of well-designed buildings that you can enter, but completely opens up a new appreciation for the city once you get the leg cyberware that allows you to double or power jump (you probably should get one of those early). You can probably spend hours parkouring around buildings while focusing on every little detail that has been lovingly crafted and placed. Even some streets have multiple levels and while this is a common occurrence in real cities, I never noticed their absence in digital urban spaces until I visited Night City. Not only verticality distinguishes Night City from others, at 160 hours I know that there are probably hundreds of alleyways and tens of shops/bars/buildings that I never visited and even though I have completed the game at this point, I look forward to going back to the game and dissect every little detail in those and the small stories they tell. Especially whoever designed the graffiti around the city deserves a raise as I often found myself looking at those admiringly, wishing that the city I live in had some of those.

Gameplay wise, I was not expecting much, just a Witcher in 2077 and this would have satisfied me but the game we got is a beautiful lovechild of The Witcher and Deus Ex. Every minor quest offers multiple paths you can take (if you have the necessary skill level on body or technical ability) and I had fun exploring every one of them that I could have found but I cannot deny that this level of freedom sometimes makes the game too easy and if you cannot go through some path you can always find alternatives that allows you to skip most of the level and reach the objective quickly.

Game's difficulty level (I played on hard) is not helped by the fact that there are so many perks you can obtain to transform yourself into a demigod that one shots the opponent most of the time (I was doing 400k damage with my sniper rifle at the end of the game) but enemies can often one shot you as well if you are playing on hard or very hard. If you are an experienced player, I absolutely recommend picking one of those two difficulty levels. There is a good amount of weapon variety and unique reload and equip animations, and they make you feel like the most badass merc in the city. You can also use different hacks to keep your hands relatively clean, but I won't spoil this part as I loved seeing how those most of those hacks worked for the first time.

Story and the characters are amazing. I did not think that I would enjoy this game as much as I did enjoy The Witcher games, as I am annoyed by the rampant individualism of the modern world and most of the themes of the Cyberpunk genre hit too close to home, but they found a good balance between the dissolving sense of community and aforementioned rampant individualism. I did not expect that the so many of the character side quests would dabble on the same issue that has been driving me mad and this theme was executed perfectly without stepping on too many tropes of the modern storywriting. For these side quests, I feel that the only thing is missing is a proper closure or change that impact the world, but it is also possible to consider this as a deliberate choice as V is just a passing merc and not the main character. One of the most groundbreaking parts of Cyberpunk 2077 is that, usually you feel like a companion in other people's main quests and this is extremely refreshing to see a game where the world does not revolve around player character. I feel like this should have been fleshed out more with a Stalker like system where every gang/community has its explicit objectives, and the player can see and impact this dynamic struggle for power or survival but maybe this is expecting too much from a game that already achieves so much.

The main story is more related to traditional Cyberpunk genre themes, especially transhumanism, libertarian erosion of the state (or in better terms absolute corporate dictatorship) and artificial intelligence, but how they are presented elevates Cyberpunk 2077 from another example of the genre to a unique experience. Compared to newer Deus Ex games, where these themes are so on the nose that these issues become a mundane, everyday thing, Cyberpunk 2077, with the inclusion of Johnny Silverhand, approaches these themes with so much clarity and simplicity that you never feel the necessity to take a breather to adjust your suspension of disbelief. You may feel like the main story should have been longer and I thought of the same from time to time but at least there is a cohesive story that will force an expulsion of feelings, a catharsis, at numerous points of the story. First person point of view and a plethora of facial expressions that the characters employ greatly contributes to this as V has been much more of a relatable character than the most due to POV.

Another innovation that I believe will pass under the radar is how I never felt the obligation to be Mr. Goody Two Shoes during the game and could usually transfer my personal beliefs and judgement into the story, without being punished by it which is so rare. In most games, you will often be punished by locking you out of content or forcing you to get a worse ending if you are not some form of a stoic angel, but Cyberpunk 2077 does not have this problem.

Please see comments for the rest of my review as I have exhausted the space given to me by Steam. Sounds, bugs and final conclusion are in the comments.

I had never heard of Death Rally until it turned up free on Steam, so this is not some kind of nostalgic look. Death Rally was an amazing surprise for me as I just launched it to maybe see what it is for five minutes and move on. Instead, I racked up 13 hours playing this beauty.

What makes Death Rally enjoyable 24 years after its release is its incredible progression system. The only thing you need to do to progress is keeping your car healthy. This is amazing for a game this old as that period of gaming has been renowned for its ruthlessness and having pretty harsh fail states. Even if you don't get the wins required, you'll see yourself progressing through the ladder. I loved that the game does not expect you to win every race (especially for a game named Death Rally) but sometimes getting the third place while keeping damage minimal allows you to access better parts or cars, which can make you more competitive and help in the future. But if you take this longer route, your rivals progress as well, creating a larger points gap, ultimately requiring you to have more consistent performances. So you can set your own pace.

This progression system is accompanied by a risk and reward system. There are three different difficulties for races with large reward differences between them all. Four spots in each races are filled by signing up by you and AI. This means when you are around 10 to 15th spot in the ladder, hard races will usually destroy you, but if you take your chance when you see a 12th place driver signing up for that, it means that you can take the chance to come third and rise through the ladder faster. But while waiting for an equal opponent to sign up, easy and medium race spots may all be filled and you may find yourself stuck in hard race, racing against opponents you have no chance against. There are also other risks, for example getting mines with the last 500 dollars you have when you may need it after the race for imminent repairs or trying to kill the last surviving racer instead of focusing on a win to get some extra sponsorship money from Death itself.

Progression, and risk and reward systems complement each other perfectly and create an immensely captivating experience. Other mechanics such as shooting, dog fighting, racing are just backgrounds to these two systems but that does not mean that they are lacking, they are just outshined. Tracks are just alright, but extremely memorable as I developed a connection with them by being able to identify on which I did better and which ones I did worse on. Soundtrack was sometimes epic and sometimes meh, and there was a song that was more like Sims 1 music which killed the mood completely. Graphics are what can be expected of a game this old (except for Bogota track which is just beautiful) but you may need to adjust your viewing angle as some parts of the tracks can be too dark to see what is going on, especially if your monitor is not that good.

All in all, I am stunned by how unexpectedly good this game is and would love to participate in leagues made by 20 real players with the same game mechanics in a modern iteration.

Gwent is my first proper card game but my early impressions are that it is a fantastic time sink that I can't get enough of. I have heard many horror stories about how traditional card games, Magic the Gathering, Hearthstone etc., are at a point p2w and it always held me back from getting into the genre. I played Thronebreaker and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I thought that it was more an RPG than a card game (you can find my review for it here). Unlike the stories I have heard about the aforementioned games, at the end of my first day in CDPR's Gwent I fully had a deck that I felt confident and competitive with, including premium (animated) cards for most of my basic units without paying anything.

The game's art is probably the second strongest point it has. Every card is more than just a gameplay tool but a perfect design on their own and the premium cards enhance most of them perfectly but some of them of course could use some work (like Duchess's Informant). Backgrounds are varied but I found most of them to be a bit lower quality, probably to help boost game's player count by making it playable on every potato out there. But even the 4K graphic assets don't help much with the backgrounds and I would love to have the option for better graphics for the people with higher end battlestations.

The art is accompanied by stories and tidbits from the Witcher universe, which is a huge bonus for me as I said before, I am not that interested in the genre but I love the Witcher universe and it makes the game more accessible for me as I have a general understanding of every faction and their traditional strengths. With that said more voice lines from the universe here and there would be perfect but I am still happy with yelling Nauzicaa whenever I play Nauzicaa Sergeant.

Speaking of factions, every faction I played against seems interesting and unique enough.
If you like backstabbing and treachery Nilfgaard is a great pick,
If you enjoy the building a harmonious deck with a surprise factor Scoia'tael is the way to go,
If you want the standard army general feeling Northern Realms is the best,
If you want to annoy your enemies with hard to counter tactics Skellige offers its best ships.

Even in the faction's general characteristics there are interesting subcharacteristics that you can employ. For example as a Nilfgaardian you may go for three distinct decks, one of them is a spy deck for stealing and converting enemy units, the other is poison deck for ruthlessly destroying your opponents with some tricky cards and there is the lock deck which uses the strong aspects of the opponent against itself. Then you can combine those two to get your unique experience, although I don't deny that there is a "meta".

Only Syndicate faction feels a bit out of place with unique mechanics in regards to coins, fees and whatnots and it has been my least favourite opponent as they are very different from what the game presents in other challenges.

I can't deny that there are places that Gwent falls short but these shortcomings do not take the fun out of the game. My primary issue is with its marketing, as on the day it was released on Steam, the top banner was not Gwent but a random golfing game and if I did not come across the release tweet retweeted by The Witcher account perchance I could probably miss that it was released on Steam at all. The reason I am complaining about this is that I want to play Gwent as much as possible and when I am done with Nilfgaard, I still want to have opponents while I try out the other factions.

Also, CDPR, regional pricing please.