I came back to Cyberpunk 2077 recently. First time touching the game since the 2.0 update and I have to say I’m a bit mixed on the changes (I actually reinstalled the legacy version to make sure I’m not just misremembering things).

I’ll probably post a longer write up once I’m done with my playthrough (or at least do more testing and comparison between both version) but for now my main takeaway is this: I like the new content and all the technical improvements, gameplay, while better from a design and balance perspective, lost some of the fun for me in the process. It’s still a great title and I enjoy it quite a bit but yeah… I miss some of the old unbalanced jank of a game we had before.

Rockstar showed their thoughts on IV clearly in GTAV, I don’t think you have to worry about it anymore.

I currently doing a playthrough funnily enough, didn’t realize it was so close to an anniversary.

I’ve been spending more time exploring and doing side activities this time around, just driving around and taking photos. It ended up being quite a surprising experience. I was surprised with how easy the game is, how fast the story moves or how empty some parts of the world are (makes sense considering when it released). Taking the world in a more touristy way was an interesting change compared to how I experienced those games before. It’s also a way of playing I’ve been trying to move towards more and more recently (doing the same with Cyberpunk as well).

I still think it’s a great game but IV and, to lesser extent, Vice City are probably my favorites as far as mainline games are concerned. IV especially as it had a nice grounded approach to gameplay with weighty movement, interactions and driving, as well as the story - it sucks most people hated this as GTAV ended up being a rather mid experience for me.

I only properly played 1, 2 and a bit of Black Flag but based on that and what I’ve seen from all the other games I’m gonna stick with the first one.

Investigations were… well actual investigation, gameplay mechanics while simple and satisfying weren’t overly automated and the game wasn’t burdened with all the bloat that came afterwards. Simplified movement system from later games, one that’s fighting you whenever you try to do something even a little out of game’s comfort zone, is probably my major sticking point with the series.

That said, I’m not sure if that would be the best choice for you. If you want to try the classic approach I’d suggest going with the Ezio trilogy (II, Brotherhood, Revelations) as these games are more polished, if a little bloated, compared to the first game. They should still hold up well enough to have fun.

Ubisoft also announced both The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest will have an offline mode (twitter post, screenshot). Looks like the Stop Killing Games campaign is working.

Speaking of, if you’re in EU make sure to sign the The European Citizens’ Initiative petition - we’re already over 30% required signatures!

I think an important step would be to not be afraid of creating characters with actual… well, character. It was somewhat mentioned in the video but it seems like devs are unwilling to make NPCs with their own likes and dislikes, ones that might disagree with players instead of being all over them no matter what. This might be a slight exaggeration but boy do I wish we had more “real” feeling NPCs in games. I’m sure I’m not the only one who couldn’t care less about being the most important being in the universe and would rather be treated as an equal part of the world.

From a mechanical standpoint, relationship system in Scarlet Hollow feels like a good step into making interactions more natural (here is a detailed look by one of the devs) but I realize it’s a lot of work for something a good chunk of players won’t care about. I understand why this isn’t something many (especially bigger) devs would be interested in using but it’s still a disappointment.

Maybe AI will be able to help somewhat with this problem in the future but I’m not going to hold my breath on that.

I tried playing Bahamut Lagoon, a Japan only SNES TRPG, but had to stop due to some technical issues with the unofficial translation. The little bit I did manage to play (prologue and the first scene after that) was interesting enough so I’ll definitely try again, I just need to get back to my PC so I can research what’s wrong with it.

To keep with the theme I started Jeanne d’Arc, the PSP TRPG, instead. I like the art style, animated cutscenes and gameplay. Not a huge fan of the fantastical elements but they’re not a dealbreaker either. I’m not sure what to think about the story just yet - I like it for the most part but there are some things that make me a bit wary since they might potentially turn into tropes I’m not going to be happy with. It’s a “wait and see” for now since I’m still pretty early on. It’s good so far.

Can’t say I share your experience with either game but I can understand it doesn’t work for everyone. Personally, I can’t really imaging playing this, Kao the Kangaroo or old Tomb Raider titles without tank controls for example.

To be clear, your comment is exactly what I meant - you tried and don’t like it, that’s absolutely fine. There’s plenty of games I couldn’t get into due to controls or mechanics so I feel you. On the other hand, I met people who refuse to even try to engage with certain mechanics and that’s what I’m not a fan of. I’m all for remakes/remasters/rereleases updating things to let more people enjoy the old thing and hope this will be the case with Croc. And hey, even if they change something in a way I don’t like, there’s always* the classic version.

* Though not always an official way to get it.

Ah, I thought people had some specific issues besides the game having tank controls. Fair enough.

I’m not going to begrudge someone for not liking a control scheme (unless their only reason is not wanting to learn how to play differently) but I do think some people dislike it without even giving it a fair shake. The thing is, these games were designed with this control scheme in mind and switching to a modern one can be detrimental to the experience (compare playing REmake with and without tank controls, the latter makes navigation and avoiding enemies much easier).

Oh well, everyone has their own dislikes.

Edit: I read a bit more and apparently the game always had an option to play with some kind of “modern” controls when using a controller with sticks? I’m guessing they’ll probably polish those.

I totally agree. I just don’t have much expectations towards big publishers anymore, I guess. Not many approach the topic of remakes/remasters from the point of view of celebrating their history unfortunately. Heck, we had multiple instances of publishers removing the old versions from sale just to push people to the new one.

Low effort or not, companies (and many players to be honest) rarely care about their legacy.

As much as I like this idea I don’t think many publishers would look at it and said anything other than “yeah, not worth the money”. We probably have a higher chance for the classic versions landing on GoG than being added as a freebie to a remake - they want you to play the new shiny thing, not the old one after all (that and no need to provide support to the old version).

I’ve seen a lot of comments about the controls and I don’t really get it. I’ve played through both games about two years ago, I think, and didn’t have any problems with either of them. Maybe I’m just used to the jank due to playing a lot of older games but I remember both titles playing fine.

I’m curious how they’ll modernize the controls. The little gameplay present in this teaser looks pretty close to the original and I don’t think they talked about this in detail. Whatever they’ll do I just hope it’ll allow people to play and enjoy this little gem. It deserves it.

I feel like that should be the default stance. One thing that gives me hope is the early access release - there’s a chance they’re approaching the game seriously and will use it to make something great.

Maybe so. Also, I reread the article and there are more mentions of PC than I initially thought. I just kind of glanced over them between all the talk about Xbox, a term that’s also used in regards to Windows gaming (something I forgot when I posted this).

They could also not do anything at all and leave those players on their own. Sure, it would be great if all of those options were available from the start but most of MS’s work on accessibility wasn’t developed back then. At least they can be used with PCs and should be compatible with their future consoles.

I haven’t used Windows in a while now so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but it always felt like PCs were a bit of an afterthought for Microsoft. I know it changed somehow but have no idea how much so my random guess would be: it’s simply be a case of “lets market these with our main gaming product: consoles”.

Same here. While I’m very critical of Microsoft and tend to avoid a lot of things they’re involved in their continuous work on improving accessibility is one thing I’ve been really impressed with. I hope this approach will become more and more prevalent in both the gaming industry and in general as well.

This looks really cool. I hope they can pull this off since I’m really itching to play a sims-like again. It’ll probably fry my PC but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Edit: There’s a free character studio available on Steam to play around with.

I focused on game companies since that’s what’s this article is about but yeah, that’s true.

Sometimes I forget how unprofessional the game industry still is or how little respect people have for well being of others. I’d like to say I’m surprised but that would require having some expectations towards those companies.

I hope more VAs speak up about stuff like this so we can have some real changes.