Ok let me start by saying yesterday may have been one of the weakest attempts at writing a blog in my entire life. Here’s the situation: I have spent the last 26 years of my life unaware that I am highly allergic to ragweed pollen. What is ragweed pollen you ask? Its the fucking bane of my existence that’s what it is. I’ve never had any allergic reaction quite like it. My eyes are puffy and itchy, my nose is stuffed up and itchy, I have a rash breaking out on different areas of my face; I’m literally a walking meatsack of suffering and misery. Add to that the fact that my 13 week old puppy has decided that this is the week he is resisting any form of training that requires him to be silent or not use the floor as his toilet, and you’ve got a complete and utter clusterfuck. Yesterday I took 5 different allergy pills in a 24 hour period in an attempt to feel any form of life and happiness again. Instead I turned into a mush brained zombie like the people who still play League of Legends and claim it is the only true form of competitive gaming in the world. So let me say this in an attempt to clarify yesterday’s blog: I really am excited for Halo Infinite. I really hope it’s everything we want out of a Halo title: true skill based competitive arena multiplayer with a solid Master Chief based campaign. And if it isn’t, I hope it is an absolute dumpster fire so we can finally move on from this “at least we still have Halo” argument that keeps us buying Microsoft’s clearly inferior consoles.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming:
Numbuh 2: Cyberpunk 2077
I’ll open with this: outside of my #1 choice, there is no game I have more faith in being excellent than Cyberpunk 2077. Normally, after a presentation like what we saw at E3 this year, I would have said “oh they must be covering up for something really bad if they’re enlisting a star actor like Keanu Reeves to be in the game”, like how CoD Advanced Warfare and CoD Infinite Warfare used Kevin Spacey and Jon Snow to cover up the fact that their new games suck dick. But there isn’t a better company for giant long open world RPG’s than CD Projekt Red. And for those of you trying to fact check that in your head, let me help you out: Rockstar games have less character depth, Bethesda games have too many game breaking bugs, Bioware can’t draw faces anymore, Japanese companies can’t write voice lines that aren’t cheesy or childish, and Nintendo…ok well Nintendo has a decent argument behind it. I’ll accept Nintendo as an alternative. But there hasn’t been a single game in the last decade that has come close to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It was graphically ahead of any game in 2015, it kept the player engaged for over 100+ hours of gameplay, the characters had incredible depth, the combat wasn’t button mashy but also wasn’t overly complicated, and the difficulty was fair. It’s a modern masterpiece. So when that studio says they’re releasing a new game, it doesn’t matter if you’re playing as a fucking muppet navigating the innards of a diseased hippopotamus to find the cure for gonorrhea. You buy it, no questions asked.
This might really be everything I ever wanted in a game. I love everything cyberpunk: the neon scenery, the synthy music, the futuristic takes on items and weapons, the whole cyborg/augmentation upgrade system. I love it all. And now, you’ve got one of the best studios in the world making a FPS game centered in this world, with an incredibly deep character customization system. I’m not talking about a system where you can modify every cheekbone and lip muscle to make your player look like a picture perfect version of yourself. I’m talking about a system that lets you truly play the game however you want. Want to make your character a rebellious lesbian who can climb walls with her arm blades? You can do it. Want to make a hacker that can slow down time and shoot bullets the ricochet off walls? It’s in the game. Want to be a basic ass bitch and make the standard average military Call of Duty guy that just runs around with a ton of health and standard guns? I mean…yea you can do that too…don’t know why you would…you know they’re still making Call of Duty games tho right? Anyway, that’s just barely scratching the surface. CD Projekt Red is trying to make an environment that is so immersive and realistic. The weather and time of day will affect NPCs behavior. Branching dialogues will be different based on your gender, outfit, street reputation, etc. Failing quests no longer will reset the game back to a checkpoint; you just fail the quest and move on. There are a ton of endings that are actually impacted by your player’s choices (unlike most games where you just make one or two critical decisions that could “accidentally” make you’re character gay right PuddleOfDeath?). The list goes on and on.
Now if you told me someone like Bethesda or Ubisoft or even Rockstar was going to be making this title, I’d respond by saying “ok so half of those things are actually going to be prominent in the game and only like one of them is going to be what we expect; everything else is gonna be glitchy or suck ass”. But this is CD Projekt Red. I have 100% confidence they will pull it all off. And I am fucking jacked to the tits.
Cyberpunk 2077 will be out on April 16th, 2020 for Xbox, PS4 and PC.