Have you gotten used to typing "2026" yet? I think I'm just getting
the hang of it, finally. Anyway, another month has rolled around, so
it's time to re-start this thread. Y'all know the drill. Play the
games, then list 'em here so we know what kept ya busy. Maybe even
throw a few thoughts in about the games (or not, it's all good).
Lemme getcha started.
Superbrief
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* Cyberpunk 2077 (continued from last month)
* Dystopika
* FBC: Firebreak
* Skald: The Dark Priory
Maximum Verbosity
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* Cyberpunk 2077 (continued from last month)
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/32470/Cyberpunk_2077_Ultimate_Edition/
Well, that didn't go as planned.
In more ways than one, actually. I ended last month playing this game,
and thinking, "Well, I'm almost done; a few more days and I'll be quit
with this game." It took me /three weeks/ after that to see the
end-credits. I have to admit, by this point I'm just a little bit
tired of the whole game; I'm a little sour on the whole experience.
"Cyberpunk 2077" is a /long/ game.
But also... well, see, I had /plans/ when I started this game. I was
gonna do me some role-playing in this here role-playing game. I was
gonna take on the role of a brash, violent young streetpunk who --in
the course of his adventures-- just happened to get himself infected
with a bit of malware that looked and talked a lot like Keanu Reaves.
At first the relationship between the two would be openly hostile, but
as time progressed --I intended-- my street-punk (his meat and
cyberware slowly being absorbed by the Keanu-virus) would come more
and more to agree, look, talk and act like his alter identity. Then,
when the time came, the virus would take control and the adventure
would end with street punk gone and the Keanu-personality in charge.
Which was all well and good... right up to the end when --instructed
on how to 'choose' so that Keanu ended up in charge, somehow I did the
exact opposite. Ooops. I /knew/ I should have dropped a save-point
first. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans...
On the whole this playthrough --my second-- didn't really change my
opinion of the game. It's a grand experience to be sure, and an
excellently crafted game... but not one of the truly, timeless greats.
Its scale and detail --and to some degree its story-- are incredibly impressive, but a lot of its actual implementation aren't quite as
good as they should be. The combat is good, but not mind blowing. The
city is vast, but shallow. Your options as a player always feel just a
/touch/ more limited than they should be. There's a lot of reasons for
this, which I'll generously not go into here, but the long and short
of it is that I just wasn't as enthralled with the game as I could
have been.
Certainly the "Phantom Liberty" DLC did nothing to help. While it did
finally open up somewhat after where I stopped last month, still it
seemed a fairly unexciting romp; too linear, too focused on combat,
with little of the fun grey-on-grey morality or interesting characters
found in the main game. It felt a lot like cutting-room floor
material; lower-quality stuff dumped into a DLC that was 'more of the
same'... just not as good. Not terrible, certainly not... but
definitely the nadir of the overall adventure.
And, again, it's not that I think this is a bad game. It's not. It's a
very good game. But it's a 9/10 when it /could/ have been a 10+... and
it hurts me that it came so close and missed by so little.
* Dystopika
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2379910/Dystopika/
Continuing on the cyberpunk theme, I moved to "Dystopika". This is
less a game than a sandbox where you can plop down futuristic-themed
buildings and create a future dystopia of your very own. Similar to
games like "Tiny Glade" or "Townscraper", there's no management
aspect; it's all about your creativity and making your city look like
you want it to look. You need not worry about any rhyme or reason to
your city; any building can be plopped down anywhere (even on top of
other already placed structures). Like many games of its type, it uses
some procedural generation to lock things together, which is rather
clever in its implementation.
But "Dystopika" is also far more limited than other city-creators,
with only a limited variety of props and everything looking very much
the same. It doesn't help that your city is shrouded in an endless
night; it's way too dark to see very much, and actually placing
structures with precision is made difficult by the constant gloom. The
end result is that, after a while, all your creations start looking
very much the same, and there's not too much you can do to
differentiate your city from anybody else's. Your little metropolis
has very little personality. It's pretty to look at and it's fun for a
while to build, but after 30 minutes you've seen everything the game
has to offer, and its time to move on.
* FBC: Firebreak
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2272540/FBC_Firebreak/
This game reminds me nothing so much as of the "Rambo" cartoon.
Did you even know they made a children's cartoon based on the Rambo
movies? Even in the 80s, when the program was being aired, there was
comment on the incongruity of making a show for children based on a hyper-violent movie franchise primarily aimed at adults. It wasn't the
only movie to get that treatment (I seem to recall both "Aliens" and
"Robocop" also got cartoons of their own). The 80s were a weird and
wild time.
It's this same sense of incongruity that connects those cartoons and
"FBC: Firebreak". This game is based upon Remedy's earlier game,
"Control". That game was a stark single-player adventure-shooter, best
known for its atmospheric setting. Itself loosely based on Internet
'new weird' paranormal settings (like the Backrooms or SCP),
"Control's" art-style and mood were well received. It's gameplay
--slow-paced third-person action/shooting-- didn't get quite the same
praise, but neither was it greatly disliked. Overall, the game got
favorable reviews, and it was no surprise that a semi-sequel was soon announced. That game, of course, being "FBC: Firebreak".
But while "FBC: Firebreak" shares the same setting as "Control", it is
a completely different beast. It's not just that "Control" was a
single-player third-person experience and "FBC" is a co-op
first-person shooter. It's that the entire mood of the original game
has been scrapped. You know, that one thing that made "Control" so
memorable. "FBC" has none of the weird horror vibe; it lacks the tight
controls or strong story or tense pacing. in fact, the first thing I
noticed about the game was how... well, how /silly/ it seemed to be.
It's in the voices, and the interactions, and some of the weapons.
There's an overall goofiness that's been added to the setting that
totally changes the vibe.
Sort of like making Rambo friend-of-all-children whose massive machine
guns never actually kill any of the baddies, like in the cartoon.
"FBC: Firebreak" never goes so far as that, thankfully. This still is,
after all, a shooter, and there's still a vague hint of the
suspenseful setting of the original in the design of its monsters and
setting. But at the same time, it also feels a lot lighter in tone,
what with its customizable avatars (with ever so many exciting hats to
apply to your character) and the cheerful, almost bubbling comments
your hero makes as you fight through the hordes. It screams of a game
desperate to attract the hordes of Fortnite players with some of its
colorful designs. As a fan of Remedy's earlier games -- "Control",
"Alan Wake", even "Max Payne"-- this is not the tone I was
expecting... or wanting.
But even disentangled from Remedy's earlier works and accepted on its
own merits, "FBC" doesn't seem much fun. Yes, some of the monster
designs and the styling of the levels are neat. But everything else
about the game -- all its mechanics-- just weren't enjoyable. The
uninteresting layout of the maps; the repetitive structure of the
missions; the overly complicated skill system that demanded excessive
amounts of play before you got to any of the interesting stuff; the
weird QTE to activate items or pick up ammo. There was nothing about
the actual gameplay that made me want to engage with it. In fact, I
found the game more annoying than anything else.
I will give "FBC" this much credit. For the brief time I played, the
community seemed fairly welcoming (I tried a few matches with
strangers). But nice as they were, the other players couldn't make up
for the dull gameplay.
"FBC: Firebreak" has an interesting premise behind it (largely lifted
from its predecessor) but the game itself targeted the wrong audience
and failed to put its premise to any good use. Remedy tried to tap
into the lucrative 'live service' market, despite the fact this
ignored their strengths in creating compelling single-player
experiences, and what we got was a weird game that just isn't worth
playing.
* Skald: The Dark Priory
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160/SKALD_Against_the_Black_Priory/
I feel like I've been here before.
Not because of the game's retro-resemblance to classic CRPGs like
"Ultima" or "Magic Candle", although that certainly helps. Or because
it draws so heavily from the tone of Lovecraftian tales that I'm
familiar with. But... a long chain of islands in the wild north, on
the edge of civilization, where the warp and woof of reality run thin?
A low-magic world where passage through the wilderness was as much a
struggle as the random encounter with bandits and monsters? Has
somebody been reading the notes to my D&D campaign?
All of which probably speaks more about the lack of originality in my
own games rather than as a criticism of "Skald", but boy oh boy, did
this game /feel/ familiar to some of my tabletop adventures. Maybe not
so much near the end (I tend not to go full Lovecraftian) but
otherwise so much of the tone and pacing of the game felt familiar and comfortable to me. The game won bonus points for that alone.
I just wish it was a better experience mechanically. The retro-theming
did add a certain ambience to it (it added an eerie, ancient feel to
the game), but as often it worked /against/ the game's feel too. The
pixelated graphics often made it hard for me to figure out what I was
seeing... or even differentiate my characters from the background. Was
that blob of pixels some unholy Cthulian monster... or just a giant
rat? I never could tell. The constant fog-of-war was annoying --just
let me see the whole fucking overland map already!!!-- and the combat
was slow and tedious (especially the inability to attack or move
diagonally). It felt like an ancient DOS game... but the limitations
of those classics were due to weak hardware and archaic design. We
loved the games /despite/ those problems, not because of them. Writing
them back into the genre is nothing I've ever desired.
That said, overall I enjoyed "Skald". Yes, its gameplay had its weak
points and its story railroaded the player a bit much, but it was fun hacking-n-slashing my way through a classic CRPG-styled game. And,
like I said, I adored the game's style. The engine itself is also
moddable to add new 'adventure modules' and I can imagine some other
fans taking it upon themselves to polish away some of the game's
rougher edges. Until then it's an adequate romp down Nostalgia Lane,
especially if you've already over-played the /real/ classic it
imperfectly apes and are looking for something new.
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So, that's how I started the new year; a pretty good romp through a
handful of video games. How about you?
What Have You Been Playing... IN JANUARY 2026?
--- PyGate Linux v1.5.10
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)