So it took me a while but I watched... some of it. To reiterate the op's explanation: This isn't just a one hour review, this is actually eight parts, some of them 2+ hours. The author doesn't...
So it took me a while but I watched... some of it. To reiterate the op's explanation: This isn't just a one hour review, this is actually eight parts, some of them 2+ hours. The author doesn't seem to even recommend watching all of it although I lost count of whether he was an even or odd number of irony-layers deep when he said that.
So, obviously, the one thing you can't blame the author for is laziness: This goes deep. But (and I could only say this with certainty had I genuinely watched the full 10 hours which I have not) its depth seems to be carried by an intimidating level of pop culture knowledge (he casually mentions having read "266 books in 2019") as well as marketing and social media (there's a lot about Keanu Reeves). So considering this being a 10 hour review, apparently thousands of hours in the making... I can't help but wonder where the hell the gameplay commentary is? Is there any? It seems to be entirely about "the story", glancing over hundreds of hours of min-maxing weapon stats and whatnot to trigger a different story branch or ending. As if pressing a different button in a dialog option was "making a decision" and genuine "interaction". At one point, during these 10 hours, he certainly made a snarky comment about this being meaningless after all but he ultimately seems to accept it as a genuine purpose for a videogame. A cut scene player, judged by the quality of its cut scenes.
I agree that the hilarious bugs are less relevant than the social media outrage suggests and I like how he presents youtuber speedrunning glitches and the views they amass as "more cyberpunk" than anything in the game. But ultimately, the review (or the parts that I manged to watch) does seem to say little about the possibilities of the medium (in terms of gameplay and interactivity) and fully accepts modern AAA games essentially being buggy hollywood movies.
Also too much whining about not getting enough views, dude, I get it.
Yup, in the "What I Didn't Like" video where he says he's focusing so much on the other parts of the game because he actually didn't like the combat at all. He goes into some detail about not...
I can't help but wonder where the hell the gameplay commentary is? Is there any?
Yup, in the "What I Didn't Like" video where he says he's focusing so much on the other parts of the game because he actually didn't like the combat at all. He goes into some detail about not liking much of the RPG mechanics and other gameplay either.
Tim Rogers is the type of reviewer who is very proportional when it comes to talking about things that he likes or finds interesting, and he's unique in that way among game reviewers.
I think that the what you experience will be dependent on what you choose, and you can only really criticize the work once you've experienced all the paths... I'm joking. But each of the segments...
I think that the what you experience will be dependent on what you choose, and you can only really criticize the work once you've experienced all the paths...
I'm joking.
But each of the segments does approach the game differently, and the "What I didn't like" section rips into those systems that you're criticizing here. The 'what I did like" section does mostly focus on the story, because that's what there was to talk about there.
I think it's a difficult review to enjoy if you're not there for this guy, since a lot of it is focused on him and his experience of the game, rather than the game itself. Im still not sure if I enjoyed it.
I skimmed and found the part about him maxing out his hacking skills and spending the entire game insta-killing enemies by frying their cyberbrains. I'm not even sure this bothers me so much...
I skimmed and found the part about him maxing out his hacking skills and spending the entire game insta-killing enemies by frying their cyberbrains. I'm not even sure this bothers me so much within the genre. It's just an RPG letting you commit 100% to one path. The real problem is the very genre of "RPG" in which skill is represented by numbers that just perpetually increase no matter what you do. It's essentially just a time barrier... between cut scenes which are, supposedly, what really matters. Or, more speficically, the many story-branches that you can find.
IMO, when going this far off on a tangent, there's something to be said about the very nature of point systems and rewards, of cinematic content and the true reason anyone really plays a modern AAA game. 10 hours of rambling are enough to turn it into a narrative Rorschach test so I'm sure you could see some of the things he said as a general critique of this sort but mostly... it was just about minor annoyances adding up and a vague sense of disgust about the social media ugliness surrounding the game. Would the game really be best improved by "giving you a button to hide the mini map"?
What bothers me about games of this scale is that the many systems they introduce are never allowed to interact too much because animating the result in "cinematic" quality would not be possible. I don't know much about cyberpunk but I remember an essay about fantasy games that brought up something interesting: "Magic" is essentially a limitless tool for creativity yet games reduce it to "fire balls" and "bigger fire balls" because that's easier to simulate. "Magic" in stories not written for videogames can go much further. It lets someone fly, summon armies, grow to the size of a mountain, change the weather, visit entirely different dimensions. Yet look at Skyrim. "Targets take 20 points of frost damage for 10 seconds, plus Stamina damage". Great. That, IMO, is the real tragedy of the limits of game design. Or rather, the limits of making "cinematic" graphics the lowest common denominator of all gameplay interaction. It's hard to make true interactivity look good so all you get are simple things that just increase a few stats.
Don't sleep on his Kotaku work, which are some of the best video reviews from any major publication. His famous Dragon Quest XI review. His Death Stranding review, which was a precursor to his...
Don't sleep on his Kotaku work, which are some of the best video reviews from any major publication.
His Death Stranding review, which was a precursor to his current Action Button review styles (in which he reviews the game six times in different ways).
I was a bit confused about your description of this video and saw the "1 hour review" part and thought it was unusual for his reviews to be this short. Especially considering how much there is to...
I was a bit confused about your description of this video and saw the "1 hour review" part and thought it was unusual for his reviews to be this short. Especially considering how much there is to talk about with this game.
So it took me a while but I watched... some of it. To reiterate the op's explanation: This isn't just a one hour review, this is actually eight parts, some of them 2+ hours. The author doesn't seem to even recommend watching all of it although I lost count of whether he was an even or odd number of irony-layers deep when he said that.
So, obviously, the one thing you can't blame the author for is laziness: This goes deep. But (and I could only say this with certainty had I genuinely watched the full 10 hours which I have not) its depth seems to be carried by an intimidating level of pop culture knowledge (he casually mentions having read "266 books in 2019") as well as marketing and social media (there's a lot about Keanu Reeves). So considering this being a 10 hour review, apparently thousands of hours in the making... I can't help but wonder where the hell the gameplay commentary is? Is there any? It seems to be entirely about "the story", glancing over hundreds of hours of min-maxing weapon stats and whatnot to trigger a different story branch or ending. As if pressing a different button in a dialog option was "making a decision" and genuine "interaction". At one point, during these 10 hours, he certainly made a snarky comment about this being meaningless after all but he ultimately seems to accept it as a genuine purpose for a videogame. A cut scene player, judged by the quality of its cut scenes.
I agree that the hilarious bugs are less relevant than the social media outrage suggests and I like how he presents youtuber speedrunning glitches and the views they amass as "more cyberpunk" than anything in the game. But ultimately, the review (or the parts that I manged to watch) does seem to say little about the possibilities of the medium (in terms of gameplay and interactivity) and fully accepts modern AAA games essentially being buggy hollywood movies.
Also too much whining about not getting enough views, dude, I get it.
Yup, in the "What I Didn't Like" video where he says he's focusing so much on the other parts of the game because he actually didn't like the combat at all. He goes into some detail about not liking much of the RPG mechanics and other gameplay either.
Tim Rogers is the type of reviewer who is very proportional when it comes to talking about things that he likes or finds interesting, and he's unique in that way among game reviewers.
I think that the what you experience will be dependent on what you choose, and you can only really criticize the work once you've experienced all the paths...
I'm joking.
But each of the segments does approach the game differently, and the "What I didn't like" section rips into those systems that you're criticizing here. The 'what I did like" section does mostly focus on the story, because that's what there was to talk about there.
I think it's a difficult review to enjoy if you're not there for this guy, since a lot of it is focused on him and his experience of the game, rather than the game itself. Im still not sure if I enjoyed it.
I skimmed and found the part about him maxing out his hacking skills and spending the entire game insta-killing enemies by frying their cyberbrains. I'm not even sure this bothers me so much within the genre. It's just an RPG letting you commit 100% to one path. The real problem is the very genre of "RPG" in which skill is represented by numbers that just perpetually increase no matter what you do. It's essentially just a time barrier... between cut scenes which are, supposedly, what really matters. Or, more speficically, the many story-branches that you can find.
IMO, when going this far off on a tangent, there's something to be said about the very nature of point systems and rewards, of cinematic content and the true reason anyone really plays a modern AAA game. 10 hours of rambling are enough to turn it into a narrative Rorschach test so I'm sure you could see some of the things he said as a general critique of this sort but mostly... it was just about minor annoyances adding up and a vague sense of disgust about the social media ugliness surrounding the game. Would the game really be best improved by "giving you a button to hide the mini map"?
What bothers me about games of this scale is that the many systems they introduce are never allowed to interact too much because animating the result in "cinematic" quality would not be possible. I don't know much about cyberpunk but I remember an essay about fantasy games that brought up something interesting: "Magic" is essentially a limitless tool for creativity yet games reduce it to "fire balls" and "bigger fire balls" because that's easier to simulate. "Magic" in stories not written for videogames can go much further. It lets someone fly, summon armies, grow to the size of a mountain, change the weather, visit entirely different dimensions. Yet look at Skyrim. "Targets take 20 points of frost damage for 10 seconds, plus Stamina damage". Great. That, IMO, is the real tragedy of the limits of game design. Or rather, the limits of making "cinematic" graphics the lowest common denominator of all gameplay interaction. It's hard to make true interactivity look good so all you get are simple things that just increase a few stats.
Just a heads up, your link is timestamped to the middle of the video. Not sure if this is intended with the split parts?
Already fixed it for you.
Don't sleep on his Kotaku work, which are some of the best video reviews from any major publication.
His famous Dragon Quest XI review.
His Death Stranding review, which was a precursor to his current Action Button review styles (in which he reviews the game six times in different ways).
His ten-part nearly line-for-line translation of Final Fantasy VII and all the nuances and hidden jokes lost in translation.
I was a bit confused about your description of this video and saw the "1 hour review" part and thought it was unusual for his reviews to be this short. Especially considering how much there is to talk about with this game.
But yeah, 10 hours is about what I was expecting.