Welcome to Thunderdome

This is the next game from The Witcher developer. It looks pretty awesome.

Twitch live stream (it'll be a video later) of game play.

I've seen reddit posts about this game, and they are all about penises.

Well, you just got Cake's attention.

It's ok I guess. Normal mode is a little too easy and level 1 enemies take 10 headshots on hard mode, which sucks. Not pulling me in like Skyrim.

I had to play with the settings a lot to get it to work.

My buddy got it on PS5 and says it is practically unplayable there, 20 fps, constant crashing and restarts.

Didn't play for a few days and now the game, all 70 gigs of it, won't even load. Brilliant.

e: redownloaded another 10 gigs of files and we good again

This is why I rarely ever buy on day 1 anymore.

Corporations don't give a fuck about consumers. They just want that money flowing in and they can "fix the problem later" with patches.

I get that they can't sit on a game forever, but it needs to work before going out the door. There should be some baseline established that game companies must meet before release.

Leisher wrote: This is why I rarely ever buy on day 1 anymore.

Corporations don't give a fuck about consumers. They just want that money flowing in and they can "fix the problem later" with patches.

I get that they can't sit on a game forever, but it needs to work before going out the door. There should be some baseline established that game companies must meet before release.

Last night I got the game to run, logged in, realized I didn't really want to play... so I shot up a (futuristic) hot dog vendor and got gunned down by the (futuristic) police.

Troy wrote: so I shot up a (futuristic) hot dog vendor and got gunned down by the (futuristic) police.

How big were their dongs?

Check out this mod. We aren't thisclose to photorealistic games, we're there.

In a word: Ambitious.

You've heard about bugs, and it has bugs. None were game breaking though. I did have it crash multiple times, but it was almost always while driving fast and one of my idlers running. Turning off the idler usually fixed it. But yeah, they have fixed a lot of the bugs.

The story has you as V (a name I particularly enjoyed) a young ________ (you pick the background and sex) who is making their way to Night City, which seems to be a take on Las Vegas. The setting is...obviously...2077 and something has happened to the U.S. so it has fallen. They don't get too deep into all that, at least I didn't notice it. You met a guy named Jackie and you become fast friends. Then you get a big job infiltrating a megacorp's HQ and that's where the story really starts. Soon, you meet Johnny Silverhand, played by Keanu Reeves, and he's with you until the end of the game. FYI, this is no cameo role. He has a movie career's worth of dialogue.

The Phantom Liberty DLC includes Idris Elba, who also has a bunch of dialogue, but nowhere near as much as Keanu.

The story gets a bit convoluted late, not too much, but enough that it'll bug you.

Lots of ending, with a few only having minor changes, but the road to them can be dramatically different. I think I played through half a dozen and hit all the main variations. Although, I think depending on if you beat the DLC first or after, endings can be different there.

There are no "happy" endings. I did find the one I was happiest with that fit my character, and that's the one I ultimately ended on.

Is the game "woke"? I would say no. Yes, there are romances and that can be same sex, but it's not shoved in your face. There's also a character that is revealed to be trans, which is interesting considering the lack of an Adam's apple, but they're revealed to be...let's say "broken" and they do something very immoral. I also noticed that all the main characters are in the realm of attractive and in shape. I can only remember one story character that was obese. So no, not woke despite "representation".

The romances are interesting. I played a male and there's one very obvious choice, who is kind of awesome. Very girl boss, but also very vulnerable. An extremely well written character. I do wish our "date" conversations were more varied and kept up with my progress through the game. My other options were all men, so Cake will love that. I guess the devs prefer you play as a woman as there's a lesbian romance that I've read is really fleshed out and two guys that I can think of.

The graphics are just phenomenal, and the world is definitely more populated than I've ever seen before, but it's still missing something.

I think this was most obvious during the driving. The drivers in this world are either subtly moving out of your way (when you see it you'll understand) or they're freaking out and driving like lunatics if you hit them.

The gun play is really strong. Many, many variations on weapons, which reminded me of Borderlands, but you'll eventually find ones that you'll stick with. You can craft some too.

Missions GA-FUCKING-LORE. From story to side to NCPD jobs to fixer jobs, there is a metric ton of content. One of the fixers in the DLC is Mr. Hands, and he's an awesome character perfectly voice acted.

Attention to detail throughout is really impressive. Some of the stories have choices that are difficult to tell what's right or wrong.

Character advancement comes through XP, skills, and cyberware (think cyborg stuff).

I could go on for a long time about this game, but I'll wrap up and say that this is GTA, but set in the future. If you're waiting for GTA VI, this is what you need to play (or Red Dead Redemption 2).

Highly recommended WITH the DLC.