alpha machina

This game had a lot of potential, most of which was wasted on Massive trying to turn it into a kid friendly Disney theme park. They completely ruined the scoundrel experience by making this game entirely too "safe." Which I could have told them from the start was a bad idea, because the vast majority of Star Wars fans are 30 - 50 year old men, and middle-aged men want a more mature, in-depth experience. This game deserved better than what Massive and Ubisoft gave it, and it's a damn shame what it turned out like. It should have been a completely different experience, with more character class options (think: scoundrel, operative, bounty hunter) with quests that change dynamically based on what class you're playing. We should be able to drive any vehicle, use and keep any of the weapons, the worlds should have been more fleshed out and mature, with darker themes, the interior of the ship should have been far more interactive, and we should have been given the option to fly the ship from inside of the cockpit (way more cinematic). By trying to make Outlaws appeal to everyone, they made it appeal to almost no one in the process. If I could describe this game in one word, it would be, "diluted." It's watered down Star Wars. We need a studio brave enough to make games for mature audiences. Too many are so worried about maximizing profits by appealing to as many different kinds of people at once, we keep getting these safe, boring games, and I'm really tired of it. Everything good that this game had going for it, like the visuals, sound effects and overall atmosphere, are ruined by the fact that the story is boring and predictable, the combat is lackluster, and the gameplay and world building are overall shallow. All-in-all, Outlaws is a disappointment. And that really sucks, because I really wanted to like it. But there's just no fixing this. Let's just hope Massive's next project, Division 3 (unfortunately, from the same studio lead) isn't as boring and safe as this game was. But I won't hold my breath. The only reason it gets 2 stars is because the surroundings, sound effects, music and world design feel distinctly Star Wars, but the moment you dig a little deeper, it all falls apart.

The game fails consistently to deliver the levels of sophistication promised by CDPR over the last several years. The CEO of CDPR said that Cyberpunk 2077 would "set a new standard in the sci-fi RPG genre." Cyberpunk 2077 fails to even come close to the standards set by games more than a decade old, much less set any kind of new standard. The game is fundamentally underdeveloped, and it really shows. It has potential, but with CDPR refusing to admit that it's missing an insane amount of promised content on top of the half-baked content that it does have, I feel that it'll never live up to that potential. Entirely too much about this game is half-baked. They promised, and these are actual quotes, a game that felt like a "living, breathing world" where "your choices matter because every decision you make will have consequences" because there's a "branching storyline" and "everyone who plays the game will have a different playthrough" where "you're choices will shape how the world reacts to you, and will affect your relationships with those around you." The game fails to deliver on any of these points, and these aren't even the specific pieces of content that CDPR claimed the game would have but doesn't. And now they act like none of those things were supposed to have been in the game at all. What a farce. Nah, the entire issue is that CDPR management decided, to save time and money, it would be a good idea to force their programmers and developers to engineer and build their new game engine from the ground up WHILE developing the game on top of it. For those of you that don't understand, that's like engineering and building your car WHILE you're driving it down the highway. It's ridiculous and never should have happened. At any rate, that set them back time and again, creating major slowdowns every step of the way. They had to cobble together code to make the game work because certain portions of the engine weren't finished yet, on top of the fact that CDPR management came in (Adam Badowski) midway through development and forced them to start from scratch on portions of the game, causing many veteran developers/programmers to quit. They then had to replace them with new hires, amateurs, who knew nothing about how their previous employees were building their respective portions of the game, so they too had to start from scratch. They had to, again, start over on much of the game and the story when they brought Keanu on as Johnny Silverhand, essentially turning the entire development process upside-down. Now there's months, maybe even years worth of work down the drain. And you end up with major portions of the game being cut because they just simply did not have enough time to flesh it out. But, it seems to me like too many people are entirely too easily entertained these days. They'll play a game like this and not have the presence of mind to understand just how pathetic it is that a $317mil game was released in this state. But why should CDPR care? Why should they change their ways when 75% of you praise them for messing you over? Why should they care when they made all their money back, plus tens of millions? The answer is, they shouldn't. And they won't. And we'll continue to get half-baked games, even from the likes of CDPR. Good job, consumers.

Meh. This doesn't feel very much like Star Trek after season 2. They lost me.

Despite the poor reviews, I thoroughly enjoyed this game. The combat was exciting and fun, and the environments were incredibly beautiful. I'm thinking about picking it up again from the beginning.