This was distributed for free a while ago on Steam, providing the perfect opportunity to experience what is now hailed as the forerunner of the walking simulator genre. Most people can probably complete this game in about an hour so I was never willing to pay anything like its normal asking price even though I was curious about it. I’ve played enough of the games that came later to already know what to expect and overall this title is pretty much what I thought it would be.
I always knew I would play this after enjoying the previous game so much, only that was four years ago! It simply took this long for me to get around to it after waiting for all episodes to be released. I have to confess that I haven’t actually finished everything yet before writing this. There’s just too much content so I’ll leave the DLC content for a later date. Even with the base content trying to be truly completionist is too much. I’d had to settle for doing all of the mission stories and achieving level 20 mastery on each map but I gave up on the really exotic and tedious challenges.
I’ve had my eye on this game pretty much as soon as I heard of it. The premise of playing as a delivery driver in a cyberpunk city sounded awesome to me and the visuals in this game certainly looks the part. Superficially one might describe it as a kind of sci-fi Grand Theft Auto but there’s no combat in this game at all and without the DLC, no racing either, so the comparison doesn’t really work. Instead it feels more like an adventure game as you explore and experience the story of the city and the people in it.
I’m still feeling a bit burned out on Warhammer 40,000 due to overexposure but so many people have been raving about this take on the traditional 4X genre that I felt like giving a spin. This isn’t really a 4X game in that in line with the Warhammer theme there is only war, so there’s no diplomacy or trade between factions. But you do still get to found cities, build an economy and most importantly raise armies with which to wipe out the map.
I’m following one nautical theme game with another here. This is a tough one to talk about or even show any screenshot of unfortunately because just about any information I can give about it is a spoiler that would prejudice a person’s first experience of the game. Still, I suppose the game has been out for long enough now that anyone who is likely to play it has already done so. That means I will say that this is a mystery game set on a ship that returned mysteriously empty of its crew in 1807 after having been declared lost at sea in 1803. You’re an insurance investigator who is sent to write up a report about what happened. More spoilers will follow after the fold.
Despite my gripes, I did like the first game enough that I would eventually play this so now I have. There are so many things that are similar and so many that are different that it’s hard to decide where to start. I will note that like the first game this was quite a high-profile release but it’s still noticeably not an AAA-quality. It actually feels a little short for the epic scale that it is going for and there are all kinds of shortcuts in the writing and mechanics. Still it’s a solid party-based RPG and I suppose some compromises have to be accepted for it to even exist.
It’s been months since I first posted about this game but I’ve since decided to keep this permanently installed on my PC so that I can periodically return to it. It’s the only game that gets such treatment on my PC. I fear that my driving skills will deteriorate too much between games if I don’t keep practicing and I do want to get good at rally games in particular. Even though I’m only playing this once in a while, it still takes up some of my gaming time and reduces my ability to try new stuff and write about them here.
