Recent reviews by The MUG!

Title: "Cyberpunk 2077: A Paradox of Power and Contradictions"

Introduction:

Cyberpunk 2077 is a game of impressive mechanics and captivating gameplay. As a first-person shooter, it excels with smooth controls, engaging combat, and an immersive world. However, despite its technical prowess, the game's narrative presents a series of contradictions that undermine its thematic coherence.

First Contradiction: Capitalism vs. State Power

One of the most glaring contradictions in Cyberpunk 2077 is the depiction of free-market capitalism and state power. The game portrays a world where corporations like Arasaka are all-powerful, and the state appears to be subservient to capitalist interests. Yet, in practice, the game mechanics tell a different story.

Corporate Power:

You, as the player, can take on the might of the Arasaka Corporation and emerge victorious. This suggests that even the most powerful corporate entities are not invincible and can be brought down by individual action or rebellion.

State Power:

In stark contrast, the game mechanics make it clear that the police force, represented by MaxTac, is unbeatable. Engaging with the police inevitably leads to defeat, no matter your level or skills. This creates a paradox: while the narrative suggests that corporations hold ultimate power, the gameplay mechanics show that state power, in the form of law enforcement, is the true unbeatable force.

Gangs and Territory:

Further complicating this contradiction is the significant power held by gangs within the various boroughs of Night City. These gangs control large territories and operate outside the control of both the state and corporations. If corporations truly dominated everything, it’s unlikely that gangs, essentially private entities, would wield such power and autonomy. This highlights another inconsistency: despite the police's supposed invincibility when you confront them, the city is overrun with criminals and the police often require your help to manage the crime, yet when you directly oppose them, you are swiftly defeated.

Conclusion:

We could go on in excess about the nuanced inconsistencies in the propaganda that is Cyberpunk 2077. The mechanics are great, but the story is trash—drivel written by petulant children, crying babies grasping at their mother's teat. It is a blight upon humanity to release such propaganda drivel. The logical and factual points presented here illustrate the profound ignorance of the creators of this game and their decision to unleash such narrative garbage upon the world. Despite its technical achievements, Cyberpunk 2077's story fails miserably, making it an exercise in frustration for anyone seeking a coherent and engaging narrative.

It's fun, but it supports the people who hate you.

I used to have sixty dollars, now I have a load screen that crashes. Hooray for the money furnace.

Review for the masses:

Good...
1. You shoot stuff and it blows up beautifully!
2. You feel powerful as you glide between the stars effortlessly!
3. Lots of shiny things! (Many of which, you can shoot!)
4. You get to go fast! (Ricky Bobby approved this message)

Bad...
1. No Kardashian updates in the news feed!!! (This is unforgiveable)
2. You have to think... :(
3. 3D maps are difficult... :(
4. There's too many buttons in space travel... :(

Review for people with a brain:

This game allows you to spend many hours satisfying that "what if" voice that has lived in our heads since childhood. What if I could fly to that star I see in the sky every night? In this scenario, you can do that.

This game does take a few hours to learn. To learn how to navigate properly, and how to fly. Most importantly, it takes a while to learn how to dock properly, but all of this time is enjoyable. Even when you are unable to figure something out immediately, there is a beautiful symphony of light and man-made steel to keep you interested throughout the frustrations. It is complicated and intricate, but the rewards for mastering such concepts are more than an adequate payoff.

The starmap is an amazing achievement by itself. It truly is a 1:1 scale of our Milky Way Galaxy. It took me a few hours to truly understand the map and all of the information it can provide to you. Once you gain a masterful understanding of the navigation system they have devised, this tool becomes more of a toy. Allowing you to pan and scroll to every anomoly we can see from our blue rock, and so many more that we must take astronomers' word for, as it pertains to their existence and location (A nebula is much more impressive from a distance, at least the two I have visited.) I have spent a few hours simply navigating the starmap, and appreciating how amazing an achievement it is. They have truly set the standard for space cartography in a virtual setting.

Combat is a great deal of fun, and is plentiful. Definitely a positive, and enjoyed for many hours.

There is one thing I wish they would change. Once you arrive in a star system, sometimes you must travel for twenty or thirty minutes to reach the celestial body you have targeted. This is the only downside to the game. I find it hard to believe that it will take me 200 times longer to travel between planets, than it did for me to travel 17 light years. They should find a better way.

This game is a great deal of fun. The ability to involve your friends makes it even better. It will force you to think, and sometimes you will get frustrated. But once you learn many of the nuances, you find a rich, rewarding, and extremely well thought out piece of art and entertainment.

If you have ever found any appeal to the romanticism of space travel, then this game is definitely for you.

“Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.”
― Carl Sagan

Why are you still here? Click "Add to Cart" and make Carl Sagan proud.

Thank you,

Alex

First of all, Total Annihilation was one of the best games I have ever played. I was addicted when it first came out and for several years beyond. This game attempts to capture that, sadly it only attempts. I bought this in pre alpha for sixty bucks and I really regret that decision.

First, the good part. The build system is just like total annihilation, which I always thought was a great way of doing it. ( you build a starter factory which produces a builder which can in turn build the advanced version of it's factory which produces more advanced vehicles of that type). Now I am not a fan of pvp with this type of game because it always ends up being the same thing, build a small economy as fast as you can, then build a big enough force of low cost units and hope that it overwhelms the force that the other player has managed to build. It's usually not a lot of fun in my book, but if that is what you like then this game will deliver in that department.

Now the bad. Many things in this game are what I would consider incomplete. First and foremost there is not a storyline/campaign that has been well thought out so that it is interesting and fun. It is simply this galactic war garbage which is merely a series of ai skirmishes with no storyline or real progression. In fact it severely limits you on the tech tree as you can only use a small percentage of the tech tree at any one time. I understand that they were trying to be different from the normal path of giving you one piece at a time and building it up. But being different just for the sake of being different does not neccessarily translate into being good. In my opinion it is actually really bad! If you click on the screen shot above where it shows the picture of the galaxy then you will get to see the entire single player "campaign". Thats literally all it is, you just move between those stars and play a skirmish, I would assume there is some little congrats screen at the end or a ten second animation where one commander blows up another one, but I just get so bored I can't even get that far. And honestly who cares about the one sentence that lets you know they have nothing else to deliver in that area. I'm sure they used some kind of computer voice over for it as well, as if that somehow will make me forget that I just spent the last few hours being bored out of my mind with no reward. There are also some things I found which seem broken, like not being able to build advanced metal extractors on certain metal deposits due to terrain conflicts.

So in the end my main point would be that if you love a mindless blow em up where you and your teenage friends get high and pwn each other then this is probably right up your alley. But if you are looking for an immersive and rich experience then you should look somewhere else.