As an individual who has been enamoured with the atmosphere of "Cyberpunk", I finally finished this game last month on PS3 during the holidays. Despite the notable flaws that has been talked to death about by critics, DONTNOD delivered an audio visual experience whose understanding "lighting", "art" and "atmosphere" is rather exemplary. I'd go as far as to say that they ought to be templates for other games in the same genre.
Let me condense the "Good" and the "Bad" from my perspective:
Good:
- Design of the city. At some points when the game allows the player to take in the vista, it often felt to me as looking at a precursor to Blade Runner. I felt absolutely immersed.
- Lighting is done exceptionally well with ample amount of reds and whites. The way the light sources cast said light was harsh and apropos lending to the overall atmosphere.
- A strong female protagonist who possesses one of the better designs from the crop of last generation of games. I often found myself placing Nilin in front of a light source and admiring the proficiency with which the polygons were spent on her.
- French voice acting done quite well, considering the script (which thankfully refrains from doing disservice to the main character). I played the game in french with english subtitles and it felt just right.
- Great soundtrack. It also helped to have had a combat soundtrack that indicated the success or failure of an attempted combo.
- Interesting premise. I loved the Remix segments.
- Combo lab is brilliant idea that fundamentally alters how melee operations can be conducted in third person adventure game.
- Some good brain teasing puzzles.
Bad:
- Suffocating linearity juxtaposed against the backdrop of beautiful vistas.
- Far too much hand holding for traversal.
- Inconsistent script for NPCs with some really cheesy dialogues from adversaries.
- Existence of leapers, especially as physically designed, make little sense.
- Combat music got monotonous. A few more possessing the same functional quality would have been nice.
- As good as Combo lab idea is, the design felt it required further fine tuning with balance. There was little pay off for using longer combos as opposed to shorter ones designated purely for cool-downs.
- Story felt inconsistent. The idea was grand but the impact as presented in the game had a small scope which ran counter to what the global implications of the technology. Furthermore, the way the conclusion was reached felt "rainbows, bunnies, sunshine" i.e. unrealistic.
- Remix feature felt quite under utilized.
Another scrap of personal opinion:
I think it was bold and absolutely right thing to not only have a non-white female character (whose gender had no bearing on the story portraying its irrelevance in terms of what the goal is and relevance in terms of inclusion of both race and gender) and show off an interracial (human) couple (which, in my short few years of gaming I witnessed for the first time).
Overall I hope DONTNOD keep on nailing the atmosphere, character design and inclusion factors and improving scripts. After playing TLoU, if a dialogue feels cheesy or "game-y" it really breaks immersion for me.
I hope that CDPR delivers of C2077 and DONTNOD succeeds at delivering their vision with Vampyr.
Here's the detail on her in-game model:
Atmosphere and design:
