168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Phantom Liberty knows it needs to win fans back. While die-hards will tell you after the millions of updates 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Cyberpunk 2077 has had since launch, that it's finally the greatest game of all time as we were promised it would be, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:most of us remain unconvinced. I played one slightly rushed 25 hour playthrough on release, then spent a 𝄹far more leisurely 100 hours or so in a second a month later, when it was a bit more stable, completing every single side mission and gig. Since then, my save file tells me I have spent another 25 or so hours in Night City, dipping back in to test out new patches, snap some pics, and finally get a haircut, and it has alway🌌𒈔s felt like a shadow of the game it could be. When you start Phantom Liberty, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:it's desperate to show you what it has become. A little too desperate.
By the time you read this I will have beaten Phantom Liberty (possibly wiܫth a stylish black and yellow baseball bat), but right now, I have only just been let off the leash to wander the new district of Dogtown on my own. I am over two hours into the expansion, and this has only just happened. In a way, this is similar to the start of Cyberpunk 2077 itself. You play out a unique origin story based on whether you are a Nomad, Street Kid, or Corpo, then are locked into a series of missions that show you bonding with Jackie, before the heist that claims his life and leaves you with Johnny Silverhand in your head. From there, the surprisingly empty world is your oyster.
It felt both rushed and slow with Jackie - rushed in that you suddenly become best buds, slow in that the game kept tugging on your leash if you wanted to explore Night City itself. Phantom Liberty doesn't suffer in either direction for pacing. It's not too hot or too cold, but that doesn't mean it's just right either. Maybe there's too much salt. Whatever it is, it still feels like the wrong way to introduce us to this new, vibrant city within a city.
It's pretty typical at first - you meet an important character, get a new skill tree, and sneak into a dark warehouse. Rather than show off the new Dogtown setting, we're kept in this warehouse for far too long. Despite the fact the fabled wall-running is still not in the game, we have some weird platforming to do, which always sucks in first person. There's then some light combat, and finally we arrive in Dogtown. We enter into a grungy market with more personality than most of the shopping areas in the base game, channelling Blade Runner better than the vanilla experience ever did. I was even inspired to buy a purple fur coat a la Mariette in 2049.
It was odd that I was shuffled into a dark building for so long before I could roam free, but at least now I could- nope. Wait. Once I make my way through the market, I'm then locked back into a mission path, heading down a linear road to a big combat arena, which leads me to a smaller combat arena against tougher enemies, before I get a break with a stealth section that quickly goes wrong because I didn't put all my stats into hacking, meaning I'm now in a big combat arena again.
Cyberpunk 2077's storytelling was always better than its gunplay, and while the skill trees have been revamped and reset, it's still odd to see the game frontload the expansion with such empty spectacles. It wants us to be impressed by the scope and explosions, but all I want is to find strange stories like the sentient vending machine.
We're still not done. After this combat, we get to test out vehicle combat with no tutorial and also no point as you can outrun the enemies and will lose them automatically at the destination. There's yet more combat, eventually leading to a boss battle, and you're still not done as you keep crawling through linear corridors while the game refuses to let you experience it. Once bitten and twice shy, the first two hours of Phantom Liberty are highly curated and lack any sense of personality.
As soon as you can explore, you start seeing more interesting visuals and get the option to start the more eccentric stories the base game excelled at. I want to see everything Phantom Liberty has to offer, the good, the bad, and the ugly, but the main missions are so scared I might find something a little weird that it doesn't let me do anything at all for the first two hours.
I can already say it's worth pushing through the choreographed opening to find the punk amongst the cyber, but it's disappointing that CDPR feels the need to hold our hands this way. Cyberpunk 2077 was a bad game at launch, and it recovered to just about b🍬e good. Phantom Liberty was the chance to push beyond that, but with the opening section so risk averse, I fear it might fall short again.