yeso I do get frustrated with the tendency of The Discourse to refuse the existence of flawed or simply decent works; every media product arriving on trumped-up viral expectations has to be The Best or The Worst Thing Ever, and there must be a general consensus on which it is within a week of its existence. It’s not just video games. I felt this way about the response to the Sopranos movie, which I felt was flawed but had some compelling ideas; within a week of its release, Twitter had reached the conclusion that it was an unforgivable heap of flaming garbage, and that was that. imo this is part of the larger social media problem of the most extreme reactions to things going the most viral, which then translates into a larger social/cultural environment of polarization, kneejerk judgment, and general deafness to nuance.
(idk that I need to spend nearly an hour poring over video game-related social media and press rags, or watch someone else do it, to get these points… I did appreciate Tim’s throwaway rant on howlongtobeat.com and its suspiciously low estimates, though. I’d always assumed I just play games really slowly.)
That Said: if a game asks $60 of my money and dozens of hours of my time, I definitely want something better than “solid” and “okay”. I’ll take “flawed but compelling”, at least. Also though, for Cyberpunk’s purposes: I don’t have a gaming PC or next-gen console, so…