Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

Parris Lilly joins us as Greg, Blessing, and Andy review Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty. Follow Parris here: https://twitter.com/vicious696 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the kind of funny games cast. Of course, I am Tim Geddes and I'm joined by the new face of video games blessing at aioia Jr. What's up, Chum? We have the nitro rifle himself, Andy Cortez. I'm feeling pretty fucking gunk right now. I love the gong. It's all real. Yeah, we're getting cyberpunkgy today.

And making his return to one of these shows here, fresh from vacation, just taking a little, a little vacation to be back here. It's a big daddy himself, Greg Miller. Wake up, Samurai. And rounded out the group today, we're talking cyberpunk. So, of course, we had to invite Paris, Lily, and his chair. Fun fact. Very first game cast I ever did was Cyberpunk 2077.

Well, this is perfect having you back here. Of course, this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every week, we get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. We do it on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games and roosterteeth.com as a video, but we also do it as a podcast. Just search your favorite podcast service

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Today we're brought to you by better help but I'll tell you about that later. A little housekeeping for you. We got a lot of games to talk about here y'all. So many different games are coming out, previews, reviews, everything in between. So one thing that I did want to say is Mortal Kombat. People have been asking where a review of that is. We're going to be giving you a bonus games cast later this week in place of an ex-cost. So no ex-cost this week, but we'll do a more... We got you! One review.

There's nothing happening anyway in the Xbox. Obviously, games daily every day will be covering all the wild things going on in the world of Xbox. And then, of course, the X-Cast will return next week. But me blessing Mitchell Saltman and Khalif Adams will be doing Immortal Combat One review later in the week, which I, I'm very, very excited to get to. But we're not talking about that. It's spake in the face.

You had me until it came. We got you here. But without that all out of the way, let's get into it. Today we're talking about cyberpunk, Phantom Liberty. Greg, you were our lead reviewer on this one. So I want to start with your thoughts on what you would give this on the kind of funny scale. Sure.

Uh, cyberpunk fandom liberty is a good campaign. I had a really good time with this. Uh, I enjoyed my. myself, great performances. The game is still beautiful. It is still fun to play. The problem I found myself with is I reflected back on it and played other things and went through side content and stuff like that is that when you start talking about it being good, right, I feel like we operate on this five point scale, right? And so you have either a three that's okay or a four that's great or a five that's amazing. For me, there are great moments to the campaign, but the

overall run I had with the Phantom Liberty, I think never got and maintained the four out of five region. So for me, it's a three out of five. It's okay. It took me 13 hours to play through and roll credits for Phantom Liberty. Then you can tack on another hour after that to roll the new ending for cyberpunk. Obviously, we won't spoil any of that, but that's just that. For, you know, more under the hood stuff, I started in just from scratch on this one. You can at the start of a game say, you know, do you want to start from the very beginning or jump to where you could just get into this Phantom Liberty stuff. I jump straight into Phantom Liberty

you rolled a new character that way, ran through it that way. Eventually though, you know, I played it on Xbox Series S. I went up to Canada and played this there, so I brought the Xbox Series X. Had the little X series screen that I want to come on X-Cats and talk about it because that was just an amazing experience, but we'll get to that at a different time. In terms of the game, that's how I played it for the most part.

When I got back home here, I used CD Project Reds Save Transfer Technology to transfer to transfer my save over to PS5 and picked back up there and played it on my big old OLED downstairs with that. So I had a variety of experiences with it in terms of a technical thing, but in terms of my run on it, that's what I did with it. Um, you know, again, I think we're going to get into it. I know just from a two sentence conversation with Bless, I don't think we're fully aligned. So I'm interested to get into it a bit more. But for me, it's just one of those things that as somebody who put 33 hours into

cyberpunk at the launch and played that on PlayStation 5, obviously backwards compatible, PlayStation 4 version, platinum it, like was all about it there. I felt like when I consumed the game that way, it was very much like not so much a great RPG, but it was like a far cry where it was very much, okay, cool, I'm going to go do this thing and I'm going to do it that way and then it'll be done and it will rinse and repeat over and over again. And coming into cyberpunk fandom liberty, that was still the case. Again, the main campaign has lots of ups, lots of downs.

As you know, I've never watched a mission impossible movie, but for every mission impossible trailer I've ever seen, this would be what they were going for. They're doing a spy thriller thing, which, you know, opens, of course, with the president's plane, Space Force One, going down in Dogtown, V being dispatched to go out and help. Of course, they're promising a cure for V to go through and do, and then you were off onto this Rick Rolling Adventure in a new section of Knight City called Dogtown, where you are off trying to do this thing to save the president, and this leads you to all sorts of spy shenanigans, cool moments that I didn't see coming. But overall when you get outside of that

it is still very much cyberpunk 2077 and I want to make it clear I think I was listening to a little show you might know called Gamer Tag Radio where one of the best minds in the business Paris Lily was talking about cyberpunk 2.0 because not only are we getting

Phantom Liberty this big expansion before that you're getting the 2.0 update that's changing the skill trees and doing all these different things my review is very much Phantom Liberty not I can talk about that. I can touch on that. But the problem is that after I platinum cyberpunk, I put it back down. So to jump in three years later and go into it, like,

for me, the skill tree didn't feel different. I went through and assigned my points and I had pretty much the same character and went off and did my piece, right? Like, there's all these little things that if you were looking for, how different is that from one side of the other? You'd need to talk to an expert of cyberpunk, somebody who's played it through every update, everything here and there. But I can just talk about Phantom Liberty through the eyes of somebody who platinum the game before and the side content that comes with it that I feel was very rinse and repeat and didn't do it, but that'll get more into the weeds. For me, this is a three out of five. I think it falls very much into what Blessing and I have talked a lot

about on PS I Love You before where for blessing on putting words in your mouth, we often talk about or you will talk about like, ah, DLC is not really my thing, right? Blah, blah, I feel like this is a piece of DLC that I would struggle to sell somebody. Oh, you have to play this. Like this didn't, I would never, oh, it was great. You got to try it. You got to. to jump in. It was good. If you want more cyberpunk, if you're looking for that, it's there for you. I think it trends way more towards being an action or a first

person shooter game than an RPG, which I wasn't feeling. I want the RPG mechanics, but again, we can get into that. My thought is a three out of five. So you're the lead reviewer on it. You beat it. Andy, have you beat it yet? No, I've put in about six to seven hours, maybe. Bless. I'm on the last

mission. I put in about 15 hours. Paris. Yes. I have finished it and I put in 36 hours. Let's start with you then. What do you think about this game and what would you give it on the kind of funny scale? So it's, I'll give my score first. I would give it a four out of five. And it was very interesting hearing Greg's point of view. I'm actually glad that Greg was the lead review and not me because I did not play this as just Phantom Liberty. I played this as cyberpunk 2.0 and what Phantom Liberty and the 2.0 update was bringing to the,

this game. I am obviously someone who's been heavily invested in this game over the past three years just through the roller coaster of launch and just the updates that they've done over the past few years. I really feel that cyberpunk hit its stride around that 1.5 update where I was really starting to think, okay, this is starting to realize the vision when they initially showed this off in 2018. Obviously, edge runners came out and they started to build a lot of goodwill. So it was funny. I had been playing for a while after that point, playing different builds, just doing different things in Knight City. And then when they announced Phantom Liberty, obviously, it was coming out. I just put it down. I was like, I'm going to stop. I've been waiting to meet

Hanako and Embers. It seems like six months or however long it's been. And now that I actually got it, I jumped back in. And I actually didn't pick it up right there. I actually pulled an old save. So I could build back up to that moment. And for me, I run the analogy that I used. for this game is if any of you have seen Cowboy Bebop the movie, that's what this is for me, where that happened inside the timeline of Cowboy Bebop before the ending, because obviously that's when everybody was still together, but you told this side story, but it felt very personal at that point because you know these characters, you've invested in these characters over X amount of years. And that's kind of how I felt here with Phantom Liberty, where I've been

invested in this game over X amount of years to where everything felt very familiar, but with 2.0, changing up the skill tree, adding the vehicular combat, you know, obviously finally getting that police system implemented. Now we have this new section of Night City with Dogtown. It felt very familiar but new. And I was invested into these characters. Like, I look at Johnny Silverhand so much differently now after I've been playing at post-Fandum liberty because I felt like they almost humanized him more in a way. And again, we won't spoil anything here. But the introduction of some of the new characters, but more importantly, going back to the skill tree, the revamping of the skill tree, I love what they did because

they made it more the skills that you invest in. And I did like a net runner. So I obviously invested very heavily into tech and into intelligence. But the skills that you're seeing, they're the perks, they made more sense. Like, okay, if I invest in this, I'm going to get to do this cool thing because of that, right? And I built up to that. Obviously, the way that they revamped, the way the cyberware works now, where your armor is attached to that. Now your clothing is virtually cosmetic at this point. There's still a few attributes that you'll get in helmets and things like that. Some of the new weapons, kind of the illegal underground weapons that you can get, you know, when you're in Dogtown from that vendor was pretty cool. And like I said,

running as a net runner, you know, I'm just popping heads left and right because I've invested in it. how all those skills work. So for me, it was more about the sandbox that I got with Knight City that, again, I feel like this is very close to what they sold us back in 2018. When I originally saw it and I got super excited about the game, this feels very close to that for me. And it was interesting, Greg, where you mentioned this plays more as like kind of an action game for you

versus an RPG, whereas I think with the resetting of the skills, they're getting closer to it being that RPG that they promise us it would be because now I already see the potential when I go back in. Like I said, I did a net runner build this time. Now maybe I'll do a solo build or something like that. I'll do something completely different than what I did now, where I can actually play the game that way and approach these scenarios differently. Again, going back to Dogtown, I think what they did with that space,

it's in Night City, but it feels so much different. than Night City. And I thought that was really cool as well on the airdrops that you get in there. Just the way that the troops are walking around, the NPCs within Dogtown feels a lot different than it did in the core Night City. But then you leave out there and you're back in Night City. And that feels very familiar to you as well. Now with the vehicular combat that you have, you can have a lot of fun scenarios with that. But again, you need to invest in certain skills to unlock some of the cool shit that you'll get out of that too. One thing that I did, with the police system was that I thought was a neat little thing is I got up to five star and it took off for the badlands and the night city police basically handed off to Militek once I got to the badlands and that fed into the lore of what cyberpunk has been so that was another thing that was a cool thing for me to be able to experience but I totally get what Greg is saying I can see someone that has not been invested in this over the years that maybe you know obviously we know the launch was not great in 2020 put the game down and

you're going to pick it up at Phantom Liberty and you're not going to have that investment that someone like myself would, whereas maybe it's just okay. If you're just playing the Phantom Liberty portion of it and you don't have the other backstory, you know, of the main story, you know, the relationship with Johnny and just everything

that goes along with that. So I can see Greg's point of view, but for me, ultimately, this is a four out of five. One of the things you bring up Harris that I like is the sandbox stuff you're talking about. For me, the things that wore so thin to where I was like, ugh, like I'm not even, like, I feel like, yes, Dogtown looks different than Knight City, but one of my problems, especially after having

platinum bit and put it 33 hours into it, to jump back in here and be running around Knight City and Dogtown is the fact that I feel, even though districts look different, the whole thing is just such a blur of neon and on ramps to where I think you're really missing that, oh, here's Village Square, or here's this one building that I'll center myself off of. and know all this stuff. So when I was out there in the sandbox running around doing that, it was very much like, this doesn't feel alive.

And I know we overuse that word all the time in terms of it. But then it would be the idea of like, all right, cool, I'm running to the next objective and I'm running through NPCs and I'm knocking them down, but I'm not having an emergent gameplay moment. I'm not having a Starfield. I pick up a quest or somebody says something. I'm not having a Baldur's gate.

This guy fights me and I'm into a battle. It would have the skull above their head or like the night, I can help the cops here or whatever. But again, it was that thing of back to my far cry comparison after playing so much of this where it is just like i that's just clearly one of the things you can do with them rinse and repeating stuff in there to the point of then to jump out back to the sandbox part of it right like anytime i had to drive i was just like all right i forgot i don't like driving in this game driving in this game i do not feel

as tight or fun and so there's like you know one of their things they talked in our thing is like oh we had all these new side quests right there's 17 new side quests and gigs right and one of the gigs is more cars. There's more cars littered around that you get. And it's like anytime, like I did like three of them like,

yeah, this sucks. Like I'm just never doing these again because I'll ride Jackie's motorcycle when I have to. I will fast travel whenever I can because I don't like this. But then when it would be these drives,

it would be these drives where I could sit there and just be like, man, nothing is happening. Like I'm driving from point A to point B to do the next thing. You know, why not just let me blink fast travel there or do whatever.

Like I'm not enjoying this moment. And I felt like I had a, oh, there are, like I said, great moments in the, the campaign and there are great side missions too i'm not trying to knock that there's a really fun side mission with these two cops that i thought was great and then there's even a sequel to that

that i enjoyed but it was like over there'd be these moments where i was actively being like i am not having fun in this moment and i wish i was plus what about you you're just at the end of this game like where are you out with it yeah so it's fun listening to gregg and paris talk about it right and like thinking back to my review back in the day when the cyrpunk 277 base launched and i opened up my notes from that review from 20 what end of 2020 december yeah december for 2020 just to see where I was with that. Right. And overall, like, I really enjoyed the game, but it wasn't like, it wasn't high

in my game of the year list, right? It was one of those ones where we're coming into it. I was like, this is going to be my favorite game ever. And it let me down in that sense, but it was still a game that I had a lot of fun with, right? Because I got to play it on PC and all this stuff. But I still go through and I look at the cons that I had written down on my notes app, or on my Google Docs, actually. And, you know, I go through and it's, the first note I have here, it's buggy as fuck, right? And I go through the bugs

of consistent call air, guns floating in the air, sometimes dialogue will just pause and wait following NPCs can get if he I found a straight up typo in my game quest regression would just bug out in some places yada yada yada right went through a long list of bugs I then go through and like I talk about how the map is cluttered I talk about how the game feels like it wants to be

edgy so much that it comes as a detriment right when the game goes into points where it feels like man characters can get into like a cartoonish level of stereotypical right like I go through I talk about having not feeling like I have ownership over my character and over my story and all these things for me playing Playing cyberpunk Phantom Liberty in the last couple of weeks,

I feel like I am able to love this game now without compromise or caveat. I'm having such a fantastic time playing this game. Half of it, and part of it is the reminder of, oh, man, I really do like this world. And oh, man, I think cyberpunk really has something here with its characters and his story and its style and all these things. Another part of that is the 2.0. I think so many of these updates are great. I think this piggybacks a little bit of what Greg's talking about with the RPGisms of the game, because it's been so fascinating jumping from playing Ballersgate 3

to them playing Starfield to then now playing cyberpunk and being able to see the different ways in which they want to be RPGs where Ballers Gate is very much, hey, this is tabletop, this is D&D, like we are going to really give you ownership of the choices you make in the story and the characters they hang out with and all these things, right? Starfield is more of a, hey, we're going to be a space sim. Like if you want to create settlements, we're going to let you do that.

If you want to be a crimson fleet, dude, we're going to let you be that. If you want to be a Fed, we're going to let you be that. Excuse me. Cyberpunk, in terms of its RPGisms, where I've been able to find them this time around, is in the skill tree and is in how they marry all those skill and perk and, like, upgrade systems to really let you play the way you want to play. And for me, I've been blown away by it.

Like, you look at the skill tree, for example, right, which they've gone through, they revamped. It's like the same kind of things that you had in the OG game. So you're going through, you have the reflex ability. you have cool, you have body, you have all these things that you can level up, but then you go into a menu deeper and you have these abilities that you can now apply perk points to that, well, you kind of focus in on these different play styles for combat and just for general gameplay that I felt like he didn't really have before. And so now as I'm playing, I am, and I should also give context that I didn't restart my game.

I'm picking up from the end of my save, so I have all these perk points built up. So like, I am coming in with a character that is already like, oh, I'm already deciding how really want to play this. So I'm going in. My character is this like ninja. I can slow-mo time. If I pick up, I'm like dashing all over the place. I would double jump and a dash. And so now I don't even fuck with cars. I jump dash jump and that gets me like a good enough distance to get to wherever I'm kind of going to Doctown. And that's been enough for me. But like with that also in combat, I am slowing down time all over the place. I have another relicability where like I can see critical hit points. And so I'm doing that. I'm combining that with a, a,

specking into katanas and specking into swordsmanship where I am slicing and dice and people and the way I'm playing the game now reminds me of listening to a podcast back in like 2018 of people that came back from the E3 demos yeah the E3 demos talking about like oh man and yeah they dismembered this and it was crazy that's how it feels like I am playing now when I get into combat with my character leveled up in this way and I'm having such a blast and I can't wait to level my character even more to get them closer where I want to be that combined with the cyberware being revamped as well where it is you're going through like paris mentioned you have the armor stuff that is applied there now as opposed to just cosmetic but you can do that you then have all these different

elements of your v that you can replace right whether it's your eye whether it's your arm stuff whether it's your leg stuff right like i know some of this was in the it was already there in the base but they've gone through and really made the stuff work together to where now i'm like i i feel like i have such an ownership of high play, and I'm excited to see other people's gameplay to see if the way they play is matched up, say if they go for a cool character that is doing another thing, or they're going for a body-leveled character that is using the big weapons and doing all that stuff, that's like, that's where the RPG is coming in for me, and I'm enjoying it so much. You then get to the story, right, which does have less ownership than what you look at at Baldr's Gate or even like

a Starfield. But from what you're getting out of the story and the character work and the decisions that you're making, the dialogue and all this, I'm having such a good time. I really like the story. I think it's a really cool political spy thriller, right? It's not the best thing ever, but it, again, like, looking back at cyro-punk versus what I see from other RPGs in the genre,

the fact that, like, I get into a scene in this game and I'm talking to characters, and it feels like a scene. I'm talking to somebody, and they are walking around, they're cluing dishes, they're like, making a drink. And, like, the character models look fantastic. The lighting, the environment, that we find ourselves in look fantastic. Like it's the kind of game where I feel like I can take a screenshot at any moment

and that screenshot I can make my background. Dude, my Xbox is filled with photo mode because the game's gorgeous, but then to your point, especially coming off of Starfield, where they have understandably gotten so much shit for being Bethesda. And it's just being, I'll stand there and talk to you like this and maybe my eyes will follow you. Or maybe I'll slowly turn my head off.

Like the fact that you were in there and you will be talking to a person and they will track you, they will make the drink. They will give you the drink. Yeah. I mean, like, yeah. And like, for me, the best parts of my playthrough so far had been when I've been able to stop and smell the flowers

in the way that, like, I love to do in these kind of games, right? And I think that's something that I kind of wanted more at Starfield, right? And like, it's that fun thing of seeing sort of the, some people have found that there. Some people haven't found that. In this game, I'm sure some people will find that. Some people won't. But I've had points where I'm doing a main mission and I'm in like a, kind of like a club type setting. And I go outside and I lean over the railing, and I just look out at nice.

city and like I just enjoy the moment for a second. I'm like, okay, that's cool. And I come back and there's a concert going on and there's all these cool effects and the, um, the singer is walking down this runway and they have these lit up, uh, wings. Like they start off with one wing looking like the one winged angel, but then like via lights and in all the shit, right? Like they have this cool um, uh, holographic effect of like a wing flowing and I'm like, this is fucking cool as hell. Like visually this is so stunning and so fun to watch. And that's something that I could just walked by. I didn't have to take a moment to stop and just look at that stuff. You know, I think the set dressing in the style of cyberpunk is so strong. And that stuff has been blowing me away,

even more so this time around. I have been enjoying some of the in-world, just random activities. I like the driving. And not necessarily like, I'm with you in terms of in base cyberpunk. I didn't love the driving either. Like the handling was weird. The new vehicle missions, one of the first vehicles I found was this souped up like race vehicle practically. And it looked cool as hell and I started driving with it. I was like, oh, this controls perfectly. This is exactly how I want something to control. And so now I made it my mission to find a car like that and own a car like that. And that's been fun. There are these random drops that you get now in Dogtown that you have to fight people over and that stuff's been fun because all the

loot has been worthwhile. And for me, this has been a game. This has been such a game I've been able to find myself getting lost in. The one more thing I'll say here. Performances have been great. I really like all the characters. Idriselva, fantastic, except for the fact that he doesn't know if he wants to have a British accent or an American accent. And like he is in between the entire time. It is hilarious. But aside from that, like I really like the character stuff in this game as well. I mean, you haven't beat it yet, but just where are you veering right now in terms of

on the kind of funny scale? Because that, everything you just said reads like a five to me. For me, I'm between a four and a five. I think I really want to see the endings. And I also want to play way more. But yeah, like I could see myself giving it a five. But I'm kind of on that back and forth there. That's awesome.

Andy, I want to hear your thoughts on this. in Paris, I'll get to you in one second, but first, I'm going to take a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. I can't even count the amount of nights I lose sleep because I just can't stop thinking and my brain just won't stop talking. It turns out one great way to make those racing thoughts go away

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Paris, what's up? Oh, no, I, real quick, before you go to Andy, one other thing I did want to bring up, because I played on PC, and the path tracing that's in it, you know, the R-TX cards, Nvidia, the whole thing. And we'll see what the comments say,

but I'm going to go out on a limb and say, this might be, no, this is, the most visually impressive open world game I've ever played. This is period point blank. And a lot of what Blessing was just saying, you want to stop and smell the roses in so many different places in that game where you just look out and you're just like, God damn, this is just visually stunning to me.

I just love. And again, this goes back to what I was saying that I'm invested in it since 2020, that I've seen all the iterations of this game across PC, across console, et cetera. and to see that they did not give up on this game and they continued to iterate on it and they continue to improve not only the visuals, but obviously everything we've said with the overhaul of the skilled tree, the new relic tree that's in there now,

just all these different things that CD Project Red has done to make this game, anybody that were to pick this game up today and play it from start to finish with Phantom Liberty and everything included, they would look and go, well, what was wrong with in 2020? They wouldn't believe it because obviously all the issues that it had back then, But they've 90% tile resolved all of those and improved upon the systems in the game and made it, like I said, this open-world sandbox that you just want to live in. You want to turn on the radio stations, get in your car, your motorcycle, and just drive around the city and see all these different things. And that's the other thing.

Like the community focused our radio station. They added in in Phantom Liberty as well. Just, again, another cool perk. Awesome. Music is so good. Yeah. It's really, really good. But it's just a thing of like I feel like yeah, look, they effed up.

Let's just say that period point blank 2020. They effed up. Games should have never come out when it did. But they stuck with it. They listened to feedback. They worked on it. And here we are three years later. And it's just like, yeah, this, this is a very visually impressive and fun game to play in an open world setting.

Absolutely. Sorry. I know I kind of went long. Well, I wanted to add a couple more things. One, I didn't hit one bug while playing. And that was the thing that blew me away the most honestly for like, again, my original play-through having so many bugs. Only one I had was a visual one where they made a big deal about

Azurzalba changing his clothes and we were a different clothes and then we split apart and then we came back together and he was in his original outfit. I was like, that's weird. And then we split apart and came back together and he was a normal outfit. I'm like, all right, that was just. And to Paris's point about this being like maybe the best looking open world game ever, right? Like I'm kind of aligned with that.

I think it's up there right next to Horizon and right next to Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2. I think, you know, where Horizon might have this game. on like pure fidelity. I think this game has, has it on like just set dressing and how versatile the environment's looking, how well the environments are set up. Like this game is,

like they've done such a good job, just creating locations for you to be in. And so yeah, that's where I look at cyberpunk and I'm like, damn, y'all did the thing. Andy Cortez. This was a kind of a tough one

to get back into just because so much time has gone by. And it's one of those that I knew I was going to have to start eventually. I was like, do I start a new character? I was kind of wrestling with all that.

And by the way, Greg, you mentioning the NPC differences. And I did end up rolling a new character for a little bit. And just to kind of like, you know, I haven't re-experienced this intro with my massive PC at home. And like, I want to see how all of it looks, path tracing and everything. And just, you know, those intro moments where Jackie's are talking to and he's eating his noodles. And it's just, it's like, God, that's a person. That does not feel like a video game character. I'm way more aligned with blessing when it comes to a lot of this.

Again, I'm only about six or seven hours in, but when you have an NPC, Tim, look at you and say, this goes way deeper than we ever thought. Oh, shit. You got me in. Oh, I got it. You got me. So when something goes way deeper than you ever thought, I'm totally into it. This whole DLC so far has been really thrilling.

And I'm enjoying all the characters. I'm enjoying these lines of dialogue that I just like kind of existing in these sequences, even when Vee isn't talking, just having two characters going back and forth about their pasts and learning more about them, I think Yadda's performance is awesome, and it doesn't feel like the, not to like throw shade, right, but, you know, there's a lot of people that have issues with Megan Fox in World Kombat and how, like, sometimes actors on the movies don't really know how to, you know, take their talents into the vocal booth and do, like, voice of, work there. Eegis Elba, I think, is so fucking awesome in this so far. I'm just incredibly

interested and intrigued by all this story-wise. I didn't expect to be pulled back into this world the way I have. There's something about the rest of Knight City, though, that still doesn't encourage me to walk around and see what I can experience. A lot of Night City to me looks like super gorgeous, obviously, and it is just immaculately done art-wise, but I don't really play this game the way I do a lot of open-world games where I'm like, let me just walk this direction to see what

happens. I don't really feel like I would be rewarded with anything in that case anyway. If anything is going to happen, I'm going to get a phone call or a text message from somebody telling me about a mission. Then I'll go fast travel and find it with that mission. Dude, it's like booting up the, because I made a new character and then I went back with my PlayStation

character save, right? And booting that back up for the first time in years, your phone just rings for like five minutes. Yeah. Oh, this is happening, and I'm talking to one guy. And while I talk to that guy,

the same guy who's talking to me, sending me text messages. Jesus God. Yeah, like when you finally get out of like a big like NBA game or something, you finally have. Airplane mode off, you know,

I will say though that I think Dogtown is a really awesome addition. And I enjoy how lawless so much of it is because it kind of reminds me of like the, it's a weird kind of like callback, but rage too. Just kind of enjoying the open worldness there of you'll just see random crimes and I can just go shoot people down and have a cool little gunfight against this gang of these two gangs that are kind of fighting against each other right now. I'm way more interested in that little section of open world than I thought I'd be.

And I'm with blessing. I do enjoy the driving. I like, I have that Akira style motorcycle and I'm just driving on that, you know, doing this sort of like you just draw your weapon. I haven't really experienced a weapon or a vehicle that does who said metal type shit yet. I'm just kind of like shooting from the motorcycle.

But yeah, I think the story's awesome. I'm loving where I'm building my character sports in terms of combat. Go ahead. Do you like shooting from the motorcycle? I do. Is every like driving combat? I think it's fine.

I did it like the three times I needed to in the story and I was like, all right, I hate this sucks. And so now if somebody shoots me, I just stop the car, get out. They stop their car, they get out. I shoot them to death. I get back in my car. and how you go about my business.

I love it. Yeah, I love just trying to be like precise keyboard mouse aiming and shit like that. But they brought in a move from, from Overwatch to my favorite character to play Ash, where she throws a dynamite and shoots it out of midair. That's an ability now. And you can throw grenades and shoot them out of midair. And they do more damage when they explode in the air

if they're near a lot of people. I love kind of just the path that I'm taking in terms of talents and abilities and getting really into the like hacking of enemies while we're in battle. All that stuff is just so like it's so fast-paced and it feels so good to do when we're in these battles. I think a lot of these levels

in the Phantom Liberty expansion have been really well thought out in terms of pacing and getting your tension up and kind of throwing you curve balls and you think something's going to happen but nope, you're fucked. You've got to take on this whole room and then the music hits and it's like, God damn, dude, this movie

like this really does feel like the ultimate lessons learned. to me where like they they knew that a lot of things weren't up to anybody's standards really when that game came out. And I feel like so much of it is so sculpted and crafted with where I'm at right now. I'm absolutely loving it. Yet another game that I'm like, God, I wish I wasn't into it so I can get back to playing the other six or seven games, right? Same thing happened with Starfield. But I am enjoying my time a lot with this and I cannot wait to get back to it. One thing I do want to jump in on it. We're talking about performances, Adrian Salvo being awesome.

Keanu Reeves, I know Paris talked about this at the top, right? Of, like, Johnny being great and a new dimension to him and stuff. Echo that 100%. Keanu Reeves' performance. And again, I know when we got our hands on cyberpunk originally, there was like, oh, man, he's really in this. It wasn't just he's doing 10 minutes in a VO booth. He's like, same thing here, really great for him.

And then also, I want to give a shout at to the female V. And I'm probably mispronouncing her name, but I think it's Shay Rami Lee. I was a male V in my 33-hour platinum play-through. So this time around was like, I'll roll her, and I really liked her a lot. I think I liked her more than the male counterpart. And so I was really enamored with that performance. I wanted to call out, I think the male V has improved a lot in, like, just remembering the male V's lines from, yeah, from my initial sort of like playing in 30, 40 hours or whatever. I do feel like there is a bit more of a serious tone when needed.

It isn't always just the, you know, I'm going to be this brash sort of cocky guy or whatever. That's the thing I feel like I'm noticing this time around with Phantom Liberty is that I just think the writing is better. That was one of my things with just the original play through of, oh man, this is great, but I got to roll my eyes sometimes because now it feels juvenile because you want to be so cyberpunk. You want to be so cool. And so like you're throwing out like when we open up this episode, I'm like, what's up, Chum? And you said something about Gonzo. When we're like, you know, saying these random shit, if you can't execute on that, then it is just going to come off cheesy. It's not going to come off great.

This DLC, the whole time I'm like, yo, I'm in. this. They're throwing chum around. They're throwing all these words around. And like the context, the situations, the way that these lines are delivered, I'm in and all the way. Like, I felt like the writing bits were actually real, way better this time around. I also learned to mention real quick. I was going to say, Paris, that I started from my character just like Blessing did at the end of the game. I didn't do a brand new save. No, and just, just my point on everything that you're just saying is, yeah, I mean, this is, again, the result of lessons learned. Three years later, they've gotten better.

like I've always played as a female V. I've actually never played as a male V, but to your point, even her as a voice actress, she's improved as well. It's like they've lived in these roles now, so they're very familiar to them and you're seeing the execution come out of that and some of the new dialogue that we're having. And, you know, shout out to Steve Blum. He's legendary voice actor. He's playing Mr. Hans, which is the fixer that you meet in Dogtown. And, you know, he's fantastic too. It's like everybody was in their bag when it came to the performances that we got, fandom liberty-wise. One thing I do want to circle back with Greg is the vehicle combat. The other, and I've been running as a net runner, the other cool thing is not just shooting your

gun is I'm literally using quick hacks, blowing up cars, you know, making them break, reverses, doing all this stuff where, you know, in combat real time, which is just another cool perk, which again, go back to the new skill tree. They've laid it out in the way that you can look at the skill tree now and figure out where's all the cool shit that I want to do depending on the build that I want to have now. And you can start specking that along the way. I think they even have a website now where you can kind of do that ahead of time just to see what it would look like. But these are the things that they've updated now that, you know, they've gotten all this feedback and they've learned what worked the first time, what didn't work and what can we do to improve to kind of truly make this the definitive cyberpunk experience. you know, for this game.

It didn't take too long for me to get back into the rhythm of having to infiltrate a big old building and seeing one camera and then hacking into that camera and being able to look through it and switch to the other camera feeds and marking all the enemies. I was just like, man, this feels good to do again. The first time I got back in and I was like, all right, quick hacks. You know what I mean? I'm like, all right, cool. I'm going to, you know, use an overheat on this guy's short circuit over there.

Let me blow up that thing to distract the enemies. and then now I'll go take them out. Again, like the moment's a moment. Like, the core gameplay is good. Like, I'm not trying to say it's not. I'm not, you know what I mean? I think it's just, it wears thin for me for as much as I've done in it,

or much I've done with it, I guess. Yeah, I think to what we're talking about, too, like this, it feels like almost my dream, Deus X game. Because Deus X, you know, I played a human revolution and loved it. I played Mankind Divided and really liked it, right? But, like, those were games that, they were smaller, right?

They were, hey, we are going for, this is a, you know, action RPG, Western RPG, immersive sim, whatever you want to call it. You're going to get probably 20 to 30 hours out of it. But when we're talking about the skill tree stuff, you know, that was the game that made you pick a lane, right? They're not just giving out the, oh, I forget what they're called. They're called like haxas or some shit like that. We're not just giving out the skill points, though, to upgrade your character really nilly.

You're going to have to pick something. And with that, usually it was gunplay, stealth and crawling through events. And then, like, hacking stuff, right? You had a, like, a small handful of options. playing cyberpunk it feels like they took that and just expanded it out because even as you're talking about the hacking stuff of finding a camera and then going from there you know like early on in this dLC play through i i still had a cyberware um like thing that let me hack like turrets and shit and i'll i'll be using it randomly and i'm like i'm not really built for this like this is

just the random thing that i have so i'm going to replace this with something else and now like i've gone full in on just being a samurai right like using my sword and using my dash abilities and like using pistols and shit. And like hearing you talk about how yeah, you can hack into cameras and do things and even seeing some of the gameplay footage that Bear brought up during the beginning of the episode where there was somebody who, you know, they're sneaking into a thing. They looked up, hacked one person and then they blew up and then another person like catches on electricity. It's like, whoa, what's going on here? That's not how my game looks. Instead, I think, you know, when I talk about... You're playing Ghost Runner. Well, no, literally, like,

I am playing Ghostrunner. That's what it feels like I am dashing a little of the place, slicing and icing. When we talk about how dynamic the game can feel in terms of the cutscenes and the characters walking around all this stuff, I got to a cutscene during a gig. This wasn't even like a main story mission. This is a gig where I am, I get

toward the end of it. It's me and two dudes and we're trying to drive out, but then the head honcho walks in and it's him and his bodyguards and he's like, oh, what's going on here? We get into the conversation. I'm trying to talk him down. I'm trying to be like, hey, it's all good. But one of my guys says something that fucks up the whole situation. And so the guy is like kind of

be, he's kind of building up to like, all right, sick him. Like, he's like, he's about to say one of those lines to his bodyguards, and I sense it. And so I'm like, all right, I'm going to keep my finger on the yellow two button just in case because I, I suspect my sword into being able to deflect bullets back. And so if ginged him. Yeah, like, if shit pops off, I'm fucking ready for it. And then sure enough, he says, he didn't say sick him, but I'm just going to say, he's like, all right, sick him.

And as soon as he says it, I bust out my sword and like bullets come flying at me and I deflect all of them. and it was the coolest feeling thing ever. And that was in the middle of what essentially is a cutscene, right? But, like, I think the way that they've built this game does give you that sense of, oh, I'm going to put myself in this movie scene and play it out the way that I, that, like, my badass character could play it out. And yeah, like, I think that stuff works really well.

Production values are just absolutely insane in some of these cuts. Erdin and some of these side quests, in particular one where you do some jugs to kind of hallucinate. Oh, yeah, there you talk about it. My God. Playing that little moments like that that could be missable, I think, are just really impressive. Andy, I want to know what you think about all the new Nvidia stuff because I know they are really showing off a lot of the RTX tech and stuff. In this one, like, did you get to play with that stuff?

Yeah, it's really impressive. I mean, again, the amount of before the show started, I was telling Paris, like just photo mode has been, it's during a lot of these important cutscenes with characters where I'm needing to listen to dialogue. It's tough to not hit the end button and then pop into, like, let me just get a quick little photo right here. Yeah, the full path tracing is awesome. Again, path tracing on the level of what film does where you're not just having metals reflect and then calling it ray trace reflections or having the shadows in between boxes and the ground and calling that like ray trace ambient inclusion. This is like every light ray in this game behaves as it. it should and I've just been taking a lot of before and afters of certain, you know, just a little environment and inside of a club and inside of a bar.

It is, it's unbelievable. And then you kind of forget about it because you're just so in there. And then you turn it off and certain moments will just kind of go, ooh, god damn. That's, that's really how it actually looks without path tracing turn on. I think the tech is just super impressive. And I'm running it on my RTX 4090. and I have frame generation on as well, so that's creating an extra frame for frame rate,

and I'm just, you know, everything's just awesome right now. One other thing to add to what Andy's saying, because we're similar setups, we're both on RTX4090s. And to be clear, I have not played on console. So when my visually impressive statement, that is strictly I'm talking about PC with past tracing enabled, and midway through,

they, Nvidia sent out the update. So now it's doing. DLSS 3.5 as well and it's doing some more AI stuff. It's an improving performance old thing. I want to say I'm definitely staying about the high 90s at 4K with path tracing on with DLSS 3.5 as far as frames go. But again, just everything Andy said, the path tracing, the lighting is just, it's incredible. It's just absolutely incredible, especially night scenes.

I think Barry was even just showing one a second ago. You just want to stop and just look at it. Like, wow, this is actually in the game. This is, I'm playing this right now. This isn't just a screenshot or some kind of CGI video. This is the video game that I'm playing right now. And, you know, credit to CD Project Red and Nvidia for, again, just all the work that they've been doing the past couple years. Because cyberpunk has pretty much been their poster child from an NVIDIA standpoint for all of their RTS and DLSS technology that they've been doing the past few years.

I'm playing on PS5 and the adaptive triggers is pretty cool. Well, there you go, everyone. That has been our review. Whoa, whoa, whoa. So 277, Phantom Liberty. On the right here, I listened to the games cast from December 2020. And this was still when you, Tim Getty's, yeah, contemplated playing this game. Yeah.

I think, honestly, even for me, who's the lowest on the thing, but still enjoyed myself, you would really, I think, like the campaign. Yeah, I mean, I ended up beating cyberpunk 27. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know. There's something about it. I don't need to go back. I think you should do it. I think there's fine.

It's not possible. It's mission impossible. It's sick as hell. It is mission impossible. That's a great way. Yeah. It's what I said. Why are you giving him credit?

I said it's man. Good job, Andy. That's a great comparison. That's a great comparison. Tim. Tim, I would suggest watching cyberpunk edge runners on Netflix.

Yeah, I've seen that as well. If that didn't hook you to want to go play the game, then nothing will, in my opinion. I mean, I sent some callbacks in the game now to that as well, which is pretty cool. I said Tim the

cinematic trailer that they made for this and was like Tim even if you're not going to play the game play this big and loud because this is one of the coolest

cinematic preview things and it is it blew my mind and I still have it because it got too late and Gia went to sleep and I was like I need to do this right

so when I get home tonight I'll do it you got me you got to do it but thank you for that Greg let us know in the comments below

what your hype levels are for of Liberty, what you're planning on doing, whether it's re-rolling a new character, using your OG. What's up? And also, what you have for lunch? Please let me know. Paris, thank you so much for joining us. Paris will return to the X-Cast next week.

But until next time, I love you all. Goodbye.