Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) - Dystopian Video Game Review

I very nearly decided not to attempt a review of Cyberpunk 2077. I have been playing it almost constantly over a four year time period, but it saw me restarting the game several times after being deep into it. The issues with this game at launch were many, but years later it is not only in a much better shape, but had the release of amazing DLC titled Phantom Liberty. I love cyberpunk stuff, I've reviewed things previously here, so here is my attempt at doing written justice to this frankly amazing game.

The game is a first person shooter with driving and RPG elements to it. Mainly taking place in Night City, you play as V (female version voiced by Cherami Leigh), a low level mercenary who through a series of misadventures ends up with an artificial construct of a legendary rocker and terrorist named Johnny Silverhand (voiced by Keanu Reeves - The Matrix trilogy) who died decades previously during an assault on Arasaka (in this dystopian future as is the way with cyberpunk, large corporations rule the world) embedded in her head. With this construct unavoidably taking over her mind, V goes on a hunt to try and find a way to get rid of the construct before it kills her.

I loved this game, I loved the stories told here, I loved the missions, I loved the combat, and I loved the atmosphere. It is a bit of a flawed gem as it got so close to complete greatness but there are some elements that hold it back from a perfect score for me. It plays most like Grand Theft Auto I guess, but instead of driving being the focus, it is the combat and story telling that is the biggest thing. For my build, my V had the ability to hack enemies, uploading viruses to them, and even being able to force them to commit suicide or turn against their teammates. Combat is fast paced and full of great music and brutal and bloody kills. Missions are plentiful and run the gauntlet of cyberpunk style situation. Side quests include such topics as discovering a self-aware vending machine A.I, rescuing a Buddhist monk who had been spliced with tech against his will, and discovering a candidate for the role of Night City mayor is secretly being controlled by a shady group. There is simply too much to go into, I loved the story telling here, there are some really powerful moments. One minor complaint is the amount of side quests that task you with stopping crimes, these little moments are so numerous that at the games start the map screen is covered in the symbols for them.

Then there is Phantom Liberty, taking place in an area of Night City inaccessible in the base game, this twenty to thirty hour DLC features Idris Elba (Luthor TV show) as agent Solomon Reed. It felt like a half-step sequel to the core game due to the amount of improvements here. The story missions are much more involved and detailed, while combat encounters have been levelled up (such as reinforcements arriving during battles). In total, the game took me around a hundred and seventy hours to finish, it is a large game and one that never gets dull due to the intense atmosphere that almost makes you feel like you are in a living city. That is where some complaints come in. The traffic situation is one of the biggest peeves. In the distance the roads are full of cars, yet these fade away when you get close to them, making the city streets feeling a bit dead in terms of vehicles. In general the cars are barely needed, there was a later attempt to add combat to driving, as well as to make the police an actual threat, but it couldn't really be achieved. There are various radio stations featuring some really cool music, but the songs on the stations aren't many (originally you could only listen to the radio while driving, so tracks are limited, something that becomes apparent after they added the ability to listen to music anywhere you go).

This has been a bad review, I just can't put into words how much I enjoyed Cyberpunk 2077, I may even go so far as to include it in my top ten games of all time, despite its issues! It is that much of a nova game choom! Cyberpunk as a concept is something I hope happens in the real world, for now, I'm happy to have such an atmospheric game as this one to occupy my time. Something special, if with some obvious flaws.

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The Last Video Store (2023) - Comedy Horror Film Review

The Last Video Store is a tremendous homage to the era of cheesy VHS movies that serves also as a send-up of those films. Co-directed by Cody Kennedy and Tim Rutherford (who also co-wrote this along with Joshua Roach), this horror comedy may follow a path that other films have carved (Final Girls was the first one that sprang to mind), but this had style in spades.

Nyla (Yaayaa Adams in her film debut) has headed to the hard to find secluded movie rental store 'Blaster Video' to return some tapes that her father had rented. After realising the girl has no interest in movies, the store owner and sole employee; Kevin (Kevin Martin in his feature length film debut) decides to educate her on the films she had returned. It is then that he notices a strange fourth tape, and upon turning it on is shocked to realise it is the legendary 'videonomicron', a mythical videotape that is said to have the power to bring movies to life. With the three films that Nyla returned including a creature feature and a slasher, this turns out to be quite the problem, as the antagonists of those films manifest within the video store, with Nyla and Kevin being forced to fight for their very survival.

I got some Jumanji vibes from the set-up for the film, the protagonists forced to endure the nightmare they unknowingly unleashed, though for this limited to a single location. Nearly the entirety of the film takes place in the dark video store, not a problem as the set design is wonderful, walls adorned with posters, neon lighting around, and some maze like areas. With Nyla and Kevin you have an 'odd couple' dynamic with them both complete strangers and with differing perspectives on things, but forced to team up to survive. Kevin is a loner geek with an encyclopaedic knowledge of films, while Nyla is have someone more like the viewer, who has no idea about any of the movies Kevin is going on about. For much of the film she seemed a bit stand-offish, and it took a while for it to seem like the two had started to warm to each other. Kevin was likeable if a bit puny, I did find it funny how he spends nearly the entire film drinking cans of beer.
Star actor who played a bit of a neutral character was Viper (Josh Lenner - Bio-Cop), this character was pulled from an action film by Kevin to help the duo out. Coming from a trashy action film, Viper was very amusing, and there was even a fun training montage when he is preparing for battle. He had an interesting character arc, with the eventual realisation that he not only wasn't a real person, but that the film he was pulled from is widely regarded as a terrible movie.

The horror comes from the three films that Nyla had been returning. The first of which is a creature feature horror with a CGI monster that looked purposely fake when in the real world. The meat of the film comes from the second movie invasion, a Jason Vorhees type slasher called Castor (Leland Tilden - Urban Legends: Final Cut) whose hockey mask actually makes sense here as his tragic and funny backstory saw him as the goalkeeper for a hockey team drowned under the ice in a hockey arena by his bullying teammates. There are some fun nods to the quality of the films that are manifesting, such as one victim turning into a mannequin when killed, the exact same severed head appearing for different victims, with Kevin commenting the filmmakers were being cheap and using existing props from other movies. There are quite a few fight scenes here, and one kill in particular near the end that looked great.
The design of the film was impeccable, there are cheesy adverts, cheesy excerpts from the movies covered, and lots of warping effects to make scenes resemble VHS tapes when they are having tracking issues. I liked how the end credits have the film playing quickly in reverse as if a VHS tape was being rewound, but that had made me expect an after credits sequence that never materialised.
The soundtrack is mostly stellar, lots of eighties sounding synth music, though there was one piece of classical music that felt like it outstayed it's welcome. 

The characters are a bit strange but I thought The Last Video Store was an excellent comedy horror that displays a lot of love for the genre of movies it is making jokes from. With some unexpectedly moving moments, and a constant barrage of really cool looking special effects, this was a fun film which at seventy three minutes long (not including the end credits) was probably the ideal length due to the limited location and small cast of characters. The Last Video Store came to ARROW, the streaming subscription platform on 9th December last year.

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