The HotSpot - Episode 391

The hottest spot mess

Oh cool, they got the 'American Video Game Expert' on the show. What a treat!

Welp, 1.05 just came out for consoles.

After many messages from gamers, Best Buy will allow open box returns of Cyberpunk 2077.

Brad is correct about pointing out Sony 'taking a bath' in Australia.

"Australia’s ever vigilant Competition and Consumer Commission has won a court case against Sony over its PlayStation Store refund policy. An Australian Federal Court has ordered the company to pay AU$3.5 million (~$2.4M) for misleading customers."

Australian Consumer Law doesn't stop its protection on downloading a product, or opening the box, if the thing you then use is faulty, everyone else should be fighting for similar consumer protections.

As much as you guys want to joke, “Haha F*** off,” to your paying subscribers about Jeff’s green screen, that shit causes screen burn in.

it sounds like someone's mic stand is creaking or someone is tapping their desk througout the whole show and it's driving me crazy

Despite its faults, I'm actually loving Cyberpunk on PS5 and think it looks pretty good for what is technically a PS4 game. Ironically, patch 1.05 that claims to fix a very long list of bugs just hit the PlayStation store right as they removed the ability to purchase it.

I always knew cyberpunk would suck

While playing it on PC and enjoying it quite a bit. with a 3080 the game looks great and the performance helps impress, I do agree the marketing oversold it by a long way. But if you look at at as a GTA like with Bethesda game jank it's still an okay experience, like Jeff said a 4 star game that needs some patches.

Yo Jeff green af.

"Capitalism is the real issue" - Jeff Gerstmann

Is Jeff's green filter a technical difficulty? Or is it some kind of joke?

@sergio: Surely any persistent feature in the frame would be cause for such concern? (I.E. walls/lights in the background)

I could go on about how most websites/applications/whatever have persistent elements and how screens susceptible to burn in probably shouldn't be used as a PC monitor but I get the impression you're making a fuss for the sake of making a fuss.

These are unprecedented times as they say. I imagine switching to home office for game dev is incredibly difficult especially for what is ostensibly the final stretch. Although I am curious how long they realistically still needed to release this game in a proper state without killing their staff. I don’t mean add any new VO or systems just this game we got now, only polished and optimized.

Technical difficulty. This happened sporadically to Alex in one of the recent Giant Beastcast episodes. I believe it's a camera issue, a Zoom/video conferencing issue, or a camera-to-conferencing issue. Kinda hard to pin it down for the crew, I'd imagine.

My thoughts go out to the little people who are probably going to have to crunch through the hollidays to get CP2077 in a somewhat more playable state, because higher up's/shareholders decided the game "had to ship this year"

thronebreaker was good. :/

Looks like GetFucked Dot Net is on sale for $3000 lol

AC unity is the best AC game

Longform warning sorryyyy

First, this PS4 thing..the fuck even, what ...even. That situation is so dumb, and I am so sorry for anyone unable to play. Especially with the entire gaming internet seemingly at war making it either more confusing or obfuscating what a potential 'patched up' version looks like in the future, and blacklisting the game as just 'a bad game' without even really knowing if that's true. That in itself is the problem here, and it needs fixing. Fast, and I am angry for people out there.

I just want to say though, that there is a path to getting to a point where that game works. And, in other circumstances like mine that are more forunate on PC, the game still has bugs but, I find a lot of potency currently, and potential with patches, for a very worth-your time video game that may lose that appeal for no reason other than this stupid studio mismanagement and messaging, and shit performance optimization.

Remember folks, it's okay to like what others call 'bad' video games. It's also okay to dig exceptionally and objectively terrible garbage media that is busted. Most of my favorite things are like this, many of my favorite games are STILL buggy as fuck, and I still love them. Honestly, I played so many dog-shit games this year so maybe my tolerances are higher, but I am considering Cyberpunk to be a very, very highly produced yet buggy, but incredibly compelling (I find the characters to be very strong, and the side missions a big exercise in living out my AKIRA/DREDD inspired jungle-gym city tourist dreams, in a currently almost-great-but-pretty-good B-Game ARPG which my steam hours are well above what the side missions and main plot require already. Alex, I don't feel burned. While saying "I'm having fun" sounds like a defense-and maybe is? - I am having fun. You may now throw your bricks.

For exercise I listened to about 4 hours of criticism about the "optimal experience" available game, and in tandem, the problems higherup-publisher decisions, which seems to be in my perception somewhat conflated with the actual quality of what this game, say, patched, looks like, or, when the PS4 version gets up to PC stability (generally speaking glossing over reviews/forums/whatever). You might wind up with a game that settles at a 6/10 in the end, but I'd still play this 6/10 game a couple times, for seeing things I hadn't. There's enough here, to offset what isn't, for me. In days where I gave more of a shit, I remember a game I was enjoying getting slammed being a gut punch I wanted to argue over, but to save others that reaction, TLDR; enjoy what you enjoy, busted, buggy, reinventing the 'Game', or not.

So, while the entire situation about this game feels negative, I...don't feel it is about the game's objective and deserved careful analysis about what it, in theory, should be, rather, an entire platform lockoff, the years of hype and problems with showing stuff and on the other end, people eating it up and baking it in as a promise that cannot be broken, and then some. It's a shitshow, but the game is not necessarily felt as such to be that way as well by everyone.

To answer Alex's question, if they do uproot and overhaul things, yes, I would be excited to jump back in, after this first run's playthrough. Someone said it in chat; but- Alex, don't speak for us, a lot of us in chat were literally saying "Yes" to your 'will people actually want to play this patched'. Totally dude, that's half the issue.

I guess like Vinny said, there are people out there really enjoying this. I am one of them. I was thinking about how to best describe how my in-progress feels are on the game, and Cyberpunk 2077 is sort of like, well, cookie-dough, not fully baked but if it's in front of me and available, I am gonna eat it until I get "sick" so to speak- or the bugs pile to a point I go 'alright, too much/gamebreak patch-wait-time'. Weird metaphor but the nuggets of goodness in there are worth playing while the second tray of this game gets baked properly. Lol, Idk.

I think people will have earlier threshholds for that, or entire-playthrough tolerance for it. I am not sure which of those I will be, but again, Yes, I would be excited after a first run, given how (ILLEGALLY) impressed I am by aspects of this game's world, and story, and characters, and visuals, along with Nexusmods which is already mending many aspects of the game.

Still giving Cyberpunk 2077 the benefit of the doubt long term for a few reasons. Reputation-damage-control, modding scenes already debugging the game, long term patches, and generally the fact I legitimately like this game world and find something in it I did not expect to connect with, and there is enough depth to this game to warrant a second run, even if Jeff does not agree, which is fine. This is just an opposing view, of my own, and a few others in chat I saw, but there ya go.

CDPR has a lot to own up to and more importantly, get straightened out. That much in the end is for sure.

Enjoyed hearing the cast's take on the situation, good discussions and angles, big deal stuff, possible leading to ...positive changes? Lets hope..

*edit: you guys are mis-remembering, No Man's Sky at launch was HORRIBLY ridden with bugs.. You can refresh on that with Internet Historian, alone, at the initial state of that game, it was pretty gosh dang bad.

https://youtu.be/O5BJVO3PDeQ?t=924

I feel real bad for the developers that worked for years and crunched for months on Cyberpunk and were shafted by senior management. There really is a great game buried under all the technical issues on consoles.

Capitalism! Thank you for calling it out.

Games like this always reinforce my habit of rarely playing video games at launch. I'm usually a year or so later at the earliest kind of person. I'm sure I'll have a reasonably fine time with Cyberpunk in like a year or so, or whenever I get around to it. I actually had every intention of playing CP2077 at launch, but then with all the delays and then WoW Shadowlands coming out when it did, it meant I was occupied at this time. So thanks to Blizzard for that, I guess.

@nick: same, someone keeps tapping their desk or tapping their feet and the mic picks it up. It's like they are directly tapping my brain while listening to this on headphones and it sucks.

@nigeth: it's not as noticeable on the video version, if that helps

I'm playing Cyberpunk on a good PC, I've had some visual bugs but saying it is 'fucked up' is definitely overkill

Other players, like myself, are playing a fucked up game on a good PC.

Most scripted sequences or cutscenes have had completely busted background AI behavior, and a primary scripted character holding a completely wrong art asset.

Every combat encounter has an enemy ragdoll falling over and never getting back up, while shouting barks at me. I can walk up to them and shoot them until they die because they don't respond - they're stuck in a 'falling' state.

Every area has several items marked as lootable, but which can't be identified or interacted with.

Sometimes, someone who isn't there will say something directly behind my character.

Car AI literally doesn't exist. They just drive on a path and if the path is disrupted, like if i block them with another car, the game deletes them from the game world when I turn around. Aggroing a pedestrian results in the same behavior.

Sometimes when I run down the street at full speed for awhile, eventually the game will not be able to keep up with me and will start spawning everybody in directly in front of me within a ~20 meter radius. One of the times this happened, one of the pedestrians spawned in in the sky, and just fell to their death at my feet.

I stepped off a curb and died from fall damage.

If I pick up an unconscious body to move it, there is a 50/50 chance they will pretzel and explode if I set them down again, killing them. This is almost guaranteed if I set the body down next to a piece of furniture, or a wall.

I'm one mission past the title card, but I'm gonna wait for another patch to keep playing.

Jeff Gerstmann's German PBS spot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r65S2oES1s&ab_channel=SirMix-A-LotRareMusic

Sometimes, someone who isn't there will say something directly behind my character.

There are ghosts in this game? Awesome!

There are too many fundamental problems that feel like game design from 2001, if not debug code that was never finished. When you start fighting in a crowd, people will spawn out if you look away and back. By design, cops will spawn directly behind you instead of naturally arriving. There are basic, core things to an open-world game that don't work. Probably still enough to enjoy for some but it's akin to watching a cam copy of a film instead of seeing it in theatre.

Woah Alex AC:Unity was not "bad", you've been swept up in the zeitgeist of the time, it was expected to be and promoted as a shining example of the next generation but ended up just being pretty similar to prior AC games, and the "disappointment" of that was exaggerated due to the bugs it had.
If you return to it now without that expectation you'll find a great original style AC game with a still impressive rendering of late 1700's France.
If that sounds bad to you that's fine, but it's not a bad game by any stretch.

@lonelyspacepanda Similar to what i just said about Unity Cyberpunk won't win any awards for its design either, but i'm enjoying it with my lowered expectations, the trailers didn't look great and the final product isn't great, but i'm still enjoying the moment to moment action.

I hope the main lesson that is learned is One: Developers have to stop releasing their games before they are done, or better yet not give a date on when its done, until its done. Two: Consumers need to be patience and wait until a game is completely finish, which in the case of AAA games can take many years. There is no excuse for CDPR to release Cyberpunk 2077 in its current broken state, but how soon people forget how much they were being harassed because they kept delaying the game. Now those same people want refunds, and the same media whom called them out for the delays are now dumping on them. Not saying the people disappointed shouldn't get the refunds, or the media is wrong in calling out how broken Cyperpunk is.

I stopped playing it, not because I don't like the game, but because CDPR announced two big patches and I'd rather wait on them to hopefully experience the rest of the game how it was intended. Luckily, my progress isn't that far from the opening prologue after the title card, and I barely started any of the side quest. I have plenty of games to hold me over until they fix this mess. I just hope CDPR can recover from this and not go the way of Bioware.

How can Jeff describe Cyberpunk as empty and dull?

Each to their own opinion and all, but that just doesn't track with the reality.

ive worked six day work weeks for many years.

Just gonna leave this here

Alex is wrong, Unity is the last good classic Assassins Creed game and its still awesome on PC nowadays.

Strong refund policies (not the lame 2 hour ones steam/xbox has) are needed. With the option for consumers to refund games, developers are less likely to throw out broken games like Cyberpunk, Fallout 76/4, AC:Unity, MCC etc

Boy, it's hard for me to imagine how slid from "overtime" to "corporate exploitation", only in the tech industry folks, only in the tech industry. I worked 6 day weeks and was on call 24/7 for years in the construction field, and no one said a thing, know why? Cause some jobs call for it. It was never corporate exploitation it was simply part of the job, your aware of it and and are told about it when you start the job, and that applies to every job, construction or not, it's never a surprise unless you walk through life idealistic horse blinders on.

With all that said Im torn on this game, on one hand i love the world they made and the potential the game as a whole has and the characters are interesting and I want to see where they go with them; and on my PC it runs pretty good. But on the other hand general performance aside the game is still buggy as hell and clearly not finished. Even after the 1.05 patch i still see graphics breaking, characters sliding across the floor, objects and npc's spawning into the world right in front of me or inside of each other (leading to funny physics moments). Most npc's mouths don't animate when they talk. Car's and objects floating in the world. It's crazy to thing how people on base consoles are dealing with this.

Something Ill be very curious to see is years down the road when we start to hear about how it was during development, for a game in dev as long as this has been the world still seems like they never had a chance to implement much reactivity or tertiary immersion, there's not a lot to do in the world compared to lots of other open world games of this nature. I have a feeling they had to scrap portions of the game several times, either that or management is some of the worst in gaming history; those are really the only reasons for the game being like this after 8+ years in dev and a budget/staff the size of a GTA budget.

@anorak88: same here man

@schindigg: You were still being exploited.

People talk about the exploitation of workers, no matter the industry, all the time. You just aren't paying attention.

@bahbbarker: Exactly. If you go back in time, it would be like saying "I don't understand the frustration. I work 12 hours a day and some of my coworkers are children and that's considered normal among the industry". Just because something is normal doesn't mean it's right. We can fight and make things better. It's clearly possible because it happened all throughout history. Minimum wage, no child labor, 8 hour workdays, 40 hour work weeks, paid vacations, anti-discrimination laws...all of this stuff didn't exist until people fought to make it exist. I dislike the defeatism when people say "well that's how things have always been" because that's false and untrue. We can always make it better, one step at a time.

Anyways...that's my silly little speech for today lol...