Christopher Livingston played Cyberpunk 2077's latest patch. It's a sizeable download with almost 500 fixes, and yet Chris still encountered a lot of the same bugs he saw at launch. Broken quests, floating NPCs, physics quirks flinging him through the air, and those cars that keep crashing in the same spot.
Natalie Clayton played the alpha of Elite Dangerous: Odyssey. Among other things, this expansion adds humans (Andy Kelly wasn't a fan of them), and budget space airlines, which Natalie seems to have a love/hate relationship with. On the one hand, it's frustrating that the only way to get around Odyssey's new system is by sitting through a slow flight, but if you miss air travel this is probably the only way you're going to experience that for a while.
Wes Fenlon played the beta of Grit, a western-themed battle royale that's like PUBG if PlayerUnknown was the Man With No Name. You've got to admire its commitment to the theme. Everyone drops in on a wagon tarp parachute, collects weapons and stove-door armor in a poker hand inventory, and scores kills marked by the sound of a ringing church bell. The closing circle is a dust storm, I suppose because "the obsolescence of cattle-driving" is hard to depict in videogame form.
Jonathan Bolding continued leading a peasant revolt in Battle Brothers, his band of shit-kickers slowly growing in number and trading their farm implements for real weapons. They've survived direwolves and bandits, but how will they fare against the undead and the hated nobility? (Read part one first.)
Luke Winkie spent a night at Gatsby's in an interactive live-FMV experience over a Zoom call. It sounds like a cross between one of those flashback cutscenes from The 7th Guest and an improv show where the audience suggestions are "disillusionment with the American dream" and "gin".
Enough about us. What about you? Have you solved the Big Bang in cosmic whodunnit Genesis Noir, demanded one million dollars in Evil Genius 2, or explored the inner world of a game console in Narita Boy? Maybe you coordinated a raid in an MMO you've never played before, since there's a game about that now? Let us know!
