Some spoilers for Citizen Sleeper and Cyberpunk 2077 below. Citizen Sleeper is a game I thought I loved. Liked? I still know that, but for a while since I played it in 2023, it stood as an example of great harmony between gameplay and thematic intent. It’s funny, how stuff lives up in your head, huh? I replayed it this week on my Switch while visiting my parents for a few days, just hanging out with the family dogs on the couch while I explored the structure of the Eye. If I had to sum up the game, I’d call it a “space disability simulator”- you’re an artificial clone of another’s consciousness, imprinted into a metal body and sent off to work until you collapse for the purposes of a corporation. You escape, but the corporation builds a failsafe into all of their ‘sleepers’ - The need for a proprietary stabilizer, a substance that prevents the artificial bodies from decaying. Effectively, you are a disabled person reliant on corporate healthcare in order to keep your body functio...
Battlefield Hardline (2015) opens with the song "Sound of Da Police" by KRS-One. This is a game that's clearest inspirations are cop dramas, 2010's prestige television, and the sort of drug war stories we still hear every day. The game has a liquid cocaine drug called Hot Shot, a side-narrative that you can discover clues about, but if this game was made in 2025 it would have been fentanyl instead. The game seems to, at the start, be about being a cop on the front line of a new drug war, of morally grey circumstances and holding onto one's beliefs (if you could say a cop has beliefs other then the expulsion of power from various holes). Around halfway the game throws out the cop drama bullshit and leans into a bootleg Fast and the Furious clone where the game is trying very hard to be goofy, fun, and frantic. It fails, but to be honest? There's the barest glimmer of a decent frame sorta buried in there, and THAT's fucking infuriating. I don't t...