Aspirational rhetorical loquaciousness
October 28, 2021 4:28 AM Subscribe
"Like any good dumpster behind a GameStop, Cyberpunk 2077 features and glorifies molecules of the entire history of videogames. It contains at least a little bit of everything good and bad about the best, big modern games. Reviewing it allows me to review every modern videogame of the past three console generations and predict most future videogames of the current generation, all at the same time." Action Button [Tim Rogers] presents a Cyberpunk 2077 review with branching paths. (playlist)
The live introduction and premiere of this review was truly something to witness, made complete by the 5,000 or so fans in chat who spent about 10 minutes desperately trying to figure out whether they were being trolled. (Here's a YouTube link for when the Twitch archive expires.)
I'm only halfway through my first "play-through", but I can already tell that the goodtime hat is likely to become a long-term addition to my vocabulary.
posted by teraflop at 7:11 AM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm only halfway through my first "play-through", but I can already tell that the goodtime hat is likely to become a long-term addition to my vocabulary.
posted by teraflop at 7:11 AM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
Standard reminder that "review" is an (intentional?) misnomer and this is actually (also?) a series of video essays talking about Cyberpunk 2077 (the video game), authenticity, Cyberpunk 2077 (the Discourse), middle age, Cyberpunk (the genre), gamer chairs, Video Games (the discussion of), floofy puppers, and...well, I've only seen half of it so far, who knows?
Also, FYI, this "branching path" review has a hidden true ending. You'll have to find it yourself though.
(Does this post qualify for a slyt tag? It should.)
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 8:24 AM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
Also, FYI, this "branching path" review has a hidden true ending. You'll have to find it yourself though.
(Does this post qualify for a slyt tag? It should.)
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 8:24 AM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
It's Gwent. The hidden ending is the entirely other game embedded in the world of the game.
posted by k3ninho at 11:44 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by k3ninho at 11:44 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is incredible. Thanks for the link.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:34 PM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Rock Steady at 1:34 PM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
"It's deglycyrrhizinated, Jerry!"
I watched my allotted two, and now I'm going back to watch the rest. I was unfamiliar with Action Button until yesterday, but now I'm a fan. I searched in vain to find any discussion on similarities with the work of Spalding Grey.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:56 AM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
I watched my allotted two, and now I'm going back to watch the rest. I was unfamiliar with Action Button until yesterday, but now I'm a fan. I searched in vain to find any discussion on similarities with the work of Spalding Grey.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:56 AM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
This is... the definitive review of any/every video game - I mean, this level of depth literally will define all reviews in future. From here on, I will watch a review of a video game review by another person and think... "Well, it's good, but definately not 'Action Button - Cyberpunk 2077' good"...
posted by rozcakj at 8:16 AM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by rozcakj at 8:16 AM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
I very much recommend Tokimeki Memorial as a second (or even first) Action Button review to watch. Like the Cyberpunk one, it's very long, but broken into chapters (albeit all in a single video this time) and he provides instructions on which bits to watch depending on what you're interested in.
To directly quote someone on the Slack I hang out on:
the tokimeki memorial video was a real model for a lot of tricky things:
• how to talk about a super complicated game that would immediately put most people off but make you understand why it's good/important
• how to bring in autobiographical elements in a way that makes sense with the essay and the analysis (they felt more pertinent in a video about a game that's about teenagehood and memory and relationships than in most of his other videos)
• how to talk about Japanese cultural products from the position of someone who knows the language/has lived there and to weave in expertise without any weird fetishizing
posted by rifflesby at 1:05 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
To directly quote someone on the Slack I hang out on:
the tokimeki memorial video was a real model for a lot of tricky things:
• how to talk about a super complicated game that would immediately put most people off but make you understand why it's good/important
• how to bring in autobiographical elements in a way that makes sense with the essay and the analysis (they felt more pertinent in a video about a game that's about teenagehood and memory and relationships than in most of his other videos)
• how to talk about Japanese cultural products from the position of someone who knows the language/has lived there and to weave in expertise without any weird fetishizing
posted by rifflesby at 1:05 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
Rogers spent several years developing his audio-visual vocabulary at Kotaku, a job to which he alludes several times in this review. Many of those videos, while nowhere nearly as exhaustive as his Action Button reviews, are remarkable works in their own right. In particular, his review of Metal Wolf Chaos XD displays many of his strongest authorial instincts in a surprisingly concise package. His Cyberpunk 2077 review even calls back to it obliquely. His review of 1994 (the year) absolutely obliterates the format of the listicle video, and in his review of Death Stranding you can see the Action Button Method about to burst from its chrystalis.
posted by belarius at 1:16 PM on October 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by belarius at 1:16 PM on October 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
I hate to be the one naysayer in this thread, but I may need help with this. Perhaps I made poor decisions in choosing my "path". I chose #1 (Intro), #2 ("Citizen Keanu"), #5 ("The Point"), and then #7 (the conclusion); what a comment on the intro video called "The Neutral Path". But out of that total of three hours and 56 minutes of video content, I came away with... almost nothing said about Cyberpunk 2077. Or at least not more than could have been said in under 20 minutes.
I think about a quarter of that four hours was Tim telling me about segments that he shot and decided to cut, or plans for segments that he ended up not shooting but maybe would do in the future. I sat there thinking: Please, please stop describing hypothetical segments and show me an actual segment about the game this review is supposedly about.
Another quarter was discussions of other video games. I think I learned more about his thoughts on GTA3 and Tokimeki Memorial than about CP2077. Yet another quarter was tales from his life, about living in Japan and his health problems and what his apartment is like and a t-shirt that he has and his history of haircuts.
I wasn't familiar with Action Button previously and I really wanted to like this, because I'm a fan of the game despite its flaws and am a fan of the cyberpunk genre. The format seemed like a novel idea for a review. The host seems smart and is about my age so we have similar video gaming reference points, although his span of knowledge is clearly far greater. He's a William Gibson fan. There's a lot to like!
Maybe I'll try one of the other videos, like the "What I Liked" one. It seems like he has a lot to say about the game. I just can't understand why he doesn't just say it already.
Thanks for posting this, I just happened to start a second playthrough of the game so I'm primed for a rethinking of the game nearly a year after I first played it, and I'm interested to hear thoughtful recent reviews on it that aren't just a continuation of the pile-on about its bugs.
posted by good in a vacuum at 10:35 AM on October 31, 2021
I think about a quarter of that four hours was Tim telling me about segments that he shot and decided to cut, or plans for segments that he ended up not shooting but maybe would do in the future. I sat there thinking: Please, please stop describing hypothetical segments and show me an actual segment about the game this review is supposedly about.
Another quarter was discussions of other video games. I think I learned more about his thoughts on GTA3 and Tokimeki Memorial than about CP2077. Yet another quarter was tales from his life, about living in Japan and his health problems and what his apartment is like and a t-shirt that he has and his history of haircuts.
I wasn't familiar with Action Button previously and I really wanted to like this, because I'm a fan of the game despite its flaws and am a fan of the cyberpunk genre. The format seemed like a novel idea for a review. The host seems smart and is about my age so we have similar video gaming reference points, although his span of knowledge is clearly far greater. He's a William Gibson fan. There's a lot to like!
Maybe I'll try one of the other videos, like the "What I Liked" one. It seems like he has a lot to say about the game. I just can't understand why he doesn't just say it already.
Thanks for posting this, I just happened to start a second playthrough of the game so I'm primed for a rethinking of the game nearly a year after I first played it, and I'm interested to hear thoughtful recent reviews on it that aren't just a continuation of the pile-on about its bugs.
posted by good in a vacuum at 10:35 AM on October 31, 2021
Oops, I messed up the numbering of the videos I watched, but the titles are correct.
posted by good in a vacuum at 10:57 AM on October 31, 2021
posted by good in a vacuum at 10:57 AM on October 31, 2021
Parts 2 through 4 (Graphics, What I Liked, and What I Didn't Like, respectively) seem to be where most of the discussion of the video game actually take place. (This ends up happening a lot.)
I skipped playing Cyberpunk 2077 (the hype train was pretty obviously heading towards a huge train wreck even before its release—not that my PC could run the game anyway) but I thought the "What I Liked" section did a fine job of of extracting the things the game did really, really well from the smoking wreckage—before diving into said wreckage for a closer look in the next part. I wouldn't exactly describe Tim Rogers' style as "direct", but parts 2-4 are probably the closest to it.
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 9:51 AM on November 1, 2021
I skipped playing Cyberpunk 2077 (the hype train was pretty obviously heading towards a huge train wreck even before its release—not that my PC could run the game anyway) but I thought the "What I Liked" section did a fine job of of extracting the things the game did really, really well from the smoking wreckage—before diving into said wreckage for a closer look in the next part. I wouldn't exactly describe Tim Rogers' style as "direct", but parts 2-4 are probably the closest to it.
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 9:51 AM on November 1, 2021
I ended up going back and watching parts 3 and 4 ("What I Liked" and "What I Disliked"), and you're right, The Lurkers Support Me in Email, there was plenty of actual discussion about the game in those videos.*
I found myself in frequent agreement with his likes and dislikes: The story and the city/environment are top-notch, while the game mechanics and interface can be cumbersome and annoying. And like Tim, in my first playthrough I ended up as a hacker character that was so absurdly overpowered that the latter part of the game was getting boring since I could insta-kill whole buildings full of enemies from across the street and not face any danger.
But the design of the city is just so good, I'm able to forgive a lot of the game's shortcomings.
* In one of those two videos Tim called out the phrase "I wanted to like this" as the mark of the hater. A phrase I used in my earlier comment, I sheepishly noted.
posted by good in a vacuum at 11:01 AM on November 1, 2021
I found myself in frequent agreement with his likes and dislikes: The story and the city/environment are top-notch, while the game mechanics and interface can be cumbersome and annoying. And like Tim, in my first playthrough I ended up as a hacker character that was so absurdly overpowered that the latter part of the game was getting boring since I could insta-kill whole buildings full of enemies from across the street and not face any danger.
But the design of the city is just so good, I'm able to forgive a lot of the game's shortcomings.
* In one of those two videos Tim called out the phrase "I wanted to like this" as the mark of the hater. A phrase I used in my earlier comment, I sheepishly noted.
posted by good in a vacuum at 11:01 AM on November 1, 2021
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Looking forward to watching more of this. I really enjoy listening to Tim Rogers talk about games I know (I'm from the Pac Man & Doom generation). I haven't dipped into the unfamiliar game reviews so far, but I grew up during the flowering of cyberpunk, so I'm interested. And I just love his asides and diversions.
posted by rikschell at 6:03 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]