Redwolf's Journal (continued)

 Though I've been avoiding details, I know there's a lot of controversy out there about Cyberpunk 2077 's release state. CD Project Red has been one of the more consumer-friendly development/production studios for games since... well, at least the release of The Witcher 3, possibly 2. The studio has been a darling of the video gamer realm, so such a troubled release is a big burn to a lot of people. I find that tragic as there's a solid game there that I'm thoroughly enjoying. Even with my experience of low-severity bugs, I can see the game would have benefitted from further patching and polish. Without much research, I would expect the pressure to not delay again and push back into a new year was too much for the company. And, as a company, it's fair to suffer the backlash for that, though I find myself really feeling for the developers who were (and probably still are) working hard to improve the state of the game. As said, though, I'm still quite enjoying

 So, yeah, I went into Cyberpunk 2077 expecting worse than I got. Apparently the game suffered worse and more widespread bugs prior to the release patch, so early reviewers saw the worst of it. I heard about that, but decided to try diving in anyway. So far, the issues I've run into have been occasional, mild annoyances - visual duplication where an item may hang in the air or animation issues where a person may move oddly or float. Neither issue has been as common as reviews led me to expect and they do little to lessen my experience, but they do bear mentioning. I haven't hit any progress-blockers or outright crashes yet, so from where I sit this is actually better than something like AC: Valhalla . That said, I know others have been having it worse. It sounds like the PS4/Xbox-whatever-recently-turned-last-gen versions are quite bad to the point of refunds being discussed/offered. If there was any clue of that, those versions in particular probably should have been further

 I haven't even watched/read any Fire Force recently! So it's a little odd to dream about being in such a group of firefighting pyrokineticists. I recall being in some sort of marketplace and going to a large building that was... maybe part restaurant(?) and/or processing plant of some kind. There, we found the owner were holding a bunch of fae as "employees," though where really focused on siphoning their power and/or using it to open a portal to their world in some fashion. One of my teammates and I were so offended by this that we went in after hours and used our powers to set fire to the place. Very gratifying, but the following day the site was being checked out by other inspectors/police and the owner was there with the fae/demihumans lined up, blaming them for the fire. With some reluctance, but greater guilt, I went to confess and turn myself over. The police were initially skeptical and it was unclear whether my teammate was going to give herself up as well (

 The Assassin's Creed game are... odd. Probably around 90% is historically-set Ubisoft open world with a dash of the fantastic. Combat is okay. Stealth is pretty good. There are scenic vistas on a wide map to explore. There's been iteration and occasional innovation along the way, but the core hasn't really changed much through the series. It plays well and I find them generally entertaining for a fair while even if overall things are a bit shallow. I would have to say I think I may have seen more technical issues with this over any other AC game I played. Maybe I didn't dig into the others as early in patching or maybe this one was actually worse. The game crashed outright on occasion and there were maybe half a dozen spots where things seemed to get stuck and I had to reload and/or change graphic settings to proceed. And along the way, a story is told. Valhalla follows Eivor and his/her adopted brother Sigurd as they set out from a newly-united Norway to establish a f