Got a couple of games off my Steam wishlist...

[PZ]

L.A. Noire dropped down to $5.99 and Cyberpunk dropped by 50%. Instead of taking a few days to download the combined 75gb, it only took a few hours.

I like L.A. Noire because of the splendid graphics depicting old Los Angeles. Sure, it is linear, but I love driving the roads and looking at the old -time brick buildings with great store fronts.

I'm glad to finally get Cyberpunk, but I was a bit hesitant due to the futuristic setting. However, after using the Microsoft Copilot AI searching for games other games like Cyberpunk, a list came up including Far Cry and Watchdogs, both of which I'm fond of. I totally like the beginning of the game in the dystopian setting and immediately sensed Far Cry in the climb to the top of a tower. Moving further into the game, it also felt a bit like Watch Dogs Legion. I hope the game continues to satisfy because the graphics are stunning. 

[Dweller_Benthos]

Never played LA Noire though I've heard a lot about it. Good to grab it for that price.

For Cyberpunk, did you get it with the Phantom Liberty expansion? I highly recommend it if not though it is a bit more cost. It adds a ton of new content and an even more dystopian area in the city is fleshed out. Though I wonder now if you can access that area anyway without the expansion, you just don't get the story to go with it. I think not, I think you have to have it to get in there.

Just to give you some perspective, I'm on my fourth playthrough of the story and that is pretty much unheard of for me, I rarely play a game twice much less four times. Yeah it's that good. And there's so much to do in it. The main story is actually kind of short if you just concentrate on it and do nothing else, but there's so much side stuff to do and open world stuff to find that it expands the game greatly. My advice is to not do any main story stuff until you've thoroughly explored the beginning area of the game, which is Watson, where you get to after you do the very first introductory mission. There are three of those, one for each life path, then after that the game is pretty much the same for each with some differences depending on which path you take, mostly in conversation responses, but there are a few side quests that you can only get on a specific life path and not the others. But leveling up and getting money before doing the mission to access the rest of the map is the way I usually do it, so that once you have access to the whole map you have some good gear and money on you to help with the rest of the game.

Then there's mods, a few of which I consider essential. One being the Fixer's Hidden Gems mod which adds 190+ little secrets to find. They are there in the game normally but unless you explore every nook and cranny you'd have a hard time finding them all, this mod marks them for you and gives you a bonus in money and XP for each one you find, which you can turn off if you prefer.

Have fun.

[PZ]

I had L.A. Noire for the PS4 and liked it back then so when I saw it on Steam for $29.99 back when I first mentioned the T-Mobile router I was disappointed at the high price for an old game. However it dropped to the $5.99 price so I snatched it up, started it, and it is even more beautiful (if you can call somewhat dirty old L.A. beautiful). Definitely a good addition especially for that price.

I did not get the expansion because it was $25.99 - was a bit difficult for me to purchase DLC for nearly the same price as the main game.    I'll definitely keep my eyes open though now that you've piqued my interest. I especially like the idea of having something to do in the dystopian area rather than just pass through. 

So far I've had a couple of bugs in the game that evidently have never been fixed and stopped me for a bit. The one the most troublesome was the one where you sit in what looks like a dentist chair to do the BD tutorial. It locked up my game to the point where I could not get it to do anything at the point where I was instructed to scan the gun. I could not even start the scan because the game did not tell me how to do it - had to go online to see a video of people playing. I finally had to abandon the game for a prior autosave, tried it with the same results, and then discovered through another video that one can bypass the tutorial, which I did on the third attempt through.

Do you know of any other things like this I should watch for?

So far, I really like how the game works in the dystopian area (mainly for the visuals because I have not returned). At first, what caused me to hesitate in purchasing the game was the futuristic feel of the city, but now that I am playing, it reminds me of Watch Dogs Legion, which I like quite a bit. Now I have the best of two worlds, and I need to agree with Copilot that the game is reminiscent of Far Cry, GTA5, and Legion.

[PZ]

By the way, do you know of a mod that reveals all of the fast travel points?

[Dweller_Benthos]

huh I hadn't heard of that bug in the braindance tutorial, strange. Sorry it caused you issues. The braindances are required later on, so hopefully it doesn't happen again. They are a bit tricky and if you're using a controller, not sure how they even would w0#k because of how you have to change what you're looking at in which spectrum and scan it. Though I suppose they must have something set up for it. On keyboard it's just a matter of looking at what you're supposed to look at and it will automatically scan it. You have to have the correct spectrum selected though, visual, sound, or electrical.

The futuristic part isn't very over powering for sure, as down in the streets, it's a very gritty game. It's pretty much Blade Runner, so you get the idea of what it looks like from that. Dogtown, where the Phantom Liberty DLC takes place is even more in ruins as it was supposed to be a high luxury area of the city but was mostly destroyed during the war and then closed off and settled by survivors and all the rest of the city's less fortunate. Once you see how the main city really is, you can't imagine Dogtown being worse but it is lol.

I don't see a mod to reveal fast travel points, just a few to change how fast travel works, but you still need to have discovered them in the first place and that's what I recommend. Walk the streets, or at least drive around, see everything from street level, climb over fences and buildings, explore, as that is a large part of finding various small things in the game and discovering cool places. I save fast travel for really long distances when I'm doing a quest or something, and usually just drive around. Matter of fact, I found one of the small Easter eggs that way just the other day, that I had never seen before. Out in the desert is a small little cave and if you wait there at a certain time something happens. If I'd used fast travel I would never have seen that. There's also another mod that will give you delivery jobs for money, you have to travel from the starting point to the delivery location to get the money, and you can't fast travel, so I use a fast motorcycle to buzz around the city delivering stuff. Doing that will mark various things on the map to do and check out and reveal fast travel points.

[PZ]

Thanks for all the info, D_B! 

BTW, all the games I'm writing about I'm playing on my new Nitro 17 and nothing on the console. (I've been totally converted because I can game anywhere now) I do not like many of the programs my wife likes, but I like to be with her so we sit in our loungers in front of the fire (still cold here), she watching TV and me gaming - the best of both worlds.

As to the braindance, I tried all the spectrums, but nothing worked, and I could not even move from my position. After I gave up on the tutorial, I continued on a mission to retrieve a relic (can't recall the name)  and that one was really fun! I had no problems at all with the braindance parts like in the tutorial and it turned from a frustration into a part I really like because it reminds me of Watchdogs Legion. What was even more Legion-like was the spider I think they called a flat top. I loved using the spider in Legion, and this one is way easier to manipulate, largely because the people do not seem to see it.

I broke down ang got the Phantom Liberty DLC largely because you mentioned Dog Town, which I discovered contains some kind of iconic weapons dealer in the stadium I would like to visit. Not related to the DLC of course, but it will be nice to find things to do there via DLC. That was quite a large DLC!

I installed the mod you mentioned: Fixer's Hidden Gems. I have not used it yet, but I see it in the mod menu. Looking forward to this one. You mentioned you had a few others you consider essential? I'll probably wander around so I can reveal it all - I don't like how they feel the need to keep the map in fog until you go there.

Anyway I played until 1am.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Ah OK so you've done the heist then, if you had to get the flat head. That's the main first mission, and the one I usually put off until I've leveled up by exploring Watson and doing small stuff and the general open world encounters. Now I'm fuzzy as to when the lock down lifts, it's been a while, is it before or after the heist mission? You'd think I'd know by now lol. The flat top spider robot is unfortunately only used during that mission, it would be cool to have it later.

There's a few decisions during the heist that can effect things later in the game, as in weapons you can get if you chose the right things during it, of course, you don't know that when you're in it, so it's all a guess lol.

As for other mods, there's the hidden gems one for Dogtown:

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/12245

Night vision mod, you have to get pretty high level optic implants but it's nice to have for those dark places where the devs obviously use monitors with the brightness at 10000 because on my screen there are some places that are pitch black:

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/8326

This one adds more quick slots to the toolbar, so you can have quick access to changing grenades and other boost items that you'd otherwise have to go into the inventory menu for:

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/3096

In the 2.0 update, they removed the ability to change upgrades on your weapons and gain them when you scrap weapons, so this mod gives that ability back, because that was a dumb stupid change if you ask me, you'd not know about it if you hadn't played the original game.

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/9349

Were you driving fast and took a corner too wide and clipped a pedestrian? Did the cops then chase after you for this minor traffic infraction? This mod adds a bribe system that lets you get the cops off your back for such things. Of course, no one would use it to get out of trouble after a more serious offence, of course not. It won't w0#k if you REALLY get into trouble as even cops on the take have a limit, so don't try to use it to get out of really serious trouble lol

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/8557

Oh yeah this one adds a function to the missing persons mod so that if you've already found one, it will let you go to that shard to progress the list, so you don't have to go find it in your shard list which can get quite long after a while

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/9018

Sometimes you get stuck on terrain and normally the only way out is to load a previous save, but this mod lets you noclip through anything and fly. Of course no one would use it to gain access to an area you otherwise couldn't get to, nope.

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/780

This one will show you what type a loot is in a container by using a different icon for each type, ammo, food, etc

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/3486

This one is the one I mentioned that adds courier missions to drop points, nice way to tour the map and make money. You can turn it off in the mod settings which is a good idea because it sometimes conflicts with other functions of the drop point during missions where you have to drop something off, so leave it off then turn it on when you want to do a courier mission.

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/5755

This one will hide shards in the world if you've already read them, so you won't walk all the way to a shard only to find you've already seen it

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/2820

I think most of those will install with vortex if you're using it, otherwise just follow the install instructions, which is usually drop the files into the game folder.

[PZ]

Thanks, D_B!  Looks like I'm going to have lots of new/improved experiences! 

That's too bad about the flat head spider - that was one of my favorite of the gadgets in Legion

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah all that and you only use it that one time and can't directly control it. There is a mod for a small invisible drone you can fly around, scan things, hack people, etc but I didn't include it in the list of mods because it's a bit janky and can interfere with some controls. At least I think they fixed the worst of the bugs lol I haven't used it in a while, but it is super OP in that you can fly it unseen into a place, mark all the enemies there, hack them, open locked doors, etc. But may be a bit buggy.

If you want to try it out, it's here

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/3419

You have to buy it from a ripper doc and upgrade it there which costs a bit of money.

Looking at the bug list, it seems it's back to it's old trick of not separating you from the drone movement, so as you're flying the drone around, your character is also moving around where you left them, which can be dangerous of course, lol. So yeah might want to hold off on it until / if that's fixed.

[PZ]

Sounds interesting and I'll keep an eye on it because I like the drones in the FC games. However, I've already had issues a couple of times where I needed to verify my files so I'll likely wait until things smooth out with this one. 

I now see the Phantom Liberty addition to the startup title in the game, so at least that is working. I've also started installing mods from your list, but am doing so one at a time to ensure that nothing destabilizes my install.  So far, Pacifica Typhoon, night vision, and Missing Persons shard addition.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah it's a good idea to do them one or two at a time so you don't get a huge amount of hassle if one doesn't w0#k. Having said that, they all w0#k for me, but if the game updates, all bets are off.