Give Me A Reason. Yeah, That'll Do.

I haven't played Cyberpunk 2077. I'd like to but my PC won't run it. Well, technically it will. I just benchmarked it at PCGameBenchmark.com and somewhat to my surprise I got a PASS on all of the Minimum Specs but I'm not naive enough to think that would lead to a great experience.

On that test, my rig gets a rating of 37%, which is a failing grade by anyone's terms, although what it actually means is that I can run "371 of the top 1000 most popular games listed on PCGameBenchmark - at a recommended system level", which isn't quite as bad as I thought. Still, that number is only going to shrink.

The site very helpfully analyses where my rig is weakest and tells me what I need to do is upgrade the graphics card, which will "have a big impact on your performance in games." That's quite re-assuring. I've been thinking of doing it for a couple of years but obviously the market wasn't right. Now that crypto's over (Hah!) prices are coming back to a reasonable level, so it's probably time I did something about it at last.

Badge of Shame.

I've also thought about upping the ram. Memory has been very affordable for a long time so that hasn't been what's stopped me. I just haven't been sure it would make much of a difference. Still, it's bound to do something, right? Might as well do both.

Apart from money and availablity, the other reason I've been holding fire on upgrading this six-year old machine has been the prospect of remote play. Streaming if you prefer. Playing on someone else's hardware.

I dabbled with that when I was playing New World and I'll be doing it again when the miracle patch drops. Like everyone else, I'll be back in the queues to see how the new New World plays. I haven't decided if I'll start over so I can play through (And document.) the new-user experience or if I'll carry on with my existing, max-level character. Almost certainly both, I imagine.

New World does run on my machine, albeit not without issues. Although I can play just about normally, my PC makes frightening grinding sounds and chunters away to itself, which makes it hard to concentrate. I keep worrying it's going burst into flames. 

Playing New World on GeForce Now leaves my PC silent and cool but without paying a subscription it leaves me limited to one hour sessions (Albeit chainable indefinitely.) and the performance there isn't always great. It doesn't feel like the ideal time to be investing in a streaming game service, either, what with Google suddenly deciding to pull out of the market. I still believe streaming from remote servers is the future of mass-market gaming but we clearly have a ways to go yet.

Just because I can't play Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't mean I have to feel completely left out. There's a spin-off anime series on Netflix and I just started watching it last night. I'd been aware of it since it first appeared and I had it on my watchlist but it might have been a while before I got round to watching it if it hadn't been for this.

That's the 7" single that came with the deluxe edition of Let's Eat Grandma's utterly wonderful third album, Two Ribbons and even on such a superb record it would have been a standout. I'm not convinced by the logic of putting your very best work on bonus material in collectors' packages but so long as we all get to hear it later I guess it doesn't much matter either way.

Towards the end of that Stereogum article (That you didn't click through and read earlier. No judgment!) there's this delicious tidbit: "In other Let’s Eat Grandma news, they scored the upcoming Netflix series The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself, which drops on the streamer on October 28." Oooh! Excited now!

Naturally, the first thing I did was look the show up. Turns out it's an adaptation of a YA series called "Half Bad", the first of which I read in proof quite a few years ago. I can't even remember if I liked it, much less what it was about. The publisher, Penguin, must have had expectations. They made a promo video. That doesn't happen often. Here it is. Just don't confuse it with the upcoming show.

You'd think the fact that I never read any of the sequels would suggest I wasn't very keen but you'd be one hundred per cent wrong on that. I've started any number of series with proofs, many I loved and swore I'd follow, but the problem with reading proofs is that by the time the actual book comes out you've read fifty more. I very rarely remember to follow through on series I discover that way.

My success rate with TV adaptations of YA fantasy series has been pretty good, though, so I have hopes for this one. I'd probably have watched it anyway, when it popped up in a New to Netflix promo. Now I know Rosa and Jenny did the music it's a sure thing.

A lot of indie/pop/rock musicians seem to be working in soundtracks these days. Some of them seem more suited to it than others. Let's Eat Grandma's lush, cinematic sound ought to be a natural fit. Once again, though, releasing in limited format. Not sure about that.

 Still not seeing the Cyberpunk 2077 connection? Don't fret. We're getting there.

After I'd watched the video for "Give Me A Reason" embedded in the Stereogum piece, I went straight to YouTube to download it. As I was listening to it again, I noticed several links to Cyberpunk 2077 in the reccomends sidebar. I thought that seemed odd so when the song finished I clicked through to see if I could find out why they were there. This is why.

Credited to "Rosa Walton and Hallie Coggins", it's not by Let's Eat Grandma as such, even though it sounds exactly like something they'd do. It's a solo effort by Rosa, whose "in-universe alter-ego" is... Hallie Coggins. The song plays on the in-game radio station 98.7 Body Heat Radio and features in the TV show, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, all of which is so meta it burns. Also, talk about limited accessibility...

So far, I've  only watched the first episode of the show. It starts very unpromisingly for reasons that are satisfactorily explained within a few minutes but it's a risky opening. If I'd been flicking through, looking for something to watch, I'd have kept on going.

After the unsettling start the thing picks up traction quickly. I was solidly hooked by about ten minutes in. I'm looking forward to seeing all ten episodes. By accounts I've read, the Rosa Walton tune accompanies a deeply resonant, emotional episode in the show. I'd expect nothing less.

We'll see if watching the show makes gives me a reason to play the game. Who knows, by the time I get to the end of Episode 10 I might even have bought myself a new video card.

Saturday Night In The City Of The Eyes: Neo Cab

Around eight-thirty last night I'd about had enough. I'd started maybe twelve hours earlier and I'd been at it ever since, with the usual breaks for food and excercise.

I'd been thinking about blogging but I'd come up empty on ideas again so I decided to give myself a day off. No reason to force it it if the feels aren't there but before I gave up for the night I flipped down the roll to see if anyone else was feeling more inspired than I was.

There was a post by Bhodan at Backlog Crusader that caught my eye: Neo Cab (PC) Review – A Dystopian Uber Simulator. That's a header just packed with hooks. "Neo" and "Cab" are triggers for both cyberpunk and noir and I already consider the real-world Uber to be one of the four motorcycle outriders of the coming Dystopian Apocalypse. This might be something.

I read the review and my intrigue, already piqued, spiked. It would be redundant to repeat Bhodan's detailed take on the game, not least because they've played the damn thing and I've only seen the demo. If it's true that "When you meet a new face, they do feel like a pastiche of a stereotype: a doomsayer, rebellious teenager, chill sage, mysterious lady – you name it. Meet them for more than once, however, and you will begin to see behind their mask", well, I wouldn't know, would I?  In the demo you only get that first face-off.

What I will say is this: it's a hell of a demo. For a start it hangs on and won't let go. I guess you can close the app to get away but if there's any kind of Pause or Save or "Come Back and Finish This Later" button, I couldn't find it.

The demo downloads in a minute or two via Steam and plays perfectly. I say "plays". It does feel more like an interactive graphic novel than a game. Not that there aren't gamelike elements. There aren't many but if I have a criticism it would be that even "not many" is too many.

There's this thing called a FeelGrid that you end up strapping to your wrist. It's like a 1970s Mood Ring only it works. Lina, the protagonist, gets it as a gift from Savy, her quondam and to-be-again BFF and the game presents it in glowing, positive terms. I thought it seemed like something the STASI would have used.

I found it ironic that Lina and Savy would willingly submit themselves to 24/7 unrestricted public exposure of their emotional state at the same time as decrying the intent and will of corporations to subject the population to something not at all disimilar but that may well be wholly intentional. Cognitive dissonance is endemic under neon lighting.

Leaving the ethical and philosophical subtext in the box, the thing is a damn pain when it comes to gameplay. The main effect it has is to block you from taking some of the listed options when you talk to your passengers (aka paxs).

The idea is you can't deviate from Lina's emotional state and the FeelGrid tells you what that is. If she's angry the game won't allow you to back down or make peace or just put on a professional face, keeping all your seething inside so as to protect your rating. Which would all be well and good if it didn't also leave the alternate replies on screen for you to click on in frustration, trying to dial the situation back a notch, before you realize you don't actually have a choice.

That's about the only thing I didn't like. Everything else was spot on.

The tone is perfectly judged. There's a brittle edge to everything from the beginning. Lina doesn't know what she wants, Savy, her friend, is clearly lying out of both sides of her grim little mouth, every pax has an agenda they're not revealing even though you can clearly see it sticking out of their top pocket...

The visuals are muted, spare, typical and effective. There's a deal of less being more going on here. I took over forty screenshots in ninety minutes and honestly I could have taken twice as many. Not because of anything that happens on screen but for the dialog.

The writing is sharp, pulpy, clever. There's nothing original here but someone knows what all the parts are and where they fit. You can see the gears moving. I like that. The story, what you get to learn of it in the demo anyway, is intriguing. Not unexpected but enticing.

The characters are key. Lina is floundering but struggling hard to stay afloat, Savy is... I hated her! Okay, hate may be too strong but I wouldn't trust her to open a jar of pickles, something she spends most of the time looking as though she'd just eaten. The last thing Lina said to Savy when they fell out years before was to call her selfish - on the evidence I've seen that would count as a compliment. I'd say she was self-obsessed, bordering on sociopathic.

Evidence? What would you think if your ex-best friend got in touch out of the blue, after never speaking to you for years, to invite you to move cities to share an appartment with her. Then, when you arrived just before midnight, tired after the long drive, she strung you out with a load of excuses about what a bad day she'd had before leaving you to drive around the city while she went clubbing?

Plus she has a sour face and talks like the worst kind of hypocrite. Compared to Savy, all three of the paxs Lina picks up are joy unconfined. And they really aren't.

What they are is convincing, compelling and in two out of the three cases laugh out loud funny. I found the Neo Cab demo to be one of the best laughs I've had for a while. 

The first pax, a would-be photographer on a year's sabbatical from his "real" job (which he doesn't explain and about which the game doesn't allow you to ask) just seems like a nice guy. When Lina picked him up by the side of the road in the middle of the desert I was getting ax-murderer vibes but he's cool.

The next two pick-ups are your choice. There are several calls but you only need to make a total of three for your quota. I picked Gideon, who turned out to be a teenage girl with a boy's name, locked in a spacesuit called a Kiddiemech (I think it was...). Her mother, Yancy, put her in it when she was four years old after a car hit her and she can't get out of it until she turns eighteen. Not even to sleep.

She is, understandably, pissed. She made me laugh out loud more than once. She reminded me of me when I was about sixteen although I was neither rich nor sealed in a spacesuit. I did want to set the world on fire just to see it burn, though.

When Gideon gets into the car in her suit Lina hopes she's going to turn out to be a robot, which is some gorgeous ironic foreshadowing right there. Her final fare turns out to be two German "tourists" who appear to have stepped straight out of a Blade Runner parody.


They've heard that American taxi companies are starting to use robot drivers and they don't believe Lina can be human. They insist on putting her through a hilarious version of Phil Dick's Voight-Kampff empathy test. Theirs even has a soundalike compound name, the exact detail of which escapes me but the first name was Higgs.

The questions become increasingly surreal and sexual. I was quite surprised that Lina took it all as well as she did. I was expecting her FeelGrid to lurch into the red at any time but it stayed solidly in the green chill out zone. She seemed to find the whole thing as amusing as I did.

I guess after the pax that she had before, the one that just jumped into the backseat without going to the bother of using the Neo Cab app, then started ordering her about, a couple of nerdy Germans with an AI fetish must have come as light relief.

The demo wraps on something of a cliffhanger. It also leaves Lina alone in Los Ojos with nowhere to sleep and no news of Savy's current state of existence beyond her smashed phone, found in an alley.

I am in two minds whether to buy the game. It's very well done and I enjoyed the demo a lot. But boy, was it intense. After an hour and a half I felt drained. There's a lot of moral decision making and I don't find that much fun. I like everything to be nice and I place a huge value on politeness. I find games that only give me dialog options that I consider aggressive or rude to be trying and Lina's FeelGrid sometimes pushed me down that road further than I felt comfortable with travelling.

Still and all, I managed to score a maximum five-star service rating from all three paying customers and the freebie liked me even though I yelled at him a lot. That did feel satisfying.

Chances are I'll buy Neo Cab eventually. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes this kind of "moral decision" gameplay although I do get the feeling that no matter what choices you make the whole thing is going to play out like an animated movie anyway. I think I'd prefer it was a movie. I'd definitely watch it.

The demo is worth an hour and a half of anyone's time, though. I might play it again, if that's allowed, just to see what the paxs I didn't pick have to say for themselves.