Video Game

1. The Evil Within 2 (might change to Cry of Fear after I play it)

For some background, one of my favorite video game series is the Resident Evil Series. It's a survival horror game series that scares you with minimal jump scares. Instead of jump scares, it uses the game's sound and lighting to constantly make you feel scared. You could be in a room and out the window, you see something pass by. Or you hear footsteps nearby. You don't encounter any enemies but you are constantly on edge about what's coming next. The survival part is that they give you weapons. How they keep it scary is by giving you limited ammo. The game lets you decide how to best use your resources. For example, if there are slow zombies in the living room, I am not going to shoot them. I will just run past them and save my ammo. However, if some large spiders start chasing me, I am going to shoot every one of them until I am out of ammo. I will not rest easy until I know I have killed each and every spider in the whole game.
The Evil Within 2 takes it a step further by incorporating trauma into the survival horror game. In Resident Evil, we are just fighting monsters. In Evil Within 2, sometimes the monsters take the shape of the character's past trauma relating to guilt over a lost loved one. I myself suffer from trauma and my favorite part is how the character's relationship with their trauma changes as the story progresses.

2. Yakuza 0

I have been playing video games since I was seven years old. I remember playing Pokemon Emerald on my cousin’s Gameboy Advance which you could flip open. As the years went by, I mainly played on PC going from Flash video games on miniclip.com to playing now on Steam. Somewhere in the middle, video games stopped being fun for me. I played the horrible game League of Legends where the goal is to be better than other players. I began playing video games less for fun and more for completion. I created a whole list of completed games which ranged to more than a 163. The only few times where I had genuine fun was when I played with my friends on Left 4 Dead 2 or on Monster Hunter World. It was like that until I played Yakuza 0. It reminded me of what video games were about, just being plain fun. It didn’t take itself too seriously and it had the most absurd minigames like delivering pizza, managing real estate, karaoke, and somehow making them fun. For that reason, it has a special place in my heart.

3. Cyberpunk patch 2.21 (5 years after release)

CYBERPUNK HAS BECOME MY FAVORITE GAME OF ALL TIME.

(finished 06/03/2025, 84 hours in 14 days)

SPOILERS FOR STORY AND ENDINGS !!!!

Before this, it was either GTA 5 or Sleeping Dogs. All these 3 games have fun combat, open-world, and good story. However, Cyberpunk's immersive dialogue cutscenes and the breathtaking neon city blows out the competition. 

Reason 1: Visuals

Cyberpunk already looks extremely beautiful and detailed with neon signs, crazy advertisements about sex and guns, the stylish cars and the obnoxious cyberpunk fashion styles. There were a few moments where my jaw dropped and I stopped moving just to admire the scene.

First one was in the Japantown parade with holographic floating Koi, falling flower petals, lanterns, floating booths, people celebrating, and all of this is happening a thousand feet above ground. The second one is in the final mission when you are making the choice that dictates the ending. Just the view of night city from that balcony is fucking gorgeous. I just love the cyberpunk aesthetic. It's futuristic, flashy and glamarous, yet also dark and depressing. The third one is in the end of Phantom Liberty. When you choose to sacrifice yourself for So Mi. You just sit there in the observation room with Johnny and watch the rocket lift up to the moon knowing that a happy ending awaits So Mi.

Reason 2: The Characters

Almost all the main characters cast have superb voice acting with great facial animations. Two of them really hit me in the gut: Judy and Johnny.

For Judy, her last mission where she shows her old submerged neighborhood and then talks about her dreams of night city is tragically beautiful. It's a city that churns up hopes and dreams and spits them out with deaths and tragedies. In my first ending (suicide ending by accident), just hearing Judy cry with the black tears shot me in the gut. Evelyn died by suicide and now V, I had a feeling she would be next.

As for Johnny, we always see him with his arrogant, narcisstic, reckless rockerboy persona. He doesn't give a shit and is always 100% honest and straightforward. He seems like he knows and got it all. However, in the one scene in Chippin In, he realizes that everything he did in his previous life amounted to nothing. All his friends hated him, he hurt those he cared about the most, and the corporation blew up built another headquarters right over the old explosion site. He realizes that he is just one big loser. However this time, he wants to make at least one thing right. That is to save V, who he has become closer with.

Almost everyone in Night City first appear to be cold, arrogant, selfish, or paranoid. However, as you get to know some of them, you empathize with them as human beings with insecurities, fears, hopes and dreams.

Reason 3: The story

"A happy ending? For folks like us? Wrong city, wrong people."

There is no perfect happy ending. Something will always get lost in the process. I won't focus too much on the Devil or the Sun Ending because I prefer the quiet life over the blaze of glory lifestyle. Suicide ending is the worst one.

Temperance Ending

Many people like the Temperance ending because Johnny gets to live a normal life while V lives on in the cyberspace. However, I saw this slightly less worse than the suicide ending. Even though Johnny is alive, he has nobody. Either Rogue dies or he despises Johnny for taking V's life. All of V's friends are worried because V just ghosted them, they probably think he died somewhere. Panam (if romanced) is furious and vows to find Johnny and save V. I also think living in the cyberspace is the same as death because Alt is no longer Alt but combination of all the other things to the point she is no longer human. V will have the same fate too.

The Star Ending

This is my second favorite ending. Compared to the Sun Ending, V can let go of his past failure and move on so he can enjoy the remaining months he has with his newfound family (Aldecaldos). V letting go of the necklace symbolizes that.

The V in the Devil ending is in the middle. He can let go of the necklace and move on with his life. However, it's unclear where he is headed after: back to mercenary work, traveling?

However, the V in the Sun ending is still holding on to it. I believe that V still hasn't moved on and is still trying to prove something. That V is still scared of death and being completely forgotten so he does one last risky mission despite his close friends leaving him in the process. It reminds me again about how Johnny is still a loser. He blew up Arasaka and caused the 2027 incident but everybody moved on. Same will happen to this V. No matter how hard you try, everybody will eventually be forgotten with the sands of the time. The goal isn't to be remembered forever but to live the remaining life to the fullest.

Tower Ending (favorite ending):

This is my favorite ending because it has the best outcome for V. V gets to live a normal life but without chrome or combat quickhacking. However, V loses everything and almost all his friends. Most people moved on in those 2 years and V has to start all over again. In a way, V died. The merc life V and the legend V is dead. All that's left is the human.

Many people see this as tragic but there is some hope to it. If you stay long enough in Night City, it will eventually take either your life or your humanity. The tower ending gave V a second chance at life (third if you count the relic). It's not the most glamarous or exciting life but V is alive.

In all the other endings, V has to decide how to spend the remaining few months he has left whether as a dying legend or close to his friends or family. In this ending, V has to decide on a new purpose of life. He no longer belongs in Night City and that is for the best.

The only sad thing about this ending is that Johnny has to die and Song Mi is enslaved and tortured by the FIA. I decided that I wanted to survive which is why I preferred this ending despite betraying my 2 friends.

Another reason this ending is my favorite is because I empathized with V when he learnt that his old life was gone since he couldn't chrome up or use cyberware. I am still adjusting and coping with my joint pain, insomnia, depression after my deployment. I can't push myself hard in the gym like I used to. I feel old as shit a lot. I can't play online video games because my reactions are too slow. My ambitions of reaching high in the corporate world have fizzled out because I can't handle the stress due to my insomnia. It sucks and that's why I thought about attempting suicide again using sleeping pills. Finding a new purpose to continue living is hard but it's not impossible. Everyday is a new challenge.

I don't care about making six figures and owning a house and having a family like I used to. All I care about is checking off my bucket list before my body and mind fully break down.

Extra Endings:

However, I also loved the King of Wands ending. V sacrifices his chance of survival so that So Mi can go to the moon and live a happy life away from the FIA. It felt the same way in Cyberpunk Edgerunners when David dies to send Lucy to the moon. Just sitting there in the observation room watching the rocket fly to space was just beautiful.

I love bittersweet endings where there is some loss compared to perfect happy endings where nobody dies. It's not that I enjoy watching characters be sad. When there is loss and sacrifice, it makes the positive outcome so much more valuable. When the side characters sacrifice themselves for the main character, you know that the main character is going to make good use of this second chance.

Honorable Reason 4:

Cyberpunk 2077 blends different genres of video games and somehow succeeds: GTA-like, immersive-sim like, action rpg like, looter shooter, etc.