Background

If you don't care about all this and want to go straight to the advice you can skip to section 2.
Hi guys, just wanted to share some insight on my road to grinding support to GM and to give some free advice for players wanting to improve. Here's the Proof that I hit GM if anybody was curious.
Just wanted to start by saying that I started off in low gold on my main account back in season 9. I didn't hit Masters until season 16 where I was stuck around the 3.4k-3.6k range until I hit GM on tank in season 23. After that, I wanted to practice support and made a new account so I could start from the ground up and so I wouldn't ruin other people's games because my support was probably not at a high masters/low GM level yet. Overwatch is also the first FPS competitive game I took seriously.
To help supplement my practice I watched coaching VOD reviews of Ana, Zen, and Bap and some unranked to GM VODs of people like ML7 and epicenzo. Then I would write down a couple of things that I needed to work on for each hero. I am by no means an amazing player, but through focused practice and time, I was able to hit GM on support. Hoping this post helps aspiring support players who feel stuck in their rank.
I also chose to not be in team chat for most of games because I really just wanted to focus on my mechanics and decision making without having to listen to other people complain. My experience in ranked is that I don't hear actual useful callouts until mid to high masters, but even at that rank I still didn't join voice. If you're hardcore, "you must be in voice chat, it's a team game!" kind of person then...I'm sorry?

1 - Controls and Settings for Console

If you are a PC player you can skip this section.
Make sure to have all allied health bars on! This will show the HP of teammates at all times and is a very useful piece of information for all support players. It will help dictate healing priorities and who needs healing certain situtations.
I'm sure some of you are curious about the specific console settings I use because it can be confusing. Here is a video explaining the differences between all the settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG1P2RsgBbM
Dual Zone
Horizontal Sens: 70
Vertical sens: 65
Aim Assist Strength: 100
Aim Assist Window Size: 50
Aim Assist Ease In: 70
Aim Smoothing: 98
Aim Ease In: 30
Ana: I had Relative Aim Sensitivity While Zoomed at 60 and Friendly Aim Assist Strength 75. Ultimate was bound to L3 so I wouldn't have to let go of the right stick.
Baptiste: Crouch is bound to L3, which is how Baptiste charges his exo boots. This allowed me to have it charged, while keep my aim with the right stick.
Lucio: Jump is on L2 and secondary fire is on L3. Backwards wallriding is enabled
Zenyatta: Reload is bound to L3 and sensitivity of harmony and discord orb on 70.
At the end of the day, work with the sens and controls that work best for you. This is what works for me after hours of experimentation and trial and error and these settings may not necessarily work for you.

2 - Ranked Advice

If you want to go straight into support advice you can skip this section
Need a Tough Mental: From when I first placed in plat on the new account to finally hitting GM, I would receive toxic messaged at every rank. Messages like "you're trash" "garbage healer" or my favorite, "I can't believe you're (insert rank here) you're dogshit." I even had a couple of instances playing Zen where my allied tank was shooting me, bodyblocking me, and overall just being a dick so I couldn't see the team fight. Here's the hard truth. There's not a lot you can do about toxic people. I know that scares a lot of you and I can see why.
I'll tell you a little secret, people are toxic because that's a coping mechanism for them playing poorly so they deflect blame on someone else on the team. Don't let some random person in a video game diminish who you are as a player and as person. You aren't a shitty person so don't let dickheads on the internet try to put you down. Mute. Report. Go next. Prove the haters wrong! You'll most likely never meet them again anyways.
Be Self-Critical and Open to Change: This will be the best advice I can give you that will improve your gameplay in the long-term. On my road to GM, I was constantly reevaluating my mistakes, so I could adjust them for future team fights and games. It's easy to fall into the trap of blaming teammates and attributing losses to them. While that may be the case, there's always something you can do to improve. For me, there are currently two things I am working on that I know I am weak at. Landing reliable sleep darts to defend myself and being more disciplined with my positioning. What are mistakes are you currently trying to work on?
Now, don't be that type of person who is overthinking everything about every little mistake they made. That's a quick way to ruin your mental. On the other hand, don't be the type of person who thinks they are doing everything perfectly. There's a nice balance between being confident and being honest about your mistakes. If you find yourself unable to mentally remember your mistakes, write down those mistakes with solutions, then actively apply them in game. Ask for a friend or outside help to give you another perspective if you're having a hard time self-analyzing.
Teammates are Going to do Dumbshit: ...and that's okay. I get it. As a support you get front row seats to the circus of ranked. From Reinhardts pinning into spawn, teammates wasting ultimates, Genji's spamming I need healing halfway across the map, I get it. There's a prayer that goes, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." If that doesn't explain how I feel about ranked I don't know what does.
You cannot force your teammates to make the right play 100% of the time no matter how loud you scream into your mic, you cannot control all of their actions, and so the best thing you can is to control your own actions. If you are consistently the best player in your lobby you will eventually climb. You don't have to be a god gamer but just slightly better than the players in the lobby. Stick to the fundamentals and abuse the mistakes on the enemy, because trust me, they make a lot of mistakes.
Adjusting to the Speed of Play at Different SR: Once I got into the 3.8K range I would be thrown into varying SR lobbies. One game I will be in a 3.4K lobby with plats and the next I would be thrown into an almost full GM lobby. In lower ranked lobbies I could get away with weird flanks and poor positioning, which would not be punished as much. Then once I got into GM lobbies, those bad habits and poor positioning I built would be punished. You don't realize how bad your positioning is until you are being consistently smacked by an enemy Widow, Tracer, McCree, or Doomfist. I had to be disciplined with my positioning, even at the lower ranked games so that when the GM game came I would already be in that mindset. The fundamentals of the game don't change, but the time window to kill someone does. Play for the rank you want to be, not the rank you are in.
Short Warm-up Routine: It's good to have a short 5-10 minute warm up routine before you start getting into a ranked session. For me, I use some workshop codes that are shown down below in the Outside Resources section and some deathmatch. This is a great way so that you're not throwing the first few games by missing easy shots. Even after the initial warm-up, it still takes a couple of games for your brain to warm-up to the decision making in game. It wasn't uncommon for me to lose the first few matches even after a good warm-up. Don't let a couple of losses discourage you from continuing your ranked session.
Would also like to add that you shouldn't be spending hours on aim trainers and warming up. Aim is great, and is an important skill of Overwatch, but it isn't the only skill. Positioning, movement, cool down management, decision making, awareness, etc are all important aspects that aim trainers won't tech you. This is why a lot of advice for new players is to, "play more" because they just need to experience the complexities of the game. Don't be afraid to make mistakes in ranked as those are good learning opportunities for the next game.

3 - General Support Advice

Understand Your Role and Healing Priorities: The first step that everyone should do is look at their team comp and figure our what your primary job is. For example, if I'm playing Ana with a Rein, Zarya, Mercy, McCree, & Hanzo, I know that my Mercy will default to supporting the DPS, while I default to supporting the tanks. Of course, when situations arise where I need to help out the DPS or Mercy I will, but I already have an idea of what my priorities are going into a team fight. It's easier to adjust to bad situations when you already have an idea of what your default role is. If I feel that my Mercy is mismanaging her resources mid-game then I can always adjust to landing a couple more shots on my DPS when they need it.
Ask yourself these 3 questions when it comes to understanding your priorities:

What is my job in this team comp?
What should I use my abilities and ultimate for?
Where should I position in terms of this team comp?

Don't overthink this and make it super simple. It can be as simple as I need to keep my frontline alive or peel for my other support. If you have any specific situations about healing priority, comment down below and I would be happy to answer them.
Understand Who on the Enemy Team can Kill You: After 15 seconds into a match you will be able to see the enemy team comp. Get into the habit of checking the scoreboard in between team fights. Take your time to gather all in the information on the enemy. Before doing anything crazy. Most of time, the biggest threats will be the DPS and/or dive tanks. If you're consistently dying to tanks like Rein or Zarya then there is something extremely wrong with your positioning. Adjust you positioning and cool downs accordingly depending on the enemy DPS. I'll get more into depth in Part 2.
Awareness. Awareness. Awareness.: This skill is the foundation of game sense and decision making in game. If you have poor awareness you will find yourself struggling executing the points I will be making throughout this post. These are the things you want to look out for to improve awareness:

Where your teammates are positioned: As a support, it's important to get the full view of the battlefield. Constantly remind yourself to be able to see all 5 of your teammates. If you can't see them on your screen then take a second to figure out where they are.
Where the enemy team is positioned: This is to reinforce my previous point of figuring out who on the enemy team might kill you. It's important to know where they might come from. Overwatch maps are designed with a middle land, a left lane, and a right lane. Sometimes the lanes have high ground, go through a tunnel, through a building or combination of those things. There can only be so many ways and enemy can approach you. Take the time to see if you can account for all 6 enemies. If one enemy is missing then they are doing something sneaky on a flank or right behind you.
Kill feed: I am constantly checking the kill feed almost every second. It's an important tool to check the status of the team fight. If my team loses 1 or 2 players very early on then I know to wait for the regroup if I'm on attack. If I'm on the defending side I know I need to make a big play to offset the player advantage from the enemy team. Then if my team loses 4 or more players then 99% of the time I know it's a lost team fight. Simple. Check the kill feed.
Abilities used: Being aware of cool downs helps tremendously. For example, knowing when Zarya uses her bubbles or when Dva's defense matrix is down is a great way to land anti nades as Ana. If you have a hard time visualizing and listening to abilities being used then I suggest watching your own replay code and just listen to the sound queues. You will be shocked on how much you miss.
Ultimates: Ult tracking is considered an advanced technique, but is still an important skill to learn. This is especially important for heroes like Zenyatta or Lucio who have ultimates that can mitigate big enemy ult combos. Start by ult tracking one player on the enemy team. Then eventually you'll be able to do 2, then the whole team, then you'll narrow it down to the ultimates that will play the biggest impact in the upcoming team fight. Bonus tip, if a player hasn't used an ultimate in over 2 team fights then they probably have it.

Value Your Life!: Don't make the mistake of following your teammate into the pits of hell. As a support, your team's success is tied to how long you can survive. The longer you survive the more resources your team will have. Don't go into a bad position or run in the open just to heal a person is missing 5 HP in the middle of a team fight. Supports should almost never be dying at the start of team fights. If you are consistently dying first as a support then you are positioning poorly or mismanaging your abilities. Prioritize your life!
Protect Your Fellow Support: Supports. Please. Protect each other! As I mentioned before, the longevity of a support is tied with the success of the team. I know what you're thinking, "if the supports are healing each other then who is healing the frontline?" Let me put it this way, if the enemy team is pumping resources into trying to kill the backline then that means there is less damage going into the rest of your team.
Multitasking: You might need to defend yourself for a few seconds, heal your teammate the next, quick scope a low HP enemy the next, all while rotating into a different position at the same time. As a support, you need to be proficient thinking ahead. This is why understanding your role is important before every match. Multitasking requires a mixture of awareness, good decision making, and mechanics. Without each of those components you will find yourself struggling to do multiple actions.
Team fights are never static, they constantly evolve, which provide different situations for you to answer. So it's important to change priorities when needed. Remember, critical HP signs show when your teammate has half of their HP or less. So Genji who is at critical vs a Winston who is at critical may need to be healed first as they have a higher chance of dying. It's a case by case basis, but you need to be able to read situations before they happen to be able to get better at multitasking.
Be a Threat and Playmaker: Once you've built a strong foundation of dying less, you then need to start becoming a playmaker and damage threat. Supports aren't pushovers and can pack a punch. I mean, Zen can 2 shot headshot and enemy squishy with discord. The reason why this is important is because if you become a threat then the enemy DPS have to respect you. They can't just walk over the backline. If you also become a damage threat then you open up advantages for the rest of your team. For example, as Zen I am putting pressure on the enemy Tracer, which forces her recall. This then allows my Tracer to win the Tracer battle because my Tracer has a distinct advantage. That then leads to an opening kill for the rest of my team to push. Forcing cool downs for free isn't something that will be shown in the stats, but it's an important aspect that will win team fights.
Higher Healing Numbers are Overrated: What's the difference in the amount of healing a Mercy can output in GM vs Gold? Answer, 0. A Mercy will always pump out 55HPS no matter what rank. What makes a good support player is how they prioritize their healing in the right situations combined with how their kit impacts a team fight. Anybody can just dump heals on their friendly Reinhardt and get gold healing. News flash, that doesn't win you games. If a ton of healing leads to wins then you would see Moira in every top 500 lobby.

4 - Thought Process on Support Picks

Ana: Ana is a great versatile support pick as she can fit in a lot of team comps. Her long range healing enables high resource intensive tanks like Rein/Zarya but can also support dive tanks like Winston/Dva. These tanks are are also great nano boost targets under the right circumstances. Ana is decent at healing DPS, although it's not her primary focus. Her nano boost is a great pairing for ultimate combos with DPS like Genji, Pharah, and other high mobility heroes like Tracer and Genji. She is also decent at defending herself (if you're capable) with her sleep dart and biotic grenade.
Pick Ana with tanks that require high resources, in situations where you need to defend yourself, combo nano boost, and to make high impact plays with anti nade. She is weakest in bunker comps as she doesn't have the "spam damage" compared to Zen and Baptiste.
Baptiste: Baptiste is another great versatile support hero as a hybrid between Ana, Zen, and Moira, but with vertical mobility. He absolutely shines in deathball or bunker comps where he can get the most out of his AOE healing. When played in these situations he can build his ultimate after almost every team fight. He can also dish out a ton of damage and can be used to defend himself against flankers or as a 3rd DPS. His biggest weakness is playing in dive as he'll have a hard time healing his teammates. You'll end up using your abilities on yourself, and if you're not getting full advantage of immortality field then may not be worth it to play Baptiste.
Pick Baptiste in static bunker or rush comps. Avoid playing him with dive as there are better options like Zen, Mercy, or Ana.
Lucio: Lucio is a relatively weak pick at the moment as his biggest strengths, speed boost and dueling are outclassed by ranged poke damage. He can be played in really strong boop maps like Lijiang Tower or Ilios but be careful on tunnel visioning on boops. He is still decent at peeling for your fellow support but Brig is the number one option at dealing with flankers. Dueling potential as a 3rd DPS, while getting teammates into position with speed is the only way I have found success with Lucio. He pairs well with heroes like Rein, Reaper, Mei, etc who require to be in close range to be effective.
Lucio is an average pick in the moment as the strength of range damage is more valuable than speed boost. However, he can work with rush comps, but engagement timings have to be decisive. If you end up being a healbot Lucio then consider playing Moira or Baptiste instead as they output more AOE healing than Lucio.
Zenyatta: Zen is a glass cannon, but what he lacks in survivability, he makes up for in a shit ton of damage. I personally try to play Zen as much as possible, but he doesn't work well it tanks who require a lot of resources. If that happens then I would pick Ana, Moira, or Baptiste. If I do find that my tanks are feeding or playing too passively that it doesn't matter how much healing I pump into them then I will switch to Zen. His harmony orb works well with flankers like Genji, Tracer, and Echo who can utilize that 30HPS for being more aggressive.
Zen works great in dive comps and bunker comps. He's still playable against 1 or 2 flankers (if you can land your shots) but if the enemy team is 3+ man diving you and you aren't getting any peel then I would consider switching off.

Summary

If I were to boil everything down to key points to improve on how I was able to climb as support it would be this

Know your role and priorities in a team comp.
Always think in the back of your head who on the enemy team might kill you.
Position yourself with cover and to see the entire picture of a team fight.
Don't waste abilities.
Finally, don't waste ultimates if a team fight is decisively won or lost.

Follow those 5 steps then apply that to any support hero and you should be able to climb with practice and actively learning. Hope this helps you guys. Remember, it takes time to actually apply knowledge in game. Sometimes you need to take one step back to move two steps forward. A lot of you guys are making constant mistakes so it's important to slow that down, build good habits slowly, so that over time you can make good decisions quickly. Comment down below if you have any specific questions about Overwatch or how I was able to climb and I would be happy to answer them.
Here is the link the Part 2 where I go over specific support heroes.

Outside Resources

Workshop Codes
Practice Range 2.2: AJERA
Healing Trainer for Baptiste and Ana: A9B2N
Aim Trainer 1: KAVE5
Aim Trainer 2: 9SM5N
Flanker Duel Practice: MXCB3
Genji Sleep Dart Practice: ZKMC1
Doomfist Sleep Dart Practice: 8Z23K
Wrecking Ball Sleep Dart Practice: ASHZS
Ana vs Pharmercy: T7CB6
Ana Nade Tool: EBAXM
Ana
Ana Gamepedia Information
ML7's Ana Guide
ML7's Ana Unranked to GM
KarQ and ML7's 1 Ana tip vs Every Hero
KarQ's 1 Nade for Every Map
KarQ's Platinum Ana VOD Review
ML7's Platinum Ana VOD Review
ML7's Silver Ana VOD Review
Hayes VOD review of ML7
Baptiste
Baptiste Gamepedia Information
MajorMidget's Baptiste Guide
ML7's Baptiste Unranked to GM
KarQ and ML7's 1 Baptiste Tip vs Every Hero
Fran's Baptiste Tips & Tricks
Lunar's Baptiste Tips & Tricks
ML7's Platinum Baptiste VOD Review
Gunther's Baptiste VOD review via PECO Overwatch Coaching
Lucio
Lucio Gamepedia Information
KarQ and FunnyAstro Lucio Guide
KarQ and Rammy's 1 Lucio Tip vs Every Hero
Eskay's Lucio Rollout For Every Map
KarQ and Eskay's 1 Lucio Rollout for Every Map
SVB's Diamond Lucio VOD review
FunnyAstro Lucio VOD Review
Zenyatta
Zenyatta Gamepedia Information
MajorMidget's Zenyatta Guide
Epicenzo's Zenyatta Unranked to GM
KarQ's 1 Zenyatta Tip vs Every Hero
Epicenzo's Zenyatta Primary and Secondary Fire Guide
Jayne's Zenyatta Platinum VOD Review
Hayes Zenyatta VOD Review of Kaan
Jake's Zenyatta VOD Review of HTP
Edit: so I accidentally deleted a lot of the post when I tried editing something. This is the restored version and a little different from the original post I made. I tried to make it as close as possible, but if anyone who read the original post found something I missed please let me know.

Done with this life

My family started in a trailer in a poor part of my city. First my parents had my sister, and then me a year later. My parents never married, but they tried to make it work for me and my sister's sake. They made it into an apartment, and then eventually worked their way into beginning to pay on the house my mom still lives in today. Up until I was about 10 years old, my father and mom stayed together in this house, and it was the definition of hell. Screaming/fights almost every day. Sometimes my dad would start it, sometimes my mom would, sometimes me or my sister. My dad has thrown me across the room, slapped and punched my mom multiple times, (my mom is 5'2', my dad is 6'3'). He has issues, some from his own father dying while he was young, some from using/selling coke and weed and drinking. My mom told me when I was young (maybe 7-8 years old) she was raped by two men in her home state of Oklahoma, and I don't think I really processed it well as a kid. Her dad also died while she was young, he fell to his death on a construction site.
Me and my sister both have mental health issues nowadays, but she did make it through four years of college, which is more than either of my parents or me did. I personally have really bad anger issues and anxiety, PTSD from close range shoot outs and robberies. I struggle daily with depression and suicidal thoughts almost every day. I sold weed at a pretty decent level for a long time, 6-7 years. I started around 16 when I realized my parents didn't really have the money they were giving me for my weed/drug habit. 20 or so dollars every day was adding up and they would tell me. My mom was a manager at a Texas roadhouse around when I was 8-9-ish years old, and she ended up getting in between two drunk guys that were in a bar fight and she got punched in her neck. She ended up getting a $50,000ish settlement, but had to have multiple surgeries and will pretty much always be in pain and will always have metal in her neck to the point where she can feel it when its raining outside. My mom has never been great with finances, so that money after bills went by very fast. She did use probably 20-30 grand of it on a new truck. An brand new F-150. Remember she's 5'2" lol. That was definitely a mistake, and I think she knows it, but I've never been good with money either. My father has always been broke, to the point where he would ask my mother for money for his own weed and bills. I'm not sure where my dad lives now, last I heard it was in the mountains in North Carolina. He left the house when I was around 10 like I mentioned earlier. He went to his moms house for a while and then moved out. His mom took care of us a lot of nights that they couldn't because of work or other things. She's the sweetest most Christian grandmother you could imagine. She had four kids, and then as I mentioned her husband (my dads dad) died of a heart attack while they were all still young. I can't imagine the pain, I'm sure it messed my dad up pretty bad. I think these things are important to understand though, because they help me see why they were always so mad and upset always.
So in comes when it started getting hard. I had almost no friends in elementary school, I remember getting a "red card" in maybe second grade for punching a kid in the back, yes the back, lol. Because he was literally just talking to a girl I had a crush on. I never really talked to girls then, I would just decide I had a crush on them. In second grade. Lol. He didn't even hit me back, he was kind of just like "What the fuck?" And then I just walked away until a teacher came up to me that's all I remember. I've always been a kind of small and skinny dude, and I especially was back then. In middle school I started making some friends but I was always annoying them because I was always asking to hang out and to come over to their houses. I remember my bus route used to go through the nicest neighborhoods on my side of the city, I'm talking retired NFL player nice. they make my moms house look like a shack, and I don't know if I realized it back then, but it was making me jealous. The friends I ended up making in middle school were not very healthy friends, we were always the loud and obnoxious ones. I got into a lot of trouble starting around this time, 7th grade. I spent almost half of my 7th grade year in In School Suspension, just staring at wall while "doing" class work. It was also this year toward the end of the year that I got into my first real fight. I was always outspoken, and so was this other guy, but he lived in a super nice house and was from a rich ass family. We had a social studies class together, and one day, I'm not even sure how it started, he started making jokes about my mother working at chick fil a. She got that job after her neck was healed up just enough to get a job. She had to get a job, as she was my house's income. She loved and still loves that job, she's a manager now. But back then and how he made fun of her in front of my whole class while my teacher just didn't do anything about it, I was just so mad. So I told him I was going to beat his ass and after class (and more trolling me) we met next to the side of the school and a huge crowd gathered to watch. A lot of people, not the whole school, but most of my grade, because we all exited the same door if you rode on the bus. I threw the first punch, missed, he grabbed my neck and slammed my head into the brick wall, I tried to throw another punch, missed, and I just yelled "stop making fun of my mom" grabbed my backpack and got on the bus, Just cried the whole way home, my sister on the bus was just wondering what happened. I've never been good at explaining my thoughts or feelings to people, so most people think I'm even more dumb than I actually am. I didn't tell my family about that fight for years, even though my sister did. I just will never forget it. I even tried to tell people that I didn't lose that fight even though everyone heard about it. I just couldn't come to terms with it. 8th grade I don't have many memories of. I was a goofball, and my grades were really slipping now, even worse than the year before. Most people just saw me as that weird kid who got his ass beat. I think around this time I started to get very, very cynical with my worldview and my attitude. I was always on the internet when I could be, playing shitty games on our homes only computer; a dell desktop, and reading stupid conspiracy theories. Later I would start gaming pretty hard, and I loved watching streams all the way back to the justin.tv days. My dad had a PlayStation 1, and I loved watching him play Call of Duty. It might be my only good memory with my dad, honestly, and he never got to play a lot. The internet and my cynical world view pushed me away from religion, even though my family was heavily Christian. Even before this though, I hated going to church. From a young kid onward every single Sunday was a screaming match between me and my mom about not wanting to go to church. Sometimes she would end up getting me to go, but that was less and less, and before even middle school I just stopped going completely.
So in between middle and high-school I started smoking weed, it made me some new friends and got me into hanging out at a park near my moms house. This park would end up being where I spent most of my next 6-7 or so years. Most people knew it was a druggie park, would call us all "park rats" and make fun of us for wasting our time and money doing drugs. But I gained more memories here than I could ever write down, I probably could make a book out of those memories. There were all ages of people there, some young as me, some mid 30s-40s, a lot of weed smoking teens, a lot of acid tripping hippies, some Xanax/oxy fiends, and even some meth and heroine people. Most days it was just normal people getting fucked up to enjoy their time, but there was always plenty of drama. This park was known not just on my side of town but through the whole city. its kind of tucked away in woods, sits on a lake, and has a small disc-golf course, so you'd even have a bunch of random (probably) sober people show up to play some days, but they usually stayed on their course and away from us, minus a few of them. I started selling weed when my mom started telling me no to my almost daily asks of 20 dollars. I look back and realize she just didn't have the money to support my habits, and I understand now. But once I started selling weed, I realized I could start eating when I was hungry, I realized I could get and smoke weed almost whenever I wanted to. Being at the park always made it easier to sell it too, because people knew to come there to find some weed. I met a LOT of people selling, and I mean a LOT. I started moving up to QP's (quarter pounds) on the front (pay back later) and always found myself 100-200 short on my re-ups, usually just from smoking too much and cutting too many people deals, Like I said never been good with money.
Then the serious shit started happening. I was maybe 17-18 when I was at my weed guy's small apartment downtown one day. I always liked going over there, not only because I knew we'd be smoking a lot, but because me and my plug were close, I looked up to him, and we had a decently similar shitty upbringing. One day, I get a call to come chill downtown at his apartment, even had two of our friends come pick me up from the park and bring me there. Took fat dabs on the way (THC oil/wax) and when I got there he surprised us with sheets of Gel-Tabbed Acid. Strong shit. I took my usual 2 doses, I was known for tripping a lot back then, haven't tripped since this day. It was going to be a "No Traffic" day, meaning no sales in his apartment so we could just smoke and enjoy our time. His girlfriend at the time had arranged a deal between him and 3 people he did not know. A young (17 at the time) girl, a mid twenties white dude, and a mid twenties black dude. What we didn't know until after this, was they had set this up, and once inside (mind you we were tripping pretty hard at this point), the white dude and the black dude pulled a gun on my plug and my plug instantly pulled his and fired back and 20-30 shell casings later everyone ran to get out. This was a very small apartment. I mean very very small, 7 or so people all feet away from each other. I was literally sitting on the floor because there weren't enough chairs for everyone, even before the 3 robbers came in. I ducked behind the chair I was sitting next to. One of the people that drove me there got shot twice, once in the thigh and one through the side of his asscheek, no joke. The white guy who was robbing us took at least one to the chest, and was also crushed underneath us all as we all ran out and flooded the small staircase down, I could not describe to you how twisted and contorted his body was, and I had no doubt he was dead. I ran to find my plug, I'm not sure why, but I saw somehow he had made it all the way to the other side of the street already, and was on the ground. I ran up to him, not wanting to touch him, and told him an ambulance is coming and not to worry, he was laying there bleeding out of his mouth and chest with what I later found out were SEVEN BULLETS IN HIS CHEST. I watched him die, or so I thought. I yelled for someone to call an ambulance and when I saw some random student walking past was doing that I ran away and back to the two friends who had drove me there. They were freaking out, it was a dude and a girl, they were a couple at the time. The dude had just gotten shot two times. His girlfriend needed me to go back in and grab her purse and phone that were left in the chaos, I said no at first, but she begged me so I ran back to the staircase and over the white guy on the stairs who had robbed us, I definitely thought he was dead the way his body looked. I went back up the stairs and into the apartment and grabbed the phone and purse and all I could see was blood and holes everywhere, it was disgusting, and it makes me tear up while I type this. I got back into the car and they drove to the nearby hospital (The guy that got hit twice actually drove, believe it or not) and I got out of the car right before they pulled into the hospital.
I'm 23, and besides these last two years, I have been on probation/in legal trouble my whole life. When I was a juvenile, I was on Show-Cap probation, where a cop would most nights come check and make sure I was at home. A cop would wake my whole household up at anywhere from 10PM - 2AM just to make me show him a card I had and then would leave, almost every night. During the shooting I was talking about, I was on Show-Cap probation. That's why I got out of the car at the hospital. I wasn't supposed to be around certain people or things like guns, legally. I got out of my friends car and walked (still tripping balls) to a McDonalds a few blocks away, sat down, and called a friend, crying the whole time, and I just remember seeing black around the edges of my vision, like I was either dying or falling into a like dark area of some kind, definitely losing it to the drugs at this point. I got picked up and drove back to my moms house, I told the car full of people I was with what had happened and they couldn't offer much aside from positive words but I will never forget at least they came and got my ass quick. That was some real friend shit. I cried and cried the whole way back to my moms, got dropped off, and like clockwork a few minutes later my mom got home. I told her something had happened (but not the whole story yet) and I felt like I was going to be in a lot of trouble. About 30 minutes later, maybe in total 1-2 hours after the shooting, a black SUV pulled up to my moms house.
I had to go downtown, I will say my mom even made me one of the Sur-gel drinks I had been using to pass drug tests to drink during the car ride there. They weren't even trying to drug test me, I didn't ask her to, she was just that cool I guess. I rode an elevator up a huge building and they sat me down with two cops who were pretty convinced this was my doing in some way. They kept asking me why I had been talking to my plug that day and when I said I hadn't, they pulled up my phone logs and texts. So they not only knew about my outstanding legal issues, they also knew I was lying. I really was just lying because I thought just being there was going to violate my probation. They had me on camera every single step from leaving the car at the hospital to walking into the McDonalds. They really wanted to blame me, they even told me my friend (my plug) was dead and it made me cry and cry and cry and cry. In the end, they couldn't hold me there. They forced me to point at a picture line up of people but I told them over and over I didn't know what they looked like and that you shouldn't use what I say because I just didn't know. Whole time during all of this 3-4 hour interrogation, they yelled and screamed at me and at one point left me in the room for maybe 2 hours while I just cried and cried. They were probably just watching what I would do when alone. I was still tripping acid, hard, and just felt like death was all around me. All I could do was cry.
Like I said, they released me to my mother. They obviously had no evidence against me, but one thing that they asked me during the investigation was why was my plugs girlfriend outside talking to the 3 robbers (juvenile girl, white guy, black guy, the juvenile girl ended up getting some lesser felonies but she didn't have a gun or shoot anyone, she just tried to block the exit at first). That was enough for me to put together that she was behind this, set him up to have him robbed. She probably just expected my plug to just give up his shit without a fight, but no, no he would never just do that. Obviously this whole situation fucked me up pretty bad mentally. For weeks I thought my plug was dead. Until one day he literally just called me out of the blue. Told me to come see him at his moms house. I'm telling you, this was my brother. Got in my car and went to go see him. When I got there I tried to hug him but he said he couldn't hug anyone, he lifted up his shirt and it was like a Frankenstein stitching all across his whole chest. If I recall it was 8 bullets that hit him in total. He had to use crutches and a wheelchair to move around the little bit he could. He only has one lung now, and will never move the same. It was a miracle, but no one died during that shooting, not even the white guy robber, who was shot in the chest and trampled over on the staircase. The white guy (I keep saying white guy and black guy just because I'm not trying to give out names, I hate all people equally) ended up pleading guilty and sentenced to 30 something years in jail. The black-guy robber took it to trial and WON. No fingerprints on his taped up shitty little .22 caliber pistol. Jury found him not guilty, and he is a free man to this day. Plug's girlfriend that set it up was never even charged as an accessory, but she did violate her adult probation by being there. As if that's all she deserved. This is a true story, google Fort Sanders shooting, It'll come up. The only reason my name wasn't in the articles was because I was 17 years old at the time. Not even an adult yet.
They subpoena'd me after the shooting to make sure I'd show up to court or to trial. It wasn't until 4-5 years later the black-guy robber had his trial. By this time I had moved up a lot in the selling game, my plug (same plug) had moved out to the west coast to step up his game as well. Had my own house I was renting in my hometown, Knoxville, TN. Nice car, shitty (but real) diamond ring, bunch of shoes and clothes, 2 shitty cars. Tons of memories, good times and bad, important memories in between then and the trial. I've had a lot of friends die that I went to school/smoked with, especially when Fentanyl started coming around. From what I've heard that's a problem a lot of people share, fuck Fentanyl. I have done most drugs, but luckily I was just smart enough to stay away from shit like heroine and meth. (not to say Knoxville powder wasn't dirty, because it was) I just really liked weed, it has always calmed down my bad emotions from my childhood and from the events I've been through, I don't get to smoke a lot anymore, mostly because I am poor again now. Its still Illegal as fuck in my state too, but that's another story.
I declined to testify at the trial of the black guy robber, and they never asked me to testify at the white guys trial because he didn't have one, he plead guilty. I decided not to testify because of multiple reasons, one- I hate cops, and law enforcement. I understand some are actually decent people. But go through a day in jail without food, because they CO thinks you're lying about not getting a tray, and ask me how you feel about cops after. Go through getting kicked out of your high school during your SENIOR YEAR because someone told some teacher you had weed in your car. I got pulled out of class by cops and arrested, and my car wasn't even on school grounds. Cops used to roll through the park I grew up in and would get out and do pat downs on whoever couldn't run away in time. These things and many more have made me hate cops, and yes, I still to this day hate cops. Is me not testifying the reason one of the robbers walked free? Maybe. But I certainly had no new information to tell the jury they didn't already know. Especially if the no fingerprints on the weapon they recovered was the reason they acquitted him. Who knows, maybe me going in there and crying like a bitch or something would've made it the jury see the truth. Either way it does weigh heavy on my heart but even my plug didn't blame me for not testifying.
During and before and after the trial, me and my plug were still at work. This is when I had moved into my house I rented, after living in a shitty apartment. I fully furnished it and everything. Washer, dryer, Ps4, Xbox 1, queen sized bed, the works. Even the little shower floor mat, I loved that home.
Fast forward to early covid 2020, my plug was starting to get annoyed with me. I was always asking him about the next pack coming in, always wanting as much of it as he could get to me, and I was always on him about the quality of it, even though it was always above average and most of the time it was top shelf. He ran into some legal trouble driving through Texas, that and along with a few other things happening in his personal life, work for me started slowing down. I never was good at saving money, I knew I should, I'd always beat myself up for not having money when I needed it, but I just never could change my spending habits. I'm still not sold on the whole "trying to be something you're not" argument because I've never had to fake anything. Most of the people I was around have heard from others what I've been through. At one point people were driving 2-3 hours just to pick up from me. I've been robbed plenty of times and I've robbed others. One things for sure, if karma is real, then I've definitely paid my dues. I haven't been selling now or have been in any legal trouble for the longest stretch of time since I started it all almost 8 years ago. And yes, I am proud of that.
Almost all of the friends I've ever had have either robbed me or wronged me in some way, or I've cut contact for my own issues or reasons. As of today, I have one friend that lives in Ireland, and he's a great friend, but he's got his own life to live. I got evicted for giving a bad check to my landlord, 3 weeks before they did the eviction halting for covid, which is still active today. Unlucky for sure, but my fault nonetheless. Finding somewhere to live has always been a challenge for me because of my lack of provable income. Today I have decent credit, a credit card, and a few thousand dollars I have invested in my Robinhood account that I seem to keep losing and gaining back. I stream on Twitch, but my last stream I just sat and cried for like 2 and a half hours, its still the latest stream on my channel. No one wants to follow me or give me a chance, which I understand, I probably could make it work if I grinded harder and harder at it, its just depressing as fuck to sit there and talk to yourself for hours at the beginning.
Todays' (1/28/2021) events in the stock market made me write this. Me and my mom keep fighting and its BEEN PAST the time I move back out again. No one will lease to me. She wont even stay here until I leave, as of this last week. I'm waiting on my new debit card to get here in the mail, and whether I have somewhere to go or not, I told her I'd leave when it got here, I have been homeless a few times, lived in my car, extended stay hotels, other peoples' couches. Its hard, but I know that I can make it fine. Today I woke up and had $20,000 in my investments, up from $1,100 I started with at the beginning of January 2021. I finally felt a little bit positive about my future at least a little bit, after a very depressing Christmas and January. Then Robinhood and other brokers today cut off buying GME, AMC, and others. I was heavy into GME, having gotten in @ $69 (lol) dollars a share. It was $450+ per share this morning, after a week of mainstream media attention from every social media website, major TV news stations, and billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, that Chamath guy (who seems awesome) and many more. Robinhood and a couple other brokers actually turned off the ability to buy the stock. Literally. All the stocks that were heavy volume "meme stocks" they cut off. I was in GME and AMC, but even Blackberry, Nokia, and others were cut off too. Needless to say, after the whole week of manufactured panic from all of these different sources, this straw broke the camels back. GME at this moment is trading @ 225, and I sold mine when I opened my app and saw it at 155, which was the lowest dip of the day. I came out in the green, I came out making a $1,500 or so dollars. But my portfolio by the time I cut AMC losses went from $20,000 this morning, down to $5,000 as I type this. I have never wanted to kill myself more than I do right now, mostly because this week it felt like I really earned this. I stayed diamond hands (held through the media pressure) through this whole week, only to give up at the end. It will hurt even more if GME recovers from this dip, but It's not because other people are making money without me, its because I could've used that money to move out, get some food to eat, get a new car that doesn't leak through the roof in case I'm living in it here in a couple days. And more importantly, I earned that money. I noticed the momentum before it even touched 40 a share. I've watch DFV's (roaring kitty on YouTube) 5-6 hour livestreams where he was going over the financials and spreadsheets of GameStop back in fucking 2019. I believed in this play and threw the money I had at it, and it should have worked out at least better than it did, I was planning to exit or at least hedge my earnings tomorrow, when shorts have to cover. But when I stepped away to eat lunch and take a shower because of how stressful this morning this morning was, I came back, opened my phone, and I was $15,000 down. So yes, my diamond hands failed. I sold. And while I still had a gain, its not at all what it should rightfully be. I can't even bitch and moan in the Wallstreetbets subreddit because apparently me being a lurker for a year isn't enough because of all of the newbies in there from all of the media attention.
So to finally wrap this up, I feel like I tried my best in this life. I haven't always been a good person, but not once have I thought to myself that I was evil. I'm too nice sometimes, and its gotten me fucked over, and I'd still go back and front friends weed or give them money/weed for free because I'm just not having fun unless people around me are too. Everyone's struggling in their own ways. I do not want to live on this earth any longer. I wrote this to at least explain to everyone what happened to me. And while I left out some very important parts in my life, this should give you a summary of what was going through my mind today. I really have been a good human being these last 2 years. Maybe I'm greedy for not selling earlier today. I was just so caught up in finally "sticking it to the man" and making the best play I've ever made I didn't want to feel like they would win by making us sell. I didn't even come out in the red, but goddamn it feels like I lost everything. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, just learn from my mistakes and take care of yourselves. You have to be stronger emotionally than I was. Move out of the U.S. if you can, its just greed and money that rule here. Maybe nowadays that's just everywhere.
Thank you to anyone that for some reason read all of this. To my dead friends Tad, Pmoney, Cierra, Raegan, Tina, I miss you guys and you better have a blunt for me when I see you all soon, I could really fucking use one about now. Much Love, - Bleezy

Cyberpunk 2077 release/game info and common answers

CTRL+F to search for stuff or, if you're on a phone, just be sad and scroll.

--Official Release/Preload Times--

From CDPR: https://twitter.com/CyberpunkGame/status/1334548241459933188
Pretty much what we knew on PC due to the GoG counter, but sadly seems console players have local midnight release. There you go!

--Is the game DRM Free? (ON PC, obviously)--

Yes. CDPR is vehemently against DRM, and the DRM-free nature of Cyberpunk has been confirmed by journalists. Whether it's Steam, GoG, or Epic Game Store, you will be able to run the game without any of them open, and YES, you can technically just copy and paste the game onto 20 computers if you wanted. That's just what DRM-free means, but PLEASE support the developers.
Again, this obviously doesn't include stuff like consoles or Stadia which are inherently locked by nature.

--Difference between Steam and GoG?--

Ultimately, no differences. Both are DRM free, both have achievements, both will update at the same time. CDPR, the makers of Cyberpunk 2077, own GOG, so if you buy it from there the devs get 100% of your money. Every platform will get its own comic and on Steam you get an exclusive short story; they'll all probably be all over the internet in 5 seconds though, if you really care.

--PC Performance or "Can I run it?"--

Here are the official hardware requirements, but I'll tell you now that no one really knows how it'll actually run in reality because they've given us no information about FPS targets on PC (we can probably safely assume 60, as that is the standard on PC).
Anyway, here is the RTX ray tracing gameplay trailer for the 30xx unicorns.
AMD and thus next-gen console raytracing will come eventually, but right now it's limited to Nvidia GPUs.

--Will there be official modding support?--

CDPR has been inconsistent with official support for their games. Their official word for Cyberpunk 2077 specifically is "not at the moment" because they want to focus on the core game, which I guess isn't a no. Witcher 2 actually had RedKit for official modding support, and Cyberpunk 2077 uses an upgraded version of the same engine, so it's possible a new RedKit will be released someday.
However, even without modding support at the start, Witcher 3 still had a ton of modding. Most notably, the infamous nudity mods that gave gamers the world over the joy of seeing Geralt's buttery buttocks all the time instead of just in a few scenes, because no one cared about anyone else's buttocks, obviously.
With the popularity of the game, though, CDPR would be bonkers to not officially add modding support, and honestly, the modding community probably won't care even if they don't.
So that's kind of where we're at: A solid WE SHALL SEE.

--Next-gen Patch? How does it run on consoles?--

Note that CDPR hasn't said a single thing about FPS/resolution targets on any of the consoles either, sorry. IMO this is really something they should revealed already, but meh.
Next-gen patch is planned for next year; CDPR has not given a date. The game runs a bit better on next-gen consoles, but will not have any next-gen features or graphical enhancements until this patch.
Here is the official X Box One X and Series X gameplay.
Here is the official PS5 and PS4 Pro gameplay.
Note that outside of these videos, all gameplay has been on high end PCs, so please don't let your expectations get out of hand due to the trailers. No gameplay has been shown on the base models. CDPR says it runs fine, but, again, I'd seriously taper my expectations.
Cyberpunk 2077 will offer a fee next-gen copy of the game for those who buy an old-gen version, so you don't have to buy the game twice. The game also features cross-saves between consoles of the same brand, detailed here for Sony and here for Microsoft.

--GoG Account Link Freebies?--

CDPR hasn't actually spoken about this, but they have mentioned there will be shirts and swords and other goodies if you own their prior games, and that it doesn't matter where you own them. Expect information this week, likely.

--Multiplayer--

This will be free for anyone who already owns the base game (so half the world, I guess). There's no release date, but it was expected in 2022 and may now release in 2023 instead. We don't have many details other than it's being headed by some MMO veterans and is a separate AAA project according to CDPR.
For people asking, it's actually old news that it'll be free (sorry couldn't find the original interview), but I guess they could change their minds over the next 2 years, and the way they worded it makes it sound like you will also be able to buy it as a standalone, but we don't know for sure. Plenty of journalists have confirmed this. (random example).

--Reviews?--

Still no info. Many places expected to get review copies still haven't gotten them, including those that got to sample the preview (like ACG), however it's assumed the major places like IGN and Gamespot do have keys. No word on when, but probably next week.

--Rapidfire Answers for the Questions You Keep Asking--

Download size is ~70 gigs
There will be a day 1 patch; details unknown, but stop freaking expecting another 70gigs in total file size, yeesh. The final, patched game probably won't go above 80 gigs total at launch.
PS5 confirming preload on the 8th, the rest very likely to follow.
Level cap has been most consistently described as being 50, but nothing has been officially confirmed. We surprisingly don't know much about attribute/perk gains.
The game is almost entirely in first person, with third person only available in a very few cutscenes and while driving. This was done to be more immersive; the focus of the game is storytelling, not action.
Ciri is not in the game; devs has said it a billion times and one of the leads is very against it, so if she is, they're lying lilies.
This is supposed to be a dark game. You can turn off nudity, most explicit sexually suggestive stuff, and copyrighted music, but the game has earned its rating for a reason, so the toggles aren't going to lesson the excessive sexual and violence-based themes weaved deep into the narrative. These toggles are mostly intended for streamers and their fickle masters Twitch and YouTube.
There are multiple endings; it is not known if you can get them all using one playthrough as a base (Like Deus Ex's hilariously infuriating "pick an ending" buttons).
The 3 Lifepaths all ultimately meet at the same narrative point: V becomes a novice mercenary with nothing to their name and Johnny Silverhand eventually in their heads, though Lifepaths will continue to serve as a "history" that influences your character. They WILL NOT create 3 distinct play-throughs on their own outside of the prologue, but CDPR has said some quests and quest variations/options will be locked to a particular lifepath.
~~There are 4 (might have changed) difficulties: Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard~~. The old, brief PS4 leaked footage shows Story, Easy, Normal, Hard now and so do some previews, though a dev has mentioned very hard before. There's supposed to be a hardcore mode but CDPR hasn't talked about it recently.
CDPR will talk about the season passe and DLC after launch.
This game IS NOT like GTA, however the COMPARISON IS WORTHWHILE as they DO share many similarities on the surface. Beyond that, however, Cyberpunk 2077 is a complete RPG closer to Fallout than GTA. You have stats to manage, weapons have damage values, your health is measured in numbers and so is all the damage you deal, enemies have levels and zones have levels ranges too. So unlike a shooter, where all combat is often based on skill, this is more like a typical RPG, where a much higher level enemy will almost always destroy you unless you're cheesing.
The map is filled with tons to do; too much at once, some previewers felt. Both bigger, sprawling mini-story chains and small quick one-off stuff, and some side quests were described as being just as good as main quests.
CDPR hasn't given a time for completion, but one of their QA guys was at ~150 hours on a nomad run, highest difficulty, and said he wasn't close to completing it, but remember QA guys play differently than most people.
You can't join factions, gangs, or corporations; only fight against them or work with them.
Every lifepath is deeply tied to the city and has roleplay options for any kind of character. Yes, even nomads. The nomad clans are one of the most powerful factions in Night City and have tons of people in the city, so they're not really outsiders. They also have stuff like an entire clan of netrunners, so yes you can safely play anything on any lifepath "correctly" according to lore.
Nonlethal gameplay is confirmed. You can mod weapons to be nonlethal and spare bosses, as shown in the trailer while fighting Sasquatch. There's also a variety of damage types and bleeding/poison, possibly EMP-style afflictions too.
The trunk of your car is linked to your apartment storage, so rejoice all you junk rats. Info came from one of the randamo tweets they do sometimes.
Barbers haven't been confirmed in the game yet, but I honestly don't see why they won't be present when even Witcher 3 had them
Police will react to you going on a rampage "realistically" using a notoriety system that's a bit more extensive and not quite as sharply dramatic as GTA's star system, but that should still give you a good idea of what to expect. Eventually, you'll be declared a cyberpsycho and Max-Tac, a legendary pseudo riot squad made up of borderline cyberpsychos, will hunt you down.
Most NPCs are killable (and I guess sparable by extension); children can't be harmed and seemingly despawn when you're in a car. This is unfortunate.
CDPR has said that nearly every component of the HUD can be toggled on and off individually, like the damage numbers above people's heads when you hit them. It's unknown if we can customize things further (like have different eye-optics that change HUD color).
CDPR wants to include a New Game Plus, but haven't talked much about it other than saying they want to do it but don't know how. They've been saying the same thing since 2018, honestly. It might not make it in for release and be later free DLC.

Not sure if I forgot anything but feel free to ask and I'm sure me or someone else will answer, and I'll add it if it's worthwhile.
Hopefully this will cut down a bit on repeat questions as we ramp up toward release and more and more newer folk join us.

Cyberpunk Tips and Tricks

I have read dozens of these threads for dozens of games over the years but never bothered to write one myself. Nothing especially exciting is coming up on Google for Cyberpunk yet, so I figured I might as well give back to the community, so to speak. So, here are a list of tips and tricks for new players. Many of these may not stay true as CDPR patches the game but they're up to date as of 1.06.
If you have stuff I missed, throw it in the comments and I'll try to edit it in. And if I'm wrong, correct me! I'm not an expert, just a fan. Some of this stuff is a matter of opinion, playing "optimally" is a bias of mine that not everyone may share. You may want to beat the whole game hacking everything in sight with 5 intelligence (good luck lol). This is just as valid a playstyle as being a min-maxing degenerate like me, the point is to have fun :)
Attributes:
- The game files tell you that you get an attribute point every three levels. This is a damn lie. You get one every level. By level 50, which you can attain well before beating the game, you can raise three stats to 20 with 4 points left over.
- You can have an attribute up to 20 by level 15. Game's level cap is 50.
-Body and Technical Ability both let you open doors. DIFFERENT doors. It's rare that they'll both work on the same door. If you wanna open every door, you should max 'em both out. That said, this is mostly just for bonus loot, so it's not mandatory.
- Every attribute has perks enough for a viable build, though technical ability can be rough going. You should consider leveling one skill to 20 before you start leveling another because the high level perks in many of these trees are bonkers. The two exceptions to this are "Breach Protocol" under intelligence and "Crafting" under technical ability. Good, but not necessarily your best first priority.
For example, at the end of the blades tree is a perk that makes you do double damage to enemies with full health (at rank 3) and another perk that increases the damage you do by 3% per 1% health the enemy is missing. So assuming it works as described (big if, lol) if you take 50% of an enemy's health off with your opening strike, you'll do 150% bonus damage. Throw in the bleeding effects and you'll be ginsu knifing your way to victory in no time.
- Attribute pairings: Some attributes have a bunch of synergies. For example, Cool synergizes well with Reflex for blades, sniper or silent pistol builds. Cool also synergizes relatively well with Quickhacking. Technical Ability pairs well with Reflex because the engineering tree buffs smart weapons and tech weapons - though there are some tech shotguns, which pair with Body, most guns are buffed by the Reflex trees.
Comparatively, Technical Ability has less to offer a melee build - stealth melee should be Reflex and Cool, while 'charge TF in' melee benefits from Body and Reflex.
- If you want to craft, you need to raise technical ability to 18 for best effect. If you want to use tech weapons, take it to 20. Quickhacks are crafted in their own tree, and are not a part of normal crafting.
- Not much advice here overall because it's mostly a matter of playstyle. You wanna have a dude with 13 in every attribute? They'll be a great all-rounder. Wanna specialize? You'll get some outrageous power perks.
Skills + Perks:
- Skills level as you use them although Athletics is currently really hard to level apart from some buggy stuff. The other slightly counter-intuitive skill to level is engineering which levels when you deactivate cameras manually, need to be standing very close to them. You can also level it by firing tech weapons through walls and by using grenades.
- Perks level as you put points into them. You get one perk point whenever you level up. ~~You get perk points as you level skills (7 per skill tree, if you get it high enough~~). edit: Crafting, Breach & Quickhacking have 6 for some reason.
There are also a number of 'perk shards' that give you free perks.
- To buy a perk, you need to have a high enough level in the associated attribute. All skill trees have at least one perk that requires 20 in the associated attribute (Body, Reflex, etc). Sometimes that perk is just ok, but sometimes it's bonkers powerful. Take the time to read the trees. Basically all builds are viable right now so I don't have any "best" build tips, just level one attribute to 20 and then figure out which one you wanna do next.
- Skills cannot level past their associated attribute. For example, Blades is in the Reflex tree. If you have Reflex 4, it doesn't matter if you vivisect every enemy in the game, you will level to blades 4 and stop there until you raise Reflex to 5. This is one of the reasons it makes sense to level an attribute to 20 ASAP. Keep an eye on the skills you wanna use all game - if they stop gaining experience, you need to bump the attribute.
-Leveling skills will reward you with bonuses. Sometimes the bonus makes you better at the skill (for example, reducing recoil on a kind of gun). But each skill tree has (afaik) 7 "bonus" perks in it. This means that there are more total perks available to characters who level Body and Reflex (which each have three associated skills) as opposed to other attributes (which only have 2).
- Every tree has some ridiculous skills that are must-have, and some that are useless. One or two are even actively harmful, like the one that automatically disassembles junk. Some junk sells for 750 ED, so scrapping it automatically robs you. Avoid that perk (it's in Crafting).
edit: Matter of opinion. There's a lot of junk in this game and if you're speccing into crafting, you can easily make money, so taking the 'scrap all junk' perk can save some time. Ultimately the only junk you need to scrap is the cans you buy from vending machines, which (with the current UI) is the fastest way apart from using the perk. Your mileage may vary.
-If you read through the skills it's pretty obvious which ones are awesome; usually it's a huge buff to damage or crit chance. They give out crit chance like candy in this game.
- It's worth making sure that your primary combat skill (pistols, blades, etc) is always capped - so if you have 10 reflex, you should have 10 in blades. This way you'll get the most from the perk system, but also have 'best' fighting style at your disposal. The game gives you all these great playstyles but in my experience, if you don't level them, they become progressively less useful.
- You can respec perks for 100,000 ED. This will not reset your attributes. 100,000 ED will always be a stupid amount of money. You're better off just farming up some more perk points and spending them.
- There is always an ultimate perk unlocked when you reach 20 in the skill (need 20 in the attribute first). These are enigmatic and poorly worded. To be clear, they give you an up front buff of varying quality. Then you can keep putting points in them generally for a 1% buff. I haven't doubled checked all of them, but after that first rank, it's highly unlikely you'd ever want to put another point into them.
- Cold blood makes you good at everything, a little bit. It's in Cool, so it's most efficient to pair it with pistol sneak or blade sneak, but really you can go hog wild. It has some preposterous bonuses.
- You will never need to swim underwater AFAIK so ignore that perk.
Weapons
- All builds are viable and so are all weapons. Still, I think they put shotguns and lmgs in the same tree because the range on shotguns isn't optimal and they are not sneaky weapons. I'd carry one of both, and I also carried a pistol, a sniper rifle and an assault rifle on my Reflex build, though this spread me a little thin.
- Weapons come in a tiered system: common (grey) uncommon (green), rare (blue), epic (purple) and legendary (orange.) Wonder if they'll pay Blizzard royalties. If anyone will, really.
- There are also iconic weapons. They can usually be upgraded to legendary, but not always (RIP Lizzie pistol). This costs a lot of mats. But not as much as upgrading a level 40 gun to a level 41 gun.
- Using crafting to upgrade weapons is so expensive / tedious that you should just craft new weapons instead. You should also keep your Iconic weapons at the rarity you find them, and upgrade them to level 50 at the lowest possible rarity, to save on mats.
- You can have three weapons (plus unarmed / gorilla arms) equipped at once.
- Power weapons can ricochet and are most common. Tech weapons can charge and shoot through walls. They discharge automatically at full charge until you get an engineering perk to fix that. This makes them WAY more useful.
- Smart weapons paint dots on a target and then they'll hit the target. The dots (little and red) need to appear before you start firing. If they do, the bullets may even hit around corners or cover. If you don't, the bullets are wasted.
- You can craft ammo. The carry limit is high, 400 pistol, 700 rifle, 100 snipeshotgun on PS4 according to u/Eggtastic_Taco, I thought I'd had 500 pistol ammo on PC before but IDK.
- Weapons can be modded. Replacing a mod destroys it. Scrapping a weapon destroys the mod unless you have a perk (from crafting.) The perk is worth it. Modding weapons is generally worth it. I wouldn't bother putting a silencer on a pistol.
edit: As withoutapaddle points out, silencers are awesome if you are speccing into them, generally with a Reflex / Cool build focused around pistols. You can easily overcome the damage debuff, especially with the rare silencer, where the debuff is only 15%.
Armor
- There's no transmog so you're gonna look ridiculous until endgame, and maybe then too.
- Armor seemed to me like it made little difference til I passed 4000 armor, at which point I became an unkillable tank. Main appeal of crafting, IMO.
- But mods can make a big difference by buffing critical damage, critical chance, etc. Also plenty of useless mods (breathe underwater longer).
- You can pick up resistance to damage types, and even immunity, from item mods - but also from certain perks and cyberware.
- Armor can be iconic too, though far less often. Same advice from iconic weapons applies.
Hacking
- Not much to say here - use breach protocol to debuff enemies and make quickhacks cheaper. Many quickhacks are non lethal.
- Quickhacking costs RAM. It recharges out of combat, and in combat with the right perk.
- The game teaches you this in an optional tutorial but it is VERY important: you can quickhack people while seeing them through cameras. And when you do, they can't do a damn thing about it. They can't detect you unless they see you IRL. So hack a camera from across the street, cycle through their camera network killin' em all. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Crafting
- When you craft an item, it randomly has mods (or maybe none) and randomly has mod slots. Far as I can tell, 4 is the maximum number of mod slots. Mods are fairly easy to come by, and some of them are ludicrously OP (Can find 6 15% crit chance mods and have 100% effective crit, I think).
- But they're random! So you may need to craft and recraft those legendary pants until you get one with 4 mod slots. edit: max 4 for torso slots, max 3 for everything else
- Crafting in general is broken in good ways and bad. The main tip is that you can scrap drinks, but not food, for some reason. So go to every drink machine you see and buy them out of drinks (10 ED a drink). Then scrap all the drinks for common and uncommon components. Craft a bunch of uncommon sniper rifles, sell them to a merchant, repeat til you're at 20 crafting. Good way to make money too.
- As mentioned above, upgrading things is expensive as hell, though at higher levels it also gives you huge chunks of crafting XP all at once.
edit: When you upgrade an iconic item, it seems to reset the cost of components to upgrade it again, and as a bonus, raises it to one level below yours. So if you don't want to farm mats forever, consider waiting til you're level 50 before raising your Iconic gear to Legendary status. Then you'll only need to upgrade it once.
- Items can only be crafted one at a time but you can edit a config file to make that happen instantly. This'll get patched, I hope.
- There are crafting specs scattered through the world. The best ones are usually free from drops but you might buy one for a niche build.
Here's a mod table, h/t to u/theherrhuml

Work and Stack	Armadillo, Backpacker, Osmosis, Plume
Work but Don't Stack	Fortuna, Bully
Work	Coolit, Antivenom, Superinsulator - not for EMP, Panacea
Don't Work	Deadeye, Predator, Resist, Zero Drag

Cyberware
- It'll make you a beast. It's the main use for 'street cred', too, a system that barely needs explaining. Kill dudes, get street cred, unlock new Cyberware. Other stuff too but mostly pretty pointless by comparison. The best cyberware requires 49 street cred; the cap is 50.
- The wrist mounted missile launcher is sick but it also seems to disable the use of grenades (mapped to the same hotkey on my controller anyway). The missiles, however, are bottomless.
edit: Probably my biggest error here. I thought my grenade option had disappeared, but you can switch grenades into the slot if you want. If I'm understanding u/theherrhuml correctly, this means you can't use both at once? IDK.
- Slowing time is very handy. The synaptic accelerator does it when you are spotted by an enemy. A must for sneak builds. Sandevistan slows time when activated. Mostly useful for combat but you can also rush right past enemies (but be aware that slow time means doors open slow too). There's also Kereznikov, which slows time when you dodge, slide or do some other stuff idk man, I forget. Obvious combat applications.
- Your initial cyberware lets you hack. The cyberware in the OS slot, to be specific. If you replace it with a Sandevistan model, or a Berserk, you will lose the ability to hack. The game does a very poor job of warning you of this. It SUCKS to suddenly not be able to turn off cameras by hacking them.
- Cyberware has mod slots. Maybe this explain this at one point but it's easy to forget. You'll find lots of cyberware mods in any case.
- If you're using quickhacking, most quickhacks have to be equipped in your deck, which goes in the OS slot. They have their own parallel crafting system which is under Intelligence. They'll make you a cybergod among men.
- Overall cyberware is meant to compliment your build. Wanna do blades? Mantis blades go in the arm slot. Wanna hack? Buy the best OS. Don't care about hacking? Stick a Sandevistan or Berserk in there and shoot / chop your enemies to bits. The monowire, counter-intuitively, is a 'blunt' weapon and benefits from the associated perks, as well as being buffed by cool.
- Double jump, or charge jump, are mandatory. Why wouldn't you want the high ground, as Ben Kenobi taught us?
- Like I said, it compliments your playstyle, so it also gates the best cyberware behind attribute requirements. 20 body nets you an implant that gives +60% health, which is huge. You'll never be able to equip all the "best" cyberware, but you'll have what's best for your build.
- Every ripperdoc has a specialty, but they don't always have their legendary quality item. This is kinda annoying because it's one of a number of easter egg hunts they implement for buying stuff, real MMO tier game design. I have the money, gimme the damn thing. Anyway, check the internet for guides on where to buy legendary cyberware.
Questing + Side Content
- Personally I'd recommend finishing all the side content in Watson (the first area, in which you are trapped) before proceeding to Konpecki (you'll know when you know.) This gives you a lot of tools in your toolbox for a pretty challenging series of missions, and give you lots of practice playing the game .- Alternatively, there's little punishment for burning through all the story content up to the final mission, and in fact, no real punishment for beating the final mission as soon as it's available. The game just drops you right back before the final mission, so that you can unlock the other endings. Up to you.
edit: A certain Hollywood actor shows up to make commentary on your quests once you finish Act 1, including quests in Watson. So depending on how thirsty for Keanu you are, consider holding off on doing sidequests in Watson until after Act 1.
- Like the Witcher, the story quests are worth way more experience, so if you're in a hurry to level then get after it.
- If you bought this game because of the political dimensions of Cyberpunk then READ THE SHARDS. All of them. Great stuff in there. If you bought it for pew pew lasers, then only read the shards with smutty titles, they're funny.
- The level design's pretty good. Often I'll finish a dungeon only to notice that there was a sneaky back way in that I never even noticed because I didn't bother looking. Of course, with double jump, you can usually make your OWN way in.
- Overall, the level design combined with the shards made even clearing reported crimes fun for me all the way through to endgame. I highly recommend doing most of the sidequests ( hear racing sucks which checks out because driving sucks ). Also clear all the organized crime bosses because they drop awesome loot.
Cars
- You can get a free Caliburn, one of the game's fastest cars, in the Badlands, hard to explain so just google the video.- Fixers will text you about cars they have for sale. This sucks. The cars then show up as quest markers. This also sucks. You do not need to buy all the cars (could be fun to do so), any one car will suffice.
- Motorcycles are great. They can ride in the gutters or down the center line of roads, totally ignoring traffic.
- If you park your car in the road it creates a traffic jam.
- Look both ways before you cross the street.
- You can steal cars but there's not much reason to since you can call your own car to your location.
Misc
- Some missions require you not kill anyone. You can easily get an implant mod that makes all your weapon damage non-lethal. This allows you to never worry about this again. You very rarely get in trouble for bringing someone in alive; apart from some flavor commentary IDK if it's ever happened to me. Alternatively, you can use blunt weapons or certain quickhacks.
- Pay Vic back. Partially to upgrade your eyeballs but mostly because it's the right thing to do for a friend.
- In general, dialogue checks relating to your attributes are there for flavor so you can use them with impunity, but without material reward.
- Street cred: literally just kill criminals and do quests and it'll level faster than your character level. I hit 50 SC around level 30, as I recall. That unlocks the best cyberware and the highest level gigs, then there's no reason to think about it ever again.
- If you possibly can, wait 2 years for the finished version of this game with all the DLCs. I love it, but I think it'd be more fun to experience the finished product fresh. I only played Witcher 3 last year and it was amazing.
- There are free legendary mantis blades and a free legendary monowire kicking around in the game world.
- Don't let Cyberpsychos or other bosses hit you in melee, obvs.
- Those little icons over people's heads at the beginning of the game are telling you that you can fight them but also how difficult they are. I spent an hour trying to figure this out when I bought the game, lol.
- Cops will aggro if you get too close for too long. Gangs will aggro if you get too close usually.
That's it for now! Let me know what I missed.
Thanks for updates from: u/theherrhuml, Eggtastic_Taco, withoutapaddle

I had a realization today

The Ultimate guide for OFFLINE features, split-screen, Bots, LAN Play in Cold War

1.11 UPDATE NEW FEATURES ZOMBIES HAS SPLIT SCREEN OFFLINE NOW!

1.11 update news

-Zombies now allows 2 player split-screen in offline, you can add a controller as well as start/boot the match fine, however the same issues persist with offline split-screen, visual/menu glitches/bugs just like the normal multiplayer split-screen
-Multiplayer offline split-screen is working again, it seems to have all the same issues it had prior to the 1.09 update where it got broken, rough menus, class selection not working in certain scenarios, I've also found Nuketown 84 in split-screen will crash every time it loads into the match...etc etc.
- RAID and PINES map are available offline now
-Prop hunt is available offline now, however no bot support.

1.10 update - literally nothing added for offline

1.09 update - literally nothing added for offline

KNOWN MAJOR OFFLINE ISSUES/BUGS all present in latest 1.08 'season one' version (tested on PS4/PS5) Please read these as it may answer some questions instead of posting a comment.

*NEW BUG/GLITCH as of V.08\*
- V1.08 you can no longer play split-screen offline, when adding player 2, it will attempt to add player 2 and just fail each time....
- when playing split-screen multiplayer (versus) player 2 can do create-a-class but only edit the main weapon, they can not edit any attachments
- when playing split-screen multiplayer (versus) often player 2 can not select a class when starting the match at all.

- offline zombies has no option for split-screen or adding a controller when playing offline period (unsure if this is a glitch or the fact zombies has no split-screen option offline at all
- online zombies, has the option to add a second player for split-screen, but even when you do this the game won't launch and will often come up with a error stating this mode has exceeded the maximum amount of players, (unsure if ths is a glitch or the fact zombies isn't supposed to be split-screen at all)
- Search and Destroy and VIP Escort modes, do not support offline bots at all
- the maps Armada and Crossroads do not support offline bots at all currently for any mode
- the maps Armada and Crossroads have a small variant for normal modes, however when playing VIP escort mode only, you get the full expanded large scale combined arms map (with vehicles) however again no offline bot support, unsure if this is a glitch or not.
- various interface/menu bugs within the menus/lobbys
- multiple instances of glitches when playing in split-screen, gunsights missing/notloading, hands dissappearing etc etc.
- multiple settings not working, loadout restrictions settings completely broken and not working right, guns misnamed, M82 is called the XM4 etc and turning off or enabling what is supposed to be the M82 turns off both or enables both the M82 and XM4, really broken.
- I have to do more testing but I've had two instances on PS5 where my campaign save will dissappear completely after playing split-screen multiplayer.
- unsure if a glitch or designed this way.
If you find any bugs/issues or fixes that I haven't do let me know in the comments or flick me a PM, Finding new stuff every time I play it.
I'll endeavour to keep this guide updated over the next couple of months, do be with me as I can't update EXACTLY on time every time a new update comes out..
All testing done with the PS4 and PS5 version of the game (v1.03) (now updated to V1.07)
I have updated the game now to V1.05, I can confirm nothing has changed for offline with this update, what is down below is still current including no OFFLINE split-screen option for Zombies and the Crossroads/Armada maps still do not support bots.
I now have the PS4 as well as the PS5 version of the game, It's exactly the same, nothing additional, no extra bots/maps/modes/features, exactly the same issues, exactly the same stuff.
Some people are asking about the Dualsense for it, it's neat, the guns all feel slightly different, so the resistive triggers have different 'pulls' for different weapons, big LMGs the aiming trigger is a slow steady pull where as a pistol is very lightweight and barely any resistance, the vibration stuff, pretty standard, although again every gun feels a little different, nothing mind blowing, but neat feature. Astros Playroom on the other hand is amazing for the dualsense.
All testing done on PS4 Pro and PS5, running in an offline environment, no internet on the console, boot from cold startup, booting up Black Ops Cold War OFFLINE and playing OFFLINE.
This guide is aimed at people who enjoy the offline part of Call of Duty (yes there are people like us) If you play online thats fine, no need to make a stupid comment like "why are you playing offline in 2020 what a loser etc etc"
I've done this for several years, this guide is for fans of offline play and aimed to get CORRECT information to people who need it

FAQ Starts here

What do you mean when you use the word OFFLINE?
To clear up any confusion as many people seem to confuse the terms OFFLINE and LOCAL PLAY, these are two VERY different things.
If I use the word OFFLINE in this guide at any point, I mean OFFLINE, no internet on the console, no WiFi, no Ethernet, Console as well as game has been cold booted with NO INTERNET WHATSOEVER.
Can you play Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War OFFLINE without an internet connection?
Yes once your game is at version 1.03 (latest current version at time of release) You can play the game fully offline.
Like Modern Warfare 2019, the game is quite large (100.4GB for PS4 at of time of writing) It also like Modern Wafare 2019 is divided into PACKS
The Base game has the following PACKS, which you need to have installed if you want to play every mode available.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Single Player LicenseCall of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Multiplayer License
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Zombies License
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Campaign 1
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Campaign 2
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Campaign 3
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Multiplayer Base Install
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Zombies Base Install
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Dead Ops Arcade Pack
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Content 1 - 6 License (1 file for each) ( I believe this is just DLC stuff)
The console versions like WWII, Black Ops 4 and Modern Warfare 2019 will work OFFLINE after patching/updating, the PC version however due to Battlenet is ONLINE ONLY, even for Campaign/offline bots.
Can you install and play Black Ops Cold War from the disc without installing any updates/patches?
No you can not, like Call of Duty WWII, Black Ops 4, and Modern Warfare 2019 before it, the physical copies of the game do not contain all the files nor can you play the full experience OFFLINE via the disc only, you can only play a few multiplayer maps vs bots, thats it.
*A MANDATORY INSTALLATION/UPDATE IS REQUIRED FIRST\*
Can you play the Campaign OFFLINE?
Yes as mentioned before, as long as you have updated your game to the minimum version of 1.03 (latest current release) the games campaign will be playable OFFLINE.
Can you play the multiplayer (versus) OFFLINE?
Yes as mentioned before, as long as you have updated your game to the minimum version of 1.03 (latest current release) the games multiplayer will be playable OFFLINE.
Can you play the Zombies mode OFFLINE?
Yes as mentioned before, as long as you have updated your game to the minimum version of 1.03 (latest current release) the games multiplayer will be playable OFFLINE.
**Can you play the Zombies Onslaught mode OFFLINE? (exclusive to PS4/PS5 for 1 year)**yes
Is there Split-screen support in mutliplayer versus?
Versus Multiplayer has 2 players split-screen per console maximum
Is there split-screen support in Zombies?
EDIT: Version 1.11 has finally added the ability to play zombies OFFLINE split-screen, however its still rough, but it does work.
Is there co-op campaign or split-screen campaign?
Campaign is single player only.

What does the aspect ratio for split-screen look like? Is there any 'black bars' on the sides?
Split-screen for multiplayer versus has both Vertical and Horizontal options.
Horizontal split-screen (TOP and BOTTOM) has black bars on the left and right.Vertical split-screen (LEFT and RIGHT) has black bars on the top and bottom.
Is there OFFLINE LAN support, (2 or more systems connected offline for multiplayer) ?
You can play 2 players PER CONSOLE in multiplayer versus. Zombies is ONE PER CONSOLE currently, LAN is broken though unless you go online and download temporary hotfixes, so basically you need all consoles to be online, connected to servers, get hotfixes (so every game/console is on the same version and then it will work) this is the exact same issue Modern Warfare has. Its stupid. true proper OFFLINE LAN play is pretty much broken in the last two CODs.

OFFLINE BOT SUPPORT

Is there offline bot (AI Enemies/teammates) support?Which modes support them?How many Bots per mode?
Yes there are offline bots
you can have a total of 12 players in each core game mode, so if playing SOLO, you can have 11 bots.
I can confirm if playing split-screen you can still have 11 bots in the game total.Previous versions of the game only supported 7 bots in TDM and FFA game modes, this was fixed in V1.07. all modes support 11 bots.
you can not add bots to the Crossroads or Armada maps at all.
VIP Escort and Search and Destroy game modes do not support offline bots.
Can you make assymetrical/uneven teams?
Yes, however you can't go over the maximum of 6 players per each team,
So you can't for example do a team death match with you on one team vs 11 bots on the other team.
6 v 6 max
How many players can play each mode? (assume bots means players too here)
2 REAL players in split-screen and up to 11 bots (6 players/bots per team)
Edit: I didn't notice before as I mainly play objective modes not FFA or Team Deathmatch,
If you play Free-for-all or Team Deathmatch the bots cap at 7, not 11
What difficulties are there for the bots?
Recruit, Regular, Hardened, Veteran
are there loadout restrictions and can we force the bots to use certain loadouts?
There is an option for loadout restrictions in the menu, however It dosen't affect bots, you can turn off custom classes but sadly there again is no option to set what the DEFAULT classes are (like how Modern Warfare Remastered allows)
Right now the restrictions screen is VERY broken, half of the weapons are sharing the same name, for example the M82 Sniper rifle is incorrectly labelled as the XM4 (assault rifle) I turned off EVERYTHING but the M82 but it has the XM4 enabled (as its obviously broken) I have turned off everything but the XM4 and there are still weapons that are accessible.
So hard one to test right now, It's restricting some weapons but I can only tell from the player side no the bot side, Patches are needed to test this feature properly.
are there friendly/teammate bots for Zombies mode?
No there are no friendly AI/teammates/bots in Zombies mode.
What are the bots like, and how do they play?
I've had a quick go (I'll update this more later) but they feel like how they did in MW 2019.

Create-a-Class/Loadouts/Customisation

Is there an offline progression system? or is everything unlocked for offline play?
There is no offline progression system, everything is unlocked from the start, all attachments, gear, weapons etc is available offline from the start
What about customisation/camos etc?
Yes you can apply camos, change reticles offline, it looks like everything is unlocked here
What is available in offline create-a-class?
A ton, I'll add a video in the comments later with a showcase of everything, it's comparable to how MW was at launch.
How many custom classes can you have? can you save/rename them?
You can have 5 custom classes per player offline, yes you can rename/save them.
What Operators are available offline?
All launch Operators are available offline
NATO:
Mil-Sim:
HunterSong
Operators:
ParkAdlerBakerSimsWoods
Warsaw Pact
Mil-Sim:
VargasPowers
Operators:
PortnovaBeckGarciaStone

Multiplayer VERSUS

What game modes are available offline?
Team DeathmatchFree-For-AllSearch & DestoryDominationHardpointControlVIP Escort
What about the Larger Combined Arms modes?
Although the maps like Crossroads (which was the big snowy map in the beta with snowmobiles etc) are here, these are not the combined arms versions, these are smaller cut down versions of these maps, you can only do 6 v 6 in offline.
Is there a realism mode? or Hardcore Mode?
No realism mode, there is no hardcore 'mode' like MW2019, however there are Hardcore versions of TDM, FFA, SND, and DOM.
What multiplayer maps are available?
ArmadaCartelCheckmateCrossroadsGarrisonMiamiMoscowSatelliteNuketown 84 (added for offline in update V1.07)
What interesting custom game settings are there? anything different/new?
Nothing out of the ordinary, all pretty standard fare at launch.
Can I save custom game modes OFFLINE?
Yes you can save them.

Zombies

Is everything unlocked for create-a-class?
Yes, everything is unlocked, it's the same weapon selection from multiplayer versus, however you get 1 weapon, not 2, and a field upgrade which are zombies themed special powers.
Is there settings like in Black Ops 4, where you could adjust zombies/custom game settings?
Sadly no, it seems very scaled back more like the normal zombies modes from the older Black Ops games.
What modes are available for zombies offline?
Round based (standard zombies)Dead Ops arcade 3 (top down twin-stick shooter mini game mode)Onslaught (PS4/PS5 Exclusive for 1 year)
What maps/scenarios are available for offline zombies?
Round based (standard zombies)
Die Maschine
**Dead Ops Arcade 3 (mini game)**Rise of the Mamaback
Onslaught
Moscow (same as the multiplayer Moscow map....just with zombies)
What is onslaught mode anyway?
so its basically a VIP escort thing, you have a floating orb, that has a protective cirlce around it, you need to stay in the circle to live, zombies come at you, you shoot em, orb moves to a new location, rinse and repeat. Neat but you aren't missing much if you are a PC/Xbox player.

[Video Games] A Too Human Story: How Nordic cybergods brought Ragnarok to the people that made them

I don't think anyone doubts that making games is hard work, even for those that have been in the industry for years, and following their stories can sometimes be more interesting than the games they made...or haven't made. Gaming history is littered with titles that briefly appeared on everyone's radar and then faded away without so much as a discount sale, leaving behind lessons that some studios take to heart as warnings from the past or inspiration to try and raise the bar higher for themselves. Then there are extinction events like the one that brought down Silicon Knights.
This is from years ago having taken place part way through the latter half of the 00s during another round of "console wars" pitting Microsoft's Xbox 360 against Sony's PlayStation 3. Microsoft's spunky new console, despite the Red Ring of Death silently killing some of them, was at the top of its game (except in Japan) inaugurating memorable titles like the Gears of War and the Mass Effect series.
Silicon Knights had a reputation shaped by its collaboration with Nintendo for the sanity crushing adventure of Eternal Darkness on the chibi-like Gamecube, a great Lovecraftian story that's one of my favorites on the system. This followed their anti-hero vampire, Kain, in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain on the PlayStation years earlier which also became something of a classic (and one that I did not get to play yet...sadface). And now with the Xbox 360, they set their sights even higher with their biggest project yet.
Too Human would bring to life a distant future inspired by Nordic mythology wedded to a "Shakespearian approach" to storytelling. It boasted that it could take "fifty to eighty hours" to get to level 50 with tons of loot, combos, everything that an action RPG could be and more.
Delivering a Diablo-like experience to consoles was something of a big thing back in those days and bringing that to a cutting edge console leaping off the starting blocks of a new generation cycle was a major play for any studio worth its salt like Silicon Knights. They had the experience and the ideas to do it from anyone's perspective at the time and the window for opportunity was wide open.
Could Too Human's "innovative" controls make its mark on consoles before Blizzard stepped in with Diablo III? Would it be the thinking man's action RPG? Could this be...The One? For many players like me that were thirsty for a new Diablo-like on consoles, we hoped that it could be.

Baldur's Journey

A bit of backstory.
As mentioned before, Silicon Knights earned cred with games such as Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain on the Playstation in the 90s though they had already cut their teeth in the industry with titles on PCs such as Cyber Empires in 1992 for Commodore's powerful Amiga PC series. The director for Blood Omen was one Denis Dyack.
During Too Human's journey, Denis Dyack spoke about the experiences that took him into game design, mentioning that he has three degrees, one of which was for Physical Education. He was a wrestler during his university years with some of his friends going on to the Olympics or the UFC revealing someone laser focused on being both competitive with himself and whatever he put his mind to, an attitude that he brought to his work at Silicon Knights from the beginning. He, like a number of other designers then and today, didn't only see the games he made as "games" -- he saw each one as an ambitious opportunity to bring real change to the medium, to tell stories in ways that others couldn't. He'll be a major figure as this saga unfolds.
Too Human was something of a passion project for Silicon Knights stretching back to the OG Playstation back in 1999 where it was teased at E3. It was one of the two projects from Silicon Knights that another studio, Crystal Dynamics, looked at before ultimately deciding to work with them on Blood Omen.
After Blood Omen was finished, murmurs about Too Human began drumming up interest again with hints that it would be a multi-disc game taking place in the far future with a sci-fi cyber human take on Norse mythology. In 2000, however, Silicon Knights inked a development deal with Nintendo for their Gamecube refocusing their efforts on making two important games for it -- Eternal Darkness and a collaborative remake of Metal Gear Solid that would be known as Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.
Following Nintendo, Silicon Knights moseyed over to the Microsoft camp in 2005 (the year the Xbox 360 would land on retail shelves) and real development finally resumed on Too Human with an eye for release Holiday 2006. A demo had even shown up at E3 that year in May as a preview for press meetings. Despite grabbing attention from outlets such as Electronic Gaming Monthly which featured Too Human as its exclusive cover story in the same month, the overall sentiment for Silicon Knights' biggest project based on what was shown...wasn't great.
Writing in an IGN blog entry in 2007 a few months later, Dyack admitted that a week before the event they already knew the demo wasn't "what it should be" going into the show. Fast forward a few more months and Dyack would also question the "relative value of previewing a game" noting that the press they received at E3 didn't justify the months spent in making the demo that would have otherwise been used to actually work on issues facing the project, a sentiment that more than a few developers even today still deal with. The shadow this cast over Too Human in 2006 would haunt it well up to its release as Silicon Knights went relatively quiet to focus, skipping E3 2007 though keeping interest alive with the occasional interview with Dyack as its staunch advocate.
Throughout Too Human's journey on the Xbox 360, Denis Dyack was front and center in interviews and video pieces talking up the game and Silicon Knights' storied approach to the medium, though some of the loftier claims could certainly be a bit...lofty. In one instance, he opined that the technology of the day paved the way to "create production values where people can look at Lord of the Rings or Too Human and say "I'd rather have the experience of playing Too Human.". If you were thinking that was a bit much, you weren't the only one. That led to more than a little pushback from skeptics and players, especially if you were already worn out by others like Peter Molyneux who was marching his own hype parade through the internet thanks to a little something he was working on called Fable II.

Denis Dyack Wrestles the Internet

Before "influencers" on Youtube and Twitch had become a thing and even before Twitch evolved into Twitch, gamecentric forums from Kotaku to GameFAQs to others were where a lot of internet-savvy gamers found their news and rumors. As forums and the growing power of other social channels continued to break down more barriers, NeoGAF, with its reputation for strong moderation creating something of an internet water cooler around which developers from the industry would occasionally participate in discussions there, was one of the most influential back in the day depending on who you talked to.
Dyack's outspoken personality reared itself on NeoGAF's forums in late June, 2008, weeks before a demo for Too Human would land on the Xbox 360 in July with the full game raiding retail shelves in late August. Up to that point on the heels of the hype train following the Xbox exclusive, skeptics booked travel plans on their own train led by articles such as posts by Jim Sterling on Destructoid questioning Dyack's increasingly purple claims.
Apparently having enough of some of the pointed negativity churning its way through the forum and elsewhere on the internet regarding Too Human, Dyack lobbed a challenge to "Stand and be counted" either "For" or "Against" the game, boldly proclaiming that Too Human was fast approaching and that "there is going to be a lot of trolls crying here". If the game failed, he was willing for his account to be tagged with "Owned by GAF". But if it succeeded, he wanted to see those who voted "Against" tagged with "Owned by Too Human". It was a gauntlet not so much thrown as dropped through top of a chain-link cage like Mankind was by the Undertaker. Or punching a hornet's nest while naked.
Some said "For". Some were "Against". Others just sat back aghast at what appeared to be a childish publicity stunt from a developer who should know better, others ascribed Dyack to having balls of "titanium". Arguments were made on what Metacritic score and sales numbers would be enough to make people shut up. Others made it seem like Dyack was playing 4D chess. I ate popcorn. After devolving into debates between posters, the thread was eventually locked leaving everyone to wonder what would happen next.
A bit afterwards, Too Human's demo dropped during the midst of E3 2008 on July 15th eventually reaching nearly a million downloads in short order. Dyack continued painting Too Human in glowing terms as well as mentioning an automatic camera/control system so innovative that it took eight years to develop and that he would be "shocked if there is any game in this genre that comes close to Too Human in the next couple of years." In another interview that later asked about reactions to the demo, Dyack had been quoted as saying "...what we're also seeing is for the people who didn't like it, generally just don't get it" to which Jim Sterling responded "That HAS to be the reason, Denis. We are just too stupid to comprehend the greatness that is Too Human...".
Reception to the demo, which featured an entire level, was somewhat mixed. Some lauded the game for its setting while worried over its repetition. Still others were satisfied enough to keep their pre-orders.
The NeoGAF thread calling for those who were "For" or "Against" had already been locked earlier but Dyack hadn't forgotten the forum.
In an interview in August with VG247, Dyack explained that he chose NeoGAF to make a point about the "effects of negative forums", deciding on the site because he "considered it the worst". That quickly led to his ban and an angry response from one of the site's moderators who didn't take kindly to calls for the forum to be shut down or used as a "social experiment". Even though Dyack was pretty outspoken, a developer of his caliber being banned on a forum as popular as NeoGAF back in those days was something of a seismic event picked up across the internet.
A few weeks later, Too Human arrived.

Bored by Death

Aside from the poor combat controls, dodgy camera system, and clunky user interface with menus that felt as if they were transitioning through tar, the salt in the wound for a number of reviewers (and more than a few players) was the valkyrie death scene. Dying in Too Human can happen often due to a combination of factors, not the least of which were the janky mechanics, and that always triggered a nearly half-a-minute long cinematic of a valkyrie coming down from the heavens to escort your soul. I should mention that it's also unskippable.
Concerns over the infamous "valkyrie death cinematic" had even been brought up earlier with the demo. When asked about this days before Too Human's full release, Dyack responded "The bottom line is ... If it's a sign that people love the game so much that they just want to get in and play, could we make it skippable? Sure, it's an easy change." That change that never happened and for some that played the game, it was emblematic of the arrogance that had fueled the hype behind it. Predictably, Destructoid's Jim Sterling did not like the game very much with his review though he did praise the world and the concept -- just not so much the execution. And he wasn't alone.
Ultimately, Silicon Knights' magnum opus was met with middling reviews although some players did enjoy the game despite its faults. In 2011, in an interview with Joystiq in which he pushed back against criticisms leveled at the game (including those made against the infamous valkyrie death animation), he noted that the game had sold 700k copies since 2008 and that the trilogy would continue. However, this wasn't even the worst of it.

Silicon Knights Fight an Epic Battle

While Dyack wrestled opinions in defense of Too Human, Fenrir was lurking in the background.
Before Epic became a Fortnite juggernaut, they were busy building and maintaining a little something called the Unreal Engine. Created in the 90s by Tim Sweeney but arguably overshadowed by id's own engine tech at the time, it eventually came into its own during the heady days of the 00s and the 360/PS3 generation with some very big titles. Much like how Quake III had reinforced id's savvy know-how to the masses (and other developers), Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) powered games such as the uber popular Gears franchise for Microsoft (which Epic was also developing) and Mass Effect from BioWare, doing the same thing for Epic which would pay off in the years ahead.
So remember when Too Human was supposed to come out in 2006? At the time, Silicon Knights had blamed missing the launch on "trouble" with UE3 that Dyack later brushed off by saying things were actually working out fine. Events suddenly took a bizarre turn a year later.
In 2007, Silicon Knights sued Epic Games claiming they "misrepresented the abilities of their Unreal Engine 3", essentially saying that they weren't happy with UE3, had to build their own engine from scratch to do what they wanted, and were also seeking damages. They had also alleged that Epic had saved the most functional versions of the engine for themselves and their work on Gears, "sabotaging" their development. Uh oh.
A few observers might note other developers at the time using UE3 from Mistwalker (Lost Odyssey) to EA (Medal of Honor: Airborne) to BioWare (Mass Effect) apparently didn't have the same issues, or if they did, managed their way around them instead of suing Epic. Epic seemed to have felt the same way.
Shortly after taking Silicon Knights' thrown legal punch, Epic countersued stating that they were clear on what was being promised, that any updates made to the engine during their work on Gears would be shared, and were now suing Silicon Knights for what Epic believed was an effort "to take Epic's Licensed Technology, pay nothing for it, and use it any way it pleases".
The court case would drag on for several years, well past Too Human's debut and even after Silicon Knights' X-Men: Destiny later hit shelves in 2011. In 2012 Epic proved its case in May with a jury finding Silicon Knights guilty and awarding $4.5 million in damages. Then in November, it was reported that it was doubled to a whopping $9 million, adding attorney's fees, interest, and other costs to the tab. The courts found that Silicon Knights did copy code from UE3 including "non-functional, internal comments Epic Games’ programmers had left for themselves." leaving even the mispellings they had made in those comments intact.
But that's not all. In addition to the fine, Silicon Knights was also ordered to destroy all unsold copies of the games made with the technology such as X-Men: Destiny and Too Human at its own expense.
Silicon Knights would attempt to appeal the ruling which failed in early 2014. Before that happened, however, there was one more match that Dyack and company would fight.

A Kickstarter Enters the Ring

In 2011, Silicon Knights laid off most of its employees by October weeks after the release of X-Men: Destiny (which was critically panned), a title shadowed with allegations ranging from heavy mismanagement to leaving the names of people that left the company but worked on the title out of its credits. A short time later, Dyack quietly left Silicon Knights and, with a few others from the company, formed another company called Precursor Games in 2012.
In early May of 2013, Precursor launched a Kickstarter to fund development for Shadow of the Eternals, a spiritual successor to Silicon Knights' Eternal Darkness (Nintendo owns Eternal Darkness' rights). At the time, it seemed like a slam dunk, surfing the golden tide carried by crowdfunding wunderkind such as Tim Schaefer's Broken Age, Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity, and the Ouya console that promised a living room revolution (cough cough).
Precursor's first attempt set the bar at $1.3 million in funding and it wasn't doing particularly well compared to peers that had shattered records in hours. Just a few days after kicking off its Kickstarter campaign, Dyack would find himself having to respond to those publicized allegations from earlier about X-Men: Destiny, particularly the part talking how resources meant for making the game were diverted to work on a demo for a new Eternal Darkness title at the time to shop around to interested publishers instead.
Dyack, who was Precursor's chief creative, explained that Silicon Knights actually put more of their own money into the project, a collaboration between themselves and Activision and Marvel, and had even apologized not only for the poor state of the game itself but for things said in public about that and "other projects". The reason he had ignored the article for so long was so as not to substantiate what he felt were groundless claims until he felt it was necessary to chase away doubts that might haunt Shadow of the Eternals.
The Kickstarter was eventually canceled to reboot it again in July with a more modest funding goal at $750k and a change in scope (episodic installments instead of one big game). Ultimately, that barely achieved half of what it set out to do probably due to a number of factors ranging from Dyack's reputation over what happened with Epic and Too Human, the Kotaku article, to one of the former developers at Silicon Knights and a founder for Precursor Games being arrested for child pornography.

Free Baldur

When Silicon Knights failed its appeal in 2014, long after both Kickstarters had ended, it finally filed for bankruptcy though it was barely alive as anything more than a legal body at this point. Dyack went quiet for a time after that, surfacing briefly on Youtube in 2016 with assurances that Shadow of the Eternals lives on and blaming "extremely unethical" press for the failure of its crowdfunding efforts. He most recently popped up again in 2020 announcing work on a spiritual successor to the Legacy of Kain with Deadhaus Sonata which is quietly building content and has already laid the foundations for a detailed world with the help of the community. No Kickstarter involved this time.
Oddly enough, Too Human showed up in 2019 as a free download for the Xbox One as a part of Microsoft's backwards compatibility program. According to Polygon, Epic "discreetly" confirmed giving Microsoft the green light to do so.
As for waiting for that Diablo-like... Diablo III was ported over to consoles like the Xbox 360 in 2013 nearly a year after its own painful birth in the PC space, eventually showing up on the PS4, Xbox One, and even later, on Nintendo's new chibi-like console, the Switch. It's pretty fun.

In 2020, I played 40(ish) games. Here are my thoughts.

Roughly a year ago, I jumped on the end of a bandwagon of posting up what I played throughout the previous year (that being 2019). That list was a whopping 33 games long, for which my excuse was some personal issues that gave me an unusual amount of free time. Now, roughly a year later, there has been a global issue that has given me an unusual amount of free time!
This year's list has around 40 games on it, which seems like more than I played last year, but I also played a further 16 VR games in 2019 that I had posted about elsewhere. Still, my total hours played is probably greater because I got really in to some of these at the lowest points of 2020.
This is a very long post, with a paragraph or two for each game. For those who prize brevity (or are browsing on mobile, I guess), I apologize. I've provided a short list of games I found to be stand-out in one way or the other immediately below this; then I have a few lists of games categorizing them by whether or not I recommend them and my perception of their popularity. Then there's ~25,000 characters of my expanded thoughts on the various titles. I recommend ctrl+f if you want to know my thoughts on a given game.
A BRIEF TL;DR OF MADE UP AWARDS:
Game of My Year: Disco Elysium
(runner up: CrossCode)
Most Time, Best Spent: No Man's Sky
Hiddenest Gem, I Think: Super Daryl Deluxe
Oldest Game I Played For the First Time: Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Best VR Game: The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
Biggest Disappointment: Indivisible
Commonly Recommended and/or Popular Games I Also Recommend: Disco Elysium, The Outer Wilds, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Detroit: Become Human, Rimworld, Cave Story+, Deus Ex (2001), Superhot, Death Stranding, Sonic Mania, Among Us, Return of the Obra Dinn, Mirror's Edge, No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous
Highly Recommended, More Obscure Titles: Cursed Castilla, The Messenger, Cosmic Star Heroine, CrossCode, Super Daryl Deluxe, Overgrowth, 100% Orange Juice, Barony, Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest
Popular-ish Games I'm Ambivalent About: Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, Pokemon Shield, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Subnautica, Indivisible
More Obscure Games That are OK, I Guess: Graveyard Keeper, The Final Station, Chantelise, Out There: Omega Edition, The Invisible Hours, Dual Universe
Games I Actively Disliked: Fantasy Blacksmith, This is the Police
VR Exlusive Games (all more or less recommended): Sairento VR, Espire 1: VR Operative, The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners
Without further ado, here's my List of Games I Played, Mostly in 2020, in a Very Particular Order that Only Makes Sense to Me
A Few Mild-to-Moderately Obscure Titles I Highly Recommend
Cursed Castilla (Maldita Castilla EX) (PC) - This is basically inspired by Ghosts and Goblins. It has a fun aesthetic and 'story' based around Spanish knights(?) crusading against demons. Its gameplay is a bit more forgiving than Ghosts and Goblins, but is still excellently done side-scrolling platforming in an SNES style. I highly recommend it for folks looking for a retro throwback.
The Messenger (PC) - This is to Ninja Gaiden as Cursed Castilla is to Ghosts and Goblins. It is much easier than its legendary forebear, but it's a fun retro romp through a ninja-themed tongue-in-cheek world. Gameplay is smooth with lots of movement options and fun boss fights.
Cosmic Star Heroine (PC) - Another SNES-esque game, this time harking more to Chrono Trigger and other RPGs. I had this on my list for a long time, and upon picking it up I was shocked that it looks like exactly the sort of game I would have made had I ever seriously gotten into it beyond dicking around in RPG Maker. There's a huge cast of characters, each with unique skills that all chain off each other and need to be managed through intricate cooldowns, all with a system that steadily increases damage over the course of combat to ensure nothing goes on too long.
Unfortunately, this was all so complicated for me to keep up with I bounced after the first couple of chapters. It's still an excellent experience, but you do need to either be in the right headspace or absolutely adore this sort of game and/or systems.
CrossCode (Gamepass on PC) - This is another 2D game with gorgeous pixel art that wouldn't look too out of place on the SNES. This time it's an action RPG with a sort of hokey 'you're playing an MMO' story ala Sword Art Online. The narrative actually goes to interesting places, though, but I won't spoil it. The gameplay is a top-down brawler sort, with a lot of choices between throwing energy balls, beating on things with your melee attack, and casting various elemental spells. There are also a handful of dungeons with progressively more interesting puzzle gimmicks, though it mostly involves variations on block pushing and ball bouncing. I do see this game mentioned sometimes, but not as much as it deserves, IMO. The only downside is the itemization and equipment takes a little too much inspiration from MMOs, but it doesn't really hold the action part of the game back much.
Super Daryl Deluxe (PC) - This is an absoutely criminally underrated game which I had mistakenly thought was more popular because several folks in my friend group had played it. This is a Metroidvania-esque title that plays more like a side-scrolling brawler, with a wide variety of skills to choose from and upgrade as you gain collectibles. The core brawler gameplay is just a real treat on its own. The game's narrative is a very surreal high-school themed experience, with the strangely silent protagonist running increasingly bizarre errands through bizarre worlds themed after typical school courses, like Science, History, and Music/Art. The aesthetic is a pleasant sort of squash-and-stretch cartoony thing. Despite a kind of mediocre payoff plotwise, I still enjoyed my time with both the gameplay and the narrative just because of that 'what's going to happen next?' factor. I highly recommend anyone with a remote interest in it to give this game a shot while it's still on sale on Steam.
Some of My Favorites That are Also Popular and/or Contentious
Disco Elysium (PC) - I cannot praise this game highly enough. It's a roleplaying game in the truest sense of the word. There is no combat, but the skills you choose and develop have so much impact on how you progress through the story it's kind of nuts. Every little bit of detail in the world is interwoven with others and while the core mystery of the game is a little simplistic, all of the sidequests and tertiary stuff impact each other and it is in general fascinating. The writing is excellent and the feeling of pulling at strings until you figure out what's going on is something I've never seen matched by another game of this type. I don't want to say anymore as I'll inevitably enter spoiler territory, but if this type of game is up your alley at all, I recommend picking this up.
The Outer Wilds (PC) - I played this immediately after Disco Elysium, and despite being two very different games, they excel in the same place: everything is so masterfully interconnected. The central mystery of The Outer Wilds is about what the heck is going on in your solar system, not a murder mystery, but nonetheless everything you see has some impact on something. It's absolutely fascinating piecing it altogether. Unfortunately, the core gameplay is a bit looser - some of the physical puzzles are tedious or obtuse, and the spaceflight in this game is difficult to control. You will pitch yourself into the sun more than once, usually on accident. I can't give it quite the same glowing recommendation as Disco Elysium because while you can blunder through and enjoy that game, it's entirely possible to be stymied entirely by The Outer Wilds.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (PC) - This is such a strange piece of history. The game looks like it belongs in 2004 right until you meet one of the central characters from the act one plot, whose model wouldn't look terribly out of place in an indie game today. Honestly the whole game is like this given its apparently troubled development history, with some aspects shining bright and others just being awful. The writing is absolutely great from start to finish; the gameplay dips and dives from point to point, especially the oft-dreaded sewer levels which kept seeming not quite that bad except that they just kept on going. Some setpieces are well-realized dungeon romps, and sometimes you're beating off zombies in a crackhouse for way too long. Overall, it's just good enough that I'd recommend it as an invesment of your time if you can forgive a few gameplay sins in the name of good writing and a solid plot.
Detroit: Become Human (PS4) - This one had been on my list for quite a while. It's essentially a modern adventure game in the vein of TellTale, and while I'm not sure I'd say it entirely succeeds at the idea of making choice meaningful, the ridiculous number of branches in the story is absolutely unreal. The game even maps out all these branches for you after completing a chapter, often leading to a 'what the heck could have gone differently there?' sort of thing. This is my first David Cage game, so I don't have a history with his style. I found the plot to be merely so-so, and of the three playable protagonists, two are a little too simplistic and tropey for my tastes. However the writing and dialogue in Connor's segments is second to none, and I would love an entire buddy cop game in this style. Overall, I'd recommend it for what it is - a hamhanded morality tale with crazy production values.
Stuff You've Likely Seen Before
Rimworld (PC) (replay/new content) - Rimworld is a top-down colony building game where your colonists crash-land on a lowtech Rimworld at the edge of human space. You build a shelter and work towards either constructing you own spaceship or building up enough supplies to hike to one you're told the location of. It's got a solid gameplay loop in this vein, and I played it this year because of the Royalty expansion pack, which introduced a new faction and end-game goal - impress the feudal leader of a fleet over the Rimworld to take you to the stars. Overall, I highly recommend Rimworld to fans of the genre, and the Royalty expansion is also worth it as it spices up combat with psychic 'spells' and whatnot.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (PC) - While this game does wear its Batman: Arkham Games inspiraton on its sleeve, it's a little more than that. Combat is more central than in the Batman games, and it's just a lot of fun skewering orcs and taking down Sauron's armies using the vaunted 'Nemesis' system. Shadow of Mordor - the first one, since I know it's easy to mix them up - is a nice, brisk game that has a reasonably quick core plot and doesn't overstay its welcome. In fact, I was left wanting more, so...
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (PC) - In a lot of ways, this game is more of the same. It does, however, introduce more itemization; while in Mordor, you simply upgraded your weapons by completing challenges, War requires you to level up and replace weapons as you go. This does create a few more interesting systems with damage types and whatnot, but ultimately I stopped because the new elements just weren't much fun and I didn't need that much more Middle-Earth Batman in my life. The plot also goes from 'Well, it's Tolkienish, I guess' to just being kind of dumb all around.
Cave Story+ (PC) (replay) - It had been a while since I beat Cave Story, so I picked this up and did a full run including the 'true ending' hell run. For those who haven't played it, Cave Story is a charming little side-scrolling shooter with a variety of fun weapons. There's not a lot to say beyond that; it's a short, sweet retro experience I also recommend.
Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition (PC) (replay) - I'm referring to the 2001 game, not the Square Enix one from whenever that was. Deus Ex is probably one of the earliest 'with RPG elements' games. At its core it's a first-person shooter set 20 minutes into the future, but your weapon efficacy is determined by skill points you earn by exploring, completing objectives, and interacting with NPCs. The plot has a lot of classic cyberpunk and conspiracy plot beats to it and I highly recommend it even though the core gameplay feels dated in 2020. It is still an absolute masterclass in level design, with so many little hidden secrets, bonuses for exploring, and ways to complete your objectives. I kid you not when I say that after a dozen playthroughs over 20 years, I still find entirely new side areas and routes. There are multiple modernizing mods; I used Deus Ex Revision, available through Steam if you own the base game there.
Pokemon Shield (Switch) - I wasn't patient for this, and in fact probably actually beat it in 2019, but it wasn't a Patient game at the time so it didn't make last years list. That said, it's Pokemon - you almost certainly have your own opinion on it at this point. That said I still felt sort of disappointed even with low expectations going in, as it was basically as brain-dead as other recent entries in the series. It's a shame we're not seeing more out of it given how stupidly huge the franchise is.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) - This is a 2020 Pandemic Classic, but I kind of bounced off it despite enjoying previous Animal Crossing games. The only gameplay evolution is to add a weird survival-game element of your tools breaking and admittedly a sort of neat crafting/terrain alteration system, but this was gated behind so much grind I just felt I could get this same experience, only better, elsewhere.
Subnautica (Gamepass on PC) - Subnautica is a survival/exploration game set on an alien world after a crash landing. Basically the entire game is spent in the ocean, hence the name. The game is gorgeous and has some fun encounters, but the core gameplay is a bit of a slog, requiring you to scour the ocean floor for bits to find upgrades and slowly solve how to get your ass off the world. The intent is to force you to build multiple bases, but I short-circuited this by building the Giant Monster Submarine Mobile Base. Following the breadcrumbs of the plot is alright, but then you occasionally just hit a 'go scour the ocean floor for wreckage so you can get the upgrade to go past this arbitrary depth'. I think I dropped the game shortly before its climax because I just couldn't be bothered anymore.
Indivisible (PC) - This is a gorgeously animated game that at first glance, looks like Valkyrie Profile with a Metroidvania-ish overworld. In practice, though, it's very linear and the combat system has little more depth than button mashing. The narrative tries to do some interesting things but ultimately falls flat due to some mixed messages with tones and general pacing issues. The voice-acting talent in this game is top tier, though. Overall, I feel like this is a 'good enough' popcorn filler game that's worth your time, but I also feel like it could have been so much more.
Death Stranding (PS4) - I got a fairly solid deal on a used copy shortly after launch, so I wasn't exactly Patient. Hideo Kojima Pretends He's a Film Guy isn't exactly a gripping narrative, but I actually enjoyed the literal walking simulator gameplay. Other players affect your experience indirectly, sort of like the Dark Souls message system. But rather than crude jokes about awesome chests or but holes, they leave material goods. By this I mean both useful equipment and literally dropped cargo, and they literally alter the terrain by forming 'desire paths' as more people take the same route. The whole game is fascinating even if a lot of it is just Kojima being weird.
Superhot (PC) - I don't have a lot to say about this other than I played it. It's basically an FPS where you are in constant bullettime, with the world only advancing extremely slowly until you move. It creates a sort of puzzle game as you figure out how best to dispatch foes without getting overwhelmed. I played the VR version on PS4 in 2019, which has no locomotion. I preferred the 'puzzle solving' elements of this version where you actually have full freedom of movement rather than simply leaning in place.
Sonic Mania (PC) - This is a short and sweet love letter to classic Sonic. I only ever got into the blue blur with the Gamecube MegaCollection, so this just seemed like a welcome return to a familiar gameplay style. I don't have much more than a vague thumbs-up recommendation for folks looking for, well, more classic Sonic.
Among Us (PC) - I really appreciate the chance to murder my friends and convince them they didn't. I don't really see the appeal of playing with randos, but if you can get six-to-seven people together on Discord it's a grand old time. Your experience with more may vary.
Return of the Obra-Dinn (PC) - Sleek graphical style, and neat puzzle-esque gameplay. Basically, you're an insurance... person asssessing what happened to the crew of a ship in the Age of Sail (I forget the exact year). You progress through the stylish black-and-white ship using a magical timepiece that lets you see the last moments of the various corpses you find. The goal is to discover what happened to each of the several dozen crew members on board - how they died, whether they somehow got off the ship, and what (or who) killed them. It has some flaws, as a puzzle game, but it's still well worth trying out if this is the sort of thing you're into.
Mirror's Edge (PC) - I made it about three-quarters of the way through this game years ago, but dropped it for... some reason. It's famously a game about free-running, and it's essentially one long puzzle game about how to maneuver around an urban environment by maintaining momentum, jumping, climbing, and swinging. It's serviceable enough in all respects, though I had a rough time figuring out how to proceed in a couple of areas. The aesthetic is slick, and the plot is merely serviceable.
Some More Obscure Stuff
Overgrowth (PC) - This game is slightly hard to describe. Basically, it's a... character action game based around physics, I guess? About an anthropomorphic rabbit who fights other anthropomorphic animals. The plot has a gritty low-fantasy bent to it, but the meat of the game is in doing crazy high-jumps around the environments (including some parkour!) and sneaking around to grab weapons and slaughter your enemies. Both you and your enemies have very low health pools. The physics do feel a bit janky and floaty, but you can still do a lot of crazy cool stuff - like a flying kick that all but guarantees a kill, but if you miss leaves you very open.
100% Orange Juice (PC) - This is basically Honest Mario Party for weebs. It's typically referred to as orenji, i.e. RNG (randomly generated number). You roll a dice to move your ridiculous anime girl around a board, then roll some dice to see what happens, from simple combat to gaining stars to a very small smattering of minigames. Your goal is to go around the board and make it to your home square with a certain number of stars or a certain number of 'wins' from defeating other players or NPC encounters in combat (your choice). If you do this five times before anybody else, you win! It's a charming little game to goof around with friends on, and often very cheap.
Graveyard Keeper (PC) - It's like a grimly humorous version of Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley. A literal braying ass delivers corpses to your graveyard, you have to bury them with appropriate headstones and whatnot or, you know, throw them in the river I guess. Overall it's a bit too grindy and repetitive despite having a fair number of gameplay systems (having to kill bats on your way to quarry stone for headstones, etc.) Some folks might enjoy the dark humor more than I did, and the gameplay is roughly in line with something like Stardew Valley, so if you want a twist on that formula, give it a look.
The Final Station (PC) - This is a side-scrolling game in which you operate a train across a country while weird shit happens. Gameplay is split between tending the train, which involves fiddling with the train systems as they go down and tending to passengers by delivering food or medicine. At each station, the gameplay is more of a side-scrolling shooter mode where you methodically fight weird zombie-like creatures while looking for the access code to release your train for the next leg while gathering as many supplies as you can. The narrative is jank and intentionally obtuse, but I dug the moment-to-moment gameplay. Overall it gets an 'eh' from me.
Barony (PC) - I played this with my friends when it had a free weekend on Steam. It's a 3D Roguelike that plays in real time rather than the standard turn-based. You have several base classes that determine starting skills, but over the course of a run you may well develop an entirely different set. It's pretty standard stuff if you're used to Nethack or Dungeon Crawl, but the novelty of having multiplayer was good for a weekend. If my friends weren't such dumb butts I'd probably have played more of it.
Chantelise (PC) - This is one of those mid-2000s Japanese action games that got a Steam port at some point. It's got some janky camera issues and a fairly basic combat system where you swing your sword around and gather gems that allow you to release various elemental attacks depending on what's in your gem queue. The story's your typical anime bullshit with two sisters trying to discover why one of them got cursed to be a fairy. It's a solid romp if you can manage to acclimate to the weird camera and input scheme.
Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest (PC) - I was interested in this because it was by the folks who did The Legend of Grimrock. It's an isometric strategy game with the typical vaguely-X-COM 2012 inspirations. There are some interesting choices to be made in ability and equipment loadouts and I vaguely enjoyed the first several missions, but the story didn't grip me and the combats were a mix of uninteresting slugfests and overly tense 'how do I reach the objective while not dying?' sorts of things, at least as I recall it now. This is on my list of things to go back and give a more proper shot as I wasn't really quite in the headspace for it on my first try.
Out There: Omega Edition (PC) - I believe this is a port of a mobile game that is basically a weird sort of existential space exploration. You move from star to star, trying to keep your supplies topped off, and progress towards your homeworld. There are a few different endings, and in general the writing is OK. It's a fun little space-themed choose your own adventure/resource management sort of rogue-like-ish (I hate that I typed this) game.
I Didn't Like These Very Much
Fantasy Blacksmith (PC) - I installed this thinking it'd be a fun little sim game. While it is kind of neat to run around messing with the tools to go through the full process of heating an ingot, beating it into a blade, and performing minigames to sharpen and do final assembly, there's so damn much waiting involved. To profitably sell a sword, you need to wait until you hear knocks on your door (which may well be in the middle of you doing a time-sensitive step in the process). You have to wait for deliveries. You can mine in your basement, for some reason, but it's so agonizingly slow and, again, if you hear some knocking - you better rush to the door! Overall, this game was a disappointment.
This is the Police - On the surface, I really liked the idea of Duke Nukem voicing a tired old cop, with gameplay revolving around time management as you play admin and dispatch for your various police officers. It also has a great, sleek aesthetic and general presentation. In practice it's a needlessly gritty drama about crime and corruption with very little feedback on how well you're doing at the actual game portion. I intentionally ignored the mafia's attempts to bribe me into ignoring their activity, and my game officially ended when the main character got shot in a driveby at breakfast. The fact that it was preordained that I had to be a dirty cop, combined with the fact that the only warning of this was the same 'The Mafia will remember that.' message with no further escalation or actual warning about it being a gameover condition lead me to drop it there (on top of others saying this isn't the only incident of being in a losing game state without any real forewarning).
And Now for Some VR Games
The Invisible Hours (PS4) (also has a flat-screen mode) - This isn't really a game, as there's literally zero interactivity. All you can do is move the camera around, pause, and rewind. It self describes itself as a sort of play, which is appropriate. You follow the seven or so individuals as they interact and reveal more about their own personal mysteries and the central murder mystery. The plot is a little campy and the drama a bit melo, but overall it's still a neat ride and a novel experience, even if you aren't literally in the middle of it as it unfolds in VR. It's a neat use of a few hours of your time.
Sairento VR (PS4) - For those who don't know, VR is absolutely filthy with wave shooters - simple arenas where enemies come until you have spent enough time murdering them all. Sairento is basically one of these with the twist that throwing your hands in the air causes you to do a sick ninja flip into the air and slows down time while you mow down enemies with whatever silly cyberpunk weapons you have. It's all well and good for some dumb fun, but its central gimmick doesn't really carry it given the price tag. There are other, better shooters and explorations of VR mobility.
Espire 1: VR Operative (PS4) - This piqued my interest due to being a stealth game. The highlight, in my opinion, is your ability to climb almost any wall, which along with some solid, classic Deus Ex level design, leads to a lot of neat options for sneaking around. The campaign is fairly typical both plot-wise and gameplay objective wise, and after a while sneaking around in the rafters just doesn't carry the game anymore. By the end I'd just given up on stealth and was mowing down my enemies, which is also a viable gameplay choice. Overall it was OK, I guess.
The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners (PC) - This is the first totally new game I played with my recently acquired HP Reverb G2. This is the first VR game I've played that really seemed to benefit from the previous years of design. Everything just seemed smoother and less janky. The core gameplay is basically scavenging and finding items you're sent for, which is well-suited to VR and the genre. Combat is very satisfying, and I had several tense moments where either there were too many enemies to handle in melee and managing the reloading and gunplay was just frantic enough to feel 'authentic' to a zombie apocalypse. The plot is very modern Walking Dead-ie, which you probably already have an opinion on. In the end I put more hours into the 'Trial' mode, which will being Yet Another Wave Shooter, was actually tense and engaging compared to the many, many previous games with the same formula. I think this has to do with the very satisfying 'pierce the skull' motion and literally grabbing zombies by the head and shoving them back to help manage crowds. All in all, I now consider this a quintessential VR experience alongside Beat Saber.
Unlimited Time Dumps
No Man's Sky (PS4, PC) - Like a non-trivial number of people, I watched the Internet Historian's The Engoodening of No Man's Sky. The game was on sale, it had relatively recently received a VR update for PSVR, and I said screw it and picked it up. This was right around when we were all realizing just how serious the whole pandemic was going to be, and I dumped an ungodly number of hours into the game during March through May. What I appreciated most about NMS - apart from being fairly breathtaking in VR, even in the muddy potato-water of a PS4 Pro's graphical capabilities - is how seamlessly the transition from on-foot to starship gameplay was. Neither is super deep, and the game is mostly about following quests from point-to-point, meandering exploration, or at-best-serviceable basebuilding with some survival elements. But it's all done well enough in the same package that it's entrancing. If you do pick it up, for the first time or to mess around, be sure to check out the crazy folks at the Galactic Hub.
Also yes, I bought NMS on both platforms. I used a program called iVRy to be able to use my PSVR headset on PC, but despite my best efforts I was never able to get anything other than head tracking working. NMS is sort of playable without motion controllers, until you try to build and your hands are behind you so you can't actually place anything. But this setup was fine for...
Elite Dangerous (PC) - There's a YouTuber by the name of Exigeous who says that Elite Dangerous is a pretty alright spaceship game if you play it normally. But if you play it with a VR headset, you are flying a fucking spaceship. I could not agree more. I spent an embarassing number of hours putting this game through its paces from late Spring through the Summer. The game has imeccable sound design, unbelievably good presentation, and a very solid space-dogfight flight model.
Unfortunately, it's hard to recommend almost anything else about the game. Doing almost anything involves either multiple-minute commutes in 'SuperCruise', the only-somewhat-faster-than-light in-system movement mode, or multiple loading-screen warp jumps between stars to get where you want to be. 'Space trucking', or trading, is very janky, as the economic simulation is fairly minimal. Doing anything to the 'background simulation' and affecting the galaxy requires a Herculean effort with a Byzantine system that is less clear than mud. The game probably has the most interesting asteroid mining systems, from relatively simple but pleasant to execute laser mining to cracking the cores with explosives and hoovering up the goodies, but it's still a very simple loop and relies on the aforementioned jank economics. The real strengths are the breathtaking universe (if you can stand jumping and supercruising for hours), and the remarkably complex, modular system for fitting your ships. This is especially true of combat, and with over two dozen ships to choose from there's a wide variety of options from stacking shields and wading into 'melee' with various lasers and kinetic weapons to hull-tanking and railgun sniping.
I'm still very mixed on Elite, but it's basically a must-have VR experience for the atmospheric aesthetics and sound design alone.
Dual Universe (PC) - I'm breaking patient rules here, as this 'released' as a beta in August, but it was in Alpha for a while before that. This is an MMO with influences from EVE, Avorion, and Space Engineers. It intends to be a 'civlization building' game where players run the sandbox. The core gameplay is voxel-based spaceship building, where you can freely design the ship's hull and apply various flight elements to give it capabilities (atmospheric flight, space engines, guns). Production of these elements is done by running Industry machines, and while it's not as complex as something like Satisfactory or Factorio, there is still a fun element of industrial planning (though currently this is a grind-gated gameplay loop).
It calls itself a Beta but feels much more like an Alpha, and frankly NovaQuark is a newbie developer who doesn't seem to have much of a clue. If this game didn't scratch all the right itches for me, I probably wouldn't even mention it; but it's such a fascinating project and is the only true MMO I know with such extensive usage of voxel deformation from everything from ship damage to terrain to mining, with an EVE-like sandbox ethos at least stated.
A Conclusion
If you read all that, I'm so sorry. This yearly roundup means a lot to me as I put my thoughts in order about what I played over the year, and recall some of the more obscure stuff I had forgotten I played. (In particular, I really enjoyed Overgrowth, which I played in July or so, and had totally forgotten Indivisible which I bought at the end of the 2019 Steam Sale, and was a real mixed bag).
I did play a few other games this year, but this list is exclusive to games I at least gave a fair shake of a few hours rather than simply playing for a tiny bit and putting down. My primary methodology was to pull the highlights out of my brain, then check the play history of my consoles (which is fairly inaccurate, probably). My PS4 got a lot of use on one game this year (No Man's Sky), but my Switch sat largely-dormant. PC was my primary platform, where Steam's excellent 'sort by recent activity' function gave me a fairly comprehensive list of what I had played and when.
I think my New Year's Resolution will be to actually post more about games as I play them here on /patientgamers, if only so I can just link to some posts and do a quicker list next year (though hopefully 2021 won't see me with quite so much free time).

2 player ps4 games without internet video

TwoPlayerGames.org is the very first 2 player games portal in the world and has the largest games achieve in its field. We listed instant play to all games without downloads and the site does not host pop-up ads. Most of the games house HTML5 and WebGL and thus can be played in PC's tablet and mobile device.. Our goal is to develop better free-to-play games that you can play solo or play with ... So without wasting any time, here are the 15 best 2 player PS4 games. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime; Minecraft; Broforce; Outward; Helldivers; Resident Evil 5; The Sword of Ditto Overcooked, Crawl, and Rocket League are probably your best bets out of the 91 options considered. "Requires close cooperation" is the primary reason people pick Overcooked over the competition. This page is powered by a knowledgeable community that helps you make an informed decision. Games are meant to entertain you. And this sort of entertainment doesn’t and shouldn’t come at a high cost. For instance, you don’t need to invest so much to secure internet connection to be able to enjoy your favorite game for an extended period. Unfortunately, that’s one reason many don’t get to enjoy play some games.. Most games require internet connection. Top 10 Best offline PS4 Games you need to play in 2020. There are many incredible multiplayer online games like Fortnite and PUBG on the market; however, Sony's PlayStation 4 features tons offline story-driven narratives, video games of exclusives and non-exclusives that can be enjoyed without the need of the internet. If you’re here hoping to find out what the best 2 player PS4 games are, rest easy because you’re not alone. After all, the PlayStation 4 quickly became the go-to gaming platform of choice for many people, boasting a library full of great exclusives and multiplatform titles it’s hard not to become invested in – playing them side-by-side with a friend only makes them better. There are some incredible multiplayer games on the PS4, but some single-player campaigns are just as fun and don't require an internet connection. By Jason Wojnar Nov 27, 2019 Updated Jul 28, 2020 Action. Play Action Games on notFlash.com. Our top Action games are Happy Wheels, Raft Wars 2, and Squadd.io - and we have over 307 other Action .IO games to enjoy! Our 2 player games include all sorts of unique, intense match-ups. Choose your favorite activity, and battle in arenas around the world! You and a friend can fight, race, and try to set new high scores on each leaderboard. Every game is designed for a pair of players on the same computer. Invite your best buddy, and see if you have have what it ... For 99.9% of all cases, following these steps will get your PS4 to play digital games offline. If you’re one of the unlucky 0.01%, you may have to resort to making that fun phone call to ...

15 Best Offline Couch Co-op 2 Player PS4 Games [Local ...

2 player ps4 games without internet

2 player ps4 games without internet - win

Destiny 2

Stardew Valley 1.5 released on console and PC!

About the update

Bugs and known issues

Gameplay questions for 1.5

Modding FAQs (PC only)

Just Hit GM on Support on PS4 for the First Time Playing Mostly Ana, Zen, Bap, and Lucio Solo Queueing and without being in Team Chat. Here to Give Some General Support Advice. (Part 1)