Philly had set a very high bar for himself with the success of his previous work "Depraved Awakening" and it is often hard to live up to those expectations. Well, he didn't live up to them ... he surpassed them so hard he shattered them.
I won't usually review a game until it had had a few updates. I think it gives a game more chance to fix initial bugs, add some depth to the story, and give something more representative. Well, if City of Broken Dreamers improves any further (and I strongly suspect it will) we will need more stars to rate it with. This game is practically in a league of its own.
Visuals are absolutely stunning. I don't just mean that Philly used good assets and framed them well - I mean the imagery makes amazing use of camera angles, of lighting, of effects. He's used animation liberally, not just for sexual content, but more importantly to give pace, atmosphere, and cinematic impact to all kinds of scenes.
The story is something I'm always likely to adore. I'm a big fan of sci-fi and cyberpunk genres, and Gibson's Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive trilogy is one of my favourite series of books. So, a story where cybernetically enhanced mercenaries work for mega-corporations (street ronin) is right up my grungy, neon-lit alley.
People sometimes talk about a game 'raising the bar' for the whole AVN genre. Well, this game didn't just raise the bar - it strapped the bar to a rocket and launched it into orbit. The quality is rivalling that of studios with dozens of developers - truly. There's a genuine temptation to revisit every rating I've made before and downgrade them a star so that the 5 stars here make sense and are proportional.
Simply put, this game is absolutely a must play, and even though we're only in February as I write this review, I'm not sure any other game will have the time to beat this one for game of the year by December. Awesome.