We happened upon Real Civil Engineer playing this game one day, though. And to my surprise, she actually seemed interested. We were both ready for something new, so we downloaded it and dove in.

Sometimes I don’t know why I do a spoiler disclaimer. Like, how could there not be spoilers about the game in a post about the game? Anyway, proceed with caution!

The storyline of Grounded 2 has you playing as one of four teens who have somehow been shrunken down to the size of a Nickel, a-la Honey I Shrunk the Kids, or Downsizing. Technically, this is the second time these kids have been shrunk down (this is Grounded 2).

A Quick Recap

Apparently in the first game, the kids were able to re-grow themselves with the help of a robot named BURG.L. At the beginning of this game (from what I can gather) the scientist who shrunk you down is having a meltdown over being thwarted, and is taking it out on said Robot. The kids want to save their friend, though, so they’ve come to the park to stop the scientist when an explosion happens. And once again, they’ve woken up small.

Since being shrunken the first time, a completely different group of people have taken over the corporation responsible for shrinking. You’re able to communicate with the new Director/CEO, who seems just as confused as you are about what happened and why you’re shrunk again.

There’s also a mysterious stranger who’s taunting you (and periodically sending bugs to attack you), and you need to figure out her role in all of this. So far, I’ve been having a surprising amount of fun exploring this park as a miniaturized person, climbing picnic tables like they’re mountains, and struggling to kill bugs I’d usually just smush with a shoe.

So, What are We Actually Doing?

Grounded 2 is an adventure survival game with resource-harvesting, crafting, inventory management, progressive unlocks etc. Dandelions and blades of grass are towering over you like trees, and you chop them down in order to obtain larger construction materials like planks and logs. Tiny “pebblets” (pieces of stone smaller than pebbles), sprigs (pre-grown grass), and acorns (acorns) act as smaller construction material. They’re also used for crafting your first weapons, pieces of armor, and spots needed to make more advanced items (like workbenches and cooking stations).

Food and water is important, too. There are weevils and aphids that you can cook to eat — and some mushrooms you can grab in a pinch. And since you’re so small, a simple dewdrop on the tip of a blade of grass is all that’s necessary to quench your thirst for the day. It’s honestly pretty adorable (initially).

Enemies, naturally, take the form of bugs; and at this size, they might as well be dinosaurs. Borderline-microscopic critters (like the aforementioned aphids) are the size of small kittens, and ants are the size of Big Cats. And those are just the first few foes you’ll encounter.

Ladybugs, butterflies, bees, and of course spiders, and roaches (and more) all make an appearance. There is an arachnophobia slider in the settings to make spiders less triggering. I’m not sure how it changes them, though, I left my slider at “maximum spider”.

Of course, as you progress through the game and create better items everything gets slightly easier to manage. Only slightly, though, because, frankly, this game is pretty tough. And I’m playing on the easiest difficulty. I thought this game was going to be a mild, casual game to play with my girlfriend; but it’s been giving me a real challenge so far.

Cache-Collecting, Controlling Character, & Combat

The controls are relatively simple, but they’ve still managed to provide quite a challenge. You’re given an “Omni-tool” that can turn into a hammer, axe, shovel, or repair tool as needed. Simply holding the “Omni-tool” button (‘X’ by default on Xbox) near the item you’re trying to gather will gather that item.

You don’t have to switch, say, from a hammer after destroying a rock to the axe in order to chop down a tree. You just hold the button and it works. And there’s no wear on the Omni-tool, so you don’t have to worry about it breaking or having to repair or create a new one later. So that’s nice.

Movement

Traversing the world is largely on foot, and unfortunately, there’s no double-jump. Within the “mutations” menu, there’s a hidden upgrade under “Exploration”, which suggests there will be another way to move around the world in the future; but so far, I haven’t found out what it is yet*.

That said, I found myself not using my ant all that often. Primarily because of the Mutations you can apply to your character (more on those later). One of the mutations will increase the rate that your stamina recovers; but in order to unlock it (and it’s subsequent levels which improve the mutation), you have to deplete your stamina a bunch of times. I wanted to make sure I got the top level of that, so I ran pretty much everywhere; and essentially just got used to it.

Also, the ants combat assistance continues after your character dies. While you’re respawning and figuring out how to get back to your stuff, your ant is still fighting the enemy that killed you; and will often die itself doing so. You can call your ant to you as soon as you respawn, but you have to actually think to do that — which you won’t know to do at first. At least we didn’t, assuming our ants would continue to follow us like it did everywhere else (to an almost annoying point).

When your ant dies, there is a cooldown, seemingly, until you can call your ant again. And I have seen them come back after dying. But more often than not, we’ve looked up and are missing our ant. It’s not following us like it usually does, it doesn’t come when called, and when we open the companion menu, there’s no ants to be found.

Granted there is an anthill that can be built that we haven’t used yet. And that may facilitate the respawning of ants. But if that were the case, I’d love to see some acknowledgement of that. Say, a pop-up or something after the ant dies that says “build an anthill to bring your ant back” or something.

It’s the most obvious after loading back in to the game — either starting up a new session, or simply because the game crashed (which it does fairly often). Maybe there’s an issue where your ant disappears if the game quits or is closed before the cooldown is up. I’m not sure what the culprit is, but we’re each on our third ant. Maybe there’s something we’re missing but it just seems buggy (pun intended).

Combat

I mentioned earlier that this game is surprisingly tough, and combat is one of the reasons why. Fighting consists of pressing the right trigger to attack, the left trigger to block, and ‘B’ (on Xbox) to dodge. You can also do a perfect block (parry) by hitting the trigger at the exact moment they hit you. It’s relatively simplistic, but it’s anything but easy.

The window of opportunity to perfect block is larger than a lot of games that I’ve played; and the enemies attack patterns aren’t incredibly complicated. But there’s still times where blocking feels muddy, and you end up getting hit when you were sure you timed the perfect block correctly.

Even the initial bugs you come across, like ants, provide a decent challenge — they take a lot of hits to kill, and they do a decent amount of damage. I ran an archer build for a while and oftentimes simply dodging just didn’t cut it.

The bigger-stronger bugs are even more bullet-spongey, and some even have status effects like Venom or Sizzle. That’s not to even mention the damn stink bugs that release a gas cloud that damages you. You can make a gas mask that negates the effect of the bug’s cloud — but you need to kill a stink bug in order to make it. Kind of a catch-22.

Enemies also pretty relentless. There were several occasions I accidentally came across an aforementioned stinkbug or something, but knew I didn’t want to fight it. So I ran. But despite running well outside of where I found them, and seemingly running for a while (though it’s not like I timed it), I’d turn around and they’d still be there. You can get away. It’s possible. But make sure to keep running, and hope your health isn’t already low in the initial encounter — they’ll probably hit you once or twice before you’re far enough away.

Health

Don’t expect to just sit behind a rock for a little while and get back to the action, either. Health doesn’t regenerate, not even outside of combat. And the easiest health item available — Fiber Bandages made out of Plant Fiber and Sap — doesn’t regenerate your health instantly. There’s a sub-bar that slowly increases, and you’ll only get the health if you don’t get hit before it fills up.

There are potions that can be made that will give you more health and have it increase instantly, and some food will also increase health. And with the cooking station you can create meals that gives quite a bit of health and will cause it to regenerate for a short while. But those, of course, take more resources which takes more time to go out and acquire.

Health items and other consumables also only stack to 5 (until you’ve leveled up your Axe and find a pretty rare item, which takes a while). So I’ve really been struggling to balance holding the right amount of health items, and figuring out the most efficient way to create more.

So far, just grabbing the sap and plant fiber and making a few bandages has been the most efficient solution — given that they can be created on the fly and those items are the most readily available — but there’s still a lot of complications.

If you’ve got any status effects on you, you won’t actually gain any health from the wrap because, remember, there’s a sub-bar that increases that stops as soon as you take damage. So if you’re affected, you take damage immediately, and the healing instantly stops. And given the limited stack sizes, you’re not really able to hoard the materials, either.

The carrying-capacity smoothie might be the most efficient drink that can be made. I’ve started using them more and more — they recover a decent amount of health, and do so instantly. They take resources that are slightly more difficult to gather, though, than the wraps. And you can’t simply make them from your crafting menu — you have to make them at a specific Smoothie Station.

Sleep does regenerate health, too, but you can’t sleep whenever you want. The kids have to be “tired enough”. And it doesn’t regenerate all of your health. So health management is definitely an important aspect of this game.

Truthfully, given such small stack sizes, the lack of fast travel, and the complicated nature of finding a lot of the materials needed for health, I have no idea what the developers of the game intend for you to do to survive on long treks through the park.

You essentially have to use half of your inventory slots simply being prepared — needing food, torches, enough health items to survive a few tough encounters, and potentially a backup weapon (so you can both see and fight when necessary) can leave you with very few slots for gathering resources in a hurry.

Maybe I was supposed to make more bases instead of constantly trekking back to the same one. But, man, a lot of times it felt like there were decisions made to simply extend the required playtime arbitrarily.

Getting Stronger

Of course, there are ways to improve your strength and defense, and a surprising amount of playstyles to choose from. It’s actually quite deep. Each type of armor (type being the kind of bug used to make it) corresponds to a different combat style. And there’s three armor slots, so you can equip one of each of the same type of armor; which will give you an additional bonus.

So for example, equipping the Bee Facemask, Bee Shoulder Pads, and Bee Shinguards — which all give the Ranger bonus for archery — you not only get a speed increase when drawing an arrow, but your arrows can also release a pollen cloud that slows enemies.

While I went into the game not expecting much, I was pleasantly (and frustratingly) surprised with the combat. There were times I wanted to throw my controller through the TV, but isn’t that the mark of a solid experience? Don’t make the mistake of thinking that since you play as teenagers, and the graphics are a little on the cartoony side, that this is a simple, casual game. Like I did.

Some Mild Complaints…

An ongoing gripe with this game is inventory management. Resources only stack to 10, and consumables to 5 — and that’s only non-expiring consumables. All food (raw and cooked) can spoil, so they’re each on an individual countdown… Which means they each take up their own slot. Again, there’s no real way to hoard the items you need for long treks.

Granted there are upgrades to increase these amounts, but not by much; and not until several several hours into the game. If you’re the type loot every enemy and hoard every item (like me), well:

And most of them aren’t. Almost all of the weapons use both hands, so, so far, I’ve been running a couple weapons simultaneously.

I wanted to primarily be an archer, but I made sure to keep my spear leveled up because I knew I’d have to use it anytime I needed light at the same time. Even Candy Staves are two-handed, so I’ve been having to keep it up. At this point, spears are essentially my primary playstyle (again).

Hopefully there’s some sort of hip-mounted light source that we can unlock so that I can main pretty much any weapon. But until then, I’m making due.

You Mentioned Planks and Logs Earlier?

Something I’ve always loved in video games is the building and creating aspect. I remember copy and pasting ROSEBUD a hundred times, so I could build a megamansion and furnish it with the most expensive items in The SIMS. I’ve also grown to appreciate earning the ability to build a massive home, too, which is why I was so proud of my Minecraft builds.

Build Mechanics

Rather than needing the items in your inventory (or in storage nearby) to begin the building process; you’re able to put a  “ghost” of the item in the spot you want to place it. Then you’re able to come back and add the materials as you acquire them. It’s nice, because you can get a feel for what you’re trying to do before actually committing. And you’ll be able to see if your idea is even viable before wasting resources.

That said, occasionally I did wish I could build the items instantly. Namely floors and stairs, so I could get higher more easily to build more levels and the roof. Ceilings and roofs need to be supported as well — and you can’t even place the outline if they aren’t (an outline can be supported by another outline, which is good). So shaping substantial structures takes a bit of additional creativity to even plan. And you may find yourself building section-by-section.

I also need to keep experimenting with the building mechanics. I decided to start with building the floor (obviously), but I started with the lowest elevation in the area. So, a lot of the floor pieces ended up, visually, underground. They clipped through in order to attach to the other floor pieces. The ground floor of my house looks like a crawlspace under a trailer. I don’t love it.

I want to try building a new house, this time starting at the highest elevation in the area. But I feel like the house would look like it was floating or cantilevered at that point; which I don’t think I want. The best-case scenario, which I need to figure out, would be Palworld-style where the bottom level creates a “foundation” to the ground, so it’s not just floating, and it makes sense visually. Again, it’s something I need to test. Again, maybe in creative mode.

Time to Buzz Off!

Overall, I’ve had a surprising amount of fun playing Grounded 2. It’s still in Game Preview mode, and it shows in a lot of ways. But running around as a three-inch person, and experiencing this perspective has been incredibly interesting. And despite it’s somewhat cartoonish appearance, it can really give you a challenge (and a scare if bugs already freak you out).

I’ve still got some work to do in order to re-grow myself, and I can’t wait to dive back in. Just don’t ask me to play in VR.

The post Grounded 2 | All The Small Things appeared first on I Talk Games.

So when I heard about a new game by the same creators, that was set in a futuristic world, I was extremely excited. I remember playing the original GTA (the top-down versions) which had multiple factions/gangs, and you had varying levels of reputation with each. If you had high enough reputation, you’d get more missions and other benefits from them.

Spoiler Disclaimer: I don’t necessarily try to spoil anything, but I do give my authentic experience. Sometimes that entails giving details about the story or late-game items you may want to discover for yourself. Proceed with caution

The initial hype had me hooked, hearing about the different backgrounds you can select and how the world was split into areas controlled by different factions — Voodoo Boys, Tyger Claws etc. When those first few bits of information started to come out, I thought back to those early GTA times and thought the relationships with the factions would be a big point.

Here’s to a Never-Ending Backlog!

Regardless of my excitement, I’m still a big proponent of not pre-ordering games. Especially in this day-and-age where we can simply download them. It’s not like you have to sit in line at a store so you can acquire your copy at midnight anymore.

So, I waited until the initial information about the actual game came out before buying it myself (and as we all know it was a doozy). Also, I’m perpetually behind on games, anyway. So I wasn’t exactly ready to play as soon as it came out. Fortunately for me, by the time I played, the vast majority of the kinks had been ironed out.

I will say that I was a bit disappointed in how the gangs and their territories ultimately came in to play. It doesn’t really seem like any of your choices are all that impactful. I think there are a couple specific quests where, if you go one way or the other, the way you’re treated later by some members might change. And I know choices are impactful for personal relationships. But there was definitely no reputation system and nothing seemed to be locked behind being to friendly with one clique over another.

Hell, in my first play-through, I was extremely hesitant to work with or for anyone who seemed like police. I kind of avoided Regina’s gigs and the Cyberpsychos, and didn’t really do of the Assault in Progresses. I was playing as a corpo-turned-criminal, and I didn’t want anyone getting the idea that I might work with cops.

That said, after playing a while, doing a couple, and seeing nothing change; I realized they were inconsequential. It doesn’t really matter. I can do a gig in a Tyger Claw bar, kill everyone in there, then walk through the front door to Clouds like it doesn’t matter.

I suppose there’s one quest — well, Side Job — where you’re somewhat recognized. There’s a food vendor who convinced his sister to leave her gang and take a job with a corp. A couple guys from the gang want to steal his bike in revenge, and if your rep is high enough, they might recognize you and run away.

If you’re becoming a “Night City Legend” though, it would seem that you’d get recognized like that more often, but you don’t. Combined with the lack of meaningful reputation, I don’t ever feel like I’m becoming a Legend. I see how I’m becoming more and more unbeatable; and am taking down groups of enemies without breaking a sweat — but without the recognition it doesn’t give legendary to me.

Enough Complaining

Having just played Watch_Dogs, I leaned into the Netrunner on my initial play-through. I really like the idea of sitting outside of a building, hacking into their cameras, and just taking care of whatever I need to take care of from afar. Makes me feel like the “guy in the chair” but more deadly.

Cyberpunk doesn’t fully let you do that — given a lot of the missions require physically stealing something, uploading software, or rescuing a person. But still, Doing recon and taking out anyone who might be in my way before I even set foot into the building was a lot of fun.

That said, I saw the other options open to someone who wants to vary their playstyle (or have multiple play-throughs) and very quickly had some ideas on what I wanted to do next. It’s taken a few years to get to that point. But with a few big updates (and, obviously, Phantom Liberty) behind us and the upcoming 0.23 release, I thought this was the perfect time to dive back in and try out something new (and see what I’ve been missing since those huge updates dropped).

Even while playing the first time a few years ago, I anticipated doing a female V for my second playthrough, using Sandy and the Mantis Blades. In hindsight, that character might be a bit cliché (I’ve been watching some Cyberpunk YouTube videos, and I realize I basically created Oda), but oh well it sounded fun.

While I see how you can still go through the game without really ever using the weaponized vehicles — and you wouldn’t miss out on much. It’s a nice addition, and they’ve certainly been fun to play around with.

I also don’t remember crafting being as robust as it is — being able to craft weapons and quickhacks & upgrade cyberware. I can’t say I touched the crafting menu once in my first playthrough, but now I often find myself looking through it to see if there’s anything new I can use.

Even after several hours in the new playthrough, I’m still finding new items and upgrades that I can craft (technically I’m kind of on my third playthrough, too, because I’m running a couple characters concurrently; so that helps with keeping crafting fresh)

Early Struggles with New Playstyle

When I started playing, I pretty immediately fell into old habits and wanted to play stealthily. I really like the idea of getting in-and-out of places without the people being any wiser. Nobody knows the thing is missing until they need it and check on it. Real Danny Ocean stuff.

I thought that one of the primary selling points of the Sandevistan was that you’d be too fast to be noticed. In the early-game, though, that wasn’t the case for me. Moving as fast as I’m able, I was still frequently getting seen by cameras and other enemies. And once I inevitably entered combat, my perks felt pointless.

I distinctly remember attempting to dodge a melee enemy, but they still hit me. Sometimes they were far away, but the hit still registered, and others they would just zoom up next to me by the time they were actually going to hit me. It was super frustrating; but in hindsight, I guess hadn’t upgraded anything yet, so it makes sense that higher-level enemies could still hurt me.

I also struggled in the early game with Sandy, given I had no real way to survey my environment or make enemies look away (so I thought, I figured out throwing knives later — oh and I did find the recon grenade as well, but those are ass…).

So in general, there was a lot of trial and error to figuring out this playstyle. Reddit told me to just be aggressive, go in and mess everyone up; but I didn’t want that. And now that she’s more established, I’m happy with the route I went.

Ghost in the Shell

A huge help in being stealthy was the perk that decreased detection as your mitigation chance increased (when crouched). Whenever I added more cyberware, I primarily focused on maximizing my mitigation chance; and now, my detection is at 12% [confirm this] when crouched. I am virtually invisible. I also got myself to a place where I could unlock crouch sprint pretty quickly, and that was a big help.

To leave nothing to chance, I also started using optical camo, too — it’s basically gotten to a point where I don’t feel like I fight enough sometimes. I find myself initiating combat when I don’t really need to, just to get the experience points. I’m basically a ghost, picking and choosing the times I bless the enemies with being able to see me.

Staying on the “Ninja” theme, I wanted to use blades whenever I engaged an enemy. Initially, I wasn’t sure how I’d defend myself from guns when I’m using a sword or arm-blades, and planned to rely on moving around quickly enough with the Sandy. I was pleasantly surprised, though, when I found the bullet deflect perk; and felt like Luke Skywalker returning bullets back to the shooters with prejudice.

When I first started out, I was watching Titans (the live-action show about Robin, Raven, Starfire, and Beast Boy); and saw this V having a similar skillset to Deathstroke — using a sniper to take care of enemies that were too far away to use blades. I soon realized, though:

1. That largely goes against the stealth aspect — I was found every time I shot (didn’t stick with it long enough to find out if there’s silenced snipers) and
2. There aren’t that many opportunities to snipe in the first place. Most encounters are relatively close quarters, being inside rooms and in alleys and hallways.

I decided to forego the sniper, my decision being a lot easier when I learned that I could throw knives. Honestly, I never knew throwing knives were in the game. And when I first found out, I thought they were their own separate weapon. I didn’t know that you could just throw knives. Once I found that out, though, those projectiles played perfectly with the blades theme I was going for.

With the Kerenzikov cyberware + Sandevistan cyberware + Juggler perk, you can run into an area and take out all the enemies before the guys crouching have a chance to stand up. I saw a clip of a guy who drove by some enemies, jumped out of his car with Sandy on, took out all of the guys and got back into his moving vehicle that stayed in the flow of traffic. I’m not quite that dialed in yet, but I want to try my hand at something similar soon.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same…

There are some things that are frustrating that are the same three years and several updates later. The primary beef I have with this game (and games like it) are the dialogue options. There’s no indication of what’s actually going to be said when an option is chosen, or the tone it’s going to come out in or anything.

I understand making choices, and seeing the outcomes and consequences of those choices; but it doesn’t feel like I’m actually making a choice. It all seems arbitrary. I’ll read an answer in one inflection, but when spoken, V uses a completely different tone. I may want to be nice, but instead that option has V say something mean and the person I’m talking to gets mad.

I distinctly remember a conversation between V and Judy on the roof, where I was trying to be supportive. My girlfriend was watching me play, and we talked through which one’s we thought would be the best/most comforting/”nicest” option given the scenario. I reloaded the save a couple of times so that we could see the outcome of each of the three options.

Turns out, the once that both of us agreed was the least likely to give the response we wanted to give was in fact the one to give the most positive, supportive response. It makes it feel less like a role-playing experience and more like a guess-and-hope experience. I’m just glad this game lets you freely save-scum. I have no qualms with it in this scenario.

At Least Cars Actually Have a Purpose Now

I think driving still leaves a little to be desired. The cars handle a bit weirdly — turning can be difficult and drifting is far too easy. And cars are too quick to get to their top speeds, causing the engine audio to sound like you’re constantly redlining.

That said, I’m a Night City legend, so of course I had to get myself a Rayfield (or two). And since there’s a target on my back, I got myself a Hellhound just to be safe. I’m still working toward that Trailbruiser, it looks sick.

Something else that’s new that I really enjoy, is the body check for stealing vehicles. It’s always felt a little too easy just klepping the coolest-looking car in GTA. So making sure you’re strong enough to actually steal the car is refreshing. I kind of wish it were based on more than just body. I should be able to, say, open the door remotely if I can literally take over the whole car. But I still definitely like that they implemented this feature.

And this isn’t new, but I really like that some of the cars have video screens showing the outside, instead of windows. It’s the best of both worlds — more protection as well as being hidden from prying eyes. On top of that it’s just cool. Maybe not all that practical (you’d be completely blind if the cameras go down) but incredibly cool nonetheless.

Also, and this is apropos of nothing, but I think there needs to be a steal or pickpocket mechanic. If I want to role play as a thief, I should be able to get access to rooms by lifting the key off of an enemy; and not having to incapacitate everyone.

Later Chooms

There’s a lot of potential still to be had in Night City, I think. More reasons to use weaponized vehicles, the ability to acquire a flying car, and actually being able to experience the BD’s you buy (though, that could push the game into a completely different territory it doesn’t want to be in) are all ways this world can be built upon.

I heard there aren’t any plans to release more content in this game, but I don’t believe that’s actually true. The last couple updates were unplanned (or, at least, unannounced) so hopefully, that’s simply the case.

In the meantime, though, I’m really enjoying my 2025 playthrough(s) of this game. I’m constantly finding new and unique ways to combine perks, cyberware, weapons, and more to most efficiently solve gigs, take out enemies, cripple the corpos, and ultimately leave my mark on Night City. Peace, I’m off to find Songbird.

The post Cyberpunk 2077 | A Fresh Experience in Night City appeared first on I Talk Games.