VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action Review (BebopOctorok)
I love the Hel out of this game. It may be one of my favorite games of all time even, but today this game took something from me. I played this game on Switch about 5-ish years ago.
Picture this:
You're about to play this older visual novel about a bartender in a non-standard cyberpunk universe the game when you start it even tells you to sit back and relax so you do. It's finally your weekend you have no plans, and some time to actually relax so you go out of your way to make everything extra cozy. You grab a hot cocoa/mocha, some snacks, you get a big blanket and set your couch up extra nice and comfortable with said blanket, you grab your controller and find the game despite having a physical release does not have built in controller support.
So what do you do?
Well steam input is fine surely? Someone must have made steam input settings that doesn't suck. NOPE all of them are terrible. They all feel weird and use the joystick as a mouse. Why? WHY? You look online for solutions. You find someone made a mod a couple years back you think oh thank goodness this surely will solve the issue right? WRONG. Your hot cocoa is getting cold your excitement drains from your face as suddenly one of your favorite games soundtracks is not to be heard once you start the game as if nothing could get worse the mod doesn't seem to work without causing the game to have no sound and nothing makes any sense.
What did this game take from me you ask? An hour and half, and my cozy afternoon where I avoided responsibility and my hot cocoa.
The only thing that makes this more frustrating is that the game has had controller support on console for the last half a decade almost with no issues. Why wouldn't you update the game to support this? It makes absolutely no sense.
I will revise my review if built in controller support is added, but I will never get my afternoon back.
If you want my review of the game this is easily one of the best stories ever told in cyberpunk sci-fi setting in a video game.
It's extremely relatable if you've ever worked retail from the weird people you meet day to day, and the returning clients you even end up making friends with sort of. Even to the struggles of just paying your damn bills on time, but also wanting cool stuff for your apartment. It's very real, and the experience is so good all the way through. All the characters are amazing and interesting. It's worth reading/playing for them alone. Aside from that the entire soundtrack is killer. I have the collection on Vinyl Record and listen to it on a semi regular basis. I would recommend this game 1000/10%.
Just maybe not on steam if you wanna play it from your couch like I did.