Edited by Amanda Fox
To call Cyberpunk 2077 the most anticipated game of the year would be a gross understatement. Cyberpunk (CP) is, without a doubt, the most anticipated game of the decade. CP was touted to be a true introduction to the next generation of gaming; expected to lead the way for modern RPG’s. with high quality graphics and wonderfully immersive gameplay.
For those initiated in the gaming community, this was never the expectation. No game is perfect, and Cyberpunk is no exception to this rule. In the three weeks since its release, I have logged around 120 hours of gameplay, and feel informed enough to give you my thoughts. Let’s jack in and run this game’s net. Don’t forget your ICE.
THE GOOD
One of the aforementioned promises that players were given was that CP would be a gorgeous game to behold. I am delighted to inform you that this promise was delivered on. I spent a significant portion of my playthrough just taking in the jaw-dropping cityscape that is Night City. Unlike a lot of open-world games that feel tailored to the player, Night City is designed for no one. It is its own living being; filled with various districts that are teeming with life at all hours.
In-Game Screenshots taken using the game’s impressively equipped camera mode.
I was pleasantly surprised by the level of detail that passersby comparably showed. It certainly took a strain on my system to run all of them at high density and high graphical settings, but the result was incredibly immersive. The voice acting is equally as impressive. I truly cannot think of one weak link in the cast, with each personality brining a fresh view to the table for the player.
Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand was flat out excellent. I was concerned that Reeves’ contract for the voice work would result in him appearing sparsely in the game. Once again, CDProjeckt Red proved me wrong. Johnny is a major part of the game once the groundwork for his arrival in the story is laid. He appears in the vast majority of side quests, and often would actually shape my perception of the events around me. I never felt like he was intruding onto an important moment, or that his presence was a bother to me because of some other character.
Side content in this game is almost absurdly deep. While the main storyline is only around 20 hours total, the side content goes on for what seems like hundreds of hours. I still haven’t fully completed a large portion of the storylines available. On top of this, there are 1 time “gigs” that offer decent payouts, and up your street cred fairly quickly. There are also just groups of enemies scattered about to be taken down. This allows you to flex your new gear with relatively high frequency.
Night City offers a plethora of different environments for the player to behold. You just have to go find them.
As far as gameplay is concerned, the controls and overall gameplay loop is solid. The gunplay is good; and while it certainly isn’t Call of Duty levels of snappy, I had plenty of moments where I would quickly pop off two or three headshots in a row to satisfying effect. I chose to play a stealth netrunner for my first playthrough, and found that the stealth gameplay was good, but a bit lacking. The hacking system built into the game, however, is well done and is quite akin to Watch Dogs.
This being only one specific subset of class adaptations the player can take in CP makes it another area where the game shines. Want to play a brawler with tons of cyberware that makes you a tank? Easy. Feeling like playing a commando who has proficiency in precise and devastating weapons? Done. No matter what kind of character you want to play, CP will allow you to tailor your skills down to the smallest detail. This is in part due to the massive skill trees for each subset of abilities that the player can sink points into. These trees are massive in scope, with plenty of specializations available. With the perks I’ve selected, my character is particularly good at breach protocol, and can basically guarantee that 3 daemons get installed per hack.
The other half of this specialization comes in the form of cyberware. Every square inch of your body can be outfitted with cutting edge technology, with each available slot having multiple options for skill specializations. The majority of these upgrades have skill requirements that run in tandem with your character’s build, meaning they’re available for you once you save up the scratch to buy them. For example, my character could not use the Sandestevian cyberware mods due to a lack of points invested in my body stat. However, I could use the high-end Arasaka netrunner gear, simply by virtue of having a high intelligence stat.
The end result of these two mechanics is that the player feels like their choices matter. A win by any game’s standards.
THE BAD
First, the leveling in CP needs some significant tuning. With numerous hours logged, I still have not reached it to the end of my netrunning and stealth skill trees. While this is somewhat a testament to the depth of the skill trees, it ends up feeling like you’re never the best at anything. Theoretically, if I had put all of my available points strictly into one tree and one skill stat, I should be there by this point. That would also mean that I’m still doing base damage and base crit chance on all of my weapons, and I would have zero stealth perks. Not a whole lot of options there in terms of gameplay.
The difficulty curve in this game is honestly perplexing and seems to fluctuate without any rhyme or reason. In some areas I’ll be a god-tier hacker, silently dropping my opponents one by one, then activating a devastating hack followed up by a hail of gunfire. Other areas, I’ll be spotted immediately and gunned down by two rounds, forcing me to reload a save. I played the game on hard, but at times felt like the game was on normal or even easy difficulty. Other times, it felt as though the game was on insane. These spikes could happen within a few blocks of an area I was in, and made my playthrough feel a bit disjointed as a result.
The driving in this game leaves much to be desired. Nearly every vehicle I drove felt like it weighed 20 pounds, skirting all over the road every time I needed to make a corner. While I expected this in the early game, by the mid to late game I had some of the more expensive vehicles you could buy. They persisted in flying all over the road, and smashing into pedestrians if there was ever a sharp corner. This is probably one of my biggest gripes with the game, given how well the city itself is designed. You are encouraged to explore by virtue of the city’s beauty and life, but discouraged to explore because the vehicle mechanics are just not there.
The cars in Cyberpunk are wicked. Its just a shame they handle like a shopping cart with two bad wheels.
The crafting mechanic in the game is another weak point. Acquiring the necessary material to craft the high tier weapons takes a long time to do, either by purchasing them or looting them off the corpses of your enemies. This inherently isn’t bad. The problem is that most of the weapons you would want to craft are obsolete by the time you can craft them because you’ve found a weapon that’s better. Upgrading weapons is an option, but once again becomes too expensive when you could just use that new revolver you found instead.
Clothing is equally as inflexible, forcing you to wear ridiculous get-ups simply because they have better armor stats than something that looks cooler. There’s no real way to get around this, as once again upgrading becomes far too expensive when you have the option to up your armor for free. There are clothing mods that can mitigate this to a degree, but I wasn’t running into those until upwards of 80 hours into my playthrough. For an RPG with as much customization as CP in other areas, this was pretty disappointing.
An example of the hodge-podge look that inevitably befalls your character in Cyberpunk.
While none of these gripes are game-breaking, they do need to be addressed. There are games that have done what CP does, and have done it far better. The comparison between GTA V is unavoidable, as many of these problems could be easily solved by simply adapting from how Rockstar did so 8 years prior.
THE UGLY
We come to the part in this review where I must talk about the seriously troubling aspects of CP’s launch. The technical issues and disparity between player experiences with this game are massive. Glitches, bugs, framerate drops, broken animations and quests were all experienced in my playthrough.
Let’s be clear here. Glitches and bugs are in every game; its unavoidable. The issue here is the frequency with which they occur. Every 20 minutes or so I would see someone in a T pose, gliding down the street, or watch cars clip into one another and then freak out because the physics engine couldn’t figure out what was happening. Major cutscenes were completely ruined by strange graphical glitches, such as objects that characters were holding suddenly disappearing or becoming something else entirely.
So far, I have had 3 side quests just become undoable by virtue of a door not opening, or a character not being where they are supposed to be. One particularly interesting side quest involving a child predator would not progress past a certain point no matter how many times I reloaded the save. I ultimately had to load to a previous save and fail the quest because it was broken. This almost occurred in the main storyline, when one of the bosses I had to kill phased in and out of existence, stuck on the elevator he had arrived on.
It would be one thing if these glitches were just immersion breaking. But my experiences aren’t even the worst of what some players have been dealing with. Owners of current gen consoles can barely run the game at 15 frames per second, effectively making CP a slideshow. Other players can’t even launch the game, or can only run it for an hour at a time before their entire system crashes. For a full price $60 title, this is flat out unacceptable.
CDProjekt Red, to their credit, has apologized for these issues, and has promised to deliver fixes for the game as we move in to 2021. This is comforting, given their track record with games and supporting them beyond launch. Going into CP’s launch, the company had a large amount of goodwill with their player base, which should mean that CDPR gets a little bit of a pass here.
That is, unless they told early release reviewers that the game could only be reviewed on PC. In what seems like a hilarious use of corporate power given the game’s main storyline, CDPR told all reviewers that the game could not be reviewed on console before the launch proper. Why? Because they knew that the game wasn’t ready for current gen consoles, and unwilling to delay any further, made this choice so they didn’t get negative reviews prior to launch. This has caused good will to dry up for the company, and along with the game’s numerous technical issues, has resulted in Sony taking it off the PlayStation Store until further notice. There is also a class action lawsuit in the works against CDPR, and based on what players have experienced, it seems likely they will settle.
THE VERDICT
So; what’s the conclusion? Should you buy this game? Does the game have value? Did it live up to its hype?
Let me start by saying this. Cyberpunk 2077 is a good game, and a solid AAA title. There’s no denying the work and attention to detail that went into making this experience. It has something to offer for every kind of gamer, and was frankly a joy to play over the course of 120 hours.
With that said; the game’s problems, technical issues, and slimy business tactics by its developers prevent it from becoming a great game. I say this not in the context of the hype, but in the context of what CDPR promised for the players. It fails to be the next gen gaming experience that it was touted to be.
If you are a PC gamer or owner of a next gen console, you can probably check out Cyberpunk now and have a good experience, but in my opinion, waiting may pay off in the long run. Having your first playthrough without the glitches that so many players have seen would change the overall journey drastically. If you own a current gen console, you should consider holding off for the time being until CDPR patches the game into a playable state.
Feel free to leave a comment on how you felt about Cyberpunk, what your experiences were, and how you would rate the game. I’m always looking for outside feedback to temper my analysis and having your input would help me greatly. I’ll also list my PC’s specs below so you can see what hardware I have and what that translated into as far as framerate and graphical fidelity are concerned.
Till next time gamers, thanks for stopping by!
My Specs:
Intel i7 7700K @ 4.3 GhZ
16 GB Trident Z @ 3600 MhHz
NVIDIA GTX 1080 Asus Strix Model
Games files ran on: 500 GB Samsung Pro SSD, 2.5” form factor
