Review: Cyberpunk 2077
At this point, I’m about 15-20 hours into Cyberpunk 2077 and I can already tell that it’s going to be one of those games that I’m going to sink hundreds of hours into. Since I won’t be able to do a proper review for some time, I figured that I would provide some quick first impressions.
I feel like I need to start this off by saying that, despite my love for CD Projekt Red’s Witcher series, there has just always been something about Cyberpunk 2077 that had me skeptical. For as great as the trailers and demos were, the scope of what that team was trying to deliver just seemed unrealistic. For that reason alone, my expectations for the game were low. At the time that I’m writing this, Cyberpunk 2077 is out and it’s running like dogshit on the PS4, Xbox One, and most PC’s. That’s unacceptable. If you were planning to play it on any of those platforms, hold off. If you bought it already or were planning to get it for Christmas, either get you a refund or put it on the shelf for a few months. However, I’m playing it on the Xbox Series X, and even though it hasn’t been optimized to take advantage of the Series X’s extra power and SSD, I’m having an absolute blast with it.
Whether it’s Fallout, Mass Effect, Borderlands, or Deus Ex, my favorite moments in those games are the ones that focus on exploration as opposed to combat. When you walk around Skyrim, you can’t help but be impressed with the scale of that world. You don’t just run through it to your next objective. You walk around, you observe, and you try to get a feel for what life is like for these characters. There’s so much lore to be found in diaries and optional NPC discussions that you’re afraid that you’re going to miss a single detail. If you’re one of those people, Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be a problem in the best way imaginable.
If you were to take Deus Ex: Human Revolution, add in a dash of Chronicles of Riddick, sprinkle in some Fallout, and blend it with The Witcher 3, you would have yourself a Cyberpunk 2077 cocktail. For as high as CD Projekt Red’s aspirations were with this game, I’m so impressed with what they have produced here. Night City is incredible. It’s part Judge Dredd, part Fifth Element. There’s so much to do–maybe too much.
Is it buggy? Holy shit, it’s so buggy. It’s a lot like what we have come to expect from Bethesda’s games. With games that big in scale and having so many options, I can only imagine how hard that is to account for all of that. That said, this thing is going to need a lot of work. I can handle floating NPC’s and the fact that my character is randomly butt ass naked in cutscenes, but when you can’t complete certain objectives because quests aren’t triggering correctly or the game is crashing, that’s an issue. I wouldn’t say that it’s broken, though. I have yet to reach a point that has kept me from wanting to play more. It’s usually something silly, like, getting a text for a mission from a person that you’re literally on the phone with talking about another mission. The side mission structure itself is a bit of a mess.
There’s just so much to appreciate about this game that I have a hard time focusing on the negatives. Based on the developer, you knew the city was going to be fun to explore, and you knew that the stories were going to be interesting, but I can’t say that I was expecting the combat to be a positive. For as great as Witcher 3 is, I think that we can all agree that the combat is by far the worst part of that game. With this being an FPS and using guns, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m pleasantly surprised by it. The same can be said for the driving mechanics. Despite a fairly standard fast travel system, I find myself choosing to drive around to locations, no matter how far away they are. The combination of the vehicle’s interiors and the city itself make for a submersive experience. It’s also just fun.
Cyberpunk 2077 also thrives when it comes to making your decisions feel like they have real weight to them. There’s no clear indication of what’s right and wrong. I had an interaction with a neighbor of mine that was going through a hard time and was contemplating suicide. I went down, I had a pleasant conversation with him, and I left thinking that I had just saved that man’s life. A few hours later, I returned to my apartment only to find that police had taped off my neighbors’ door. It would seem that my talk didn’t work. Was it for shock value? Was that going to happen regardless of how I interacted with him? Well, after doing some research online, no, it wasn’t going to happen regardless. I was trying to be the standard Paragon. Focus on the good things. Encourage him. “You have so much to live for.” It’s not that easy, though. Sometimes you have to talk about the dark stuff. Sometimes you have to stop choosing what you think is the right response so that you get more XP and address it as a person dealing with that situation. When the opportunity arose to dig deeper into his problems, I chose to be friendly and talk about his taste in motorcycles. It got a laugh, sure, but it had a consequence. All of this was from a 5-minute side mission.
In its current state, this game is unlike anything that I have ever experienced in gaming. It’s a beautiful mess of a game, and I sincerely hope that future patches can fix the game for last-gen players. This is one that I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on.
