Cyberpunk 2077 is a 2020 open world RPG game set in the Cyberpunk universe created by Mike Pondsmith way back in 1988 and is developed by CD Projekt Red.
I remember first seeing this game announced way back before even the now last generation of consoles were out (Xbox One and PS4) and even though it didn’t show much the visual style looked real cool, sort of early day Ridley Scott vibes with Blade Runner and Alien. Then after not seeing anything for a while the game slipped my mind and I totally forgot about it. It wasn’t until late 2019 that I realised the new Cyberpunk game that was due out the following year was the same game I saw announced 7 years ago. So now since I was suddenly reminded about it my excitement was at an all time high, then after a few delays and a rough year past the game was finally in my hands and I was ready to jump into the cyberpunk world of Night City.
Anyone who has been following this game it will be no surprise that my initial experience with the game was nothing short of poor. I initially tried to play the game on my base version on the Xbox One, with no such luck and then tried for a short time on the Playstation 4 however both versions were running like a ps2 game rather than something that has 20 years of advancements if an advantage. The framerate on both Ps4 and Xbox one were abysmal, sitting at around 12-15 fps during all scenarios and dipping to 5fps during any gun fight. Texture wouldn’t load characters would phase through objects or freeze in a T pose state and on the Ps4 version i couldn’t even get to the character creation without the game crashing multiple times. It was so bad I deemed it unplayable and actually shelled out on a new Xbox Series X in order to play it properly.
So for the remainder of the review i will be focusing on my experience with the game on Series X rather than last gen because as mentioned above it was unplayable.
So since this game is kind of ‘huge’ I feel the best way to review the game is to talk about my experiences from the very start of the game to the very end of my 100% completion. So let’s start with the character customization. So it was reported that the character creation would be the most in depth and detailed customization ever giving players the choice to customize gender,body type and physical appearances similar to the choices people make today in the world, which is really cool and a big step forward in equality for gamers of all types because it isn’t just limiting the player to just Male and their attributes and Female and their attributes. However the customization was a little undercooked in my opinion. It has all the features you expect from a character creation feature like we have seen in plenty of games before it, the only difference is customizing if you have a penis or vagina , Pecs or Breasts. But everything else that can give your character some personality and uniqueness is fairly basic. Everything is just preset options to choose from rather than doing something like Fallout 4 where you could literally mould your face. The game instead opts for fairly generic looking models and doesn’t really give you much to work with, yes they implemented the option to be pretty much any gender you want to be with genitals and romance options in the game, but what’s the point having a game character that represents you in the way of gender when its doesnt let you make the character resemble you physically, no changing of characters weight or height either which seems like an odd choice. (Side note make sure your final look is what you want because once the game starts there is no way to change it other than clothing).
Now with the story you have three life paths to choose from; Corpo, Nomad and Street kid. During my playthrough i chose the Nomad life path, now the only difference in the path choices are the prologue missions everything after that is the same i watched the prologues for the previous 2 life paths on Youtube in order to get more of a understanding of the different choices but evidently they all eventually rear into the same territory to get the story on the same path across all three starting life choices: this give some replay value for the opening scenes but not much for the rest of the game.
After completing the prologue in jumped straight into the open and began doing side activities, these include gigs which are short missions which take around 10 mins or so to complete, then there are side quests which tangle in with the story a little and gives a little bit more narrative to certain characters these take anywhere from 30 mins to 1 hour to complete per mission. Finally there are NCPD scanner missions, which take around a couple of mins to complete and are basically just crimes around the city which require you to grab some evidence to kill and a gang boss or just simply eliminate the gang in the area. Some of the gigs are fun to play the CyberPsycho missions were a highlight and basically task the player into a small but sometimes tricky boss fight and leaves you the option to kill or spare them for NCPD with little consequence over choice despite some slight dialogue changes. And the NCPD scanner missions are just copy and paste of the same 3 missions over and over again in different terrains across the map and can become quite the chore to pull yourself to get them done even if they can be done really really quickly. Side missions however are where this game shines. The side missions are full of interesting characters and short stories that at times I was like this is really something, this is such great storytelling. The quest line with Jefferson and his wife Elizibeth and the one with River an Ex NCPD officer being the highlight of the side quests with the latter actually really unnerving me with its atmospheric storytelling and its use of the brain dance sequences along with the voice acting. It gave me chills.
However after completing all the side quests i found the story quite underwhelming for a few reasons; One, it didn’t quite live up to the side missions when they were at their best and Two the balancing of the game had drastically took a dip since completing all the side missions and gigs had levelled me up and supplied me with weapons that just tore through enemies with ease even when the difficulty was cranked up to the highest myself having 3 iconic weapons that destroyed everything in its path one of which was the Comrades Hammer a pistol that one shot everything including most bosses, with a few exceptions like Adam Smasher that took about 5 hits….the final boss… five hits with a pistol. This could easily be fixed by upscaling the enemies a little kind of like what Borderlands does to keep the game challenging even when you’re a walking powerhouse. Cyberpunk just didn’t do that and made the gameplay too easy, yeah i could have dumped the weapons to give myself a challenge but why would the game let you get these weapons so early on and easily, if it didn’t want you to use them? However despite the story falling short in narrative especially the ending falling flat ( yes all of them, i played all the endings) it’s hard to denounce just how good the voice acting is in this game it’s all top notch, The main character of V is exceptional and all the supporting characters are also superb with each character moment given their all in emotional range even it loses something because of drab narrative, the voice work is truly exceptional despite not having big names to its cast, except for Keanu Reeves of course, who knocks it out of the park as Johnny Silverhand and his and V’s relationship is definitely is the best part of the story.
Playing on the Xbox Series X in 4k in performance mode was exceptional when the game did what it was supposed to. However even though the series X fixes the bugs of slow loading textures, Crashes and the framerate the game is still overcrowded with bugs here are some bugs i encountered playing through the game.
- The camera would shift back ever so slightly so when i looked down i could see inside of V’s character model
- Cars would spawn out of nowhere causing me to crash.
- People would T pose for no reason
- People would just Vanish
- People with missing limbs would get up and walk off
- Cars for purchase would sink into the ground when bought
- Guns wouldn’t load so V’s empty hand would just be on screen
- When i call my car to pick me up it would sometimes drive past me and continue to drive until i couldn’t see it anymore
- When i call in my car it would spawn inside other cars
- I would just die for no reason after jumping on the spot.
- I would have the relic malfunction effect stuck on my screen until i reset the game
- I had the a subtitle from a side mission stuck on my screen for the last 15 hours of my playthrough which wouldn’t disappear even after resetting the console and turning off subtitles
- People would phase through objects
- The game wouldn’t trigger events, stopping me from progressing
- The game wouldn’t let me place a waypoint
- The time of day and weather would just change dramatically in a split second
- The games gives you a ripper dock upgrade to be able to jump high but this lets you jump through building walls about 6 feet high and fall through the map
- Cars would spawn in destroyed
- Character clothing wouldn’t load so I walked around looking like a smooth crotched, bald Ken Doll.
These are just some of the issues I encountered with many more scattered around the internet, so yeah even on newer gen hardware the game struggles to be playable at times.
Cyberpunk didn’t reach my expectations at all and has many more problems amidst the countless bugs and glitches and despite having a great visual style and pretty great graphics these are all hindered by too many problems severely out weighing the positive it has and its a real shame. However when the game was working properly and I was running through some of the superb side missions and listening to the superb voice acting the game can be enjoyable it’s just a shame all the rest wasn’t.
Final Score.
Title: Average
Cyberpunk 2077 may look visually pleasing when it works as intended but playing on last gen hardware is impossible and even on my Series X i encountered problems, Even though the positives are strong and there is fun to be had in places, Cyberpunk is breath-taking in a sense that I was losing breath through sighs of disappointment.
Head Over Reels 