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Cyberpunk 2077 Review

This review was written in December of 2021 so most of the issues in later sections have been fixed by the time of posting (January 2024).

Cyberpunk 2077 is the game I wanted to hate but couldn’t no matter how hard I tried. I can’t hate it because CD Project RED made this game for me. They put in everything I love from hot androids to Keanu Reeves. Glitched with a love of all things Sci-fi.

Patch 666

This is a game that simply was not ready. A game a studio as small as CD Project RED should not have even tried to make. A game that was announced too far in advance to mouth-breathing gamers who can’t help but hype every pixel that gets announced to them as the second coming of the one true king. As no surprise to me but as a huge surprise to the gamers who fool themselves every single time a new game comes out, Cyberpunk 2077 was easily a year too early. I personally held off from getting it as a statement to the current state of the gaming industry. Where every r/gaming neckbeard will start a hype train only to then start a hate train when the game they hyped eventually comes out and shockingly to them ends up not being the one true king in playable form. I also stayed away as a statement to how so many of these games just come unready and then have to be patched and updated over the next month to years. I hate how modern gaming is tricking people into paying for unfinished products while rushing to finish them in real time after release.

Due to all that I wrote off Cyperpunk 2077 before it even came out because I saw this coming a solid 2 years before its first launch date. But… after the release mess, I kept a side eye on it and an ear in its general direction. The talk of the game basically disappeared over the following months of its release. Gamers are simple creatures and they migrated to new hype/hate trains in pursuit of discovering the one true king. While gamers as a whole moved on, CD Project RED was busy working on their unfinished game. Patching it left and right. This game was so broken that even when I played it a solid year later (October 2021) it was still glitchy in some places.

The game was fully playable now (at least for my play-through). The glitches I ran into were nothing truly game-breaking but immersion-breaking. I would walk around and find people cowering for no reason. Making me think it was part of whatever I was doing but ended up being a consistent weird glitch. Other than that there were a few places that seemed fine to stand or walk on that I would get stuck and have to jump continuously to escape. There were also pop-in and texture loading issues but I will cater that to the platform I played it on which is the Xbox Series S. I chose to play it on the Series S over my $2000 PC because I wanted the Xbox achievements. I realize is probably very dumb but I still ended up having an amazing time playing Cyberpunk 2077. From my experience it is very playable on the Xbox Series S. It won’t look great though so you have to be able to look past that. If you can look past that you will get a solid frame rate with a good population density. I personally didn’t really notice that it looked bad until I compared it to PC gameplay on very high settings.

Cyberpunk?

Now that we got all that out of the way I can finally start talking about what I think about the game. Cyberpunk 2077 is basically cyberpunk Grand Theft Auto. I’ll be honest, I think it's better than GTA. It has a much higher level of depth from the story and side quests. The cyberpunk genre is often considered to be style over substance in the sci-fi world. Which is a fair critique, at least at first and with certain examples. Over the decades in which cyberpunk has existed, it has taken in many deep elements from the overarching Sci-fi ecosystem. Expanding on the day-to-day aspects of transhumanism which is usually represented on a much grander and almost metaphysical level when it comes to Sci-fi as a whole. The idea of corporate control to such an extreme the government almost seemingly doesn’t exist anymore or has become one and the same with the corporations. The pristine beauty and lights on one street with the filth and crime in the allies next to it. The individual aspects of the people who live in either or both of these places. Cyberpunk has become more than just style but it would be lying to say it's lost any style.

CD Project RED did not hold back on the big questions and the fine details that I love about Sci-fi. It is rich in the pure upfront aspects of the genre as a whole but they were not shy one bit about digging deep into the philosophy and psychology that makes up the Sci-fi genre. The characters of Cyberpunk 2077 are morally grey or straight-up evil scum bags. Which I love. I don’t think there is anything wrong with irredeemably bad individuals. This is something I feel is almost treated as “bad writing” when it comes to modern writing. Yet when people see a character who is inherently “evil” they love them. I admit it can be lazy in a lot of cases but in the right context, it can lead to a type of depth in its own way.

Neon Lights and Silverhands.

I loved Cyberpunk 2077’s story. It was so full of “Cyberpunk”. From a strong Japanese influence to sketchy characters trying to survive. The game's pacing is excellent too. From creating your character to the title drop that doesn’t come in until a solid 2 hours of gameplay. The game gets you into its flow state very naturally. You play as “V”, depending on the path you pick in character creation, the start of the game will play out a little differently. I picked “Corpo” for my playthrough and I might be biased but it seems to be the one most naturally connected to the overall story. Just based on where the story goes regardless of the path you take. Corpo in my opinion seems to fit the overall story best. But really it doesn’t matter. Pick the one you like the most. It's really only for the first 30 minutes or so. Following that all paths end up in the same place with some convo options stemming from your path choice.

Regardless of the path you choose as V, you will end up meeting and working with your good friend Jackie. The two of you end up getting yourselves in a lot of trouble. As V you meet new people, some friends, some enemies, all while making a name for yourself in Night City with your best buddy Keanu Reaves better known in the game as Johnny Silverhand. If you haven’t played the game I won’t say how you two meet but it’s one of my favourite parts of the game. I love the Sci-fi of it all.

Never bring a katana to a shootout?

The gameplay is what you would expect from a GTA-style game. You can steal cars, run away from the police, play story missions, side quests, gigs, and all the other things that come with this style of game. All that being said unlike most GTA games this is a fairly fully featured RPG with levels and talent points. Personally speaking, I don’t see much gameplay diversity in the talent builds. Fundamentally when it really comes down to it, it ends up just being which type of gun you prefer using and putting points into your talents according to that. The guns themselves don’t feel greatly different to me. Sure there is a noticeable difference between a shotgun and a pistol but the point I’m trying to make here is the talents don’t feel like they add much of a difference that isn’t already obvious between a shotgun and a pistol. I think the big variation in build is the option to go “hacker” which in fantasy terms is closest to a mage build. Or go fully melee. I would split it into 3 categories with options to meld between them. Hacker, Melee, and Gun builds.

What I disliked.

The tutorial at the start of the game was very clunky. It just felt long and tedious to me. If you haven’t played the game before it is worth doing but a very easy skip if you have already done it. If you have played the game already you probably know what I’m talking about and if you haven’t played the game yet you will see. It’s not horrible just a bit immersion-breaking and longer than I feel it needs to be.

I really didn’t like Braindance. For those who don’t know what “Braindance” is, here’s a quote from the official Cyberpunk 2077 Wiki.

“A braindance, commonly abbreviated to BD, allows the viewer to relive someone else's memory with all the senses, including emotions.” - [https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Braindance]

It sounds a lot cooler than it is. It ends up being a bit of a tedious mini-game where you enter what is basically 3d video editing software to find clues for some of your missions. After a point, I found myself not even listening to the dialogue and just quickly trying to scan through the timeline to find all the clues as fast as possible so I could get out of the Braindance. It’s a very cool premise which I think works great from a cinematic and story standpoint but not the most fun for me when it comes to gameplay.

Lastly the overall feel of the combat. CD Project RED has never made a first-person shooter game before and it shows with how the combat feels. I can’t speak for the PC mouse and keyboard but on the controller, it is a very floaty, slip-and-slide mess. I think it’s possibly not even fully tuned. Due to how unfinished the game launched it is very possible they just got the gunplay into working order and moved on. That is really how it feels to me. Even over 100 hours into my first playthrough it still feels very clunky to me.

Final Verdict.

I love this game. I would even go as far as saying my options on Cyberpunk 2077 is biased because it really does feel like CD Project RED made this game for me. Aside from the glitches still in the game and a few things I would like to work on, Cyberpunk 2077 is just an amazingly deep game that respects and loves the material and genre as much as I do. It also has a lot of Keanu Reeves who is basically my religion. I played it at a time when I was falling out of love with fantasy and falling in love with Sci-fi and Cyberpunk 2077 helped me fall in love and respect the genre even more. If Sci-fi, cyberpunk, Japanese influence, crime, hot androids, and Keanu Reeves are your thing then Cyberpunk 2077 is your game.

Welcome to Night City.

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