Eight years. Nearly eight years since this game was first shown off and FINALLY (Insert The Rock animation) Cyberpunk 2077 is here! Despite being aware of this game since it’s teaser trailer in January 2013, I didn’t really know much about it until I booted it up for the first time on Wednesday. You see very early on the marketing and promise of the game sold me. It looked like a mix of Deus Ex and GTA in a large, very detailed open world with strong RPG elements. Once I knew that I went dark aside from one Night City Wire episode. I didn’t want to overexpose myself – to the point where I was only told on Twitter a week ago that you started off the game choosing between a corpo, nomad or street kid.
On that note, I decided to go with street kid. I didn’t like the idea of doing corpo on my first run and between the two remaining options, I decided I would rather be a city dweller. My first impressions of the game were strong, starting in a bar that just fit the mood of the world perfectly. Unfortunately, ten minutes later I was watching my character’s head spinning around involuntarily before the PS5 simply turned itself off. A hard crash. The first crash of any kind that I have had on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. I ended up having to remove the power cable and then reconnect it just to get the system to turn back on.
Since that crash I have spent my time with the game concerned about what is around the next corner. I go online and see people talking about having five crashes in two hours and other such horror stories. However, I have to say that my experience since that crash has been pretty flawless. I had one instance of Jackie, my partner in crime, attempting to sit on a chair and parking himself in mid-air about two foot from the seat, but the glitch corrected itself in a few seconds.
Now I should clarify that I am playing the PS4 version on PS5 via backwards compatibility which does apparently provide significant advantages over both the PS4 and Xbox One versions. Load times are quick, with less than ten seconds between pressing continue and being in the Night City. Next-gen consoles also run at 60fps and in my experience a consistent 60fps, while last-gen consoles are set to 30fps but apparently suffer regular dips. Graphics are also decent, but you can tell it is a slightly upscaled PS4 game and that we will see a huge leap when the native next-gen versions drop in 2021. Apparently, graphics can be improved by turning off the film grain filter in the settings, although I must admit when I toggled it off I didn’t notice much difference.
According to the PlayStation 5 stats, I have played fourteen hours so far, but I am most definitely still in the tutorial phase of the game. I think in total I have completed four missions, but with each one, I have taken as much time as possible exploring the areas and honestly getting to grips with the large amount of mechanics involved in the game. For the most part, things are pretty intuitive. Gunplay feels good, melee combat is serviceable and traversal in-game is fluid. It’s not all good news though. I’m not a fan of the hacking mini-game and the driving is objectively bad.
Another slight disappointment is the character customisation. The initial character creation is good and offers a lot of variety but there are some glaring omissions, such as not being able to edit body shape. Also once you get in-game very little can be altered. You can’t go get a haircut, get tattoos, or change your core appearance outside of clothes. This isn’t a deal-breaker by any means but it does seem like a strange oversight in 2020.
For the most part though, I absolutely love the game so far. The setting is incredible, the characters are strong and the narrative, while far from fully blossoming where I am at just now is showing some serious potential. I get the feeling that I am going to be happy to stick around in the world and do the litany of side quests that crop up via the various side characters because of how strong the supporting cast is.
One thing I do want to touch on is the poor way that the review process was handled by CD Projekt RED. Reviewers were given the game a week before embargo, which given the size of Cyberpunk 2077 was cutting it fine to say the least. Also, only PC codes were given out as it was the most stable and visually pleasing platform. Console codes didn’t land in reviewers hands until Wednesday, the day before launch. Reviewers also had their hands tied in several ways, like not being able to use their own screenshots. There is controlling the narrative and then going overboard. I would argue that this review process turned into a debacle and will not be soon forgotten.
Lastly, I want to touch on the burning question: should CDPR have released the game in this state? Well, first of all, I’m actually surprised they were allowed to. Again, my time with the game has been relatively bug-free, but the internet is bursting with videos of glitches and angry tweets about hard crashes. I would argue though that a game as huge as this with as many moving parts must be a nightmare to QA test, especially in a pandemic.
It could well be that the easiest and quickest way to fix the game was to put it in the mass publics hands and get feedback on a large scale, all the while putting out several patches a week. The problem with that though is that people didn’t ask to be guinea pigs. They wanted a finished product. And while it is completely ironic that the same morons who were sending death threats to the dev team after the November 19th delay are the same people now whinging that the game has released with bugs, the whole thing is a PR nightmare for the company and has caused their stock to plummet 29%.
I will review Cyberpunk once I finish the game, but I expect that to be in early 2021 as I want to see and experience all the world has to offer. Whether or not to recommend this game is a difficult one. Technical issues aside it is a must buy in my eyes, but at the moment the experience is going to vary from user to user. If your excitement is through the roof like mine was you may be willing to chance it. None of the bugs appear to be game-breaking and CD Projekt RED are patching the game on a daily basis so there is every chance the gameplay experience will improve at a faster rate than you actually play it. If you are on the fence however there is absolutely no harm in waiting a few months for more patches and possibly even the native next-gen version.
-VDZE 🧐