Too much has been said about Cyberpunk's buggy launch, it's overpromising marketing campaign, and the lack of dialogue depth and RPG mechanics. But coming back to it after 3 years and a complete overhaul of gameplay mechanics, it's hard not to love the pieces, if not the totality, of this mess.
The moment-to-moment gameplay is exceptional - blasting gangoons with a modded-out power shotgun before dashing into cover to recover RAM doesn't get old - but the quieter moments are what really stand out. Basking in the neon glow of some dirty alley in Kabuki, covered in the blood of your last gig while Coltrane comes on the radio. Reading the background of your target in the fixer's attachment while stalking some corpo stooge - and being surprised when Silverhand appears in the corner of your eye just to admonish you.
In fact, this game's greatest asset (besides the unparalleled world of Night City) is Keanu's stellar work as the resurrected rockerboy. Where the game stumbles is gluing all of this together into one cohesive whole. When the cyberpunk genre trappings hit, they hit. But too often these thought-provoking stories are marred by their marriage to gameplay. An AI cabbie experiencing multiple personality disorder? Great! Repeatedly following 7 basically identical cars at lackadaisical speed while a (god help me) audio recording plays? Boring as shit!
Often the best moments I had in Cyberpunk had nothing to do with the main quest or curated side stories. Just the ambience of being a small-time mercenary doing a gig in an intricately detailed shanty, discovering a datashard that contains delightful worldbuilding mumbo jumbo. "Of course our target was a Militech mole - he defected from the Soviets after the Fourth Corporate War!" This is when I'm locked into 2077's earnestly goofy wavelength, reveling in a totemic entry into the genre canon. But then the gig is over, I drop the key item into the drop point for the umpteenth time, and open the map to look for the next hustle to cross off my checklist. It could be a preem gig, but there's a lot of slag to sift through to find it.
The moment-to-moment gameplay is exceptional - blasting gangoons with a modded-out power shotgun before dashing into cover to recover RAM doesn't get old - but the quieter moments are what really stand out. Basking in the neon glow of some dirty alley in Kabuki, covered in the blood of your last gig while Coltrane comes on the radio. Reading the background of your target in the fixer's attachment while stalking some corpo stooge - and being surprised when Silverhand appears in the corner of your eye just to admonish you.
In fact, this game's greatest asset (besides the unparalleled world of Night City) is Keanu's stellar work as the resurrected rockerboy. Where the game stumbles is gluing all of this together into one cohesive whole. When the cyberpunk genre trappings hit, they hit. But too often these thought-provoking stories are marred by their marriage to gameplay. An AI cabbie experiencing multiple personality disorder? Great! Repeatedly following 7 basically identical cars at lackadaisical speed while a (god help me) audio recording plays? Boring as shit!
Often the best moments I had in Cyberpunk had nothing to do with the main quest or curated side stories. Just the ambience of being a small-time mercenary doing a gig in an intricately detailed shanty, discovering a datashard that contains delightful worldbuilding mumbo jumbo. "Of course our target was a Militech mole - he defected from the Soviets after the Fourth Corporate War!" This is when I'm locked into 2077's earnestly goofy wavelength, reveling in a totemic entry into the genre canon. But then the gig is over, I drop the key item into the drop point for the umpteenth time, and open the map to look for the next hustle to cross off my checklist. It could be a preem gig, but there's a lot of slag to sift through to find it.