The indie games industry is, for the most part, devoid of skillful originality. Logically this seems false, as indie games have developed somewhat of an anti-AAA, counterculture stance of development, but that stance does not reflect an indication of skillful originality. If I had a dollar ever time I saw some indie developer claim they were reinventing the way that stories were told in games, and then ended up just making another first-person story-focused walking simulator, I could personally fund one of those games on Kickstarter. I have been lucky enough to play a few genuinely mechanically innovative or original indie games—Obra Dinn for its deduction-bending pocketwatch, or Gunpoint for its snappy mix of stealth and puzzle-solving—but I tend to find that games are at their best when they relish in their inspirations’ foundations, and seek out originality in other avenues. Undertale fleshes out a simple JRPG lookalike with a colorful and emotionally involved story; Stardew Valley uses its luscious palette and soundtrack to draw the player into its Harvest Moon-inspired world; and Celeste combines nailbiting difficulty with tight controls to make one of the best platformers of all time.

Hylics, from a foundational perspective, is pretty ordinary. It plays out like a very short, shrunken JRPG, as you build out a party of four members, gain money from combat to dress them up with hot gear, and learn new spells and moves to fight enemies. Outside of this gameplay foundation, however, Hylics has some of the most unique direction I’ve ever seen. Lindroth’s art is the result of an ayahuasca-induced orgy between Gaudi, Geiger, and Cronenberg, with grotesque and pungent portraits of oil and clay composing an abstract and arid world. Expressionist, polygonal shapes and structures pierce through the epidermis of this utterly strange and esoteric world; whilst randomly generated text produces order from chaos, strangeness from normalcy, madness from truth. In this manner it produced an emotion that I previously thought to be precluded in games—that of utter strangeness and discovery. It is, in this manner, a production of hinged unhingedness, pieced together from the digested scraps of autophiliac artistry.

“Truth is… the game was rigged from the start.”

Cyberpunk 2077 is as wide as an ocean, but as deep as a puddle. Except this puddle isn’t only shallow; it’s corroded, maligned and anatomically faulty.

After 16 hours of play and 17 crashes later on my PlayStation 5, I simply cannot put up with the current state of the game. When paying $60 for a game, the bare minimum I expect is for the product to run on a system it’s been marketed on. The game is unfinished, only holding itself together off of the backs of CD Projekt Red’s overworked staff.

It’s impossible to talk about Cyberpunk 2077 without addressing its marketing hype. Since April, I couldn’t go a single commercial break without seeing Keanu Reeves ask one question, “In 2077, what makes someone a criminal?” It’s a slick piece of marketing. Brilliantly lit shots of the player character racking up some mayhem are interlaced with shots of Keanu Reeves hopping into a sports car. It looks cool, it looks fun, it looks like something you need to have.

Re-watching the ad after playing the game, I found that only three shots are actual gameplay footage. The rest of the CGI is what I hoped I’d be able to do, but can’t. Unlike what’s featured in the ad, you can’t swiftly slide on the roof of a car into cover. Damaging limbs with your katana doesn’t phase the enemy. You can’t even shoot a gun when you’re driving.

Comparing the E3 footage of a product to the product on release is nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes the comparison is straight up laughable, i.e. a Watch Dogs, Anthem or The Division. Sometimes it’s laughable that people are mad in the first place, like Spider-Man’s “puddlegate.” Cyberpunk 2077 falls in line with the former. Bustling streets are devoid of pedestrians, and when there are pedestrians they’re likely glitched halfway into the ground or t-posing in an adjacent corner. There are barely any vehicles about, the lighting is reminiscent of a PS3 port of a PS4 game and the texture quality leaves a lot to be desired.

Why this game is as graphically demanding as it is ponders me. I played Red Dead Redemption 2 on a DVR Xbox One and I never experienced a crash. I played The Last of Us Part 2 on the original fat PS4 and it ran swimmingly. Cyberpunk 2077 does not look any better than these games, yet it chugs along like an out-of-his-prime athlete who’s trying to prove he’s still got it.

On the PS5, Cyberpunk 2077 hits 60 fps in most areas. However, the game doesn’t seem to be able to handle the ability to sprint. Sprinting from one block to another would either make the game crash or load in PS2-quality textures for several seconds before the up-ressed textures are plopped in.

The only element holding the allure of Night City together is the art direction and sound design. This soundtrack is absolutely killer. From thumping and throttling bass to pristine electro-pop, Cyberpunk 2077 has it all. It’s insane to think about the amount of big name artists providing new songs to the game. A$AP Rocky, Run The Jewels, Grimes and more. These songs keep the spirit of Night City alive, so it’s a real shame that you’ll never know who is performing each track. Cyberpunk 2077 does not showcase the names of any song during gameplay. When changing radio stations, you will have no clue what artist is performing each song and you won’t even know the song title. The only way to figure it out is to either scavenge YouTube or Spotify. GTA did this in the 90s, why can’t Cyberpunk 2077 do it in 2020?

UI decisions only get progressively more confusing. Even after attaining the cybernetic upgrade allowing you to see your ammo count (which is a really odd thing you have to earn), I had numerous glitches which didn’t allow me to see what ammo I had in my holster. When walking along the streets of Night City, subtitles for NPCs are unreadable. Changing the subtitle scaling does nothing to suffice this. I experienced another glitch where my health would not appear until a complete game restart.

These terrible UI decisions rear their ugly head in inventory management. While you are able to sort between long range and melee weapons, you are unable to sort between the various classifications of these weapons. What if I only wanted to see the pistols in my inventory? Tough luck. Want to lock a favorite item? Can’t. Want to sort armor value? Can’t. What about a warning when you’re storing an equipped item? Na-da. What about bulk marking items for sale? Prepare to press that triangle button because you can’t. You can’t even turn off the “compare weapons” function.

Figuring out what any of these items do is a problem in its own right. Cyberpunk 2077 introduces itself terribly. No matter what life path you choose at the beginning, you will always do the same opening mission. In fact, through my 16 hours of play, the life choice has not affected anything other than flavor text and romance options. For a game promising endless possibilities, it’s a real low blow to those wishing to partake in additional replays.

The first six hours of Cyberpunk 2077 are convoluted and overwhelming. When you exit from your apartment and step foot in Night City, your senses are immediately flooded with map markers. Exclamation points, vehicles, crimes, you name it. While you are intended to pursue the main story missions until you explore these parts, the game doesn’t stop you from getting lost inside the mess of markers. Cyberpunk 2077 takes the Ubisoft approach to open world design, pounding the player with goals and tasks to accomplish in order to try to attain a feedback loop of quest-kill-reward. While games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, Horizon: Zero Dawn and hell even GTA 5 have moved beyond flooding the senses, Cyberpunk 2077 takes a massive step back.

The means through progressing Night City are also a mess. Driving is terrible. Each vehicle feels like you are driving on ice, slipping and sliding and making imprecise turns until you reach your destination. I feel as if I have no control. Braking is also a lost cause, as slamming the breaks will still cause your car to slide plenty of meters before a full stop. Calling your car to your location is also hit or miss. Sometimes the vehicle arrives without an issue in five seconds. Sometimes it gets stuck on the bridge above you. Sometimes your vehicle phases other cars out of existence in order to reach you. Sometimes it bursts under a car, sending the other vehicle flying to hyperspace.

When you arrive at your destination and proceed with combat, it’s an overall mediocre experience. Enemy AI is completely brain dead with Skyrim bandit level of awareness if you choose to sneak. Enemies are also bullet spongey as hell, sometimes standing out in the open while you nail shot after shot at their unprotected head. Shooting doesn’t feel like it has weight and neither does melee combat. Melee combat is a particularly awkward experience as it’s hard to tell at what range I am hitting the enemy. Sometimes I feel like I’m a proper distance away and the enemy lands a punching blow, other times it’s vice versa. Combat works and isn’t necessarily broken, but there is little to no skill involved. It is simply a duel over who has the higher DPS.

The loot system is also complete shite. You are given way too many things that don’t matter. What’s the purpose of collecting junk? Why can’t I use any of it? Why can I collect vinyls but not get new music tracks from them? You can never get attached to your weapon or clothes choices since DPS reigns supreme.

The skill trees are also largely irrelevant, as the only thing that matters in combat is DPS. The only benefits of skill trees seem to be more dialogue options (which still are essentially flavor text), unlocking doors and breaking into cars. Perk points essentially only give marginal percentage boosts. Weapon mods are also largely irrelevant as suppressors seem to do nothing and changing your sight only brings marginal benefits.

I’ve gone this far without even mentioning the story, which is just OK. The big draw to the game is obviously Keanu, but his performance is fairly lackluster. Reeves’ strength as an actor comes from his stunt-work and monotone voice which works for characters like Neo and John Wick. However, Johnny Silverhand is supposed to be this bodacious and otherworldly presence with endless charisma. Reeves’ doesn’t deliver that. He’s far more “aging rocker” than he is “uncanned ball of chaos,” which I believe CD Projekt Red was shooting for.

While the story has many interesting beats to follow and intrigue abound, it simply shoves too much information at one time. It’s hard to get attached to a character when in the same scene, the game tries to introduce another. After 16 hours, I feel like I’ve progressed nowhere.

Everything just feels wrong. Driving feels wrong, combat feels wrong, exploration feels wrong, mission structure feels wrong, looting feels wrong, it graphically looks unfinished, characters don’t move correctly which creates an “uncanny valley” effect.

The game advertised everything you could do, but in reality your options are cut woefully short. Why can’t I customize V’s appearance after character creation? Why is there no body slider for V? Why can’t I smoke and get plastered? Why can’t I see my character outside of mirrors and third person driving? Why do the police teleport to me when I tap a person with my car when driving? Why am I able to rob people without them caring? Why are there no trains? Why do crowds not react when I’m standing butt naked in downtown Night City? Why are there no garages to store my vehicles? Why can’t I customize my apartment? What’s the point of the apartment? Why can’t I access braindance for anything other than story missions? Why, no matter what I choose, is V the same character from when I started to when I finished?

And holy shit the bugs. V has been completely naked for most of my playthrough on my end. Even when she’s not in the nude, her breasts pop through her clothes. Most recently, she has lost her hair. My first minute of the game I had a t-posing citizen. During the first car chase, my camera bugged so I could see my headless malformed character shooting down enemies with no arms and a slug-like body. At random moments the game will not have NPCs move their mouths for dialogue. Every major story mission cutscene I’ve had a visual bug which takes me out of the experience. Keanu has swapped poses mid sentence and in the most emotional scene with Jackie, his model got swapped for an assault rifle. For an hour of playtime, my character was completely invulnerable. Even after the 1.04 hotfix, nothing regarding performance has fundamentally changed. I am crashing just as often and experiencing just as many bugs as when I began.

So after 16 hours, I am done. The game is too unstable to play in sessions longer than an hour, visual bugs have ruined my experience, the mission structure is outdated, gunplay is weak and melee is weaker, there is too much happening in the story to get me invested, none of my choices matter leaving me not attached to my own character, AI is brain dead and I am not having fun.

Cyberpunk 2077 was marketed to be everything that it’s not. It is not the evolution of GTA open world structure, it is an Ubisoft-esque experience with light RPG elements. At its best, Cyberpunk 2077 is average, but is that an experience you’ve been waiting nine years for?

Wait until it is patched, if it ever is.