I can't begin to say how disappointed I am by this game. I will admit that a large share of the issues I have with it come from the performance drop of playing on a base PlayStation 4, but I don't think that should take away from the fact that I DID have these issues.
This game is functionally BORKED on PS4. Texture pop in, impossibly low resolution, visual tears, freezes, crashes, the works. I fortunately haven't had visual bugs with characters and such, but the performance of the game is legitimately worse than honestly any other AAA game I've played, it really isn't even close. When exploring Night City (which is my favorite part of an open world game), I had to avoid combat and areas with lots of NPCs if I wanted the game to run at a reasonable framerate. This is a HUUUUGE issue, because Night City is filled with people chilling and gang members who want your ass beat.
These visual and performance issues take away from the strongest aspect of the game, the world design and fluidity of the experience. Night City is probably the most intricately designed open world I've explored before, with many layers, tunnels and pathways for you to dig through- just in the first area! But unfortunately when the visuals of the world are filtered through a low framerate and sub 720p, it becomes incredibly difficult to enjoy them.
But honestly, low resolution or unstable framerate aside, I'm not sure how much I would like this game. I don't really think the story (what I played of it) is well paced- they throw an absolutely ludicrous number of new characters at you in the first hours of this game that it was impossible for me to feel any genuine connection to them, save for Jackie.
This also feeds into the pacing of the gameplay, which once it leaves the linear opening, is incredibly overwhelming. Gone are the open world design philosophies of games like Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 3 or even Marvel's Spider-Man, where new side-quest and collectible types are doled out through the main campaign so you are given time to adapt to each one and familiarize yourself with what everything means. You jump into the Watson area of Night City and are instantly bombarded with dozens of map icons, none of which are introduced organically through the story.
I also just think that this game doesn't do anything special as an open world western RPG that hasn't been done before or better in its contemporaries. Painting everything in a slick coat of Cyberpunk-styled paint is all well and good, but if the gameplay feels formulaic there's very little to set it apart as the next evolution in open-world gaming that we were essentially promised through the years of marketing. Unfortunately, Cyberpunk is base level when it comes to its RPG gameplay. It has mediocre gun combat and even worse melee combat, decent driving, shoe-horned in stealth, shallow hacking, okay side-quest formats, and poorly laid out, not very impactful upgrades.
As I was walking around Night City taking in what I could of the world, characters and lore, it just made me want to hop back into other open world RPGs. It doesn't quite have the flexibility of Skyrim, the zaniness of GTA, FarCry or Just Cause or the creativity of Fallout, but falls in an okay middle ground that just comes off as samey.
This game should either A) have not released on the base last gen consoles or B) had another year of development, because there's just blatant levels of polish that aren't applied here, and I have no clue how some of these issues made it past QA testing.
I'm not completely regretting my purchase, because I got to be in the ground floor for the game and its discussion, and I split the price with a friend, making it not a huge financial blow for such an underwhelming product. If you don't have access to a good PC or an Xbox Series X, wait on this game. There are major technical issues on the Series S and PS5 versions as well, though the game looks far better. Price drops, patches, updates and DLC are innevitable, and I hope CDPR can turn this game around in the next few years, but as is this is genuinely not a game worth spending your money on.
This game is functionally BORKED on PS4. Texture pop in, impossibly low resolution, visual tears, freezes, crashes, the works. I fortunately haven't had visual bugs with characters and such, but the performance of the game is legitimately worse than honestly any other AAA game I've played, it really isn't even close. When exploring Night City (which is my favorite part of an open world game), I had to avoid combat and areas with lots of NPCs if I wanted the game to run at a reasonable framerate. This is a HUUUUGE issue, because Night City is filled with people chilling and gang members who want your ass beat.
These visual and performance issues take away from the strongest aspect of the game, the world design and fluidity of the experience. Night City is probably the most intricately designed open world I've explored before, with many layers, tunnels and pathways for you to dig through- just in the first area! But unfortunately when the visuals of the world are filtered through a low framerate and sub 720p, it becomes incredibly difficult to enjoy them.
But honestly, low resolution or unstable framerate aside, I'm not sure how much I would like this game. I don't really think the story (what I played of it) is well paced- they throw an absolutely ludicrous number of new characters at you in the first hours of this game that it was impossible for me to feel any genuine connection to them, save for Jackie.
This also feeds into the pacing of the gameplay, which once it leaves the linear opening, is incredibly overwhelming. Gone are the open world design philosophies of games like Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 3 or even Marvel's Spider-Man, where new side-quest and collectible types are doled out through the main campaign so you are given time to adapt to each one and familiarize yourself with what everything means. You jump into the Watson area of Night City and are instantly bombarded with dozens of map icons, none of which are introduced organically through the story.
I also just think that this game doesn't do anything special as an open world western RPG that hasn't been done before or better in its contemporaries. Painting everything in a slick coat of Cyberpunk-styled paint is all well and good, but if the gameplay feels formulaic there's very little to set it apart as the next evolution in open-world gaming that we were essentially promised through the years of marketing. Unfortunately, Cyberpunk is base level when it comes to its RPG gameplay. It has mediocre gun combat and even worse melee combat, decent driving, shoe-horned in stealth, shallow hacking, okay side-quest formats, and poorly laid out, not very impactful upgrades.
As I was walking around Night City taking in what I could of the world, characters and lore, it just made me want to hop back into other open world RPGs. It doesn't quite have the flexibility of Skyrim, the zaniness of GTA, FarCry or Just Cause or the creativity of Fallout, but falls in an okay middle ground that just comes off as samey.
This game should either A) have not released on the base last gen consoles or B) had another year of development, because there's just blatant levels of polish that aren't applied here, and I have no clue how some of these issues made it past QA testing.
I'm not completely regretting my purchase, because I got to be in the ground floor for the game and its discussion, and I split the price with a friend, making it not a huge financial blow for such an underwhelming product. If you don't have access to a good PC or an Xbox Series X, wait on this game. There are major technical issues on the Series S and PS5 versions as well, though the game looks far better. Price drops, patches, updates and DLC are innevitable, and I hope CDPR can turn this game around in the next few years, but as is this is genuinely not a game worth spending your money on.