This review contains spoilers
This game is a controversial, wonderful, shitty game. It's got a long list of goods, bads, and in-betweens.
So let's start with the company, CDPR. Has some pretty shit PR teams, and some pretty shit management, as with most game companies and companies in general. Ironic that the guys that probably flubbed the necessary action to fix most of the bad in cyberpunk 2077 were the ones the crosshairs were aiming at the whole game, mostly. They have some chud PR folks that make some tasteless jokes and seem pretty silent overall about some of the problems with Polish society, being one of the strongest fascist bastions of europe.
Cyberpunk's writing staff clearly did not have those same ill intentions. The biggest thing leading up to its launch I was concerned with is that if it was going to make a huge called shot by labeling the game Cyberpunk(yeah, I know, it's cuz of the TTRPG, pretty much irrelevant still) that it needed to be some fairly golden standard of faithful to the themes of the genre for me. I was terribly worried and when approaching release date more and more so about it doing a "cool aesthetic" with everything else flying past your face.
Not so. Of course, it has the slick and sickening aesthetics in equal measure, mostly amazing graphic, architectural, industrial, fashion, character design is everywhere in this. Neat touches, like effects being sprayed out over the audience of an EDM show like digital pattern sparks that hang in the air, pixel sorted ghosting while traveling through cyberspace, authentic looking glitch design in a variety of spots. When the game looks its best, it absolutely looks amazing. Even if you have to suffer from the 5-12 FPS occasionally to get a look, cranking everything up to its max and prioritizing visual quality is worth it on occasion. Not necessarily so when you're trying to play the game.
So everyone's talked a ton about the bugs, which I still place the blame squarely on the bosses of CDPR and their need to shove this product out, and caving to whiny gamers thinking it couldn't be baked for any longer against their mental health, and then being equally outraged when it started out of the gate on its face. The bugs are spectacular. Hilarious at times, frustrating at others. Each new small update to correct them has in turn improved everything, broken formerly working pieces, de-optimized, re-optimized and de-optimized again the way it works. And this is on PC from GOG itself. Pretty wild, and sometimes funny, but pretty tough to sit through sometimes. A lot of them weren't in the same vein as a fallout, Cyberpunk's closest cousin. Many of them genuinely made the experience worse for wear, and lowered the overall experience.
The game plays pretty much like Fallout AU: LA. You're locked in first person, a choice I feel undermines the whole point of its "you can be anything in Night City" advertising, and the entire hype around the character creation which was extremely disappointing for a number of reasons. It felt like the direction for some of these parts of the game was traded hands a few times, or wasn't given enough focus on where to maneuver these. The character creator lacks a lot of customization. Some good ones, and some that are basically unthinkable to exclude in a game with as much identity questions as a cyberpunk one. But overall the choice to lock gender expression and voice behind if you have tits or not, and the inability to further modify your appearance tremendously harms the sense of connection that would drag you into the game deeper. Frankly, it's the biggest factor to me that knocks points off of cyberpunk. And the elephant trunk in the room: penis, penis 2, or vagina. And then not shown through the rest of the game, even in the mostly unnecessary sex scenes. Again, intentions all over the place whereas resources were burned or cut down so little it's baffling.
But back to gameplay, most of the combat and pseudoplatforming all felt almost exactly what I'd expect from fallout. A little more slippery and unkempt, particularly when coupled with some of the bugs, but still overall pretty entertaining, especially with the weapons at your disposal, and a grander first person unarmed combat system, and quickhacks thrown in. The systems were very confusing for everything except gunning and punching at first, and I felt like a good portion of the game was not properly explained when it was required, and maybe a bit overexplained elsewhere. The driving is indefensible dogshit. You get used to it, but another futuristic cyberpunky game watch dogs was panned for its driving, and woof does this beat that by a longshot. None of the vehicles feel remotely nice to drive, if they're able to because of glitches. If everything is smooth sailing, you'll still take a turn just a little too hard and smash into someone, or smash your car up. The auto nav summon system for them was nice, though, and felt worldbuildey enough.
The writing itself was pretty great throughout, when taken as a whole. Some quest lines felt weirdly short, as if they'd been cut(and I did every quest line except racing) down and would end abruptly, or carry on to too many residual quests. The most development felt like it happened with the nomads, but the individual stories were all interesting. Some side jobs also had their quirky charm to them, though a lot of them were fairly standard "steal the thing, shoot the guy", etc etc. The actual plot of the story also felt a bit truncated, when considering the events of the game, minus the non-essential side stuff, feels weirdly brief. The core story at the heart of it, and the questions it asks aren't new to this subgenre, or scifi as a whole but it does a good, if relatively safe job at presenting it. But it's candy to me, I don't really have any major qualms about it because i'll eat it at its most basic to most well-orchestrated. The worldbuilding was also pretty fun most of the time. A good portion of it could be boring to get through, but some of the gems more than made up for it when trying to show vignettes of life in Night City.
The music was also pretty in the middle. No great track to remember, Samurai is pretty generic rock stuff, some strong pumping synth stuff for action sequence, some knockoff vangelis in the sadder parts. Nothing unexpected, but I do feel like it reflects on the studio's core soul they were trying to hit on in this, and can respect it.
A couple criticisms when it comes to the game that I've heard raised, and personally feel the game rebuts:
1. the voodoo boys. In the original cyberpunk game the voodoo boys were basically commenting on cultural appropriation as they were a lot of skinny white dudes who adopted haitian culture and mixed it with their hacker lifestyle. The voodoo boys in this, revealed in some admittedly obscure text logs, were genuine haitians and descendants of haitians who basically moved in and said fuck off to the cultural appropriaters. I don't think they kept that consistent, so there's still room for criticism on it, but felt like it was worth noting that they wrestled that into a fairly amicable ground where it showed the expats of a sunken island reclaim their heritage pretty effectively.
2. trans rights. First off, trans rights are human rights. Just like above, I identify as nonbinary but don't feel too strongly about it to really be out and open, and I pass as a straight white male when it comes down to it. I identify, attempt to work against, and minimize harm from my privilege pretty frequently. And there was a lot of worry, with CDPR's teams devoted to writing The One Conservative Joke(attack helicopter) and the chromanitcore ad. Since it was early on, we didn't see their excuse represented for why it was done, and then when it came out I do believe they were accurate in what they were aiming at. To circle around, however, if there were no trans folks(and black, preferably haitian folks for that matter. Or japanese, buddhist, whichever group touched on at any part) consulted with, CDPR definitely fucked up in that regard. Personally, I feel like when looking at the game and what happens and what its ads are, it ends up looking to punch up, but they did play fast and loose with it, especially with the aforementioned weak character creator.
All in all, not the revolutionary game it was hyped to be, and it was never going to be, and weighted down heavily by its dev's parents pulling their leash. But for what it is in its current state, it is still a fairly solid game, if you average out the parts of the whole. I do hope to see where this franchise, and even this title go as more and more problems are resolved, and hope they can pull a more succinct title together that is even more representative of the cyberpunk genre, the attitudes and rep of marginalized people and aren't forced to crunch and release a broken game.
So let's start with the company, CDPR. Has some pretty shit PR teams, and some pretty shit management, as with most game companies and companies in general. Ironic that the guys that probably flubbed the necessary action to fix most of the bad in cyberpunk 2077 were the ones the crosshairs were aiming at the whole game, mostly. They have some chud PR folks that make some tasteless jokes and seem pretty silent overall about some of the problems with Polish society, being one of the strongest fascist bastions of europe.
Cyberpunk's writing staff clearly did not have those same ill intentions. The biggest thing leading up to its launch I was concerned with is that if it was going to make a huge called shot by labeling the game Cyberpunk(yeah, I know, it's cuz of the TTRPG, pretty much irrelevant still) that it needed to be some fairly golden standard of faithful to the themes of the genre for me. I was terribly worried and when approaching release date more and more so about it doing a "cool aesthetic" with everything else flying past your face.
Not so. Of course, it has the slick and sickening aesthetics in equal measure, mostly amazing graphic, architectural, industrial, fashion, character design is everywhere in this. Neat touches, like effects being sprayed out over the audience of an EDM show like digital pattern sparks that hang in the air, pixel sorted ghosting while traveling through cyberspace, authentic looking glitch design in a variety of spots. When the game looks its best, it absolutely looks amazing. Even if you have to suffer from the 5-12 FPS occasionally to get a look, cranking everything up to its max and prioritizing visual quality is worth it on occasion. Not necessarily so when you're trying to play the game.
So everyone's talked a ton about the bugs, which I still place the blame squarely on the bosses of CDPR and their need to shove this product out, and caving to whiny gamers thinking it couldn't be baked for any longer against their mental health, and then being equally outraged when it started out of the gate on its face. The bugs are spectacular. Hilarious at times, frustrating at others. Each new small update to correct them has in turn improved everything, broken formerly working pieces, de-optimized, re-optimized and de-optimized again the way it works. And this is on PC from GOG itself. Pretty wild, and sometimes funny, but pretty tough to sit through sometimes. A lot of them weren't in the same vein as a fallout, Cyberpunk's closest cousin. Many of them genuinely made the experience worse for wear, and lowered the overall experience.
The game plays pretty much like Fallout AU: LA. You're locked in first person, a choice I feel undermines the whole point of its "you can be anything in Night City" advertising, and the entire hype around the character creation which was extremely disappointing for a number of reasons. It felt like the direction for some of these parts of the game was traded hands a few times, or wasn't given enough focus on where to maneuver these. The character creator lacks a lot of customization. Some good ones, and some that are basically unthinkable to exclude in a game with as much identity questions as a cyberpunk one. But overall the choice to lock gender expression and voice behind if you have tits or not, and the inability to further modify your appearance tremendously harms the sense of connection that would drag you into the game deeper. Frankly, it's the biggest factor to me that knocks points off of cyberpunk. And the elephant trunk in the room: penis, penis 2, or vagina. And then not shown through the rest of the game, even in the mostly unnecessary sex scenes. Again, intentions all over the place whereas resources were burned or cut down so little it's baffling.
But back to gameplay, most of the combat and pseudoplatforming all felt almost exactly what I'd expect from fallout. A little more slippery and unkempt, particularly when coupled with some of the bugs, but still overall pretty entertaining, especially with the weapons at your disposal, and a grander first person unarmed combat system, and quickhacks thrown in. The systems were very confusing for everything except gunning and punching at first, and I felt like a good portion of the game was not properly explained when it was required, and maybe a bit overexplained elsewhere. The driving is indefensible dogshit. You get used to it, but another futuristic cyberpunky game watch dogs was panned for its driving, and woof does this beat that by a longshot. None of the vehicles feel remotely nice to drive, if they're able to because of glitches. If everything is smooth sailing, you'll still take a turn just a little too hard and smash into someone, or smash your car up. The auto nav summon system for them was nice, though, and felt worldbuildey enough.
The writing itself was pretty great throughout, when taken as a whole. Some quest lines felt weirdly short, as if they'd been cut(and I did every quest line except racing) down and would end abruptly, or carry on to too many residual quests. The most development felt like it happened with the nomads, but the individual stories were all interesting. Some side jobs also had their quirky charm to them, though a lot of them were fairly standard "steal the thing, shoot the guy", etc etc. The actual plot of the story also felt a bit truncated, when considering the events of the game, minus the non-essential side stuff, feels weirdly brief. The core story at the heart of it, and the questions it asks aren't new to this subgenre, or scifi as a whole but it does a good, if relatively safe job at presenting it. But it's candy to me, I don't really have any major qualms about it because i'll eat it at its most basic to most well-orchestrated. The worldbuilding was also pretty fun most of the time. A good portion of it could be boring to get through, but some of the gems more than made up for it when trying to show vignettes of life in Night City.
The music was also pretty in the middle. No great track to remember, Samurai is pretty generic rock stuff, some strong pumping synth stuff for action sequence, some knockoff vangelis in the sadder parts. Nothing unexpected, but I do feel like it reflects on the studio's core soul they were trying to hit on in this, and can respect it.
A couple criticisms when it comes to the game that I've heard raised, and personally feel the game rebuts:
1. the voodoo boys. In the original cyberpunk game the voodoo boys were basically commenting on cultural appropriation as they were a lot of skinny white dudes who adopted haitian culture and mixed it with their hacker lifestyle. The voodoo boys in this, revealed in some admittedly obscure text logs, were genuine haitians and descendants of haitians who basically moved in and said fuck off to the cultural appropriaters. I don't think they kept that consistent, so there's still room for criticism on it, but felt like it was worth noting that they wrestled that into a fairly amicable ground where it showed the expats of a sunken island reclaim their heritage pretty effectively.
2. trans rights. First off, trans rights are human rights. Just like above, I identify as nonbinary but don't feel too strongly about it to really be out and open, and I pass as a straight white male when it comes down to it. I identify, attempt to work against, and minimize harm from my privilege pretty frequently. And there was a lot of worry, with CDPR's teams devoted to writing The One Conservative Joke(attack helicopter) and the chromanitcore ad. Since it was early on, we didn't see their excuse represented for why it was done, and then when it came out I do believe they were accurate in what they were aiming at. To circle around, however, if there were no trans folks(and black, preferably haitian folks for that matter. Or japanese, buddhist, whichever group touched on at any part) consulted with, CDPR definitely fucked up in that regard. Personally, I feel like when looking at the game and what happens and what its ads are, it ends up looking to punch up, but they did play fast and loose with it, especially with the aforementioned weak character creator.
All in all, not the revolutionary game it was hyped to be, and it was never going to be, and weighted down heavily by its dev's parents pulling their leash. But for what it is in its current state, it is still a fairly solid game, if you average out the parts of the whole. I do hope to see where this franchise, and even this title go as more and more problems are resolved, and hope they can pull a more succinct title together that is even more representative of the cyberpunk genre, the attitudes and rep of marginalized people and aren't forced to crunch and release a broken game.