Cyberpunk 2077 Review

 

Aside from Persona 5 Royal, Cyberpunk 2077 was my most anticipated game of the year. The gameplay demo shown in 2018 looked really good to me and as a black gamer I wanted to support Mike Pondsmith who was getting his tabletop RPG realized into a video game. The lead up and aftermath of this game's release was fucking crazy and I don't think that's enough to fully express the amount of stuff that went down.

Cyberpunk 2077 was originally supposed to release on April 16th of 2020. That was pushed to September 17th, which was then pushed to November 19th, when then again was delayed to December 10th. As a gamer yeah, I was frustrated as it was the only game I was looking forward to that year after I got Royal, but I knew it was going to be worked on so that it would be better, but when the game finally came out it was in an ass state. I watched and read reviews that made me confused. Some people were saying the game was too short at being like twenty hours long while others said the game was too long at over one-hundred twenty hours and I was like "Which one is it? Is it twenty hours or one-hundred twenty?" Reviewers were also mentioning the amount of bugs and glitches in the game and how they weren't provided with console copies. They did mention that there was going to be a day one patch that will likely fix most of the issues. When I actually got the game and downloaded the patch the game was still a hot mess.

 

I bought it for PS4 and the game ran so badly on launch day. Immediately I knew something was off during the character creator. The cursor moved slowly upward on its own and I was confused if I was doing something wrong, but after watching other people play this it's happening to everyone. After actually starting the game I noticed just how bad it looked. My character in the mirror looked fuzzy, there were weird grainy lines across the floors, and my character's skin tone on my arms didn't seem to match what I had in the creator so I ended up restarting the game and trying to pick a darker skin tone, but considering I spent about thirty minutes in the creator I couldn't remember the exact skin tone number I chose and ended up choosing the same one again so my character's arms still looked too light to me, but I just decided to keep it.

 

The opening segment was fine, but going out into the actual game world was where I saw just how badly the game runs on my base PS4. The game environments were constantly loading as I drove in the city and everything had a weird looking blur to it that made it look more like a PS3 game than a PS4 game. After playing games like Tekken 7 and Resident Evil 3 there was a steep contrast. It looked so bad. It looked SO bad. I remember Jackie clipping through the elevator doors and then NPCs had their models textured right in front of me. Not only that, but I got slowdowns while driving sometimes, and got a major slowdown during my first encounter with a cyberpsycho that resulted in my first crash. Speaking of crashes I got so many during my playthrough up until the last time I turned it on when I got zero. I found if I played for more than two hours I was guaranteed a crash.

 

I had numerous bugs as well, but not as serious as a lot of I've read from other people out there. Up until Patch 1.6 I think it was I had issues with the camera switch not working when I was in cars. I learned that you had to sit and wait for the background to completely load to do it. I also had delayed responses from exiting vehicles, a couple of times I got out of a vehicle with the camera zoomed in and you can only walk slowly in this state. I was confused what was wrong until I realized what it was and had to press L2 to get out of it. One car issue that was never fixed for me was that changing radio stations were delayed. Sometimes they would change immediately and other times they wouldn't. I figured it was like the camera changing thing and it would be fine if I sat and let the game world load, but that didn't always work.

 

Sometimes throughout the game you get a relic malfunction which causes the screen to distort and there was a time I got one of those, but it never ended. Thankfully saving and reloading my save fixed it. I never encountered anything that broke a quest like a few have and I'm also grateful that I wasn't a PC user that had to deal with the save file bug that will corrupt your save if your save file was 80MB or more. Your save getting corrupted is the worst thing in a video game, especially for someone like me who usually only keeps one save per playthrough. The 80MB was really bad considering how it's almost impossible to keep your save under that file size. It requires you to keep a very small inventory which no one does when playing RPGs.

 

CD Projekt Red deservedly received a ton of backlash due to these performance issues. This resulted in probably the biggest refund event in gaming history. Many retailers who usually don't offer refunds for games were offering refunds for Cyberpunk. Sony pulled the game off from PSN and eventually CD Projekt Red themselves were offering refunds for console buyers. I even saw the New York Times cover this game. CD Projekt Red faced rumored lawsuits from investors which eventually became realized and it was later revealed by employees that they knew the state of the game was bad, but the higher ups forced them to release it anyway. The company did straight up lie as I recall in an interview prior to launch where the staff representative said that Cyberpunk "runs surprisingly well on consoles."

 

Now I don't agree with the majority of the people on the internet around the game's release that said this game should've never came out on last gen consoles and that the game was being delayed due to the PS4 and Xbox One versions when at the time this game was announced the PS4 and Xbox One weren't even out yet and then this was initially supposed to come out in April of 2020. The PS5 and Xbox Series X weren't even out yet. I do believe they thought of this game with PC in mind at first due to the game's UI. It doesn't make sense to have a mouse cursor for menu selection when playing with a controller. Before the game came out I thought the game would be best to play on a PC and that wasn't due to anything I heard about the performance of the game, it was just due to the sci-fi setting. I would've bought this for PC if I had a PC that was powerful enough to run this game.
 

It seems like the PC crowd though suffered the most game breaking glitches. The patches came out and the game no longer looked like complete ass on my PS4 and I was getting less glitches throughout though I would still occasionally get something stupid like cars appearing out of thin air and combusting spontaneously. I also came across random NPCs falling from the sky which was hilarious. I forgot to mention, but yeah Cyberpunk definitely did not look anything like the demo that was shown in 2018. There are far less NPCs roaming the streets which make the world feel a bit empty and weird considering Night City is supposed to be a major city, I think it's inspired by Los Angeles. PC owners with a good enough PC can increase the city population so that it feels more like a large city. I think when I eventually get a good PC or a PlayStation 5 I'll be buying this game again so I can experience it like it was meant to be.

 

Just to let you know there will be no spoilers for this review. Even if you beat this game there is so much content here that there will probably be something you've never encountered so I think it would be best if I didn't talk about anything specifically. All right, now let's talk about this game.

 

Aside from all of the technical issues, the game content itself is great. The level design is great and allows for me approaches to tackle situations especially in the side quests. The main quests are more linear in how you perform them and the options for completing them are more limited because they're scripted, but they're still enjoyable nonetheless. The level design is all structured from the game design. The options you have for playing Cyberpunk are enormous. You can just play it like a straight up FPS if you want ignoring all the the RPG mechanics, but you'll definitely have a harder time. You can also play like a Western RPG, playing the knight role and beating enemies by only using melee weapons, you can play it like a stealth game or go the netrunner route. You can of course do a mix of all of the above and there are sub-classes to explore as well based on weapon types.

During my run I wanted to be a stealthy assassin that relied on silent takedowns, silent pistols, and hacking. I wish there was more variety in the stealth takedowns. There's only one animation for non-lethal and lethal takedowns and it doesn't even change if you have a weapon equipped. Although I tried to remain stealthy in my run many times I would end up getting caught and instead or reloading to the last checkpoint I was just go guns blazing. Sometimes I would do it just cuz. The gunplay in this game is pretty good. There's a lot of variety in weapon selection and guns have great feedback and feel weighty. I did never figure how to make bullets ricochet from Power weapons. Power weapons were basically like normal guns to me while the tech and smart weapons offered more fun ways to combat enemies. I would see random enemies in the world and take out the mantis blades and start dicing. The stat progression in this game is good, but I do think it can be better. The game never really directly tells you about most of its systems. In the early game I was wondering why my character was catching on fire a lot during fights thinking maybe the game was just glitching, but it turned out that enemies called netrunners were hacking me with the Overheat ability and I had to either take them out first or get out of their line of sight to prevent it.

Although I beat the game I still never quite understood what the Cold Blood mechanic did. Your stats not only affect how well you perform in combat, but it also opens options to unlock certain doors in the game world which usually just act as a quicker way to enter areas during side missions and they can open up dialogue options in the story. There's even a sidequest where if you have enough intelligence can drastically change the outcome of a character in its conclusion. I was running a black girl geek run so was more than smart enough to do it. The stats are the key to making your builds. They also grant you both passive buffs and abilities like making you immune to your own grenades, increase bonuses earned from data-mining, and damage to specific enemy types. Where you distribute your points during the character creator really matters as you only get 1 attribute point per level up and you don't level up often.

I heard there's somewhere in the game where you can reset your points, but it costs a lot and I never found it so just have an idea in your head on how you want to play when you get to your point allocation. I do also like the loot system in Cyberpunk, but it can be improved too. It does feel like there is a bit too much of it and I definitely thought so of the junk like halfway through the game. At first I thought junk was just to simply sell, but you break them down for crafting components which is actually the better option and if you want to sell those you'd make way more money than you would if you just straight out sold the junk and there's even an ability you can get that will automatically break down junk for you though it requires you to open up the menu and then close it for you to get the actual materials. Speaking of crafting, the crafting in this game is kind of bad. Not only does the game never give you a tutorial in it, but when crafting items the UI is kind of confusing and you have to hold down the confirm button in order to craft an item and you can only craft one at a time. You can also upgrade your items as well and involves a similar process.

 

If you like a particular outfit for your V you can upgrade the pieces here so you won't be underpowered, but it does require a lot of grinding for component parts and I never quite learned the trick to farming rare, epic, or legendary components. Speaking of those, the loot system feels imbalanced. The tier system for loot goes from common, to uncommon, to rare, to epic, and finally legendary, but the stats to go with them isn't always necessarily better. I've gotten an epic piece of the maelstrom punk jacket that increases my defense for only 20 points and it came with no mod slots. I've gotten situations like this a lot and the only consistent thing is that breaking them down will always get you the components of that tier. I did notice that sometimes if I reload a save and try to get that same item it would have different stats on them. Also, with the clothes since I'm sticking to my role so strictly it did irk me trying to find items to match with other pieces. I wish the game had more options for hats and eyewear too. 

 

While I think some randomization is okay the way it's done in Cyberpunk is annoying and can make equipment that's supposed to be really good as weak as early game armor. In a patch I hope they make the loot more consistent. Also, I almost forgot there are some random junk in the game's environment that are bugged so that they cannot be picked up. A couple outside of V's apartment are the first that come to mind. All those complaints aside I did have a lot of fun finding cool outfits for V to wear and even creating ones for specific missions. Playing this way I think contributed to so many of my deaths as I could die in three hits or less as for most of the game I didn't even know I could upgrade my items and I just plain do not like making my character look like she just put on a bunch of random shit. These outfits also gave me inspiration to play around with Cyberpunk's photo mode. This is the only game actually where I cared to actually use, so I can't compare it to others, but it does have a lot of options. 

 

I just wish I was playing on a more powerful console so my screenshots would look a lot better. I did notice they added more idle poses in one of the patches. I still had a few clean shots of my V.

 

My favorite thing about Cyberpunk 2077 is the side content. The side missions are great. As I mentioned earlier the sidequests give you a lot of option on how to tackle them. The random gigs you get don't provide much story if at all, but the ones you get from side characters provide some great storytelling and emotional scenes. The sidquests are more memorable than the main quest outside of the ending to me. The main quest does have some good points and all of the storytelling and emotion from this game is largely due to the voice acting. The voice acting in this game is stellar for all of the characters in the stories and missions. The random NPCs is another story and that might just be more to the dialogue being random. Keanu Reeves was in this game way more than I thought he was going to be and he does a damn good job, but that's no surprise he is a professional actor. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but the relationship between V and Johnny Silverhand, Keanu Reeves character is interesting. The first time I met him I was shook. How well the two of you get along depends solely on your responses to him in conversations and I believe it has an impact on which ending you get. Out of all the characters I think V and Takemura are the only ones I don't like. Maybe because I'm spoiled with Persona 5, but that game read my mind with a lot of the dialogue choices. In Cyberpunk V never says anything I would say and sometimes I don't want to say anything as I think all three choices are bad. All that aside, it's not a big deal. It would've been nice if she had better dialogue choices.

 

Also, I didn't think about this until I watched The Sphere Hunter's review of Cyberpunk, but it doesn't make sense that you gain street cred by working with the police, you should lose it given the themes of the game and genre. I myself avoided doing as much police missions as I could, not because of that like as I mentioned I didn't realize it. I didn't do a lot of them because fuck the police! There are a ton of them so they end up being the fastest ways of building street cred and getting money without cheating or doing exploits. Street Cred is basically a way to gate gear and cyberware. It may open up certain sidequests as well, but I never noticed it if it did; sidequests just seemed to pop up at random.

 

Oh yeah, let me talk about the character customization. In the beginning you can pick your life path, appearance, and stats. The life path is the most disappointing. It's not a life path actually, it's a backstory because you play a short sequence in the beginning of your playthrough before you skip time and end up in the actual story. The marketing for this game had you believe that picking one of these would have more impact on the whole story, but your choice just basically gives optional dialogue choices and I believe one exclusive side quest. At least to me it appeared so. I ran into one side quest where I had to meet with a former coworker as I chose the corpo life path. Before I could get a taste of what it's like being a corpo in this game I lose my position and the game skips ahead in time. I was disappointed.

 

For your character's appearance. I was expecting a bit more. I was thinking there would be body type choices in this. As I mentioned earlier the game has mouse controls and the cursor moves slowly upward on its own which was very annoying. Although I said I was expecting more for the customization there is still a lot. As you know you can customize your character's genitals in this, but you can also customize nails, hair, facial structure, skin blemishes, makeup, facial hair, eyes, eyebrows, ears, tattoos, and cyberwear. There are a lot to choose from in most of the characters, but still as a black gamer I am still disappointed at just how few skin tone and hair options there are, especially the hair options. There are only four black hair options in the game at least for my female V which were two kinds of dreadlocks, cornrows, and a bad looking afro.

I don't know why I thought just because this was an adaptation of a black man's tabletop RPG that this game was somehow going to be the exception, but I let my hopes up and got crushed. There really should've been at least two more skin tones between the light brown and dark skin options. There really be a gradient slider for a lot of the color options in the game. It's also weird that this game doesn't have salons or barbershops to change your character's hair or nail colors. Whatever you pick at the beginning you have to stick with it. Hopefully, this becomes DLC in the future, but their biggest concern at the moment is most likely just fixing the bugs and performance issues. I feel like we won't see any DLC for a while while.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk 2077. I see so much potential with this IP and hope it gets a sequel. There's so much that can be improved and explored with a sequel rather than DLC.