Cyberpunk 2077 is a game with an identity crisis. From an open world that is stunning
but utterly devoid of immersion, to a campaign that while enjoyable and well-written fails
to innovate in any real way, it’s a game that it's hard to look at and say “this is
pushing the genre forward”. It’s appropriate that a game about the lengths to which people
will go to augment themselves is so bereft of humanity.
Please note, I played the PS4 version running on a PlayStation 5. The dedicated PlayStation
5 and Xbox Series X version of the game is not yet released.
Cyberpunk 2077 follows V, the player character who after a job gone wrong must contest with
Johnny Silverhand, an ageing rocker and digital ghost played by Keanu Reeves, who’ll guide
the player through Night City in an attempt to avenge him and take down one of the city's
megacorps.
Keanu Reeves' performance is probably the best part of the game. Turns out the memory
of a weird half-robot annoyance was the role he was born to play. The game’s narrative
is at its most interesting during the conversations between V and Johnny. It makes me wish there
was slightly more, as Cyberpunk’s main campaign is a bit shorter than I would have liked.
The resolution comes from almost nowhere and it feels like there’s still a lot of uncharted
territory before you’re warned that you’re about to complete the game.
Throughout the game you’ll be given some choices such as dialogue options or how you’d
like to approach a mission, but the finale only seems to have a couple of variations.
Your life path, as chosen at the start of the game, mostly just amounts to how the game
begins and a few other dialogue choices.
Unlike their massively popular Witcher series, Cyberpunk is a first-person shooter. While
the number of guns and mods is plentiful, the shooting itself is rarely satisfying.
There are a few melee weapons but they achieve only a Skyrim level of clumsiness. The stealth
is also disappointing and borderline unusable as a playstyle.
The cybernetic upgrades such as blade arms and opticalmods are cool, but they’re astronomically
expensive. I have no idea why the decision was made to gate this stuff away behind hours
or grinding gigs because they’re one of the only unique things the game has going
for it.
Levelling is split into your character level and your street cred. With each level you'll
earn more points to assign into the huge branching skill tree, or you can upgrade certain stats
by engaging with that mechanic. If you use handguns, your handgun stat goes up.
The game does a great trade in “well I'm here anyway” moments. You’ll open the
map and see an exclamation mark nearby, wander over and it’ll be a three or four minute excursion,
either steal something or kill someone, that kind of thing, and then you’ll get a wee
reward. Absolute junk food stuff, but I enjoyed doing it for a few hours. I think I was mainly
avoiding having to drive to a new location because the driving is terrible. It’s like
every road is made of ice and the mini-map doesn’t zoom out while you’re driving,
so you’ll constantly miss your turn and have to skid 180 degrees hoping you don’t
take out a pedestrian.
2077 is without exception the single buggiest video game I have ever played. From characters
T-posing throughout the world, to items floating out of place
and sometimes dialogue options don’t even trigger leaving you and
Keanu Reeves standing about like you’re both in a lift and one of you let off.
It crashed 18 times in 25 hours of play. That is completely unacceptable. The way this game
runs on the consoles it was originally announced for is so bad that I don’t understand how
it was allowed to release like this. A cursory glance at the internet will show you a game
that does not look finished. Please keep this in mind when you’re watching the trailers
they’ve been showing off for years, that is the PC version. Those reviews you saw at
launch? The PC version. The reality of the console ports of the game was suppressed.
That lush, busy Night City that has been touted for years is a husk on console. Street population
is sparse, although a little better on Xbox Series X. Nothing about Night City feels alive.
It feels like the minute you walk away from any area the characters just power down and
wait for you to return.
It’s a complete lack of immersion. The city is full of arcade machines, but you can’t
play any of them. There are bars and food vendors everywhere, but all they serve to
do is to throw you to an inventory screen. You can’t even get your character a haircut.
You’ll find a guy standing near a vending machine lamenting that it doesn’t work and
stole his money. If you then hack the machine for thousands of cans to fall to the bottom,
he’ll just keep hitting the machine and pretend nothing happened.
There are random crimes around the world that basically boil down to three gang members
holding someone hostage. So I shot the three of them and went up to the person I saved.
No reward, no thanks, they told me to F off.
If anything it just serves to show how ahead of the game Rockstar still are. Sure, being
able to talk to everyone didn’t always lead to amazing moments or multi-hour stories in
Red Dead 2, but if someone was upset with you, you could defuse the situation or throw
them through a window. In Cyberpunk you can either shoot them in the head or shoot them
in the head.
The police can’t track you so they just spawn 10 feet behind you and shoot you. Drivers
can’t get off their AI path so if you pull out a gun they will just stare at you blankly
or if you wait long enough they’ll disappear.
There are more role-playing elements in GTA V and that’s a game that was originally
released in 2013. There are arguably more role-playing elements in San Andreas and that
game’s so old it’s practically out of copyright.
There is a cool, 15 hour Cyberpunk narrative here but there’s absolutely no need for
this to be an open-world game. Ultimately Night City serves as the world’s most expensive
loading screen that you’ll speed through from main mission to main mission to actually
get to the interesting parts.
I played a lot of side missions, and outside of one or two storylines, they felt very surface
level. Although there is some great writing to be found in these excursions. Even the
way that side characters are introduced feels forced. You’ll drive into a new area and
just be bombarded with phone calls and texts from people you’ve never met offering you
work and soon enough your mission list will scroll endlessly, but so much of it is absolute
filler.
Ultimately, Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world game in the style of Watch Dogs or GTA with
a few, very light RPG elements. But it’s just that. This isn’t some revolution or
“the next generation in role-playing games” as they’re currently, bafflingly advertising.
Night City is great to look at. It does a great job at setting an atmosphere, but not
for the Night City that is actually presented. Not the Night City I’ve spent 35 hours in.
The Night City I’ve spent 35 hours in is a barren waste of little traffic, mindless
NPCs and little character. Even Keanu Reeves and a strong central plot can’t make up
for what is ultimately a dated, lackluster experience.
Thanks for watching, let me know your thoughts about Cyberpunk 2077 and until next time check
out another one of our reviews on BBC The Social, I’m Jordan Middler...