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Rating 3
3
Good

Cyberpunk 2077 - Review

What Could Have Been
Score: 3/5
Reviewed by Oliver VanDervoort on PS4 - January 04, 2021   

After waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 for seven years, it's finally here! Did CD Projekt Red deliver on the promise it generated for so many gamers? That's honestly a difficult question to answer.

The first thing that stands out when looking at the company's newest project is that it simply isn't as pretty as people hoped it might be. One reason for that is because this isn't the next-gen version. The company is delaying the release of the Xbox Series X, Series S, and PS5 editions of the game until next year. Just when isn't known.

Of course, there are plenty of PS4 and Xbox One X games that are breathtakingly pretty. The Last of Us 2 is one of those. Somehow, Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't rise to that level, despite the work put into it to make it look good.

Visuals Feel Like Last Gen At Times

It's not that Cyberpunk 2077 looks terrible. Some visuals are quite good. When you are talking close up to characters, things look quite right.

It's when you take a step back that the game starts to fall a bit short of what we've come to expect from games like this. It's one of the many reasons I question why Cyberpunk 2077 is done in the first person. Many graphical problems can be solved when the camera is slightly farther away in the third person.

It strikes me as a bit odd that I like the visuals of The Witcher 3 more than I do Cyberpunk 2077. When I say that this game's visuals look like they're last-gen, I'm not talking about the PS4. There are times when the fidelity drops to the point where it looks like a PS3 game. 

That's about the most damning comment I can make. The game looks like something that isn't anywhere close to taking advantage of the kind of technology available. CD Projekt Red is well known for improving on its games after release. That's the good news. The bad news is that, at least for now, it needs quite a bit of work, primarily graphically.

It's also of note, in this day and age when a game's characters cannot track where you're standing during a conversation. Having to move into the field of view of an NPC because they're talking to you while staring off into space hurts the immersion.

Friendships Feel Real

Speaking of immersion, there are some things in the game that help rather than hurt the game's immersion. While Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't always look great, there are times when it looks good enough that I felt like I was V. I was hanging out with Jackie or other relationships I made along the way. 

The conversation options packed into this game are similar to what CDPR did with The Witcher 3. That means you can have as much or as little dialogue as you want for the most part. There were indeed times in the game where I just wanted to get down the business.

Pulling off a heist, or going after a contract, you can make a choice to just get down to it and take off. Or, you can choose to sit at the bar or in a room and only discuss things. When those conversations are going on, for the most part, they feel natural. They don't feel forced. That allows you to feel as though you are forming relationships.

That's not necessarily a good thing, as far as the story goes. These characters are quite well flushed out. That means they're going to do something that real people do. Sometimes you think you've made a friend, and it turns out you can't trust them. Sometimes you do everything you can to make that friend, and they never really take a liking to you.

There are several different backgrounds players can choose for V. The developers could attain near-masterpiece level story writing when it comes to allowing different backgrounds to determine how you identify with other characters.

Fleshing Out The World

I need to give the caveat that the realism and relationships you forge, apply to main characters. While there's supposed to be the ability to talk to almost anyone, most of the interactions with background NPCs tend to feel very shallow. 

It might not seem totally fair to hold CDPR responsible for that. After all, they're giving you the option of talking to dozens of people. Can they be blamed for not making every background character all that involved? Well, yes. Because if you're going to allow players to talk to background characters, you should make sure it's worth the time to do so. 

That's not so say these wood figures being ... as wooden as they are is a huge strike against them. It's just another small stike. It's another place where it feels like it should have been better.

Glitches, Glitches and More Glitches

Perhaps the weirdest thing about Cyberpunk 2077 is the number of times this game was delayed, and it still comes packed with so many problems. It's not just one problem either. The glitches are all over. One such instance saw my V following Jackie into a room on a mission very early on in the game. 

When I got into that room, I saw Jackie's two guns floating in the air, pointing at enemies but not opening fire. Every so often, they would change position, but Jackie never showed up again. Not until I finished the mission.

Other times, characters would walk into walls, or float above the floor. There's also something a bit unsettling about walking directly through an NPC. I've read a few reviews that talked an awful lot about how they were giving the game a great score, despite the very obvious glitches they ran into. That doesn't seem like the best way to do things. Other games don't get that kind of treatment. If a company is going to release a game that is glitchy and broken in several different ways, it should drag down the review.

Cyberpunk 2077 is definitely not a "bad" game. In fact, it's quite fun. But it's not one I find myself  itching to play. At times, I even felt the urge to play something, anything other than spend time jumping back into Night City. That's also a pretty big indictment of one of the most hyped projects in the last few years.

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