Cyberpunk 2077

I'll keep this short. The game has numerous bugs and glitches, many of which affect gameplay or even progress. While the main story is enjoyable, the gameplay suffers from so many instances of mechanical errors that even that suffers. Think grenades that don't get thrown and sit in the air in front of you exploding and killing you, sniper rifles that don't fire or register any sort of input, cops materializing right behind you, inexplicably dying while running, etc. This is to say nothing of absurd graphical glitches which abound on Reddit and Youtube. This game is such a mess I can't recommend it. I'll spend some time playing starting to enjoy it, then the game just slaps me in the face. CDPR have enjoyed hijacking the bad pr of other game companies to make themselves look good (just look at their Twitter) and this game really walks back any sort grace they may have gained in the game's industry. They released this broken game in order to make holiday sales. The ironic memes of corporate greed are flooding in.

This game was sold as a different experience, I paid full price at it, last time I did it was with The Witcher 3, and it was a waste. This game is poorly optimized, the story is far from whats was promised, and you go around the city shooting enemies because there is nothing else to do, a massive city that you can't connect personally to, you drive around looking in the mini-map because it's so big you can't remember the districts. And yet, the map being this huge, there is not to do, absolutely nothing, the clubs are boring, the markets all the safe, not entertainment to do at the city all, just driving around shooting. This game is far, very far, from what I expected, they promised something animated, fun and sensual, showing a dystopian corporate fueled future, and what we got was a drive around shooting game, that you can even drive correctly because the mini-map is too zoomed in and the car physics are awful. A disappointment!

On the technical side I've had no crashes and very few bugs. Popping in palm trees were resolved with a driver update and I've had some floating artifacts during cutscenes. I know that lots of other people have had gamebreaking technical problems, I just haven't experienced them. It's weird, but that's gaming. The world itself is beautiful, I love Night City and could roam around here for months, however that's all there is to it. Quests are well done, but outside of that there's not really anything to do. This is not the Cyberpunk GTA I was led to expect, there is a lifelessness to everywhere and V is a blank canvas with nothing to do but quests. No side activities, no hustles, no customisation, nothing. -Your apartment doesn't change with you and you can't buy others. -The first cyberware has a visual impact, but none of the others do. It's essentially another skill system tree. -You can't customise your appearance after the intro, during which for some reason you can customise your genitalia? My wife was particularly impressed at me choosing small regular or large breast size. Many eye rolls came my way that day. -Can't customise your cars, or have a garage for them. -Quests are utterly linear, you have no choice. -Weapons are bland numbers based nonsense. Yay, it does 12DPS more, score! -Levels and level locked equipment? Totally realistic, why just the other day I ordered a pair of boots on t'internet and had to send them back because they're for a level 38 and, alas, I'm only level 36. -Lifepaths mean nothing, and I suspect that montage at the end of your 5 minute lifepath intro was made from cut content you were originally supposed to play through. -Johnny Silverhand is an unlikeable and annoying character. Just putting that out there. Basically, mile wide, inch deep. That said I still enjoyed it and had a blast playing the story like a linear shooter, but it's not the glorious Cyberpunk GTA it should have been. That it could be with a lot of work.

I genuinely enjoyed this game overall. The story was fantastic and gripped me in many areas. However, while the city was very immersive the activities really weren't there. I went to many bars and clubs hoping to do something other than people watch, but alas it wasn't there. I believe there is one club with an interactive dance floor, but I don't remember seeing any other. From a story driven point, I loved the main story. It may have been too high an expectation, but I genuinely thought there would be more to do with the npcs. I went through 2 of the romance options, and I enjoyed the part of getting there and developing Vs story along with theirs. It just felt like after you unlocked a special cutscene that was pretty much it. You couldn't call them to discuss anything new (with an exception or two). None of the npcs were really able to be interacted with outside of missions. This to me felt disappointing. Maybe it wasn't in CDPR's original vision or scope, but I feel that would help immerse oneself in a big city like this. It is surprising to see this massive open city where the characters come to life but aside from people watching, there wasn't much else to do outside of story/side missions. Overall, I feel this game was good especially the story telling, but they missed the mark on features that feel like they should be there. It just feels like there are features that should be in this game and aren't.

I've had high expectations from CDPR in delivering a good product seeing their success with The WItcher saga, however now I think that was just good play from PR and management teams. Jumping on the bandwagon on hating other companies and claiming that their best interests are customers' interests, releasing cosmetic add-ons and dubbing them as "FREE DLC", crunching on the development and the inhumane treatment on the devs. I could go on forever. I've poured in 40 hours in the state the game it is and I refuse in continuing to do so until the game will be patched and completely overhauled. As to put the cherry on the cake, 59% of their user base will get the latest patch, 1.05 sometime "SOON". -no key remap -cannot deselect objectives -inventory management system is clunky and counter-intuitive -performance : gotta do some backflips to get some decent frames. No seriously you personally have to apply some fixes. Beyond me why do I have to touch config files and game files. -no RPG elements, the beginning of the game and the life-path changes nothing, just some conversation options, but nothing that has deep-impact changes on the storyline. To make a comparison, think of it as the convo-system from Fallout 4. So no, you don't get to keep my hard earned money when you didn't deliver what you promised.