Cyberpunk 2077

First 6 hours of game is polished, because this is the part that media was playing. Rest of game is mess, glithes, bugs, cops spawning behind hero (remember their promises about living city, bribing cops etc.?) Remember: NO PREORDERS. LEAVE GRRED TO OTHERS

I did not follow the events leading up to the release of Cyberpunk 2077 with ardent fervor. In fact, it wasn't until a year and a half after the game released that I finally got around to playing it. Up until that point however, I noticed that very few people actually talked about the game, which stood in stark contrast to the overwhelming hype that seemed to radiate from people who desperately fell for an idealized imaginary game. You could pick up Cyberpunk 2077 and draw a simple comparison: it's like Deus Ex mashed with Grand Theft Auto. And I'd be inclined to agree with that comparison. But not for very long. The mechanical depth is so shallow, the immersive elements are almost entirely vacant, and the narrative cohesion is so skewed. Cyberpunk 2077 is a phenomenal game on paper. You can isolate each aspect and consider, "Hey, that sounds kind of good." And it kind of is. But the cracks in the facade grow into a substantial rend in what should have been something much greater. But I can't completely disregard this game. Obviously people worked hard on it, some may even have worked with a good deal of love in their hearts. But that excuse doesn't last long when you stand on a sidewalk of Night City, watching a traffic jam that resulted from an event that you may not have witnessed (or maybe you never could). UI elements remain on-screen long after they should have been dismissed, characters evoke very little emotion, cars drive awfully. Imagine a car that weighs only 40 lbs (or 18 kg), with tires that haven't had traction in years, and a speedometer that just does not work. The roads are often completely clear of traffic, police are a joke and seem to just spawn in behind you (nothin personnel kid), and each interaction is disappointment after disappointment. What is left? A hollow game. A game that compels you to spend your time doing anything else. Every choice you make is completely meaningless until the last hour of the game, and even then... Sigh.

First the good news. Game looks great. It sounds great. The acting is great. I guess the story is ok too, if not a bit silly. For a moment it can be immersive too until a game breaking bug snaps you out of it. Then the bad and I'm not talking about bugs here. To my big surprise and disappointment the game has almost zero rpg elements. There is next to nothing taken from the actual Cyberpunk 2020 rpg. You can't be whomever you want and you can't do whatever you want. Style is nothing. You are mercenary V and no-one else, period. You can choose from three different backgrounds which have absolutely zero effect on your character and story. It only affects the short introductory mission and some dialogue choices. The skills don't matter anything. Everybody sees you as the same person no matter what you do and because hacks and stealth are broken as hell, you end up shooting everything anyway. Story itself is almost totally linear and flat. You really can't influence it. Outside the story there really ain't much to do. The world doesn't react to anything you do. There is a seemingly big city where you cannot do anything. NPCs don't seem to react to anything and when they do they react in a generic way. Reputation system is the most basic one can think of. I think you all already know about the completely broken physics and AI, like cops, ducking npcs, etc. so I won't go there. They can all be fixed, but until that happens the game is unplayable, unless you just want to experience the main story. Overall, if they fix the bugs it can be a nice little shooter. But an RPG? Not even close.

I really looked forward to Cyberpunk 2077 from the developer of the Witcher series. Come on. What could go wrong? Turns out. Everything. The game ended up beeing a very beatiful city with not much to do in it. And when I say not much, I mean there is a lot of 'quests' and stuff but very little variety between all of those. I mostly ended up with 'go there and fetch that'-quests which are miles from the mysterious quests you stumbled upon in the Witcher series. Now for the Bugs: I played this when it came out. And it utterly destroyed my belive in the game. I came to the point to just wanting to finish the game, set it down, and never touch it again. Which is sad. Some bugs just bolted me out of the map or glitched me behind a wall. Those are fine. Nothing a quick reload couldn't handle. But in other instances there were bugs (or sometimes design choices for that matter) that broke gameplay completely. I had to reload and reload saves because some mission triggers weren't happening. Answer was: not going stealth because for the mission to move forward the alarm (despite there not being any) had to be raised or whatever. With my stealth approach I encountered numerus cases were enemies weren't even spawned in and visible on the cctv cameras. To spawn those in it took me going into the room which resulted in them noticing me and shooting me in the face. Not good at all. Just sad. I had such high hopes.

Half of this game is incredible, and half is a broken unfinished mess. It's such a shame. The world they've made is gorgeous but quite shallow, and even so long after release it is packed with bugs and things that feel missing or poorly done. Some items you can't loot, corpses that float in the air, graphical glitches... The best part of the game currently is how it looks, so if your computer's not up to playing it on good settings I'd wait for now or you're missing out on the best bit. I'm tempted to just stop playing this now and come back in a couple of years to see if they've salvaged it. I can understand why people were so angry with this launch but it's partly because people can see there really is an incredible game in here somewhere if they could fix it and realise its potential.