Cyberpunk 2077

Pre-ordered, installed on 7 December. Playing (ha) on a Ryzen 5, Samsung SSD T7 and AMD RX 5700 *drivers updated today Believe me, I regret having to post this review as I am a big CDPR homer and longtime GoG user BUT at its current state, the game is unplayable. Had 15 crashes to desktop in barely 20 minutes of play, audio glitching, NPCs not moving. Happy to change my review once I can get to at least 30 (10 would be a good start) minutes of uninterrupted playtime. Right now, a complete mess.

Currently, the game is bad. CDPR outright lied in their marketing campaign, multiple times on multiple things. The "out when it's ready" is the biggest one. It is not ready. It plays like a buggy clone of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs everywhere. Optimisation and performance is terrible. Controls are clunky, the physics are all over the place. There might be a good story there, characters seem interesting. But I can't tell since all I see is floating items and I'm constantly being shot into space when driving my car. I do not recommend, wait for a discount, maybe they'll fix some of it by then.

The world itself is jaw dropping. Unfortunately just about every other system in the game outside of art, writing & music/audio are unacceptably shallow in a deep "RPG" from CD Projekt Red. NPC's seem to have only 2 states -- walking around aimlessly, and when you bump into someone, everyone in a 5 mile radius hits the deck or runs for their lives. That's about it. The wanted system in this game is also atrocious. GTA 3 had a more complex police interaction system than this, sadly. Combat & weapons are a ton of fun. Each weapon is meticulously modeled and animated, and they all feel & sound great to use. However, stealth and hacking are a total waste of time. None of the abilities or interactions with the world are interesting, and all it does is pad out an enemy encounter by making it take 10x as long to clear. Unfortunately, if you had dreams of becoming a netrunner like I did, there's very little here to entice you longer than 20 minutes. Side quests and gigs are unfathomably boring. I remember side quests in The Witcher as some of the best writing & quest design in the industry. Unfortunately, side quests here feel like they borrowed from the MMO formula. Instead of a handful of meaningful side quest that take unexpected turns or tell engaging stories, we're given 300 points of interest that involve a bunch of enemies to kill and a few crates to loot. And how do you meet these notorious fixers? Let's just have them call you every 5 minutes as a floating head on your screen. Thankfully I haven't experienced a single performance issue, but I know the majority of people have been. Running everything on Ultra without RTX at 1080p. Again -- the game itself is absolutely stunning. No other open world holds a candle to Night City. But much like the corporations in Night City, it is simply a facade that tries to hide the fact that it is a shallow husk the deeper you look. Hurts to say it, but CDPR bit off WAY more than they could chew here.

It it's current state the game is unplayable. Performance in 2.5K is painfully low on RTX 2080 with RTX on, controls feel clunky and i can't find a way to turn off mouse smoothing (feels like it's always on). Will definitely try it again next year, after a few more months of polishing and bugfixing, but for now - pass.

Farcry 3 meets borderlands meets the witcher 3 on launch. Insipid sidequests, horrible gameplay, performances decreasing rapidly over time until you have to restart your entire system. This is a review, not a critique. Wait a few more months before considering buying it, especially if your system isn't upper high end.