Posted on: December 16, 2020

manicvelocity
Verified ownerGames: 47 Reviews: 3
Beautiful game, average gameplay
I’ve been having a lot of fun with Cyberpunk’s story and photo mode. CDPR really nailed the setting and tone of the cyberpunk genre. But stepping back and looking at the game as a whole, I can’t deny that it is pretty average at best. Every aspect of the moment-to-moment gameplay represents the absolute bare minimum of what to expect in 2020. The shooting, the exploration, the crafting, the RPG elements... all of it has been done better by games that came before it. The open world is beautiful in the way that Disneyland is beautiful. You can lose yourself in the spectacle as long as you don't look too closely. Graphical bugs and glitches can be fixed over time, but I worry that the rest of the game cannot be so easily fixed. The NPC AI is easily the worst aspect. It is broken in a way that is indefensible for an open-world game in 2020. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, a game released 16 years ago at the time of this review, has far better NPC interactions than what you will find in Cyberpunk 2077. Every open-world NPC has just one or two lines. They trudge listlessly through the map with no personality. You cannot buy goods and services from most street merchants. The NPC police spawn instantly all around you for the smallest infraction, but then lose interest entirely if you drive a block away. My expectations were not high for Cyberpunk 2077. I was not expecting a ground breaking experience to blow other games out of the water. But I was expecting for Cyberpunk to at least try to exceed its predecessors, and I don't feel it has done that.
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