Cyberpunk 2077 is an marvel to look at, beautiful neon city lights. Advertisements dazzling as "V" walks night city's cluttered streets. Like a drifter you walk the lonely road, seeing sights, feeling the pulse of the city. Though nothing feels right. It's an empty vessel, hollowed out at it's core. The substance of the city is void, nothing but noises and distractions. The same crowds, walking on streets. Which feel meaningless, in the overall appeal. The environment is unfocused, jumbled and listless. It's only a very pretty snowglobe, mounted on a mantle. Something you stare at for a few moments then chuckle and say "Neat". This title gives you a cinematic experience, but where is it's heart and soul? The characters are fine, but they're meant to drive the cinematic experience, rather than provide an enriched roleplaying feel. Cyberpunk 2077 is a tongue in cheeky diversion to rise your serotonin levels and give you that magical high. Even the music is high octane, cyberware pumping into your brain. It does not have staying power, unlike The Witcher 3. Which gave you a truly rememberance of an experience. Sadly, this is not CD Projekt Red's masterpiece that was The Witcher 3. In closing, I give high marks for the production value, the polish is lacking but that comes with time. This was an ambitious project and it has solidified CD Projekt Red for years to come. The best thing about this title is it's engine. Which will be the Cry engine of the decade. Take this game for what it is. Maybe you're immersion will not be subverted by the souless pit, oozing out of Night City. TLDR: Cinematic marvel, lacks soul. There is no ghost in this shell. 3/5: Won't talk about the technical stuff, don't seek to beat a dead horse. This game is worth a playthrough at least and at most a cat walk session, which will get Jared Leto's inner Zoolander Blue Steel'ing from his mouth.
This game is beautiful. The artistic style, narrative, and the show-don't-tell presentation work fantastically together. It's Zelda + Journey + Secret of Mana/Ghibly film + neon pixel dream. The combat gameplay is also great. Weaving together dashes, blaster shots, and sword slashes looks and feels amazing. Exploration/discovery is a big theme for the game. The world map is imperfect, little is told to you explicitly, and secrets paths abound. Finding hidden paths has been fun for me so far, but even paths toward making progress can be hidden and I could see how this would be frustrating for some. BUT 1) It runs like butts. At least on my MacBook Pro, frame rates dive in large fights and against bosses, and this gets me killed all the time. Not just that but over a play session the game's performance deteriorates to the point of that it become unplayable and must be restarted. GameMaker Studio has a bad reputation for reasons, eh? 2) The keyboard and mouse controls are a bit awful. Most things work fine, but you dash toward your mouse cursor instead of the direction you're moving. I understand WHY it's like this: the game uses the dash for platforming so having the precision of dashing to the cursor, instead of using the keyboard (and thus being locked to eight directions), in addition to letting you do swag dodges, is important. But it feels VERY unintuitive if you have any muscle memory for conventional top-down-shooter gameplay, and I am constantly dashing directly into enemy attacks in the heat of the moment. On the other hand, for some reason when you throw bombs they go in the direction you're moving/facing, NOT toward the mouse cursor (also always a set distance, ugh). It's completely baffling. Seriously, I am wicked baffled. If they fixed these technical issues I would definitely give this game 5 stars, and would consider it one of my favorite games of all time.
