I played this game on release day and had no issues with stability, but now it's that much better than it was. It's a special game, but after playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 and 2, it makes you realize that Cyberpunk 2077 could have been so much more than a looter shooter. A missed opportunity to make a truly immersive experience with interesting immersive systems. Secondly, CD Projekt Red has not implemented AMD's FSR 3.1 in a responsible way. It is the worst implementation I have ever seen, and FSR 4 needs to be implemented properly now that the 9070 XT is out (and popular). People are using Optiscaler to make this game playable, but CD really needs to behave like a professional company and implement FSR 4 in a timely fashion.
This game was better when it was first released; and coming back to it every six months or so, this game never even resembles its previous iteration. The rules have been simplified, but the graphical flourishes and annoyances constantly intensified. What was a simple and satisfying game in The Witcher 3, is now extremely tiresome due to the constant rule updates and visual vomit littering the screen. This is not simple enough to be a classic. I want Magic...I really want Chess. I don't want Candy Crush.
The new Hitman games are some of the best of the past few years, but IO is about as bad as any major studio when it comes to anti-consumer practices. The lack of a true offline mode is the biggest issue for me, but I'm also still reeling from the insult of the Hitman 3 exclusivity deal after having purchased the previous two games elsewhere. I understand why a lot of the content has to be online, but there is no reason to artificially hamstring the offline content.
Nobody has writers like CDPR. Some of the quests are gobsmackingly well written and paced. And nobody has made an environment as large and unique as Night City: every street and alley feels hand-made and realistic. And so far, my old graphics card is handling the game fine; in fact, it looks and plays great, and the bugs have been only minor and rare in my case. I do take issue with some of the design imperitives, however. The game is a looter shooter, and while the gameplay itself is fine, the inter-gameplay management is mind-numbing. Again, the gameplay is fun, and there's room for creativity, but a lot of the scenarios are boring and the stealth is linear and mostly only worthwhile if you're role-playing. But managing your inventory after every firefight and mousing through endless stat cards is not fun, it's a chore. I know it's meant to massage that reward center of the brain, but it doesn't work for me. So on top of being a looter shooter, the game isn't groundbreaking in its progression: it's very last-last-gen in approach to questing and exploration. The Witcher 3 feels far more advanced in this regard, and its inter-gameplay systems are far more enjoyable and rewarding. In The Witcher 3, I often would go exploring and happen upon crimescenes or quest prompts. In Cyberpunk, I look at my map and waypoint to a questionmark. I will say, walking around in Cyberpunk feels like walking around in a real city, it's uncanny, and while the npc/car ai and pathing are rudimentary, exploring the city on foot is very satisfying. I really wish CDPR had looked more to Kingdom Come: Deliverance for inspiration. More freedom, more unpredictability. More hardcore RPG elements. I think I could totally avoid placing XP into any of my Cyberpunk character's specialties...it feels perfuctory. All that said, I'm enjoying the game and I'm looking forward to playing again--right away. And I almost never say that.
We all know how great The New Order was, but the standalone expansion, The Old Blood, may be even better. It's a shorter, more difficult game, and the arenas/corridors are far more creative. It doesn't have the story that The New Order has, which is a first-rate title, but The Old Blood makes up for it in sheer gameplay quality and unrelenting pace and difficult. So treat yourself after playing The New Order, because The Old Blood is basically dessert, the cherry on top, and all of that.
