Cyberpunk 2077 Review

Cyberpunk 2077 is not the game that people thought it would be. Which, generally, is a bad thing. I don’t like when I’m misled. But was I really? Did CD Projekt Red ever lie about Cyberpunk? I mean, everything that was shown in gameplay footage and media kits was there in the final product. Everything. And this Déjà vu was a lot more frequent than usual because it was still fresh in my memory and the main storyline is rather short, taking me 37 hours of gameplay, along with a couple side missions and gigs. I was counting the days to play Cyberpunk and got extremely pissed when CDPR announced the last delay, because I would probably have to stop my marathon half way through because of Christmas (wouldn’t be home). I would have just 10 days to play it, how awful! Can’t say I wasn’t surprised when I sensed the inevitable approach of the ending, in just 3 or 4 days of intense gameplay. It felt way too short, all things considered, but it felt right. Short games usually leave a bunch of loose ends, this one didn’t. Closure, at last.

To sum it up, Cyberpunk could have been much better. It’s not that it’s bad, but there are so many aspects where they could put some more work in. Things that aren’t even complicated or far fetched, generally common in open world games. Night City is massive, very alive, full of NPCs running their daily errands, cars rolling down the many virtual streets, countless high-rises, stores, night clubs, adult playgrounds, pubs, diners. So much yet so little, because there’s absolutely nothing to do in the city itself. Wanna go bowling with your cousin? nah. Billiards, perhaps? nope. Poker? I’m afraid not. No side activities whatsoever, other than the ones tied to the main storyline and its hundreds of side missions and gigs. It’s like Night City is just the background for the story, leaving no room for sandboxed experiences that we are so used to in open world games like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Watch Dogs, etc. Then again, I fully understand their reasoning. It’s an RPG, which happens to have a living environment as the setting. But there’s no denying it would be nice and make things a lot more interesting. The storyline and side missions can only go so far when it comes to retaining attention. I really didn’t want it to be one of these games that you finish once and then to the hidden corner of the shelf it goes for the rest of its life. Perhaps I just assumed that because CDPR made something so fantastic out of The Witcher 3, they would pull that off again and surprise us with something out of the ordinary. Turns out Cyberpunk is just ordinary.

People complained The Witcher 3 was too long. CDPR then decided to not make the same mistake again and cut Cyberpunk short. Way too short for my taste, though. The part that mainly stuck out was the one year jump after the intro, showing that cutscene with brief bits of every job the character did in Night City after his arrival (I started as a Nomad). From zero to hero in a few seconds and you do absolutely nothing. Would it hurt to at least let us play through a bit of that struggle? That would have added an extra ten or so hours to the already very short main storyline. It’s too fast paced. Not to mention that missions interlace which each other very weirdly, creating strange timelines. Let’s say you are supposed to meet with someone in the morning, but instead you decide to meet someone else in the afternoon, and then one day later you meet with that first individual and it’s like you never stood him up. I do know that it’s a compromise they have to make, but at least make it a little less tied to time. How about “call me when you wanna meet up” or something rather than meet me tomorrow morning when that tomorrow morning could be literally any tomorrow morning. Breaks the immersion. And I won’t even mention the times when you are on a mission and then you get a phone call to do something else, and V answers the phone call against your own will and suddenly the voice lines are overlapping each other and your character becomes a professional multitasker. Bet he would make a lot more eddies working at a telemarketing company of some sort. It’s not game breaking, but it certainly ruins the experience. Even worse when it happens during critical conversations that could interfere with the direction your story is taking.

Then again, it’s their first go on something of that magnitude. It’s not easy to build a new graphics engine from scratch, a massive city on top of that, then slap a decent story, character development, all the bells and whistles that gamers enjoy. It’s a very hard job and there’s a lot of pressure from the corporate (Mr. Silverhand hates them for a reason), media and the general public. They’ve raised the bar pretty high with The Witcher 3, and people couldn’t expect no less from Cyberpunk 2077. And a high bar means making compromises, to avoid biting more than one could chew. It’s a rather minimalist game, considering what it could have been. People think too highly of CDPR, and having the public opinion at your side is a double-edged sword: it’s all games and fun when things are going great, but oh boy, run to the hills when things go south, ever so slightly.

Cyberpunk is not what we imagined it would be. It has its quirks, bunch of positives like the good storyline, insanely great character development, visuals (the graphics are mind-blowing, and so are the frame drops with RTX on), flawless voice acting, KEANU REEVES, good gameplay mechanics (shooting is so much fun, with M&KB and controller), beautiful environment (one of the most impressive virtual cities I’ve ever seen). The negatives were all thoroughly described above, with the exception of the performance because it is certainly being worked on by CDPR as I write this review. Masterpiece? nope. GOTY? unlikely. But it’s a good game, in its own right. Once one understands that the Cyberpunk we have at home is not the Cyberpunk that we imagined, I fully believe that it’s possible to come to terms with it and enjoy the game as it is. A flawed, yet enjoyable, experience. Now, if you excuse me, I have a city to burn (again, for the sake of getting each and every achievement).