Developer: CD Projekt Red
Publisher: CD Projekt
Platforms: PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S (reviewed)
Release Date: Feb. 25, 2022
I missed the first train to Night City. Back in 2020, Cyberpunk 2077’s notorious reputation preceded it. “Glitchy mess,” “disaster,” and “trainwreck” were all words thrown around, which made me grateful that I had missed said train. Two years later, and the next-gen update is finally out on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. A bile curiosity had laid dormant inside of me, wondering what exactly this game was all about; when I was asked to review the latest version, I gladly accepted. If you know me (which you likely don’t), I’m not a fan of modern open-world games; I find many of the worlds to be shallow, often with a lack of meaningful content, reliant on a well-worn, Ubisoft-esque design philosophy. If that’s your cup of tea, then I pray you sip it nice and slow; it’s just not for me. Honestly, it’s a cold day in Hell when I have anything positive to say about these types of games, so don your warmest winter wear, and let’s head into the snowstorm!
Out of all available romance routes, Panam is best girl.
Our first stop brings us to Night City itself, the setting of Cyberpunk 2077. Much of my praise for the game comes down to just how damn impressive this map is. Often with open-world games, I feel as though I’m grinding away tasks “on top” of large, sterile, and unchanging maps, rather than existing in a believable and breathing world – this is not the case here. The care placed into Night City is genuinely astonishing. There’s a shocking amount of verticality and interiors galore; alleyways, nooks, and crannies crammed with interesting details – it’s my jam. Neon permeates everything from all directions, and it’s strikingly vibrant. The weather effects further add to the atmosphere – genuinely some of the most beautiful rain I’ve seen in a long time. The pedestrians don’t feel as alive as I was hoping; they never really react to my presence or actions in a realistic way, short of painting the sidewalks with their brains – definitely no Red Dead Redemption 2 in this regard, though I should note that there’s also many more NPCs here to tend to (apparently they all have complex, daily cycles and routes, but it’s not all that noticeable). This isn’t the biggest map ever, and we should all be very, VERY grateful for that; quality over quantity. CD Projekt Red did an excellent job crafting the map design and atmosphere of this game.
Linkin’ in the rain.
This map is a canvas, waiting for you to make your mark, painting the city in blood and influence. “You” (not “U”) being V, your custom character. It’s a novel concept, being able to change the size of your genitalia; fun stuff, even though I’m not usually a fan of character creation – I made my V look like Kanji Tatsumi from Persona 4. This game handles custom characters better than most, because V is actually a character with a personality and voice acting. A pretty good protagonist, honestly; very snarky, and I enjoy that – helps to further highlight the crapsack, dystopian vibe. You get the option of choosing your Life Path, be it Nomad, Street Kid, or Corpo (the one I went for); this mostly extends to the prologue mission, a handful of extra dialogue choices that impact nothing (like pretty much every dialogue choice in the game), and one exclusive side-quest per Life Path option. While these differences are appreciated, it’s disappointing that the Life Paths don’t impact the story more; no matter where you start, your destination is one of 6 endings available to all paths. This makes it less desirable for me to replay with a different Life Path.
He looks like Kanji to me. Started out unintentional, but I liked how it turned out.
The story itself is decent; I find the moment-to-moment writing to be pretty good. I’m especially engaged whenever Johnny Silverhand is on-screen; Keanu Reeves knocks that role out of the park, and his vitriolic banter with V lends itself to many of the funniest and most memorable moments. The narrative never really strived for the sweeping ambition of CDPR’s previous game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but that’s alright; for what it is, the story kept me entertained. Honestly, despite TW3 probably being objectively the better game, I probably enjoy Cyberpunk more, since the, well… cyberpunk, sci-fi aesthetic is more my style than medieval/high fantasy (The Witcher is really the only property of that genre that I engage with). I also enjoyed the side-quests quite a bit more than I was expecting; the storylines were engaging and missions had loads of variety – it wasn’t all just the same dime a dozen fetch quests, outpost liberating, and map defogging that’s standard to modern open-world titles. I wish it wasn’t possible for certain quests to expire, but I suppose that does add a hint of weight and consequence to how you interact with the world, which is appreciated.
With friends like these…
However, it ain’t all sunshine and rainbows in this gloomy, polluted hellscape. The aspect in which Cyberpunk 2077 falters the hardest, is probably the most damning for an RPG: the combat. First off, the out of the box aim settings are atrocious – the deadzones were simply too big, and subtle aim adjustments were a herculean effort. Naturally, I did what any sane person would do, and turned to Reddit for help. An absolute champion known as u/poasternutbag enlightened me to settings that made a dramatic, demonstrable difference to my experience (which I’ll share at the very end of the review).
Even once I tweaked the game to feel like an actual FPS, it’s still nothing to write home about. Gunplay is serviceable enough, but I find combat encounters quite tedious and uninspired. Weapons lack a satisfying “oomph,” without much variety present; bonus elemental effects make little difference, and quick hacking often trivializes encounters. Ideally, the perks you invest your level up points into would improve the combat, and while these do open up a couple new avenues for strategy (mainly through quick hacking) and increase damage output, they don’t really change much about how you play the game like you’d expect from an RPG. This disincentivizes repeat playthroughs with different weapon/attribute specializations, since the perks appear to have made such little difference. Not helping this is a disappointing difficulty curve; it’s either piss easy with little need for cover on Normal, or a bullet sponge-y slogfest on Hard – there’s no in-between. Aim assist is also not great; console shooters benefit from having quality assist tracking, and while this game will quickly snap you to your target, the tracking stops there, which is clunky for a game where enemies are constantly zipping around. Combat just feels like a chore; like needing to eat my meat before having any pudding.
Sniping is definitely where combat is at its most enjoyable, but it’s still not particularly engaging.
I’m pleased to say that the technical performance of next-gen Cyberpunk 2077 is pretty stable in 60fps Performance mode; there’s also a 30fps Ray Tracing mode, but… no. Just… no. I’ve had a couple minor glitches here and there, and one instance of my framerate harshly dropping, but it appears to be a massive improvement on the issues that plagued the game prior. The game looks very good, especially once I turned off the film grain and most of the other post-processing effects. The textures and (important) character models are all quite detailed, and as I mentioned above, the use of color is striking. Perhaps sometimes too striking. The game sports a very intense color palette, which is great and sets it apart from its contemporaries, but occasionally made it difficult to play for longer stretches of time. The biggest offender was the already controversial, potentially seizure-inducing lights when entering and exiting Braindance sequences, as well as harsh, non-telegraphed flashes of red during points in the story. Excellent visual effects, no doubt, but they made me uneasy (I cannot recommend this game to anyone with epilepsy or otherwise prone to seizures; it’s simply too much of a neon minefield to be safe).
Really dug this (ostensible) Portal reference.
It’s unfortunate that Cyberpunk disappoints both as an FPS and an RPG. In a series like Fallout, for instance, my choices actually matter, and may have lasting consequences or open up new paths in a quest; my perks make a meaningful change in how I interact with the world, in addition to the combat, and my stats actually matter. Night City is such a cool place, with a real sense of presence and effortless immersive quality, but it’s all bogged down by a game that I often don’t really want to play. Funnily enough, this is also how I feel about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt; CDPR develops some of the best open-worlds, with great writing and meaningful content within, but they just can’t stick the landing on gameplay. I had a good time, but not a great one. Still, I had a lot more positive to say than I was expecting, which was a pleasant surprise. I’ll definitely put in more time eventually, partaking in further side-quests and soaking in the atmosphere – I’ll just set it to Easy so I can get the combat over with.
7/10
Oh, and here are those aim settings I was talking about, courtesy of u/poasternutbag from Reddit:
Outer Dead Zone – 0.90
Inner Dead Zone – 0.02
Horizontal Sensitivity – 13
Vertical Sensitivity – 11
Zoom Sensitivity Reduction – 1.55
Response Curve – recommended
Horizontal Turning Bonus – 0.80
Vertical Turning Bonus – 0.80
Turning Ramp Up – 0
Turning Delay – 0
Horizontal Turning ADS – 2
Vertical Turning ADS – 2
Ramp Up Time ADS – 1
Turning Delay – 0
(Disclaimer: these settings were specifically calibrated for Series X/S, so there may be a slight discrepancy with PS5 and other versions)
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