Cyberpunk 2077

A very ambitious video game developed over 8 years, but ultimately a flawed and, depending on which launch you witnessed, a broken experience.

Cyberpunk 2077 was the most hyped game of the year, the only one left that could give 2020 somehow a bang to end with, but no. The hype was not met in the end, and after beating it just now, the reputation of CD Projekt Red has been damaged for good.

Having purchased my digital copy on Steam for the PC, using my high end PC without an RTX video card, I was able to still play it with high settings and enough performance, but even when all the early patches were installed, I still encountered numerous bugs and glitches, which have been talked to death on the internet.

Coping with the incompetence of the development, it's an open world first person shooter with main and side quests, dialogue options with little impact, a cyberpunk and trans-humanism setting with an impressive graphical and artistic vision in mind but crumbling here and there too, and inventory management, skill trees and equipment.

The main story was interesting enough to follow, but the characters most of the time not so much. Exceptions are Johnny Silverhand played by handsome Keanu Reeves, and to a lesser extent Jackie Welles and Panam Palmer. Expect to be immersed by it, especially with Johnny pulling a Joker as a plot narrative.

At first I was playing Hard mode, but after I grew tired of the bullet sponges having to hit enemies over 6 times in the head to kill them, I switched to Normal with no regrets. Aside from the regular modern gun play, expect to drive around GTA style, and to also play little hacking and detective mini games, which all have been executed better in other games.

Content wise, there is enough to do even after beating the game, but I am told that other promised has been either cut, or I hope not, prepared for future DLC. That would break CD Projekt Red's great reputation of The Witcher 3's DLC expansion packs to a lesser extent too.

But as far as ambition, hype, optimization, performance and gameplay goes, Cyberpunk 2077 does not deliver in the end on those, and instead, we are left in my opinion with a regular open world first person shooter that tried to be something much, much more.

It's certainly not innovative, and it's launch event was a disaster, so many people have refunded it already, and some lawyers have already started a lawsuit against them for delivering false marketing and promises, especially for last generation console gamers.

I prefer to replay the first Deus Ex, or Human Revolution, instead of playing this again. Only if CD Projekt Red is able to fix so much about Cyberpunk 2077, and release exciting post-content, perhaps somewhere in the future, they will be forgiven.

Or, a sequel could be much better, now that a new IP has been established.

Rating: 7.5