So, after about two months of playing around with Cyberpunk on PC, I think I find my that I find myself in a position to write a proper review of the much-hyped open world game from the acclaimed developers of the Witcher games, CD Projekt RED. It is no secret that this game had incredibly high expectations in the minds of gamers everywhere... part of this was due to the marketing hype, and the rest was the overblown expectations that gamers had after the incredibly impressive Witcher 3.

The game launched as a buggy mess.. and with a much reduced scope compared to the expectations of the gaming community. So, it crashed out in both of these aspects... and then to make things worse, news emerged of the horrific working conditions that the development team were put under. Needless to say, this tarnished the reputation of the studio, which once occupied the lofty pedestal of gaming company that was much beloved by gamers all over the world. It was a long and sudden fall from grace...

Thankfully, I had dodged all the launch day and first year issues... only just picking up the game at a sale.. months after the last patch had "fixed" the game into a playable and relatively bug-free experience. So, lets see how it is... one year after launch.

The Setup

The player character "V", starts off in one of three life paths with a short intro and character backstory. However, regardless of choice of starting story, the game funnels you into a a rescue mission that you undertake with your old friend Jackie Welles. It is a nice introduction to the Cyberpunk world of Night City... but eventually...

... the fun heist romp that suddenly and abruptly turns sour when you find yourself embroiled in a plot that is way way way out of your league.

Leaving you with a strange anarcho-terrorist living in your head... Johnny Silverhand, aka Keanu Reeves. Your struggles to reconcile his struggles with the Corpos (corporations) and your own desire to stay alive form the backbone of the main story line. More about that later....

The Game

So, Night City is pretty big... you don't get he impression that it is as big as Skyrim or the Witcher 3, but it is plenty big enough with more than enough little markers of things to do. However, unlike Witcher 3, these markers seem to be just generic encounters that don't really seem to make much sense... sure, Night City is supposed to be dangerous... but SOOOOO many muggings and lethal encounters in a single district? You will be fresh out of living people in short order if the murder rate was that high! At least in the Witcher, all the monster encounters were way out in the dangerous wilderness... and not on the way to the corner store.

Ahhhhh.... Night City, the dystopian vision of our future... where man and machine have melded, the corporations rule the world and the trash is left heaped up on the side of the road and forgotten. It is quite amazing how many of our fictional future worlds seem to have not figured out a way to better dispose of garbage!

I had better mention something briefly about combat... it is numbers flying off people's heads and bodies. There are hit locations and a sort of cover system... but it isn't that interesting. When you are swinging swords in melee, it feels better to have a hit points system and those numbers flying around.... but when you shoot someone in the head from stealth, and they turn around crankily at you... well, it is a little less believable!

Driving occupies much of your time in getting from point to point in Night City... and to be honest, the experience leaves you wishing for the return of Roach (the horse from Witcher). Cars are crazily finicky to steer and skid and slip everywhere.... thankfully, smashing at full tilt into things doesn't damage either you or the car. I wonder if that semi "god"-mode was done in response to poopy handling of the vehicles.

Another glitchy and slightly annoying thing.... this has got to be the absolute worst GPS navigation system ever! Come on... even Siri does a better job. Have a look on at the minimap in the top right corner of the above screenshot.... I'm sorry, you want me to drive where?

So, Johnny Silverhand... your little unbootable guest in your brain thanks to a shard that you cleverly stuck into your own head (do people even bother with basic cyber-security in the future? Don't click random links/QR codes... don't stick unknown shards into your brain...). He is rabidly anti-corpo... having dropped a nuclear bomb into the elevator shaft of one of the largest corporations before he was killed in the physical world.

He is supposed to be the moral and philosophical compass that makes your character (and by extension, the player) question their own morality and ideals. I'm sorry... most of his ramblings are that of a stoned university first year student... or even more pretentious than that. It is really quite cringe inducing....

... and speaking of cringe inducing... there are notable moments in the side missions that aim to be "emotionally" earth shattering. They aren't.... they are short text exchanges with the emotional impact of a wet sponge. There is very very little attachment to characters, and you aren't really that engaged emotionally with them.

The Witcher also featured this sort of detective vision... in the future, it isn't a mutant's ability to employ their near supernatural heightened senses, but a robotic augmentation in your eyes. Completely different in mechanism, but somewhat familiar in gameplay execution. Also... not at all similar to the detective vision from Batman.

Apparently, there are romance options in the game... I really wonder why developers feel the need to add romance options in such a hackneyed way.... Now, I'm no Cassanova... but after a day of killing things together and getting shot full of holes... I'm not entirely sure that having someone touch my leg would be a welcome advance! But what would I know...

... yes, the game feels like the thing was written by a sex-deprived team of 20 year old BROs! I can imagine the design sessions... Do you think it would be EDGY if we put a mannequin with a fake boobs and a DILDO here? Wait... why would there be a mannequin with a dildo in this alley? YOU ARE FIRED! FIST BUMP... CHEST BUMP! YEAH! SKUL SKUL SKUL... DUDE!

Sigh.... yes, there is an overabundance of dildos, sex "jokes" and references, and gratuitous swearing. The future is obsessed with rude words and sex... sort of like a naughty five year old who has discovered that people react if you say a naughty word!

So, the relentless min-maxing of RPGs rears its ugly head in Cyberpunk... leading to the most plausable explanation as to why people in the future dress so funny. Come on, in the Witcher 3 we were able to have RPG stats on apparel and accessories without making Geralt look like a clown.. In the future, we've taken a step backwards on that front.

Inventory management is another huge thing for RPGs... pack rats are naturally attracted to these sorts of games. There are plenty of drinks and boosters all over the world of Cyberpunk, and they don't weigh anything! You would think that that is a pack-rat's version of heaven... but it ends up with a cluttered and infinite page of all the various snacks and boosters that you have picked up... and never felt the need to use or eat. I wonder if this is an accidental holdover from a gameplay mechanic that wasn't fully realised... in the Witcher, the alchemy and potions were a pretty crucial part of the game, this is a wasted page in the inventory screen.

There is a pretty neat crafting mechanic... but it is heavily tied to your skill in the crafting/engineering tree, so if you don't invest points there, you will find that pretty much everything is beyond your ability to craft. Thankfully, the simplest common grenades and health kits are available for everyone to craft... and so, I find myself with about 500 of each. Combat ends up being crazily explosive!

I have to admit, the cyberware page in the inventory screen is my favourite page! When you go visiting your local ripperdoc, you have the ability swap in some pretty cool augmentations and stuff... Some give you new skills and abilites, whilst others are just passive bonuses. But it does look really cool... even if it doesn't really implement in game as well as Deus Ex.

Attribute.... a staple of all RPGs. These are the core high level attributes that give some passive bonuses with each level added... and also unlock the lower dependent skill trees options.

The skill trees have some pretty interesting perks, but you will be limited by the unlocks from the higher level attribute levels. What is interesting is that each of the skills have their own internal levelling system that increases with usage of the skills and abilities that are relevant. Again, these provide little passive perks that flesh out that particular play style.

Visuals, Sound and Performance

There is no denying that the world of Cyberpunk is really quite beautiful. On my gaming laptop (see below for review specs), there was no problem performance-wise. Sound is okay... I did find that the locations of sounds could be quite confusing at times... You would be able to hear enemies talking from different levels as if they were right next to you, making for a terrifying experience when you whirl round and round looking for someone who isn't there....

... and the music. Well, it is terrible... one particular memorable lyric "We like to bang... we like to bang... we like to FUCK!"... yes, we are back to the naughty five year old again.

Despite being in a playable state with no game-breaking bugs (yet....), but there are gliches aplenty! For example, this gang member started trying to attack me whilst I was in the middle of a cut-scene chatting to the corpo woman in front of me... quite impolite really, but made even worse due to the fact that she was trying to burst out of the corpo chest at regular intervals...

Perspective is also a big problem as well... at times you feel like a dwarf with your eye height being about a metre or so off the ground...

... and at other times, you feel like you are towering above the little toy miniatures of the other inhabitants of the world.

My Thoughts

Cyberpunk, it isn't a great game by any stretch of the imagination. It is most decidedly average... however, it does look pretty, and it isn't at all terrible. Combat is tolerable, but again the mechanics aren't that good... the setting is interesting, but the story is absolutely cringy and feels like it is aimed at a hormonal teenage boy.

After a couple of months of playing... I'm still playing it. I feel like it is going to be a bit of a rite of passage, to experience a game that promised so much and ended up delivering short of the monumental expectations. To be honest, when I', done with this... I'm going to really savour Red Dead Redemption 2, or the return back to the Witcher 3.

Review Specs

Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:

XMG Fusion 15

CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: SSD (SATA/Nvme)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 2070 Max-Q

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