All bark and no bite

2012 was an exciting year to be alive and not just with literal 2020 hindsight; Facebook went public, Tim Cooke stepped out from the shadow of Steve Jobs to sit on Apple’s throne, his first order of business taking Samsung to court. Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully docked with the International Space Station and completed an actual resupply mission, but most importantly, CD Projekt Red announced a new flagship title in the works, Cyberpunk 2077.

CDPR were at this time already the darling of the games industry, with the hugely popular Witcher series under their belt and a reputation for putting their consumers first when so many other corporate giants (*cough* EA *cough* Ubisoft) seem only concerned with bleeding their loyal legions dry through endless day 1 DLC releases and in game monetisation. So when CDPR told us that Cyberpunk would revolutionise the RPG genre, would elevate story telling, would take customisation to uncharted territory, we readily lapped it up. When CDPR told us (to paraphrase): “it will release when it’s ready”, we sat patiently (well maybe not entirely patiently), knowing our virtuous nature would be rewarded.

The year is now 2020, bushfires raged in Australia, COVID is wreaking havoc on a global scale and to top it all Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced they are stepping down from their duties as senior royals. To summarise, an unrivalled clusterfuck, seemingly only one thing could save this year.

After an agonising 8 year wait and numerous delays, at long last, CD Projekt Red confirmed that it will release on December 10th. An enormous 102 GB file arrived for early download on consoles and our palms began to sweat in fevered anticipation.

What happened next will certainly blotch the annals of gaming history and has perhaps consumed the last of the gaming communities trust. CDPR, a once bastion of decency, has seemingly fallen to the dark side, the fetid green must of corporate greed eminates from Cyberpunk 2077’s very loading screen and only continues to permeate your nostrils and subsequent orifices as you ask yourself, why, how, is this real?

Let’s unpack this equally vague and dramatic introduction, shall we?

Cyberpunk did release on Dec 10th, over 8 million gamers across consoles and PC did get to experience the infamous Night City from minute 1, but not everyone’s experience was equal.

Shortly (very shortly) before release, CDPR released review code exclusively for PC, a move that raised some eyebrows if not alarm bells. The PC code reviewed very well, earning a respectable and somewhat expected 90+ average from critics. However, disaster struck when the game proper released to the public across all platforms and a steady flow of shock and anger saturated forums, journalistic outlets, blogs and any other mediums frsutrated gamers could acces. The game, quite plainly, was broken (and will likely continue to be well in to 2021). Framerates across base PS and XBOX consoles rarely break 20 FPS and drops to single digits the moment you fire a gun. Textures take dozens of seconds to load in, audio clips, characters glitch, the game crashes, you fall through the floor as if parachuting on acid. There is a Christmas Day grocery list of issues, some game breaking, others simply immersion breaking.

The real issue is, CDPR knew this, they knew this and they knowingly prevented people from seeing this to ensure the security of their preorders and to ensure day 1 sales would be unaffected. There is nothing new to add here that isn’t already common knowledge, but to review this game without giving proper context to it’s murky release and ultimately poor score, would be improper.

So instead let’s do away with the carrots and parsnips and carve in to this overcooked, underseasoned turkey.

Let’s pretend for a moment, that you, the naive uninformed reader, know nothing about Cyberpunk or it’s narrative. You play V, the ambiguous protagonist who’s gender and back story remains undecided. You find yourself in Night City, a sprawling, furuistic metropolis home to scheming politicians, omnipotent organisations, warring gangs and the likes of you, small time crooks looking to rub shoulders with the big leagues. Not long in to your pursuit of legendary status, things take a turn for the worse, as they are often want to do and you find yourself stuck with Keanu Reeves in your head, going toe to toe with one of Night City’s most prominent Megacorps, Arisaka.

Reeves assumes the role of Johnny Silver Hand, a long dead renegade rocker, who has a particular penchant for fucking with corporations and bringing down “The Man”. Reeves actually puts in a pretty convincing turn here, helping to create one of the more memorable characters in Cyberpunk.

Infact, one of the most enjoyable aspects of Cyberpunk is the roster of rich, three dimensional characters you encounter and forge relationships with (and yes in some cases romantic relationships). I found myself really caring for some of these characters, not all of whom were pivotal to the main story line, wanting them to like me and certainly in some cases, wanting them to really like me. That is of course until they glitch through a wall or stand in the middle of a frenzied fire fight, staring vacantly in to the abyss, wondering where their lives went wrong.

The main campaign itself has a fairly unique storyline, unhampered by the usual tropes we find in triple A titles, but it is desperately short, clocking in at somewhere between 15 - 20 hours, depending of course on your ability/willingness to search every nook and cranny of every room (I’m an OCD looter). In total Cyberpunk has 33 missions in it’s main quest line, but once you get through the prologue and in to the meat of the game, it feels as though you could count the missions on your hands. I was shocked when I received the “are you sure you want to start this mission, as you won’t be able to return” warning, as I had spent the majority of my 50+ hour play through dilligently completing the numerous side quests available and purposefully ignoring the main quest line.

CDPR did address this before release, in response to feedback from a previous title. Senior Quest Designer Patrick K. Mills said: “we do know that the main story run in Cyberpunk 2077 is slightly shorter than The Witcher 3 because we got a lot of complaints about Witcher 3’s main story just being too long,". "Looking at the metrics, you see tremendous numbers of people played through that game really far, but never made it to the end. We want you to see the full story, so we did shorten the main story”

Unfortunately they shortened the story drastically (by over 50% in length) and as a result it feels rather rushed and fails to properly build the suspense and intrigue you would want it to. On the other hand, it has to be said that the myriad side quests in Cyberpunk are exceptional, the microcosms of Night City life contained within them equal that of your own in terms of action and excitement. They add a nice pinch of variety, some almost feel as though they deserve a breakaway game of their own. Historically, in open world “sandbox” games (perhaps not as much with RPG’s like Skyrim/Oblivion etc) side quests or activities outside of the main story line tend to be tedious and repetetive in nature (looking at you GTA). However, in Cyberpunk you could find yourself hunting down a serial killer, nailing a born again Christian to a cross (yes you read that right) or helping a deviant vending machine AI through an existential crisis (yes you also read that correctly, seriously have some more faith in yourself).

Perhaps the most unique and interesting thing you’ll find yourself doing, is sifting through brain dances like some futuristic sleuth. Brain dances are awesome, in name and in practice. They are essentially recordings of someone experiencing a moment in time. What they saw, what they felt, smelt, tasted, feared even. At certain moments, not only during the main quest but dotted throughout the various side missions also, you will be able to play these brain dances, your objective being to search for clues through a memory, be it something they saw but didn’t register or something their cyberware picked up but couldn’t audibly percieve at the time. It’s a novel addition that fits thematically with the dark futuristic setting and doesn’t come across at all like a gimmick, it’s not over used either, making each time a welcome respite from the stabbing and shooting.

What really irks me, however, is how little thought went in to the back story, which you get to choose at the beginning. You can choose between 1 of 3 stories: Nomad; part of a roaming clan of petrolheads removed from the chaos of Night City, Corpo; an ex-sleaze bag who managed to escape the grind of the megacorp machine or a Street Kid who had a rough upbringing and knows the city and its denizens like the back of their hand. Choosing one of these 3 will give you access to a unique 20 - 30 minute prologue and that’s about as impactful as your decision gets. Your stats won’t be affected, access to items remains the same, as does access to quests. The only time you’ll even be reminded of your choice, is during certain conversations where an extra dialogue option will appear for you based on your background, however, again these have little bearing on your ability or inability to complete a task or successfully navigate a sticky situation.

This is a pivotal mechanic for an RPG and can be seen hard at work in excellent titles such as Skyrim or the Dragon Age series. The character you choose right at the beginning determines so much in regards to your base stats, ability to use items, how NPC’s and other key characters interact with you, the effect in Cyberpunk is negligible.

On the topic of RPG’s, let’s just clear something up, Cyberpunk isn’t really one. It would perhaps be more accurate to describe it as looter shooter action game. Yes there is a fairly in depth progression/skill tree, yes combat is affected by stats, but that’s really the extent of it, CDPR’s rendition of Cyberpunk certainly seems to have forgotten it’s humble tabletop roots.

In Cyberpunk you can choose to follow various paths of progression, affecting your abilities and proficiencies. You can heap points in to Technical Ability, making you more proficient with Tech, Power and SMART weapons. Intelligence, allowing you better usage of the various hacking and “netrunning” abilities. Body, making you stronger, faster and more deadly in close quarters combat or an oddly named “Cool” category, which gives you access to stealth based traits. There are a few glaring issues with the progression trees. Firstly not being proficient in some areas doesn’t really stop you acting like you are, because so many of the buffs and skills you get from investing in them are passive (gain 5% crit damage, enemies take longer to spot you, gain 100 base HP etc).

I invested heavily in Reflexes and Tech making me a dangerous gunman in any situation, but I was still perfectly capable of completing any section in complete stealth if I wanted to. No I wasn’t able to run bare knuckled in to a room wall to wall with Ariska goons, expecting to come out alive, but I also wasn’t particulalry punished at any point in the game for not picking that or other options. Through my playthrough I was also able to invest heavily in to Intelligence, giving me access to a wide arsenal of hacks that could be applied to enemies or the environment. This sounds fun in practice, but what it really boils down to is making the occasional microwave explode or using “Ping” to scan enemies quickly in a hostile area. Much later in to my campaign I unlocked the “Suicide” hack, which is morbidly entertaining to use but not effective in either combat (takes too long) or stealth (50% of the time they shoot themselves).

At no point did it seem viable to exclusively use hacking abilities to get through a mission, nor did it ever seem necessary to even have those abilities available to me.

Crafting was a section that I almost entirely ignored, despite it belonging to a trait I had invested heavily in (for another reason), the crafting menu is hideous from a UI perspective and doesn’t seem to offer any real incentive to invest in to it. You can’t ever craft an item better than what you will find in the next firefight and upgrading your current weapons or armour is a waste of time as you pick up new weapons at a dizzying rate.

The only reason I ever upgraded a weapon was because it had “Iconic” status, with a specific passive or bonus ability I thought was cool. It’s stats (DPS is king) would otherwise fall quickly behind the barrage of generic spud guns available to me.

Cyberware, one of the games key selling points, felt like a complete afterthougt. You can visit “ripperdocs” at various locations across the map, to get black market implants which in theory should play to the strenghts you already have through your character progression. But again they don’t have a huge impact, visually or in practice (your original implants never change aestethically throughout the game, which is really dissapointing). For example I invested in a skill that allowed me to slow time automatically when I dodged while aiming, but I’ll be damned if I ever used it. Another major upgrade I bought was the projectile launcher, which gave me unlimited access to explosives launched directly from my arm, sounds good right? Well not really, I had invested heavily in upgrading grenade abilities (including one skill that made me invulnerable to my own grenades), but the projectile launcher doesn’t count as a grenade, rendering those abilities useless. Furthermore it made no sense to take the time to aim the launcher out of cover when I could simply use the overtuned weapons I already had (one of which shot homing projectiles at up to 6 enemies at once and applied poison to them all).

On the topic of combat, we need to address the elephant in the room again, performance. Combat in Cyberpunk actually has a lot of promise, the guns are cool, tech guns let you shoot enemies through walls (you can combine your hacks with this to scan enemies in different rooms first), ricochet bullets and as aforementioned use SMART guns which essentially aim for you (fun but basically a cheat code), but the minute more than one enemy fills your screen or you start using explosives, good luck seeing anything in real time. FPS nose dives, causing all sorts of bizzare and immersion shattering glitches in the process.

On multiple occassions I would start firing and my gun would make no sound, other times I would be using a pistol and it would simply decide to stop firing. On countless occassions I would try and use my projectile launcher (not because it was effective but because I was bored of running around mindlessly one shotting everyone without even having to aim) and it would start the animation but not actually result in anything happening. Although this only happened once, the standout moment for me was when I got in to a pretty large scale shootout in a side mission only to realise that enemies were taking no damage from me, nor I from them, what ensued was a leisurely walk around their base, picking and choosing from the assortment of loot they had laid out for me, while absorbing enough ammunition to topple a dictatorship. Not to mention the multiple times the FPS literally screeched to a halt, freezing my screen until it recovered, only to show me the game over screen.

These are predominantly production issue though, which in theory could be fixed with future patches, however, there are some glaring issues that aren’t going anywhere. Enemy AI is so dumb, not Forrest Gump dumb, which you can forgive and is in many ways almost endearing, no this is hair pullingly dumb, it’s laughable. I stopped using tech weapons pretty early on because although I actually had to aim with these, if the enemies were in another room they would not react to being shot at through walls. They would literally sit there and just sponge bullets until they dropped, one after the other. The shoddy AI isn’t limited to gun toting combatants either, it’s ubiquitous.

Shoot a pedestrian in the street and every bystander in sight (about 2 if you have the misfortune of playing on a base console) will just hunker down and brace as if someone just shouted heads at a cricket match. Shoot a driver in his car and he will sit patiently, hands 10 and 2 on the wheel like their examiner’s sat next to them scoring. The world just doesn’t react to you in it, it’s all prescribed, inevitable. Things will happen the way they were always going to, regardless of where you stand or who you shoot. I went to a bar to get a side quest at one point and just left my car in the middle of the road only to come out 10 minutes later and find a mile long queue of traffic behind had formed, the adjacent lane completely free to manouver around. CDPR repeatedly flaunted that their city, their game even, would be revolutionary, that NPC’s would have their own agendas which you could watch pan out over the course of the day. The reality of what they have delivered here doesn’t even meet 2012’s standards.

I hate to use GTA 5 as the other openworld shooter counterpart, but it’s hard not to look at a game where you can do a lot of the same things, made in 2012 (when Cyberpunk was initially anounced) and think, why is this done better?

Speaking of driving, I have mixed feelings. Again, performance and glitches impacted my ability to enjoy this aspect of Cyberpunk but what I could experience didn’t thrill me. Vehicles all handle somewhat differently depending on their size and power and off road driving provides a tangibly different challenge, but my god were there some serious frustrations here. Firstly, sports cars are a living nightmare to handle in Cyberpunk. Caress the analogue stick delicately, as if merely suggesting that you might like to drive around the oncoming traffic and your Quadra that you spent 10 hours grinding for cash to buy will catapult across 3 lanes and careen in to pedestrians, invoking the wrath of the fearsome teleporting police (they literally spawn behind you and open fire when you commit a crime, it hurts to talk about it). Collision detection also leaves substantial room for improvement, not least because half the time I crash, it’s head first in to a wall or lamp post that hasn’t loaded in yet.

If you find yourself able to pry your peepers away from some of these significant shortcomings, you might also begin to notice a host of smaller ones. Smaller certainly, but perhaps more inexcusable, as they are all together avoidable. The skip button in conversations is inexplicably mapped to the same button as crouch. I missed the beginning of several conversations and surprise encounters because I tried to stop crouching like a socially stunted, subservient once they started speaking to me. I think the DVLA may have bribed CDPR because if you try to read a text message whilst driving, your immediately locked out of controlling your vehicle regardless of how fast you might have been driving or what’s coming towards you, moral of the story, don’t text and drive kids.


Cyberpunk, is by no means completely unenjoyable. Underneath all the glitches, the dismal framerate, the PS2 resolution, lies a slightly above average RPG-lite. Unfortunately Cyberpunk suffers from an all too common affiction in the age of advertisement and endless content, it over promised and under delivered. This ailment is compounded twice fold by anticipation building over 8 years, anticipation largely generated by CDPR making what we now realise are outlandsih and wildly false claims the whole time. The death sentence was decreed when CDPR were found to have knowingly conned millions of customers out of their money and made a mockery out of their trust, by purposefully witholding console footage from reviewers and perpetuating lies right up until the release date in regards to performance and content.

The Cyberpunk of 2012, right up until the Cyberpunk of Dec 9th, is the game we deserved after the year we’ve all had. The Cyberpunk we got on Dec 10th, is the game we all should have expected from 2020, but not from you CDPR, not from you.

4.5/10