Cyberpunk 2077 - Sex, dugs and rock - Review.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an adaptation of a fairly old tabletop RPG. Turned into a first person shooter, a very fun one, but quite rough around the edges. Keep in mind I only have the PC version I bought from gog.com. Sure the steam one has achievements, but this time around I can't be bothered hunting for those. The setting is one where America got thrashed and a fancy multi national city was built on top of the trash pile. Night city is a crowded, polluted metropolis, with more guns and crime than people. The corporations run the world, gangs roam free, police brutality is the norm, and the poor people are still being oppressed. All of this nuance is beautifully portrayed in-game, bringing fresh life, and character to the crowded open sand sandbox genre. The graphics are truly jaw dropping gorgeous, especially with ray tracing activated. However my gpu is rubbish, especially when live-streaming the game. However even at potato settings it looks fantastic. The city is littered with humans looking busy and everywhere I go someone is having a chat. The voice acting is top notch as well, which makes everything even better. Every nationality speaks their own language. Luckily the game provides a translation device.

However not everything is well in paradise. Picking up items which are crucial for materials, healing, and money. Is quite often a finicky process that often leads to frustration and busy work. Especially when an object is stuck. I've experienced some overlapping dialogue, sequences where there was no sound and the smoke turning into glitching triangles when the frame rate is set to 60 fps. On top of that there are glitched people sliding through the streets, they're ultimately harmless though and fun to spot in the wild. The hacking visor vision struggles a lot when too many objects are close and sometimes the player slowly raises from crouching to standing.

An unfortunate design decision made by the developers can in fact trigger epileptic players. Whenever I have to enter a holographic recording of some poor persons memory, I equip a headset that flashes bright blinking lights onto my face.

The sound picture is phenomenal, with a lot of depth, from creaking leather seats, to the ambiance of the city. Got a bit tired of the combat music though. While the radio is full of spiffy songs, I ultimately ended up muting the music, it's just not to my taste. A custom playlist could fix just that. With that said, I should probably go on a deep dive into the game play mechanics.  At the start of a new game of Cyberpunk I had to design my character, which ended up looking very weird. Yes the woman I made with a manly voice, which now looks more like an alien than a sentient human being. There are a mediocre amount of choices which is to be expected, but nothing to write home about. Seeing as the whole experience is seen from the players point of view, there is not much out of the ordinary with the controls, aside from some mapping issues. 

Such as dodging is double tapping the crouch button, which is also used to slide, when sprinting, which leads to unintended crouched instead. On a gamepad the right stick is used for a quick strike with the butt of the gun, but when I hold it down a free cam to take custom pictures is activated. One key doing too many things can quickly get irritating. Espesiall the interact key that picks up items, used to initialize dialogue and other contextual actions.

Cyberpunk has a lot of brutal combat encounters, which all have a set difficulty level and in most cases any enemy with a red skull is pointless to fight, until much later. Gunplay feels great, from generic shotguns, to tech guns. The kind that has fun extra feature as homing bullets and setting people on fire. Since this is a futuristic sci-fi setting the closest thing to magic is hacking someones retina, overloading them, setting them on fire and other disabling abilities. Naturally some enemies can do the same to the player. Despite all the bullets flying around, punching people into coma is perfectly viable and unlike a katana, it is considered non lethal. Combat stats are improved through cybernetic implants, gear and leveling up. It's fairly fun to install the gorilla hands and rip a turret off its podium, or to cut someones head off with wrist mounted mantis blade. Yes, people will lose limbs, so it is anything but a child friendly game. Stealth is also an entirely viable options, even if the silenced weapon skill tree is kinda useless. As long as an enemy is not severely outclassing the player, any human can be grabbed from behind and getting knocked out. Both are required for certain quests and sequences. The thing I'm personally puzzled about is the fact that I'm equipped with a wall piercing gun that is also non lethal.

Since Cyberpunk is a city sized sandbox, there is a lot of side content to go around. Practically everywhere I go there is something to interact with. Plus many missions have hidden entrances and alternative paths that let me ghost through to the objective. The few times an npc is involved in some sort of escort mission, they're seldom useless and never in the way. Even on hard they're kinda useful. They certainly live longer than me. It is interesting to see that quick saves are allowed as long as combat is not initiated, which makes save scamming possible until the job is done. The ai is not particularly bright and often end up walking on air. Combat in Cyberpunk is also entirely stat based, positioning is important as well as cover, but eventually an upgraded weapon will be tendered completely useless. The animations are also hilarious at times, especially when enemies stumble over fallen comrades, after all a face planted enemy is easy to hit.

Crafting as I mentioned earlier is simple, but very useful. Especially when fully upgraded, since I can make epic weapons and do a lot more damage with those fancy tech weapons. Basically enemies drop random clothes and guns, which I can use, unless the game tells me otherwise, sell for pocket change, or to simply turn into crafting materials. Regardless, it is not possible to max out every skill tree, or to respec stat points, so a bit of planning is needed. Leveling is made up of three parts. There is the player level gained through combat and questing, then there is street cred which has its own progress bar. On top of that the various skill trees has some of this as well, especially crafting. Especially clothes and special guns has unlock requirements related to skill level and street cred. I have to admit that its generally easier to just use whatever I can find on enemies, even if I end up looking like a fashion disaster.

Traveling through the Night city is a relatively easy going affair, be it fast traveling at bus stops, going by foot and climbing like a monkey, or with a set of wheels. Which can be bought for money gained through the game. They all handle just fine, as long as I hit the brakes before I go around a corner. It usually ends up with me moving down pedestrians, which pisses off the police. Fortunately for me I simply have to get far enough away to lose them. Due to me playing on hard, any angry officer drone is a death sentence. There is no mechanic for getting arrested, or revived after all. 

All in all, I can truly recommend Cyberpunk 2077 to anyone that likes a violent game about criminals getting in way over their head in the worst American city imaginable. If full frontal nudity, some sex, and flashing lights trigger you. Do not get the game.

Njål signing out

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