To say that Cyberpunk 2077 had a bit of a troubled launch would be understating things a little bit. There was so much hype around the new game from the highly respected developers of Witcher 3... expectations were sky high and if they managed to deliver on these expectations, then we would have had another absolute classic game much like Witcher 3 has turned out to be! However, anything short of that would have been a disappointment to the many fans who had their hopes raised to unattainable levels, and to make things worse, the game launched as a bit of a buggy mess that has needed the better part of the year to iron out into a playable game via ongoing patches.
I recently picked up Cyberpunk in the Autumn Steam sale... along with some other nice little treats for myself, and I wasn't going o touch it for quite some time. I was another person who had high hopes for this game... and the slew of early reports had me down, but I counted myself lucky not to be among the pre- or launch day purchasers. Still... even after reports saying that game was in playable state, I was still a bit hesitant. And hating on Cyberpunk has become such a bandwagon that it has been hard to get some objective ideas about the current state of the game!
So... whilst I had access to unlimited high-speed internet, I figured I may as well load it up on my gaming laptop to see what it was like. Perhaps I might just surprise myself and like it?
You have a range of three early backstories that fleshes out your V character (after a quite involved and oddly intimate character model design section....). They don't really do much, but they are an interesting way to get yourself into the background setting of Cyberpunk. They also do have some small impact in the way that you interact with different factions in the rest of the game via some extra dialogue options. I played all three of them, because I'm a nerdy person who loves these things... but I saved the Corpo background for last, as that was the backstory that I wanted to play the rest of the game with.
Living the Corpo life as a counter-intel operative is pretty swish.... you have some nice threads, and a luxury ride to take you to your first meeting with an old friend..
Along the way, you get to see how the rest of Night City lives... but from a safe distance in an armoured flying car far from the dirty and dangerous humdrum existence of the bulk of the population. The Corps are the new royalty, and working for them bestows many perks.. and dangers.
Jackie is the old friend that you meet in all the different plot starting lines. In each, you relationship with him is different... as is his demeanour. In other backstories, he was more of a nervous newcomer with you as the old hand... in the Corpo story, he is more of a tough jaded character at the beginning who is trying to convince you to leave your Corpo masters behind to seek true freedom.
Sadly for you, you are soon forced out of the Corp Aratech, and find yourself as a destitute citizen... making ends meet by taking on various bounties with your friend Jackie.
Despite which backstory you choose... it all converges on this initial rescue mission that acts as a quick tutorial. You are tasked with rescuing a high-paying customer whose Trauma Team "insurance" chip has been blocked from calling for assistance.
You activate the chip... and Trauma Team immediately swoops in and takes in their client. Obviously with quite a heightened sense of distrust... a little "Thank You" wouldn't have gone astray!
This would probably be a good point to mention that this game looks and runs just fine on Ultra settings on my gaming laptop (see below for specs) which has the last generation's mobile RTX hardware (2070 Max-Q). I've not had any game breaking problems so far other than some items being impossible to pick up... but that is just the occasional random common loot that was already lying on the ground.
Home sweet home...
The dialogue is okay... I've not found the desire (yet) to just blandly skip through important sections. However, they are pretty liberal with the f-bombs and a huge abundance of other curse words... it doesn't offend me in the slightest, but I'm not sure that every person needs to be quite the potty mouth!
Combat plays out in quite a fun way... but it is more like Witcher than a FPS. Something that took me a bit to get used to was the stealth kills with silenced weapons. Normally, in most games you would just plug a single round into the head of an unsuspecting enemy and it would be all over. Here, you generally should unload half a clip... just to be sure! Something else that I've not been fond of... if you do a stealth kill, it appears that you don't get the weapon as a drop, however, if you go loud... then it always drops! Poop... I prefer the stealth... but it isn't that big a deal, just some loot to disassemble or sell.
Driving is something that I'm still getting the hang of... Driving is usually pretty poop with KB/Mouse, but for some reason the cars in Cyberpunk handle in a pretty jittery way, I'm still finding myself overcompensating the turns and drifts, but I've just come from Mafia 3... so, it is just as likely that I just need to recalibrate myself!
Something that I have noticed (but am a little bit thankful for, given my lack of driving skill...) is that the roads are pretty empty most of the time...
There is a pretty cool mechanic for investigations in the BrainDance sections. This is where you jack in to someone else's recorded experiences and experience a scene from their mind. Honestly, I could almost play a whole game based on this concept! I'm hoping that it will be developed throughout the game and not dropped as an interesting oddity.
The map... if you played Witcher 3, then this should be a pretty familiar sight. A map that starts to fill up with a wealth of side-quests and odd jobs as you drive (ride... in the Witcher) past, making for a very busy map! And this is only the initial lockdown area!
There is a wealth of skill and attribute upgrade trees... honestly, at the start (and still now), it is pretty overwhelming. However, there is the possibility to respec if you can cough up the money for it. At the moment, I'm trying to specialise as a stealth/tech character... but I keep picking up the occasional extra perks from other skill trees to help with the combat sections!
Yes... given that all the clothing and equipment are from such disparate styles, your character is going to start looking like a weird clothes horse. I wish that they had gone with a style or set of styles that you could just add mods to instead of changing the outfits completely to equip new things. After all, you are generally going to be playing the game to min-max stats and not so much from a fashion point of view! This particular screenshot was one of my less horrific outfits...
Yes... there are still glitchy moments, but so far there is nothing that is completely game breaking. I had parked Roach (sorry, my car...) here on the sidewalk whilst I went inside to shoot up some goons. When I got back, the traffic was backed up all around for ages (okay, I did a terrible park... but it wasn't THAT bad!). And what you don't see in the still shot is my car (on the right) bouncing like crazy up and down into and out of the street... sort of funny, but sort of weird! Definitely immersion breaking!
Although there is an early mission involving a single entity inhabiting twin bodies.... there is a disturbing amount of repeated character models as you wander through the city... these two screenshots are just a small example of the twin epidemic that seems to have taken over Night City!
So, at the moment... I'm sort of quite enjoying Cyberpunk. It isn't a FPS or a RPG as such.... but sort of a weird mix of the two. I lacks certain things of each, but cribs from both.... and so far, the setting and story are interesting enough to draw me in. There are elements of the game that often remind me of the Witcher, but just set in a very different setting... but that isn't always a terrible thing!
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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