Cyberpunk 2077

An open-world masterpiece that's its own worst enemy at times, Cyberpunk 2077 still ranks as a modern-day classic...With more than 40 hours clocked over the last week – walking, driving, shooting, hacking and talking my way around Night City – it is my favourite game of the year and the best I've played since 2018's Red Dead Redemption 2.

A lot of people don't want to spend 50 hours playing one game, much less 200 hours to 100% it, and would rather a more linear, streamlined experience. Even with its shorter main quest, Cyberpunk is unlikely to sustain this type of player from start to end. But Cyberpunk 2077 isn't designed for that type of player. Anyone who's followed the game knows what they're in for. Players keen for a world to get lost in, a game to sink untold hours into, will be satiated by Cyberpunk 2077.

Honestly, it's a dilemma. Technical issues are often passing, but what lingers is the lack of readiness, in the wider sense. The lack of requisite care. The story is a marvel, as is the sheer, red mist hostility of the world that houses it. The promised depth of systems are there, but mishandled. The maturity - and recall CD Projekt describing Cyberpunk, on announcement, as "a mature RPG for a mature audience" - is often not. Maturity in the immature sense, maybe: the teenage idea of it, that 'maturity' equals Rated M and can be found in nakedness, coarseness, blood and guts, when in actuality it's closer to something like the forced perspective gained from time. My lingering impression of Cyberpunk 2077 is of a game that's shouting over itself, relentlessly at odds with its own creative voice. Amidst it all, the nuance that does exist in Cyberpunk 2077, the intense, intoxicating humanity at its heart, is so nearly engulfed by all the noise. But I think I can still hear it, just about. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Sure, it’s better on PC, but that’s cold comfort when it’s hardly functional on other platforms. What’s clear is that this game is no more ready for release than it is for review. Major patches are already slated for January and February, and we’ll revisit it at that time to score it. Right now, buyer beware. There’s a fun game underneath all this, but only if you are playing on PC or Stadia.

Jeff Gerstmann & Jeff Bakalar's early impressions.

On my PC, beefed up specifically for the game, Cyberpunk performs OK. I can work around the technical failings and laugh at or even admire the bugs. It’s only crashed once, hilariously, when another car hit me so hard the whole game mysteriously shut down. So I’m not playing the broken mess we’re all talking about. Instead, I’m playing a game whose various pieces don’t fit together, where busyness and choices feel like illusions to cover up its emptiness, where key features like driving and gunplay are a chore. I leave each play session a little befuddled and dissatisfied, but then I read about a quest or see a video of an unfamiliar area and boot the game up again. I can’t quite say if I like it, even though saying things like that is part of my job. I’m still playing it, but I’m not always sure why.

CD Projekt Red had the weight of the world on its shoulders, but Cyberpunk 2077 delivers. I can’t think of a single significant complaint. The game looks gorgeous, sounds luscious, and hits you in the feels just as hard as Witcher 3. The deep and incredibly flexible character customization options should provide ample replayability—something you couldn’t say about Witcher—especially when paired with the wide array of meaningful story decisions you can make. [Impressions]

I can’t deny that Night City wowed me with its scale, its verticality, and its sense of history. But I wish I could see people like me on its streets as something more than objects. I wish that the game’s politics were more radical. Yes, I know I shouldn’t look to a colossal game that was itself produced under exploitative labor conditions to lead the charge of anticapitalist liberation, but I wish the sparks of Johnny Silverhand’s ideological rage got to burn brighter, that Cyberpunk 2077 felt more interested in envisioning new futures than in reminiscing over bygone glories. Neither its gameplay nor its narrative can imagine the bold possibilities that I find so central to the best of cyberpunk. But what it does offer is visions of people trying to make do and get by in a world that’s trying to eat them alive, and sometimes those people get by with a little help from their friends. It’s not the revolution I hoped for, but it’s something.

Cyberpunk 2077 is staggering, overwhelming, and even surprising at times in its spectacle. Although my first dozen hours with the game has been marred by easy-to-fix problems, Nighty City, along with all it offers and all that call it home, makes for an intoxicating escape. Here’s hoping the next one hundred hours are as utterly compelling.

Cyberpunk 2077 is huge, sprawling, complex, and deeply flawed. It’s at its best as a fairly straightforward singleplayer action game, with likable characters and thrilling capers in a fascinatingly detailed open world that looks better than any game before it. It’s at its worst if you want it to be an RPG, an approach-as-you-please Deus Ex successor, or a polished piece of software. I enjoyed my time with it a lot, and I even want more of it, though I’m going to spend years complaining about its flaws. I’ll enjoy the complaining, too. It reminds me of the Eurojank games of yore, then, but maybe it’s fairer to say that it reminds me of the previous games from developers CD Projekt Red. After eight years of one of the most grating marketing campaigns imaginable, Cyberpunk 2077 is here, its ambitions beyond its means. Cyberpunk 2077: Enhanced Edition when?

CD Projekt Red's long-awaited follow-up to The Witcher 3 is brilliant, fascinating and engrossing but bears the scars of a tough development. [Review in Progress]

I’ve been cautiously excited about Cyberpunk 2077 for years, and it’s almost exactly the game I expected: not terribly memorable, but campy and entertaining. Given just how much crunch and controversy Cyberpunk 2077 has generated, though, I can’t deny being a little disappointed — especially when the game delivers fragments of something more compelling.