Cyberpunk 2077

Ambiturner said:

What?

You think CDPR is going to shut down?

Click to expand...

Yeah I grandpa simpsoned when i read that post.

I've been completely finished with the game for about a week now. Played it on Xbox Series X. Level 50, 50 Street Cred, level 20 skill in crafting, all gigs, side jobs, bought 60% of the vehicles, and Nomad/Panam ending. All in all, came in just under 80 hours played.

The game is good, but it is far from great. I definitely liked it enough to not even consider returning my copy.

The bugs, the crashes, the instability, and the overall shit-show of a launch are well documented. A lot of that stuff pissed me off, but I am going to put all that aside and just try to focus on where the game stands from a feature, promise/delivery, scope, technical, and presentation standpoint.

Here is what is does Well:
Things they did Poorly:


It will be interesting to read the news in the coming years about the development and launch of the game. I have a feeling that someone will spill the beans and pull the curtain back on what a clusterfuck of development this must have been. The game is passable most of the time and has some really good story moments, but when it comes down to it... it is average. It was still worth my $60, but they over-promised and severely under-delivered. They did not raise the bar in any aspect of the genre and were outshined by similar games that came out 5-10 years ago. Hard to believe that this was the same company that gave us Witcher 3.

I am hopeful that the DLC redeems them. If they could somehow come out with something on the level of Blood and Wine, I will sing their praises.

Score: 6.5/10

Fight said:

I've been completely finished with the game for about a week now. Played it on Xbox Series X. Level 50, 50 Street Cred, level 20 skill in crafting, all gigs, side jobs, bought 60% of the vehicles, and Nomad/Panam ending. All in all, came in just under 80 hours played.

The game is good, but it is far from great. I definitely liked it enough to not even consider returning my copy.

The bugs, the crashes, the instability, and the overall shit-show of a launch are well documented. A lot of that stuff pissed me off, but I am going to put all that aside and just try to focus on where the game stands from a feature, promise/delivery, scope, technical, and presentation standpoint.

Here is what is does Well:

Spoiler: The Good:

• Main Story: The story is pretty good. It could have gotten convoluted, but they kept the train on the tracks. It was just good futuristic fiction.
• Combat: The combat system is really great. The weapons look and sound great. The guns have real impact. The melee weapons thump and slice. It is all really well done.
• Controls: General controls and movement feels fluid and natural. Running, jumping, crouching... all of it feels great.
• Characters: They created a world with good characters. Though, they really should not have killed Jackie so early. The sheer amount of good characters is something they should be commended for.
• Voice: The Voice acting is varied and interesting.
• Music: I wouldn't say the music was amazing, but there are 5 or 6 great tracks. I wish they would have leaned into techno-vibe more and the death-metal-vibe less. Best case scenario for me would have been the Bladerunner 2049 soundtrack.
• Night City: Night City is well constructed. It feels like it could be a real, futuristic place. The bones of the city are just great... but what they fill it with is another matter.
• Side Quests: These stories are awesome. The Gigs get formulaic and repetitive. More on that below.
• "Magic System": Quick Hacks are a great stand-in for a magic system. It fits within the Cyberpunk world perfectly.
• Stealth: The system also works well. They aren't pioneering anything new here, but they did a good job with it.

Things they did Poorly:

Spoiler: The Bad:

• Three Life Paths: They matter for about 2 hours of your entire play-thru. It determines where you start and a handful of dialogue choices (which make no difference) along the way. Just one of countless game features that are present, but so under-cooked that you wonder why they ever bothered in the first place.
• Game Vibe: That bombastic talk show host every time you loaded up the game was out of place and a poor copy-cat attempt at the GTA series take on social commentary. It was like they couldn't really decide was "Cyberpunk" was. The vibe and feel of the game is disjointed and tries to be everything to everyone.
• NPC's: NPC's are embarrassingly under developed. Morrowind, almost 20 years ago, puts this game to shame. The clearly devoted zero time or effort to making the city populace be anything but automatons that walk down the sidewalk or drive in a straight line.
• Traffic: The traffic system is fucked. They spawn cars behind you, you turn look at them, then turn away, and they respawn/disappear. It is all 100% artificial.
• Vehicles: All you get are Trucks, Cars, Motorcycles. That is it. And that is just for you. The NPCs don't even get motorcycles. There are train stations with no trains. You can't fly anything. There are no flavor vehicles like bikes or jet skis or any watercraft outside of a few huge cargo ships.
• Police: This has to be one of the worst implementation of Police in any open-world game ever. They spawn on top of you, they stop pursuing you when you get 1 block out of range. It is like the developer's had to come up with a police system in less than a day because they were told their game was shipping whether it was ready or not. It is really embarrassing.
• Water: There is one mission were you dive under the water and a couple events where you dive down to loot a stash. Just another game-system that is barely there.
• Companions: Johnny is the only companion and he is only there to add flavor to the story. It would have been great to get your own crew or a side kick.
• OP Weapons: No balance or correct scaling with the weapon system. Everyone gets to the point where you can one-shot every enemy. Prior to that, you have no way of telling enemy threat levels or whether you should engage them in a fight or not.
• Play the Way You Want: They took the "play how you want to play" to an extreme level. To the extent that EVERY mission has way in the back door, a garbage dumpster to dump bodies in, a dialogue option avoid combat, a terminal to hack, a computer to switch off cameras... on and on and on. At some point, when you have EVERY option available to you, every mission is essentially the same, just with different flavor text. Gigs especially fell into this trap and turned into a lot of filler content.
• Fixer's and Gigs: They came up with a solid formula, then copy/pasted it about 60 times. Break in, and upload virus/kill target/rescue target/steal data. Rinse, repeat. All the fixers are hallow and shallow. None of them are your friend or your foe. They just offer up the same lame missions and pay you for it.
• Gangs & Districts: No ability to pick your allegiance and have the other factions hate you. Sure, all the various gangs existed, but they were just there add a bit of flavor and fill a stereotype. Why was there no faction rating that could go up or down with your actions? They should have had their own unique vendors that would only sell unique and rare items if you had faction with them.
• Character Creator: Minor gripe for me personally, because I will often just use the generic pre-made character in RPG's, but character creation is pretty shallow. Why did we get to customize our dong's when you never see them? Beyond that, you can't alter your appearance, get a tattoo or a haircut after the fact. This is basic and standard stuff for RPG's these days. Shit it was basic and standard for RPG's a decade ago.

It will be interesting to read the news in the coming years about the development and launch of the game. I have a feeling that someone will spill the beans and pull the curtain back on what a clusterfuck of development this must have been. The game is passable most of the time and has some really good story moments, but when it comes down to it... it is average. It was still worth my $60, but they over-promised and severely under-delivered. They did not raise the bar in any aspect of the genre and were outshined by similar games that came out 5-10 years ago. Hard to believe that this was the same company that gave us Witcher 3.

I am hopeful that the DLC redeems them. If they could somehow come out with something on the level of Blood and Wine, I will sing their praises.

Score: 6.5/10

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Your character creator comment is spot on.

Why spend so long on your hair and face when 99% of the game it's completely hidden under shitty headgear and gasmasks. I mean, hide headgear has been around since at least EQ ffs!

Same with body tattoos. They looked cool when your character is butt-naked in creation but just trashy when they're mostly hidden under clothes.

I agree that some type of "hide gear" option would be nice. People have already made mods that do that, or mods that let you tweak your hair and tattoos and shit.

At higher levels I just run around with no helmet, my shit is so overpowered already it doesnt matter.

Fight said:

I've been completely finished with the game for about a week now. Played it on Xbox Series X. Level 50, 50 Street Cred, level 20 skill in crafting, all gigs, side jobs, bought 60% of the vehicles, and Nomad/Panam ending. All in all, came in just under 80 hours played.

The game is good, but it is far from great. I definitely liked it enough to not even consider returning my copy.

The bugs, the crashes, the instability, and the overall shit-show of a launch are well documented. A lot of that stuff pissed me off, but I am going to put all that aside and just try to focus on where the game stands from a feature, promise/delivery, scope, technical, and presentation standpoint.

Here is what is does Well:

Spoiler: The Good:

• Main Story: The story is pretty good. It could have gotten convoluted, but they kept the train on the tracks. It was just good futuristic fiction.
• Combat: The combat system is really great. The weapons look and sound great. The guns have real impact. The melee weapons thump and slice. It is all really well done.
• Controls: General controls and movement feels fluid and natural. Running, jumping, crouching... all of it feels great.
• Characters: They created a world with good characters. Though, they really should not have killed Jackie so early. The sheer amount of good characters is something they should be commended for.
• Voice: The Voice acting is varied and interesting.
• Music: I wouldn't say the music was amazing, but there are 5 or 6 great tracks. I wish they would have leaned into techno-vibe more and the death-metal-vibe less. Best case scenario for me would have been the Bladerunner 2049 soundtrack.
• Night City: Night City is well constructed. It feels like it could be a real, futuristic place. The bones of the city are just great... but what they fill it with is another matter.
• Side Quests: These stories are awesome. The Gigs get formulaic and repetitive. More on that below.
• "Magic System": Quick Hacks are a great stand-in for a magic system. It fits within the Cyberpunk world perfectly.
• Stealth: The system also works well. They aren't pioneering anything new here, but they did a good job with it.

Things they did Poorly:

Spoiler: The Bad:

• Three Life Paths: They matter for about 2 hours of your entire play-thru. It determines where you start and a handful of dialogue choices (which make no difference) along the way. Just one of countless game features that are present, but so under-cooked that you wonder why they ever bothered in the first place.
• Game Vibe: That bombastic talk show host every time you loaded up the game was out of place and a poor copy-cat attempt at the GTA series take on social commentary. It was like they couldn't really decide was "Cyberpunk" was. The vibe and feel of the game is disjointed and tries to be everything to everyone.
• NPC's: NPC's are embarrassingly under developed. Morrowind, almost 20 years ago, puts this game to shame. The clearly devoted zero time or effort to making the city populace be anything but automatons that walk down the sidewalk or drive in a straight line.
• Traffic: The traffic system is fucked. They spawn cars behind you, you turn look at them, then turn away, and they respawn/disappear. It is all 100% artificial.
• Vehicles: All you get are Trucks, Cars, Motorcycles. That is it. And that is just for you. The NPCs don't even get motorcycles. There are train stations with no trains. You can't fly anything. There are no flavor vehicles like bikes or jet skis or any watercraft outside of a few huge cargo ships.
• Police: This has to be one of the worst implementation of Police in any open-world game ever. They spawn on top of you, they stop pursuing you when you get 1 block out of range. It is like the developer's had to come up with a police system in less than a day because they were told their game was shipping whether it was ready or not. It is really embarrassing.
• Water: There is one mission were you dive under the water and a couple events where you dive down to loot a stash. Just another game-system that is barely there.
• Companions: Johnny is the only companion and he is only there to add flavor to the story. It would have been great to get your own crew or a side kick.
• OP Weapons: No balance or correct scaling with the weapon system. Everyone gets to the point where you can one-shot every enemy. Prior to that, you have no way of telling enemy threat levels or whether you should engage them in a fight or not.
• Play the Way You Want: They took the "play how you want to play" to an extreme level. To the extent that EVERY mission has way in the back door, a garbage dumpster to dump bodies in, a dialogue option avoid combat, a terminal to hack, a computer to switch off cameras... on and on and on. At some point, when you have EVERY option available to you, every mission is essentially the same, just with different flavor text. Gigs especially fell into this trap and turned into a lot of filler content.
• Fixer's and Gigs: They came up with a solid formula, then copy/pasted it about 60 times. Break in, and upload virus/kill target/rescue target/steal data. Rinse, repeat. All the fixers are hallow and shallow. None of them are your friend or your foe. They just offer up the same lame missions and pay you for it.
• Gangs & Districts: No ability to pick your allegiance and have the other factions hate you. Sure, all the various gangs existed, but they were just there add a bit of flavor and fill a stereotype. Why was there no faction rating that could go up or down with your actions? They should have had their own unique vendors that would only sell unique and rare items if you had faction with them.
• Character Creator: Minor gripe for me personally, because I will often just use the generic pre-made character in RPG's, but character creation is pretty shallow. Why did we get to customize our dong's when you never see them? Beyond that, you can't alter your appearance, get a tattoo or a haircut after the fact. This is basic and standard stuff for RPG's these days. Shit it was basic and standard for RPG's a decade ago.

It will be interesting to read the news in the coming years about the development and launch of the game. I have a feeling that someone will spill the beans and pull the curtain back on what a clusterfuck of development this must have been. The game is passable most of the time and has some really good story moments, but when it comes down to it... it is average. It was still worth my $60, but they over-promised and severely under-delivered. They did not raise the bar in any aspect of the genre and were outshined by similar games that came out 5-10 years ago. Hard to believe that this was the same company that gave us Witcher 3.

I am hopeful that the DLC redeems them. If they could somehow come out with something on the level of Blood and Wine, I will sing their praises.

Score: 6.5/10

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you put 80 hours into a barely above average game?

Chersk said:

you put 80 hours into a barely above average game?

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<EverQuest joke goes here>

I've sunk more hours into shit games that I tolerate. Namely PUBG.

Bandwagon said:

Hey.....how come there's no cybernetic buttholes in this game? Optical scanners are cool and all, but imagine having a fancy no-wipe butthole.

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They should have an intestinal cybernetic that makes your shit into like rabbit pellets.

V’s apartment has the 3 seashells in it, so they already have a poop solution

Holy shit dude amazing post, thank you!

122 hours in, still clearing the map before I do final mission. Starting to get fatigued but keeping it fresh by crafting new weapons.

Comrades hammer is hilarious as fuck. Some of the enemies I hit literally burst into a bloody fire charred husk. I also made a legend headsman, I got it up to 55% bleed chance with +89 crit chance. 1677 dps. Shit is just fodder and has been for a while. I still get gibbed by tougher enemies sometimes though if im not careful.

200 hours on Steam, probably 40 or so more on Xbox (doesn't look like it keeps stats on the achievements tab). Would've liked to finish my netrunner build on console but on X1X the game crashes most of the time if I try to drive somewhere instead of using fast travel, and after it crashed my Series X twice with a full power off I noped out of that too.

On a side note, how do you get the US Cracks mission? Do they just randomly call you after the Samurai Band questlines wrap up?

Cybsled said:

On a side note, how do you get the US Cracks mission? Do they just randomly call you after the Samurai Band questlines wrap up?

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Only ones I've seen are part of Kerry's missions after the concert.

Hmm, guess I have to visit him at his house again then

I'm enjoying the game a lot more the second time around. The first time, I kinda rushed to the end of the game, and didn't do nearly enough side quests and gigs (in my defense, I didn't know the main quest was THAT short). I just got Comrade's Hammer. Talk about OP, holy fuck. I'm actually crafting this time through as well, so I can upgrade more of my stuff. I was getting really annoyed at how slow it was, until I saw a cheat about where to find the incendiary grenade kit, and how you can basically just make as many grenades as you want, then then disassemble them to get epic and legendary parts. I also have no problems with money this time through, as you can then use your epic and legendary items to make rare and epic guns, which you can then sell at a vendor. I can make close to $500,000 an hour if I really want to spend the time to do it. Also saw a cheat on how you can loot the epic inhalers and disassemble them for epic and legendary parts as well. The first time through, I didn't bother even trying crafting because it was too much of a pain in the ass to level it up, and also couldn't seem to find any of the epic or legendary components.

I will say that some of the game gets really repetitive. I did a couple of really cool side quests, like helping River find his nephew (and getting his gun at the end of it), and helping Jefferson and Elizabeth Peralez. Also, the underwater scene with Judy is pretty fucking cool. Too bad you can't bang her if you're a dude. I will say that I'm impressed at just how huge the city is and the surrounding wastelands, but my only minor gripe is that the city doesn't really fell "alive." I'm not saying they should've made several million citizens that you could individually interact with, but you start to see the same people over and over again on the streets, and it makes the beauty of the city seem more like a mirage. Also, the traffic on the streets starts to get REALLY fucking annoying when there are 15 cars all not moving and you need to start smashing into vehicles to get around, or driving on the sidewalks. Still, it's pretty impressive what they were able to produce in a game of this scope. I am hoping that future patches will fix some of the annoying bugs (I had to reload a mission tonight when I stole the police SUV out of the garage and upon delivering it, I got out of the SUV and wound up stuck underneath it), and I do wish like Flight said, that they would've fleshed out some kind of meaningful faction system, so at least SOME of your actions would have repercussions and consequences. And man, if they add in some kind of multiplayer, that would be boss.

All in all, I think I'd give the game an 8/10. I'm happier with my purchase now than I was the first time through. I still think this game needed another six months or so in the oven, and I would definitely not put it up there with some of the other games I've played this year like "Hades" or "Spelunky 2" but it's still a really solid game.