3.5/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Cyberpunk 2077.

WAKE UP CD PROJEKT RED, YOU GOT SOME BRIDGES TO BURN!!! Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk. What can I say that hasn't already been discussed in the rampant discourse surrounding this game? What a fascinating case of how poor management can absolutely destroy a title in the eyes of its fanbase. From CD Projekt Red jumping at the chance to unleash the game WELL before it was ready to the refund fiasco after the unprecedented backlash from fans, this is one weird fall from grace for a team that, at one point, were heralded as the cream of the crop of modern RPG developers. I want to say straight up, I feel for you if you were excited to play this on console and were screwed over by the frankly unforgivable ports. Dropping 40 big ones on a game is rough at the best of times, but when the management at a studio like CDPR have the cajones to sell you a version of a game they admitted to not spending any time on, that's something else. But I think the biggest frustration with the bugs and the awful management of the game is that, when it's working, Cyberpunk 2077 is a really engaging story-focused experience. It's admittedly a bit disappointing and was definitely oversold by CDPR in the lead up to release, but I easily lost 35 hours in Night City without breaking a sweat and am likely to continue playing well past the credits. When it comes to telling a gripping narrative in a dystopian future world, there are few games that can rival what Cyberpunk offers, with a visually striking city, a range of diverse, multi-faceted questlines and a central plot which is genuinely enthralling from start to finish. As per usual, CDPR shine when they're fleshing out giant worlds and making the characters that dwell within them feel complex and distinct. 2077 doesn't break that trend, and the way its story tackles death and acceptance makes for some of the most poignant narrative moments of 2020 (although, away from the more grounded, emotional themes of its main campaign, it often feels like CDPR's "cautionary future" struggles to say anything outside of technology is bad, sex stands to grow into an even more exploitative industry and humans really do love to play god. It's hardly anything new or really groundbreaking, especially if you've dabbled in other cyberpunk fiction.) Outside of that, you have a range of top-grade side content and some genuinely entertaining gunplay. Much like titles such as Fallout, the optional quests largely became my favourite source of enjoyment in Cyberpunk, seeing V meet fun new characters and become embroiled in a number of surprising, terrifying, emotional and generally inventive side-narratives. Meanwhile, combat can be pretty fun when characters aren't flying around, glitching into the floor, or having their penises clip out of their trousers. As you get better weapons and become a tour-de-force of the criminal underworld, firefights generally have some solid weight to them (on the PlayStation 5 anyway) and additions like the mantis blades mix things up, even if some enemies can be frustratingly bullet-spongey. For me though, what works best here is Night City itself. The game's fixed first-person perspective and immersive dialogue system works wonders in making you feel like a part of this shady metropolis, with CDPR spending a lot of time making the game's skyboxes, streets, and environments all scream with genre-authenticity and style. Considering I'm somebody with an unhealthy obsession with the likes of Blade Runner, Akira and Ghost in the Shell, it's hard to not just fall in love with living in Cyberpunk's stunning locales and mingling with its eccentric inhabitants. But after that wears off, it's easy to see that CDPR has oversold exactly what Cyberpunk is. For one, its open-world lacks interactivity, standing as shallow eye candy to view as you drive to your next rigidly fixed mission objective rather than a living, breathing city. While it often feels like the game should've gone the Skyrim route, dropping you in Night City as a mercenary and letting you figure out the rest from there, instead it winds up being a very involved story experience. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it often feels at odds with the sprawling, 'do whatever YOU want' open-world RPG experience Cyberpunk 2077 wants to pretend it is. Meanwhile, the urgency of its story translates awfully to the reams of additional content available in its sandbox, making main quest V and side quest V feel like completely different people. And for a game that boasts how much choices affect the narrative, it feels most everyone I know wound up with the same outcomes regardless of their decisions. Cyberpunk's biggest crime, however, is that it's an action game that can't accept it's an action game. Its RPG systems are so light and its open-world mechanics so surprisingly hollow that at times I wished this was a semi-linear shooter. It tries to force you to craft, hack, and kit out weapons, but the reality is none of these parts of the game are beneficial. Combat is easy, and even if it wasn't, each of these systems are so baseline that there would be little point in ever mainlining them when guns are so readily available and more engaging to invest in. The end result is a game that, while still unacceptably broken, also just isn't what we were promised. Where are the customizable cars, the purchasable apartments, the endless choices filled with branching narrative repercussions? What's left is an amazing story supported by a pretty fun set of light RPG systems. Sure, it's a fun blockbuster experience (when it works) but it's one that, knowing the studio's skill set, could easily have been so much more. I really hope this isn't the last we see of Cyberpunk, just because I'm sure CDPR could make something utterly jaw-dropping with this franchise going forward. But with all the transphobic marketing campaigns, the disgusting levels of mandatory crunch and the horrific launch of this game, whoever's running this studio REALLY needs to get their shit together if they're gonna pull Cyberpunk back. Regardless, it's worth giving a go if you get yourself a PC port or a functional copy on PS5 or Xbox Series X.