Review for cyberpunk 2077. Game for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Google Stadia, the video game was released on 10/12/2020
Cyberpunk 2077 is finally on our monitors. The development of CD Projekt RED's latest work was definitely troubled, between continuous postponements and an old gen release that is anything but rosy, which right now is making people talk about itself for the lack of optimization, and more.
Here, however, we will focus on dissecting the contents and the quality of them, beyond the problems (which we are sure will be resolved in the coming months with powerful patches) by concentrating on what we saw in more than 100 hours of gameplay on a solid gaming PC, ready to tell you about our thunderous experience in Night City.
Whats Cyberpunk? First of all, a literary current entirely from the 0s, a sub-genre of science fiction, which has seen proliferating in its pages authors of the caliber of William Gibson, coined by the visionary Bethke and soon revisited in the key of a paper role-playing game by Mike Pondsmith.
And it is right in the dusty pages of the second edition regulation, Cyberpunk 2020, and in Gibson's Neuromancer, that the writer has dreamed for the first time of very distant but concrete, dirty and actual worlds. A shattered world with incredible technological possibilities, but bent by a very vertical social divide, where large corporations enrich themselves from the top of their skyscrapers, towering over the messy suburban sprawl.
The excellent The Witcher 3 immediately made us place great faith in the narrative and design skills of the guys at CD Projekt RED and the discovery of Keanu Reeves as Rocker Jhonny Silverhand has raised the hype bar more than it should ... much more than it should. But let's go in order.
Like any self-respecting action role-playing game, it starts with character creation, where we will be asked to customize the aesthetics of our avatar (currently it will not be possible to change its appearance during the adventure, so consider your choices carefully), then to distribute creation points in the various specialties of our virtual alter-ego. Unlike the role-playing game from which it takes its origins, in Cyberpunk 2077 we will not have to choose a specific class such as Solitaire, Netrunner or Rocker.
We can spend our creation and advancement points in one of the five categories to our liking. Each category has various specializations on which to spend another type of points to further customize the build we prefer.
The first of the five categories is physical. If we choose to invest our points here we will allow our avatar to be physically more resistant, which means having more hit points and being able to run / sprint longer as well as, of course, being able to count on a lethal right. The talents present on the various branches of this specialization are focused on hand-to-hand combat, health regeneration and steadfastness during battles.
Investing in reflexes will allow us to increase the value of evasion and critical hits, with a branch of talents entirely aimed at increasing our lethality with rifles, pistols and blades. A good physique / reflex combo is the perfect recipe for those who want a first person shooter-centric gameplay experience, strong in lethal bullets and a healthy dose of health and stamina.
Intelligence is meant for aspiring Netrunners: Lethal hackers able to scan their surroundings, hack into systems, and fry enemies by overheating their chips. A silent Netrunner can be far more lethal than a mammoth aggressor armed to the teeth, as long as he uses his surroundings intelligently.
Coldness is the relative skill of our stealth operations. With her talents entirely focused on stealth and coolness she is both a great stat coupled with intelligence and a great stand alone option for those who prefer movement in the shadows.
Technical capacity is linked to our expertise in the cutting-edge technologies of Night City. We will be able to open otherwise inaccessible passages, create high-performance weapons ourselves and make grenades much more lethal than they already are.
The beauty of Cyberpunk 2077? We will never be tied to the advancement of a specific discipline or style of play, but we will be able to use our skills in a flexible way towards the game environment, with total decision-making and modular freedom. While this vision proposed in 2077 is in wide contrast to the original RPG, being able to fully enjoy all the possibilities offered by Night City at all times is simply fantastic.
The last touch of personalization that we will be called to give to our Cyber alter ego concerns its origins. We will be able to choose between street boy, nomadic and corporate. This initial choice is not limited to characterizing the first bars of the game, but it will deeply affect our dialogue options, providing always interesting and present ideas for the duration of the adventure. Character ready? We dive into the City.
After completing the short introductory quest we will be immediately free to immerse ourselves in the open world proposed by CD Projekt RED. It will be up to us to choose whether to follow the main storyline or dive into the myriad of sub quests proposed. And the city… is alive. Night City is a tangle of stories, lives and adventures that envelops us entirely, always ready to offer us a new glimpse of the setting, a sip of danger and a mouthful of poison.
We have rarely seen the spectacle of a city so full of contents, and defining them as "simple" contents is absolutely an understatement: every glimpse, sidewalk or street corner is characterized in an amazing way from the content point of view, with the ornamentation that blends with the suggestive in a perfect artistic union. It is a suggestive experience that is worth living in first person, until it merges with the cursed spirit of the city.
Of course, this provided you have a high-performance machine, able to give back first of all a visual feedback that does not risk breaking the magic of immersion in the game world. A multitude of significant bugs are lurking, such as late-loaded textures, interpenetrations of all kinds and a dancing framerate. For this reason, it will be of vital importance to spend a few minutes with the graphics settings, in order to make the game performance consistent with the build of your PC.
Here we will try to do as few spoilers as possible, a lot don't even tell you how you will meet (and clash) with Johnny Silverhand, supporting actor of adventure excellence. Instead, we will try to return the visceral experience that one tries to immerse oneself in the stories told in the alleys, in the skyscrapers and in the remote caves of the city.
We are facing a narrative masterpiece, where the titanic mass of writing, spread organically between main missions, secondary and events, never misses a beat. The dialogues are impeccable and the stories told bristling with a profound ethical component, so much so as to leave the player dismayed or displaced on several occasions. The guys from CD Projekt Red have chosen to push on the accelerator, without sparing any issues.
Paranoia, religion, ethics, morals, transhumanism and identity are just some of the issues that Cyberpunk 2077 addresses, always leaving the player a lot of room to maneuver about the important decisions to make. V, our alter ego, although influenced by our decision making, is a living character, with a well-defined character and identity and we will almost never have the feeling of having dropped a virtual and personalityless avatar into a living world. We will be part of history, we will feel part of history and our every decision will be fundamental.
The map of the city (which also includes the surrounding areas) is very large and dense. To move from an area very far from the other we will have two options: drive a vehicle or resort to fast travel. Unfortunately, the driving side left us far from thrilled, with slippery vehicles unable to offer an arcade or simulation experience. If we add to this a very poor credibility related to vehicle damage and environmental damage, we find ourselves in front of one of the weaker sectors proposed by Cyberpunk 2077. Fast travel, on the other hand, performs its function anonymously: simply teleporting us from one point of the city to another without too many frills.
Once a mission is accepted, we will be absorbed in the heart of the action. Here we will be able to count on a rather vast arsenal, which includes more than varied guns, efficient hacking, a space full of environmental cues to interact with, peculiar cybernetic grafts and a good dose of blades and blunt objects.
The feeling of the shootings is great, exquisitely arcade with a varied and personal weapon fire drop. Hacking the world around us to our advantage, while diving from cover to cover and spewing blasts of lead on enemies is extremely satisfying. Damage-related parametry is functional and minimally invasive, optimally contextualized and proactive towards upgrades to our arsenal.
The same cannot be said of the feeling of the melee: woody, anonymous and not very thorough. This aspect would have greatly benefited from additional attention from the developers, who in the current state of affairs limits himself to carrying out his task without any praise. If, on the other hand, we decide to move silently among the shadows and eliminate the enemies one by one by taking them from behind, we will highlight the biggest lack of Cyberpunk 2077.
The AI of the enemies is absolutely subdued compared to the other sectors of the title. We will be able to test the lack of impact during the shootings, where our opponents will only hold the position and fire (our experience is based on the modality: difficult), they will never, ever attempt intelligent movements such as encirclement. They'll just stand there firing. Indeed, from time to time they will try to change coverage by exposing themselves unnecessarily.
This aspect is hugely accentuated by the stealth dynamics, where the opponents will be almost blind as moles and will never notice us unless we enter (and stay for a few seconds) in their field of vision. During our rehearsal, we hardly ever increased our stealth skills, simply because it was never necessary. A more aggressive AI would certainly have made the approach to clashes much more interesting, which in most cases amuse and nothing more.
Definitely different speech for the Boss Fight, extremely characterized by interesting characters, iconic and full of unique mechanics. We really care not to make spoilers of any kind, especially since most of the major fights are tied to the main story, but… wow. The charisma of a Ninja with cybernetic blades, a stealth suit and a menacing mouth of fire would delight anyone. Especially if the fight is spread across several exciting stages. The gaming experience is always extremely guided, with indicators on the minimap that are sometimes excessive, but we strongly believe that these choices have been adopted to make the title appealing to a heterogeneous audience as possible.
The audio sector is a center of excellence of the CD Projekt house, starting from the immensity proposed by the radio, to thunder during the auditory experience returned by the clashes. The hubbub of the city will never be a mere filler, but will always enjoy a first-class immersive note. In addition, the acting skills of the cast are incredible, the dialogue is beautifully recited, no secondary characters are treated as such., the care and love for this art is painstaking and evident in every single exchange of words. And then there's Keanu Reeves, a perfect supporting actor for an adventure destined to leave its mark.
Cyberpunk 2077 amazed us: we have repeatedly lost ourselves in its tangle of stories and drawing a clear line between main and secondary characters is simply impossible. Night City is alive, its inhabitants are alive, its themes are deep, disturbing, excessive. The city does not mince words, spares no one and will bring you to your knees again, again and again. No choice can be made lightly and you will be overwhelmed endlessly by the complex machinations of the corporations, by the infamous brutality of the street, by the little value that will be attributed to life and by the incessant melancholy of Johnny's past. Cyberpunk is current, as its genre should be. Talk to us, about us, about our world and it is impossible to remain indifferent.
► Cyberpunk 2077 is an RPG-Adventure game developed by CD Projekt RED and published by Bandai Namco for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Google Stadia, the video game was released on 10/12/2020
