Cyberpunk 2077: This Could Have Been an Excellent Game

I have good news! I finally have a gaming PC so I can play even more video games. I picked up Cyberpunk 2077 during a Steam sale in the holiday season so that I can experience one of the most discussed games in recent memory. I remember how much hype this game had prior to its release in late-2020. The developers, CD Projekt Red achieved great success with the release of The Witcher III, and it would be interesting to see how the developers would follow this up. The revelation that Keanu Reeves would have a significant voice-acting role furthered the already-massive hype for Cyberpunk 2077. This was going to be one of the best games of 2020, right?

After its release, Cyberpunk 2077 received a great deal of criticism for its many bugs and glitches, and many people were wondering if the game was unfinished and rushed to release. This was the reason I stayed away from playing this game until now. By now, CD Projekt Red should have fixed most of these bugs and glitches through various patches to the game (or so I thought...).

When I started playing Cyberpunk 2077 one year after its release, I still experienced many bugs and glitches, from horrific collision detection to NPCs acting like a ghost was possessing their souls. I encountered a constant issue where I would call a vehicle, have it stop in front of me, get in the vehicle and press the accelerate button, and the car would not move at all. When driving, I could pass through some cars (rather than crash into them), and then the game will suddenly remember that cars are not supposed to drive through each other and my car will suddenly go flying somewhere. These are just a couple of more egregious examples of glitches and bugs. There was nothing truly game-breaking, but these bugs and glitches significantly negatively affected my experience with the game.

In contrast to the bug and glitch issues, CD Projekt Red has done a fantastic job in creating the setting of Night City in Cyberpunk. Night City is an incredible imagining of a city in the future, and I loved listening to the news bulletins on the radio to hear about what happened after the year 2022 and the year 2077. Since I was playing on a gaming PC, the graphics were beautiful and true to life, though I did not have a powerful enough PC to enable ray tracing. I felt like I could lose myself in the map and how everything looked and sounded, from the buildings to the people. The overall story felt solid as well, and there were many memorable characters in the main and side quests, especially Johnny Silverhand (voiced by Keanu Reeves). 

I also like the soundtrack, and I was surprised to see the amount of effort to create original songs for many different genres. You had rock and metal, but also reggaetón, hip-hop, and even some J-pop. Cyberpunk's soundtrack reminded me a little bit of the soundtrack for True Crime: Streets of LA with the specifically-created songs for the game.

Other things to note are that the vehicle controls feel unnecessarily heavy (like GTA IV), and that there is hardly anything revolutionary about crafting or upgrading your character. I am also surprised that this game managed to stay as an M-rated game, with the detail of the violence, gore, and sexual content.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a very good game, but the constant bugs and glitches prevent Cyberpunk from being an excellent game. If CD Projekt Red spent 4-6 months fixing these issues and released the game in 2021, it would have been a game of the year candidate hands-down. I still had a load of fun with the game, despite those issues. If you can, experience the grittiness of Night City when you play this game. There is no setting like it in any other game.