Let me start with the information, which for many is probably of key importance: I explored the nooks and crannies of Night City through the console version, played on the Xbox One S. That is the bad, bad, extremely unplayable version. Most of the accusations against Cyberpunk relate to how it works and looks on the base versions of the previous generation consoles, i.e. the Xbox One and PS4. On the other hand, it was received much warmer among players using Xbox Series X, PS5 or stronger PCs. What it comes from? I’m in a hurry with the answer …
The tragedy on the day of the premiere and what happened next
I received my copy of the game one day before its official premiere, and the version was no different from the one the world bought the next day. Well… it was bad. Admittedly, I did not experience any boot issues, corrupted saves, or anything like that reported in some corners of the Internet, but the title was very unstable nonetheless. On average, every 30-40 minutes the program refused to obey and threw me to the start screen, and during the game the norm was a drop in fluency, sometimes so powerful that everything except the audio track stopped completely for several dozen seconds. A real time machine, which instead of 2077 took me back to the beginning of the century, when I played secret games on an outdated computer,
Patch 1.04, which was released a few days later, fortunately solved most of the most pressing problems. Since then, the game has crashed maybe two times, I managed to limit the clear declines in framerate as well. The latter was also better, and even more improved by another patch marked with the number 1.05. As a result, now it is possible to easily pass the title on older consoles, without fear of catastrophic errors or constantly stopping the game against our will. Unfortunately, all the other flaws are still not going anywhere.
First of all, the graphics are ailing. It’s not even that it’s unpleasant to the eye, because the whole thing looks fine once it’s loaded. But that’s what we have to wait for a long time. Textures reading “on the knee” right in front of our eyes are daily bread in Night City. If we surprise the game with too rapid rotation of the camera or a change of the environment while driving fast or even if we jump from the roof to the street level, we are often surrounded by hideous mannequins with blurred polygons instead of faces. Even when we choose our character in the inventory menu, the program needs a moment to make the appropriate changes. So we will see how the chosen item of clothing completely disappears, revealing bare skin, and it takes a second or two to replace it with a new one.
Cars disappear from the streets and my friend’s gun is sticking out of his head
This kind of clipping is not over, there are still some mistakes. Although I haven’t had any game-breaking bug , that is, a serious defect that prevents further gameplay, there are simply a lot of these minor shortcomings. Sometimes physics fails: after a collision with a car at high speed, I was thrown from my motorcycle vertically upwards for several dozen meters, as a result of which I got stuck at the top of the bridge pillar, from where it was impossible to descend safely. Sometimes the artificial intelligence breaks down, like when I was immediately attacked by all armed NPCs in the area on my first attempt at a mission in Clouds, and only after loading the previous save did I discover that the level can be passed peacefully at all. Other times it’s about glitchesgraphic – just the fact that putting on our avatar any headwear will make us reflect in the mirrors as bald as a knee.
Bugs of this kind don’t have a huge impact on the gameplay itself and are usually quite fun, but the problem is that they completely ruin your immersion. So what if Johnny Silverhand is serving us a passionate monologue spoken in the voice of Keanu Reeves, since there is a mass of lit cigarettes around him, the image of which remained permanently frozen in random places as the man waved his hand holding the drug. Similarly, a gloomy scene at the end of the first act of the game was ruined by the fact that during the conversation the gun did not deign to disappear from Jackie’s hand, so when Jackie put his hand to his face, the tip of the barrel protruding from the inside of his head joyfully protruded from his right temple. It irritates even then
Holes too big to be covered with a patch?
The critical voices I mentioned at the beginning, however, are not only about the quirks of the console version, which will sooner or later be fixed by the developers. The remaining accusations refer to mechanics that are significantly simplified or even completely cut in relation to what was promised to us as part of the marketing campaign. And well, there is some point in that …
First of all, Night City is not as lively and interactive as one might expect. NPC characters do not have a day and night cycle implemented, nor do they have any traceable routines within which to move. Most of them are one hundred percent extras, simply walking aimlessly ahead or standing or sitting in a specific place with a dead blank in their eyes. Most of the time, they do not react in any way to the player’s actions or any other events in the area, they have one repetitive dialogue line in case we decide to catch them, and if we encounter a threat, they all crouch in an identical (and quite comical) way or give a collective scratching post . If anyone was counting on interesting interactions with the crowd, well… miscalculated.
The city also lacks side activities. Yes, after some time we gain access to longer chains of side tasks, which are well written and will take us up for hours, but the rest is a complete blast. Small robots tossed to us by the so-called fixers, after the first few hours, stop getting involved completely, because they all come down to killing the aggressors present in a given area, or doing it, and then taking appropriate items from the location, i.e. evidence of criminal activity or something valuable that the client wants to recover. It is true that they have their microbeads provided to us in the text of the order or by means of something placed in the area of our operations, but most of them are fine and might as well not be there. Something is missing here which would be a springboard from the standard pace of fun – mini-games, logic puzzles, environmental puzzles. For example this yearAssassin’s Creed Valhalla was able to offer us an eagle (a fictional Viking dice game) or “hallucinogenic challenges” played after eating toadstools. There is nothing like that in Cyberpunk , except maybe finding tarot cards scattered around the city, which is simply boring, because they are all simply marked on the map.
And that’s still not all. The “stupidity” of NPCs also extends to opponents who fight extremely thoughtlessly and do not use any tactics, so they do not pose any threat, as long as their level is not significantly higher than ours or they do not have a huge advantage in numbers. Likewise, the police cannot use their own police cars and generally cannot deal with these extremely clever criminals who refuse to engage in a firefight and instead… just walk away.
The crime tracking system is even more primitive than what we know from, for example, Skyrim . There is no dialogue with law enforcement officers, there is no option to pay for your transgressions, whether in cash or in prison, and we will not experience any reward mechanics for our head. We can break the law only by killing an innocent person or entering a forbidden area (just like in The Witcherno one has heard of, for example, theft here, we can pack anything that is not nailed down in our pockets without embarrassment). How is it punished? Death. Immediate. NCPD officers will simply appear crowds around us out of nowhere and open fire, and each killed after a while another will appear, and so on, until we die or run from the scene. No, CD Projekt, this is not a “GTA-like crime tracking system”.
If you don’t love Cyberpunk when it’s at its worst, you don’t deserve it when it’s at its best!
I didn’t think I’d ever make reference to this “great” quote, but it happened! Our unfortunate cyber monster is not a flop all the way, it’s just a game very uneven and clearly unfinished. For every thing that doesn’t work out, there’s another one that works great. If the textures and traffic are not surprising, riding a motorcycle around Night City to the sounds of your favorite radio station is pure pleasure. The shooting mechanics are decent and fun, as is the entire combat system, which is diverse and flexible. Character statistics are not as important here as our ingenuity and skills, so nothing stands in the way of firing a rifle one moment, hitting enemies with katana or mantis blades in another, hacking in yet another, and when we get bored of it – buy implants that strengthen the legs, thanks to which we can easily jump on roofs or other positions convenient for sniper fire. So clashes can be interesting even when the enemies are dumb. And the most enjoyable are battles with bosses, who have their own ways of fighting and are even able to surprise us with something sometimes, offering a much-needed breath of fresh air from the AI.
In addition, the script and the accompanying acting are at a high level, because here not only Keanu can be breathtaking . Both the English and Polish language versions offer us a range of well-chosen voices provided by competent and committed actors. Both the story presented in the main plot, as well as the smaller ones, presented as part of side quests, can completely draw you in, surprise you with an unexpected twist, or move the player with a truly emotional scene. What we valued the most for the Wild Hunt , i.e. a mature story, complex characters and an opportunity to speak up on difficult moral dilemmas, can also be found here. And that is exactly what Cyberpunk was unable to make by any errors or funny graphic anomalies pick up.
To buy, not to buy … or maybe to return?
To sum up, the latest CD Projekt Red production is far from perfect. This title was given to players too early for its technical condition and, unfortunately, it does not offer everything that it has advertised for years, at least in a sufficiently extensive form. A certain amount of criticism and a feeling of disappointment in at least a few areas are therefore entirely justified here. After all, the game is also not a complete crap or something unplayable as some say. The creators are doing what they can to patch it, and you have to give them back at least that the two patches released in the first weeks after the premiere did help a lot. It is difficult to predict what the quality of Cyberpunk will beat the end of this road, so I keep my fingers crossed for them, because it is a title with potential, not deserving to be abandoned and forgotten. So if you bought it for the premiere and were disappointed, why not give it a chance and forgive yourself the return? And if you are considering reaching for it now, well … I recommend waiting a bit for further developments or opting for a more stable PC version.
We would like to thank CD Projekt RED for the copy of the game for review.
