In a year packed with highly anticipated AAA video game titles, Cyberpunk 2077 was sure to be the next “game changer”, the colossal shift in the way we play games, the future of games. Yet here we are, one week into its release and it’s riddled with bugs, surprisingly short and nearly unplayable on last- gen consoles.
2020 saw the release of some extremely “hyped” games:
•Final Fantasy 7 Remake was finally released after 5 years of trailers, tears and delays.
•The Last of Us 2, the follow up to 2013 action-adventure game developed by critically acclaimed studio Naughty Dog and directed by Neal Druckman, finally came out.
•Doom Eternal was released this year, the follow up to the 2016 Doom which was surprisingly bad ass. As far as Doom Eternal goes? Im very much on the fence (but mostly completely off the fence).
•Ghosts of Tsushima surprised everyone this year, the open world Samuri film inspired adventure from Sucker Punch, the studio known for its work with Infamous and The Sly Cooper series.
But none of these games had the build up that Cyberpunk 2077 had. So what happened?!
CD Projekt Red proved what they were capable of with the release of the Witcher 3. That game does it all. You are the hero, Geralt of Rivia, who is a “Witcher”. A Witcher is a beast hunter who has developed supernatural abilities at a young age to battle wild beasts and monsters. You travel through a vast, realistic and densely populated world, where you decide between giant main missions and some fairly silly side quests. It is a game that, to this day, looks gorgeous and feels fresh from a technical stand point.
However, Cyberpunk 2077 is no such feat. While I have not played the game myself, I have watched way too many videos of others playing it. From what I am seeing the game is at its best on high end PC’s and fine enough on the new generation of consoles (for the few people that have those). Yet when going to last gen consoles (7 year old PS4 and Xbox One) the game is hardly recognizable. Even when the game is at its best, its a buggy mess, with cigarettes floating around, players characters going into a “T-Pose” completely naked while standing on top of a motorcycle and characters guns floating around pretty much anywhere but their hand.
I genuinely feel terrible for the people involved in making this game, as they likely are the ones that are feeling the comments, videos, reviews and negative press the most. By all accounts, crunch was in full effect and while the game was delayed a few times, the pressure to release this one was clearly too much and they put out an unfinished product. This unfortunately, has become fairly common place in the video game industry. The attitude of “release the game incomplete and we will patch in whatever needs to get fixed post release date” seems to be a foregone conclusion, especially of AAA games. This is a standard that needs to change. I have no problem with post release patches/updates. But I do have a problem with paying full price for something that is simply not what was promised.
I look forward to one day playing the game myself and following up on this article. But for now, I’m going to sit back and enjoy watching the train wreck that is Cyberpunk 2077.
