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Cyberpunk 2077: What do you think?
As anyone who's spent any amount of time on any gaming forum would know, Cyberpunk 2077 was easily the most hyped game in the past year, if not the past few. Expectations were impossibly large: fanatics expected the immersiveness of Red Dead Redemption 2, the map detail of GTA V, and the density of a Yakuza game.
Now that Cyberpunk 2077 has been available to the public for ~1 day, what are your impressions? Does it live up to the hype? Do the bugs detract too greatly from the experience? Is it revolutionary in some sense; or is it the inevitable cumulation of open world RPGs, excellent but ultimately derivative?
For perspective, would you consider it a personal contender for game of the year?
No, but how could it possibly hope to? Regardless, it's still quite good so far, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. The story and a bunch of the characters have also hooked me, so I'm looking forward to continue playing and finding out where it (and they) all go.
All the bugs I have experienced so far have just been slightly annoying (and sometimes funny) visual ones, most of which cleared up upon reloading, and nothing game breaking so far... so no, it hasn't really detracted from the experience.
Can't speak for anyone else, but I wasn't looking for anything revolutionary. I just wanted a cyberpunk themed openworld game made to the same quality standard as The Witcher 3, and that's basically what was delivered.
Not even close. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is still my 2020 GOTY. But even if I pretended Cyberpunk 2077 came out in 2021, it's very unlikely it would end up my 2021 GOTY. There are just too many excellent games being made every year, and big studio AAA games rarely end up at the top for me.
So apparently the game is basically completely unplayable on the PS4/Xbox One. It also runs really poorly on 10xx series GTX cards and older. So don't buy it yet if you don't have a next gen console or a fairly beefy PC. A bit ironic, given the subject matter.
As for the game itself, there no way around it: it's pretty damn buggy. The shooting is okay, although it kinda lacks polish on the "punch" of weapons. NPCs are not like RDR2, they're pretty clearly NPCs. There's no cycles, no areas they frequent, they just bumble around each other in a very video-game-NPC like way.
The "cyberpunk"-ness is more themeing than anything. For example, you have these like "hacking" powers... which use up "ram" when you use them, i.e they're spells, that use up MP.
Also, it does lean towards the "woaw, future sure is wacky/crazy", like you find dildos everywhere, there's a bunch of bodyhorror, there's bodyhorror porn, etc.
So far it's fine, though. Buggy, but I would still say it's a good game. Apparently the main quest is shorter, though, and so far the side quests are not exactly like the ones TW3.
Digital Foundry: Cyberpunk 2077 Visual Tech Tour - The Maxed Out Next-Gen PC Experience
Digital Foundry: Cyberpunk 2077: PS4 vs PS4 Pro Frame-Rate Tests - Can Consoles Run Cyberpunk?
Frankly, the performance on last-gen consoles is abysmal, often dipping to 720p/20 fps. (In retrospect, canceling my preorder for PS4 was one of the best decisions I made all year.) Moreover, it just looks bad: the game may as well be a Switch port when the resolution/framerate limitations are coupled with other sacrifices to graphical fidelity.
On the other hand, Cyberpunk has the potential to look absolutely gorgeous, as evidenced by the PC footage above. It seems like the last-gen ports should've been either canceled or delayed.
As a PC player, I'm glad they didn't compromise the design of the game for the sake of 7 year old consoles. But releasing it in this state on PS4/Xbone is pretty unacceptable. At least the PS4 Pro and Xbone X seem to run the game at an acceptable level even if it's not a rock solid 30 FPS.
I'm not going to defend the abysmal state of the game on PS4/Xbone, but I find it interesting that people are calling it "unplayable".
This level of performance used to be common in open world games (and even some more linear titles) on consoles not even a decade ago. It is only with the most recent generation of hardware that performance in these kinds of games became really stable. I think it shows that consumer tolerance for poor performance has changed significantly in the last 6 years or so.
Well, as one of the weirdos who played TW3 on a Switch, that was my baseline expectations. TW3 doesn't look good on the Switch, no doubt about it - but it's workable. It looks clean, if heavily aliased, and manages to keep 30 FPS.
That jump from the "normal" version of Witcher 3 to the Switch version is what I expected out of PS5/Xbox Series/Beef PC -> PS4/Xbox 1. Yeah, it doesn't look great, but it scales down gracefully. The Switch Witcher 3 port was done by a third party dev, and it was done afterwards - surely Cyberpunk, which was made technically for the PS4/Xbox 1, by the first party developer, would be the same if not better.
What actually happens is that it looks just abjectly awful, it hovers around 20 FPS on the Xbox One, and I have no idea why but it looks like it's running at 480p and upscaled with bilinear or something.
Which surprised me, because this game started production 7 years ago, when there was no Ps5, no Xbox Series X, no GTX 3080. How does it run so ungracefully on the OG consoles?
I would actually expect better performance from games whose ports are farmed out to developers that specialize in the target hardware.
It's clearly aimed at next gen. Which imo is a good thing I have a i7 4790x and a 1080 strapped on top. I think I average about 50 fps on a mix of high and medium. I think the fact that it runs poorly on. Old consoles is good. I think if it running on the ONE and 4 hold it back.
On the other hand it's really just the same shit as always but with more details and more nocoms walking the streets and a little more detail.
Over all it's exactly what I expected and I have enjoyed the first few hours.
I mean if they are going to sell it on old consoles it should have acceptable performance. Releasing a platform target running at 15 frames per second after doing everything in their power to conceal this fact is in the scam territory for me.
I think this is where some of the hang-up stems from. After an 8 year development cycle and hype people were expecting a bigger step forwards. It’s got some amazing technical feats but appears very video-gamey.
I don't think they had the option to not sell on the current gen consoles. Letting it suffer in the one, 4a, and current pc hardware allowed them, the developers, to do more rather then limit them selves.
I granted, don't think the game was designed to be a revolutionary game. It was designed to make the best game out tomorrows hardware. It took the current game generation and showed what it could do on cutting edge consumer hardware.
That's not saying in it isn't buggy but if they made it big free then it would have felt like a polished last gen game.
We're talking about real people who spent money on something that does not work anything close to as advertised -- which may be fine in a world where you are upfront about the shortcomings but when you distribute no console review copies and actively take down any leaked console footage but still collect people's money -- eesh.
People understand they are not going to get the same graphical experience as a newer PC on a 10 year-old console but this game was not even originally in the newer consoles' release window -- it had 8 years of being built as an 8th gen game -- that's plenty of time to plan on delivering an acceptable product.
I'm just going off the "worst of" screenshots and videos I've seen on reddit, so admittedly, my opinion's already skewed against the game. But what I've seen is like PS2/GC/XB era graphics in certain areas on the PS4/XB1, which is totally unacceptable.
I'd be more understanding if other developers hadn't been competently handling the mixed-gen period for decades now. Plenty of AAA titles get releases on both the outgoing and incoming consoles without this level of quality drop for the outgoing. If they wanted to create the most visually-amazing game for the next generation, then they should've waited until this next-gen was more ubiquitous. Or not targeted the previous gen at all, which like you said they may not have been able to do. In which case, maybe they should've been a little more realistic with their goals...or put the time and effort into making the previous gen, by far the more popular gen at thsi moment, a quality experience instead of a joke.
I for one am extremely upset at this game. I was just about to finish my semester and was planning on inviting everyone on Tildes to play Tabletop Playground since it's part of this month's Humble Choice, but now they're all going too busy playing this game!
For real, though, I made it a point not to preorder this game. All the signs were there that the launch would be a buggy mess, and it looks like that was the case. I look forward to playing it after a few months after most of the bugs are fixed (and hopefully get a discount in the process).
(Totally serious about setting up a game night with Tabletop Simulator if anyone is interested, BTW. Just need to wait until next week.)
I would still be down for Tabletop Playground. I'm very curious on its VR capabilities compared to Tabletop Simulator.
I wanna play Among Us sometime this christmas holiday with Tilderinoos and Friends.
Oh! I would be in for that. I've been watching Among Us streams for months but I've been too terrified to play with random folks. But it could be okay with people I sort of know already?
Same with me! Need to figure how and when though.
I have an idea... one moment.
I actually bought this game when I first heard of it (I bought a multi-pack to give to friends as well) and the VR was at least a little bit better than Tabletop Simulator. I liked how by default you aren't likely to clip through the table.
Sadly, I'm pretty sure that Oculus started requiring facebook logins around the end of November, so I'm probably not going to be playing that way anymore.
Anyways, since @Apos also mentioned they were in I'll make a post some time on ~games next week so we can set up a game on the weekend.
Tabletop Simulator would be fun! Feel free to ping me on the Tildes Discord if you're there.
As opposed to the other commenters, I've been getting decent performance (2060, latest drivers), and it's been a pretty good experience overall. I've only played ~1-2 hours, but I thought the intro sequence was pretty impressive. I'm not exactly sure what people were expecting, this is a video game, you're not actually going to be running Ghidra and doing pentesting...
The hacking is pretty similar to watch dogs, although without the pipes minigame (so far). It seems to me that any of the story 'paths' you chose end up converging to a pretty similar main story (which isn't surprising, it's not like they're going to make three main stories). I think the gunplay is also similarly fine, I thought it was pretty fun, although the enemies are a bit bullet spongey.
I can't comment too much on the story, but once again, this is a video game. It seems people were expecting some incredibly deep story with deep analysis of what a cyberpunk dystopia would look like. Was it just me that was expecting a slightly more serious than Far Cry: Blood dragon-GTA with better worldbuilding? That's how I felt like it was marketed, anyway.
Nothing about it being a video game precludes that, I'm just saying that people should have tempered their expectations. Besides, I'm sure that while the main story may not be especially deep, among the myriad of side quests and other optional content there will be a lot of interesting story ideas.
Yeah, they really can, especially on hard mode... which is precisely why I went with sniper rifles right away, and mostly stick to stealth gameplay. I have been 1-shotting pretty much everything on hard mode the entire game with the various sniper rifles I have found, except for bosses... but even the bosses only take 4-6 body shots!
The only downside is that I have to be very very methodical, since I die very very quickly if I get detected and overwhelmed by enemies. However, since the latest rifle I found (an epic version of the SPT32 GRAD, that does 600+ base damage) can even shoot through some walls and most cover, I can clear most rooms without actually being inside them, so long as I have all the targets tagged first so I know where to shoot. :P
Out of curiosity, what kind of fps u seeing, what settings, what res? I've got a 1080 Ti and it's struggling in 1440
I'm running 2560x1080, mediumish settings (upped AO and shadows), and getting a pretty solid 50-60.
So far the only comment I have is that wow this was obviously rushed. Performance is awful. I probably won't invest a ton of time for the first week or two till there's a few hotfixes and maybe another set of drivers.
I'm not expecting much after all the negative press I've heard.
I've had a similar experience. I'm still running a 980 and it's fine. I haven't looked into complaints about what it looks like on consoles, but I have a lot of trouble believing the people that say it's unplayable on PC without top of the line hardware. Just turn your fucking settings down.
I went into it fully expecting it to be a buggy mess on release, because cdpr games are always a buggy mess on the release. But they always go back and iron out the wrinkles, unlike many other studios.
I agree with all of your complaints, especially the crime system given it's a game about being criminals.
And I would also like to add that driving feels like someone coated your wheels in butter. It's fine if you want to take every turn drifting at high speed, but if you want to take a regular turn at low speed, it's a mess
Yeah, when driving, the turn comes from the center of the vehicle rather than depending on the turn of the wheels. It's super disorientating.
Well, it was quite the pisser to sell this for £50 in its current unfinished state, but I suppose the management felt that they'd already used up as many delays as they could. I hope they give their workers the break and bonus they've earned, and continue to make this the great game it should be. Luckily for me, though the performance has been disappointingly shaky, the bugs were all amusing and not game-breaking. Some were admittedly rather concerning, like the pedestrians and cars phasing in and out of sight directly in front of me.
Oh, and I grenaded a ganger onto a roof and he continued cussing me out after death. That one was quite good.
For anyone looking for performance advice, I found this on Reddit.
My favorite bug so far happened in the street boxing questline. I got my ass kicked in the first bout, but right before I got knocked out my explosive shock cyberware went off which took out the other fighters. Then when I went to try the fight again, they stayed glued to their previous downed positions and I just had to dance in/out to hit them without being hit back in order to win. :P
I've had a few cases of not being able to pick up a gun because it landed just under the floor, or an item because I had to pick up the thing beside it first (or an adjacent NPC was blocking it). Also, don't deliberately jump headfirst into those rock-solid Chinese lanterns in the street, or you might trigger a deadly police response.
I think this might be the best visual novel of all time. For reference, I have played maybe 3 hours of this game and spent 15-20 minutes of it shooting people.
Some reviewers mentioned that the ongoing impetus of the main story is at odds with the fact that something is going on for you to pay attention to every 3 feet, and I totally agree. Otherwise, it's starting to haunt me--what kind of character am I playing this run? I'm not going to be able to put 500 hours into this game so at some level--my choices matter, and that part is awesome.
Launch day performance (for me) has been relatively good on GeForce Now, I can play at the "Raytracing Medium" preset at 60FPS on my macbook without waiting for any patches. My accuracy is significantly lower than it would be, like dramatically so, but the amount of time I spend shooting is low and this game is much more an RPG than an FPS so I don't mind it. Plus---Raytracing Medium is way higher than I'd be able to play on my gaming computers for sure, and playing on my macbook on my lap without burning a hole through my pants is great.
I'm on hour four of installing and downloading the day 1 patch. So, that's my impressions so far.
I've played it for ~3.5 hours. It feels like a modern Deus Ex game, like if Mankind Divided was a lot bigger.
Playing it on Stadia, there was no loading or patching, it's quite pretty, the story is compelling, and I've already grown attached to the characters. There was one time where the conversation option picker stopped working, but a reload fixed it.
I am waiting 3-6 months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJKeBbk-9YA
I'm about 5hrs in, 1 story mission and 3 side quests in basically, so I don't think I've really explored the mechanics much at all. I'm running on pc with 5700xt.
Buggy-ness wise I'm pleasently surprised. There's a few of the usual open world snafus (corpses behaving weird, multiple people in one chair) but nothing that took me away from the experience. There's also the annoyance of occasionally while using ctrl to crouch the game will detect I'm not crouching anymore and trigger all the alarms, this is annoying but not too common. I did however run into 3 full system crashes at seemingly random, but they went away when I updated to the latest drivers. I was expecting a LOT worse.
Performance wise I'm also somewhat impressed, I'm running on ultra ( minus motion blur) at
1440p1080p (ops, i guess it's less great, still good enough for me though Update2: I am now running at 1440p and getting a solid 60fps) and managing a decent 70fps, although I may need to lower it a bit in the later levels I suspect this is pretty great.Gameplay wise it seems rather generic open world afair. I enjoy the guns being a little more rpg-esk than the likes of GTA and the melee system seems a little more interesting than press click repeatedly that Skyrim and the like have. It's still rather shallow and focuses more on empowering the player than providing a challenge or encouraging creativity. I think I'd sum it up as the better parts of the systems of fallout, GTA and Skyrim. It's adequate but nothing revolutionary.
story seems boring so far, but I am very very very early on in it so I don't think it's fair to judge yet.having finished the game the story is greatOverall it's a slightly better than average for the bland, but pleasent experiences I've come to expect from AAA games. No where close to a goty for me, (for that outerwilds takes the cake)
I'm extremely impressed with it. I haven't been this immersed in a game since Portal 2. I'm playing with a Ryzen 7 2700X and RX 5700 XT at 3440 by 1440 at mixed ultra/high settings at playable framerates.
Question to others here:
What are the odds this game will run well (high+, >45 fps, 1080p) on a GTX 970? Been holding out for a next-gen card, and def don't want to purchase Cyberpunk if I'll shelve it.
I was gonna wait a few months before buying it to let them get all the kinks and bugs worked out. I picked up Horizon Zero Dawn a couple of weeks ago and have slowly been working my way through it, so hopefully it'll last me long enough between it and bouncing between online games.
HZD had a rough launch too; if it's OK with you I'd like to know how well they've ironed them out since then.
I didn't pick it up at launch, so I can't speak to that, but it has received regular patches and I haven't had any issues so far. Started playing around Thanksgiving and I'm about 30 hours into it so far. Definitely recommended if it interests you at all.