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Writing reviews for games that don’t hit the mark aren’t my favorite part of my day. The worst is when it’s a game that I’m highly anticipating. Cyberpunk 2077 on last-gen consoles was a severe misfire that should’ve never happened but it's the sad reality of a publisher’s sheer impatience and hunger for cold hard cash that leaves customers angry and developers embarrassed. I waited so long to write this review because of CD Projekt Red’s promise to have the game fixed by the end of February, and I didn’t want to be another reviewer that just piles more negativity onto the game. I wanted to wait for a more polished experience so that I could address what had been fixed.
Unfortunately, since their announcement of this new roadmap, the development team has hit multiple hiccups and roadblocks that have really made it impossible for me to wait for a more polished product. Please keep in mind that while some or most of these issues I talk about may appear on other platforms, this review is specific to the PS4 base console. This is probably the most famous shawty experience for the game and I’m actually glad that this is the first way that I experienced it. I’ve played it on my PC as well which was a lot better, so being able to compare the best and the worst gives me a very fine idea of how much worse it actually is to play on last-gen. Let’s get into it!
Story
The absolute only saving grace about Cyberpunk is its story. I found the characters extremely fleshed out and intriguing. Their backstories are gritty, complex, and often times upsetting. It’s a nasty world in Night City and the story does its absolute best at displaying that in both its villains and heroes as well. There’s a grey line between good and evil that most, if not all characters tow. It doesn’t differ too much from what I expected, but it did so well in what it did achieve that it didn’t bother me.
Gameplay
As for the gameplay, it has its highs and lows. Its RPG elements in dialogue trees are top-notch and the added pieces introduced every now and then through any of the 3 arch-types (Street Kid, Corpo, or Nomad) increases the deepness of your character that organically grows throughout the game. I think that the choices feel in line with V’s character. I’ve had a lot of issues with certain major RPGs in the past because I didn’t think that the choosable dialogue felt like viable options for the character that I was playing as. The devs give you the chance to make V your own and it’s very refreshing.
The game’s combat is serviceable but feels a little stilted. It’s not as polished as something like Call of Duty but it doesn’t feel horrible. You can use just about any gun type that you can think of as well as some really great melee weapons. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the driving though which is complete garbage. It’s almost as if the devs had never played another game with driving in it. I found that motorcycles had the best handling but they offered the least amount of cover during fights which caused the weighing of unneeded pros and cons.
Cyberpunk’s customization is notorious for all of what it allows players to choose in how V is presented. There’s a large number of physical choices with a lot of them being details that you won’t find in many games right now. Besides the physical look of V comes the skills and mods that go along with the Cyberpunk aesthetic. They’re mods that can be added to V at Ripper Docs and give them more abilities that can vary from how V sees the battlefield to how V’s body operates. My favorite ability by far is the mantis claws (above photo). Clothes offer the traditional stats you’d find in an RPG and don’t really try anything new though.
Night City is the game’s open-world where as V you can roam around, treating it as your playground. Through it, you can carry out story and side missions as well as the occasional hunt for murderers. The devs did a great job of making it feel that there’s always something to do within Night City. Even besides missions, there are tons of things to do that’ll make this world feel like an endless journey that you won’t want to finish.
Visuals
Being as I’ve played this on PC, I can see what they were going for but unfortunately, the PS4 version is awful. It’s not just the fact that the visuals aren’t next-gen looking. It’s the fact that the game is so blurry that I get physically ill trying to play it. There’s a huge disconnect between players on last-gen versus current-gen and PC players. I’ll speak for last-gen players by saying that we didn’t expect a great-looking game but what we did expect was something that didn’t divert us from ever wanting to play the game at all. I’ll get more into that later though.
Audio
Audio is another point of the game where the actors obviously did a fantastic job. Again though, there are some issues. There are the occasional bugs where audio would disappear or never start at all, but it wasn’t so often that it was a hindrance for me.
Replayability
Personally, this game isn’t worth touching on last-gen. Even with the next major patch not so far away, I wouldn’t touch it for another year. The findings for my reasoning will come along in my next section below. Proceed with caution.
What It Could Have Done Better
To start, I’ll backtrack a bit. The visuals within the game are horrendous, both in how they look and how they operate. Visuals are blurry as I said but also extremely devoid of any detail. Textures also pop in at random or maybe not even at all. It’s pretty sad to see just how bad it is especially when factored in that this was a full-priced release. I can’t seem to agree with the players that make the argument that we shouldn’t have expected a next-gen experience on last-gen consoles.
This game was originally created for the past-gen hardware and was market as such only until the latter part of 2020. And even at that end, just because it doesn’t look next-gen, it doesn’t give it an excuse to look and perform as horrible as it does. The argument simply makes no sense and gives an out for the publishers. No one is blaming the developers. This is the fault of the publishers forcing the devs to release a game that knowingly wasn’t finished. If the game didn’t work well on previous-gen hardware, then pre-orders should have been canceled and the publishers should’ve been transparent. It fully falls at the publisher’s feet, not the devs.
When it came to my gameplay experience, it was just as bad, if not worse. The seams come apart on full display and show just how hollow this game is. There are bugs and crashes aplenty that at one point in the game made me hang up my hat entirely. I very often had issues falling into the map because of the terrain not loading in. This would also cause my game to crash as well. Characters would T-pose and there were a lot of odd times that roads would be empty, only for me to roll up to an ominous scene where the NPC drivers would all be idle in the middle of the road.
I stopped playing the PS4 version shortly after the mission where Jackie dies, and the reason being the fact that it ruined his death scene for me. I had numerous visual glitches while he was dying as well as my dialogue trees not even showing up on the screen. This resulted in awkward voice pauses and the game pushing along without me while characters spoke over each other like an amateur acting troupe. The issues were persistent through my playthrough and it didn’t matter what I was doing at all.
It’s a hot mess of a game where even small things such as character spawns have a chance of being botched which can either crash your game or cause you to load the last save. Even if you reload that save, it doesn’t mean that you won’t find yourself in the same situation all over again. It’s pretty ridiculous. It’s not even a game that’s so bad that it’s good. It’s so unoptimized that I’m surprised that the publishers aren’t in trouble for marketing this game so falsely.
I’m extremely worried that this could become the norm when it comes to major video game releases. We had a taste when Battlefield 4 launched at the very beginning of last-gen and I hoped that it wouldn’t happen again. Here we are though at the end of that generation and the tickets are still being punched on botched experiences. Misleading consumers is wrong and we as gamers should hold the publishers up to their promises. There should be less arguing in the comments and better comradery amongst gamers. Because if this continues, we could all be in trouble.
Verdict
No matter how much I enjoyed the game on PC, I can not in good faith say that anyone should pick up Cyberpunk 2077 on previous-gen hardware. This game even still has issues on PC mind you. CD Projekt has not only released an unfinished game but at every turn of redemption has made excuses for why the game is still in its current horrendous state. Whether it’s lack of time or even their little hack mishap earlier last month, this is unacceptable in every way. It’s unfortunate especially because I actually love the game on PC and recommend it fully even in its own state as it’s much closer to a perfect package. Again, as it stands, stay away from the last-gen version, I beg you.
