Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)

Beat on Hard on xbox one. I would have preferred PC for mouse/keyboard and mods, but the game was given to me for free. I decided not to use my mouse/keyboard adapter and play purely with controller in all that shitty aiming glory. The game was clearly made for PC first and then ported to console, from the awkward cursor movement and selection. It annoyed me how pixel perfect I had to be to get in a car, and there were a few times when the cursor vanished while using in game computers. I spent a lot of time fiddling with the settings to get passable aim control. I turned off the garbage visual effects and upped the gamma (after looking up online where that option was because I completely missed it). By the late game I had gamma maxed out because I was sick of not being able to see in dark places. You would think these fancy eye implants would come with automatic light amplification, nightvision and maybe thermal vision to see clearly at all times. There was not even a flashlight. I made my guy. The character creator was decent but it really annoyed me how he kept moving around as I was cycling through the options. This was a stupid waste of time because I had to wait for him to stop moving his head around before I could compare options. The dick size option was pointless with only 2 sizes, and didn't come up in gameplay. Not knowing much about the mechanics I set my starting stats to: 6 body, 5 reflex, 4 tech, 4 cool and 3 intelligence, and chose the corpo background. I definitely did not want to be a street thug, and nomad looked interesting but was alien to me. I was excited to do the assassination mission, then dismayed when that was shot down and the real story began.

The gameplay was very similar to Deux Ex Human Revolution, with a bit of open world GTA thrown in. I set my map icons to dynamic, which I didn't realize was bad until near the end of the game as I was trying to find out where all the NCPD hustles were. After finishing the opening and being stuck with a lousy pistol and double barreled shotgun, I found a fight between 2 gangs. I forget if that was a hustle or just a random thing, but I seriously upgraded my weapons with an assault rifle. I stayed around that area poking through alleys and finding more fights. Then I did a cyber psycho and through exploring well past the guy, I found an Achilles tech precision rifle. Shoot through walls, oh yeah! Took a lot of shots to kill, but it was very safe. At one point I did a gig where the upstairs was full of enemies and I was locked in combat. I used ping on nearby appliances to highlight the guys so I could headshot them through the floor. My strategy was to complete activities on the map based on what was closest, with a preference for side stuff over the main quest. Which meant it was over 20 hours before I got the free smart link for smart weapons, and I skipped the fist fighting quests until late because they were listed as very hard. The fist fights were far more difficult than anything else in the game. It was extremely unfair that I could go down in a couple hits but barely scratch their health bars. I also did not like the racing sidequest but it did make sense to include that in a game with driving. I totally did not notice the guide markers on the road and constantly went the wrong way on my 1st race. Still won 1st place. I should have easily won the later races with my super fast caliburn, but it seemed like there was annoying rubber banding. I got 2nd place in the offroad race, and barely won 1st on the next, then helped Claire kill the guy rather than finish the last race.

I put most of my points into body and my first talents into passive health regen. Then 1 point for in combat RAM regen, then economic boosts, then all into survival. Later I improved the raw damage and combat effectiveness of each weapon. I did not like the many talents that gave temporary boosts, like +X to speed after getting a crit, so I skipped them. During the early game I mostly used light machine guns and shotguns. I loved how they staggered enemies, preventing them from fighting back and making follow up shots easier to land. I also did plenty of stealth take downs and used reboot optics to sneak past, grab a guy next to the blind, and to melee those fast matrix bullet dodging enemies (sandevision). They were so difficult to deal with in open fire fight that I planned my assassinations around taking them out first. As my survival increased I began to use melee more often. It took a lot of bullets to kill enemies but they dropped in seconds from katana. Around the mid game I started dying while trying to melee, and shooting was not much better. The enemies could suddenly kill me in like 2 seconds so I prioritized stealth, headshots with silenced revolver, and smart weapons. By the end game my survival was back up there with high end augments boosting health and armor, an auto heal at low hp, and a second heart for auto heal on death. So I killed most enemies with katana, especially on the final mission with allies to draw fire.

I maxed out my street cred early, and was max level long before completing everything. I completed all gigs, side quests (except Kerry which I did after beating the main story) and main quests. I sided with Militech to use their money to buy the robot and got the sex scene with her. I romanced Panam and became a member of their group. I got Takemura killed somehow though I was not sure at all how that happened. He just didn't appear any more so I assumed he died at some point. Turns out I was supposed to save him after the raid Arasaka did to get Hanako back, but the game never mentioned this. I did spare the ninja boss but he never appeared again either. That was a tough fight that my gear was not strong enough for given how low my damage was to his health bar. I ran out of shotgun ammo as I was dodging around shooting him. Then at around half health he got stuck in mid air and was easy to finish. Had to do some tricky platforming to loot him. Last I did the voodoo boys part and I did not like them. I betrayed them to side with netwatch and killed them all. Then before going past the point of no return, I changed my map settings and finished every NCPD hustle that I had missed. I chose Hanako for the final mission. I liked how it played out but I wasted my time looting everything. Just before the final boss I upgraded most of my gear. The fight was not difficult as I sprinted around smoking him with full auto smart smg fire. Hacked the turrets to friendly, cyber psychosis on the adds then finish them with katana. Finished the boss off with smart sniper head shots, and my passive health regen was enough to get me through the fight. I was very impressed with the amount of content post boss; it was almost like a movie. I chose to sign up for the body replacement program but really would have spent those last few months knocking up Panam before signing up at the end. I don't believe technology could ever control the soul, thus the constructs in the game are AI that mimic a human personality. So regardless of what you pick, the real V dies. Is there any reason not to allow an AI of yourself to continue existing after your death? I think that would be the natural choice even though it has no genetic benefit. This ending portrayed a very interesting setting where the elite will be immortal. What potential ramifications could result from this? If the technology is limited to using one's offspring as body replacements then it would create a vampire like cult that views their own children as cattle, and this could result in very interesting stories. On the other hand if the tech improves to be able to use any body, then the level of dystopia and oppression would become extreme. Maybe enough to cause the people to revolt. Either way would make for an interesting setting. Cloning tech could be useful and I was surprised that such tech did not already exist.

Then I did the other ending paths. The nomad path was fun with the tank driving and long range sniping. Having Panam help during the final boss made no sense as she was standing there taking hit after hit to the face. I preferred the added tension of being by myself. The ending itself was the most wholesome, but also the saddest. Since the dead Akasaka CEO did not take over his son's body, this setting's future did not seem as interesting. A new corporate war would still make for interesting stories and the immortality tech could still be developed. Johnny's path was not that different from Hanako's in terms of mechanics, but the plot developments were like the nomad path. It was sad that Rogue died and I was left with this guy I barely knew. The ending was disappointing because Panam was not in it at all. I guess that ending did not account for romance. The ending to let Johnny keep the body made the most sense from a biological perspective because it would maximize the life span of the physical body and thus the chances of passing on genes to offspring. Hilarious if you played a woman though.

I did not craft any equipment and did not upgrade anything until the end. I used stuff that I found for free, and I had some ridiculous looking outfits, including hot shorts, bra and a dress. I did not like the lack of stat difference between clothing; civilian clothes should suck and actual armor should give the best protection. I did not like the loot treadmill system of constantly getting slightly better weapons and armor, and how gear had levels. In the real world a gun found at the beginning would be just as deadly at the end game, same with armor. That is how physics works. My combat tactics at end game were to start by scouting and tagging every enemy. Take over any cameras and cycle through them to see as much as possible. Shut down any cameras and turrets. Then I would find the best way in and study enemy patrols to methodically take out every enemy. Go for stealth take downs and hide bodies whenever possible. This game was the most fun when the mission had an optional objective to never be detected, so I played far more carefully than I would any other time. Especially at late game finishing up all those hustles, I just wanted to get it done as fast as possible, so did not care much about proper stealth. My 1st weapon slot was a silenced revolver for head shot assassinations, so I went for the highest damage per shot; the overture. 2nd slot was the zhuo smart shotgun. It often knocked an enemy down with a single shot, and the projectiles could make 90 degree turns straight down to wreck enemies. Reloading was a problem when dealing with multiple enemies. My preferred tactic was knock an enemy down then rush in with my 3rd slot melee to kill them before they could stand up. I did not like the double barrel smart shotgun because the projectiles were slow. My other weapons I swapped to the 1st slot as needed. The full auto smart smg when shit hit the fan and I wanted to keep a safe moderate distance. Focus the shots to the head and shoot around cover for best effect. I had a smart pistol for backup in case I ran out of rifle ammo (it made no sense that sub machine guns used rifle caliber ammo since a smg is literally a medium sized gun that shoots pistol caliber). The lmg was occasionally taken out to deal with multiple enemies that could only come from a single direction; it took longer to kill than the smg but could still shred enemies at close range and kill more before needing to reload. The ashura smart sniper was my go to long range weapon; no worries about aiming or idle scope sway nonsense. The nekomata tech sniper was the best weapon in the game with sweet 1 shot kill head shots through walls. I especially found it useful for cyber psycho bosses. Last I had the silenced power sniper for the few times the revolver was not good enough, which was almost never. I loved the cyber psychosis hack, often using it on a tough enemy and shooting the distracted enemies with my revolver. The best part was if they won they would suicide, so I made sure to use it on mechs. After the novelty wore off I kept it in reserve for when I was detected. I did not bother using grenades, and hardly used any healing items. I got the arm cannon but found it did not do enough damage to bother using. I found food and drink to be entirely unnecessary and had way too much for free. I drove in 1st person view and saw no point to buy any vehicles or homes. I used random gang vehicles until my starter car was fixed, then used free vehicles. I found the caliburn at maybe the 30 to 40 hour point, which had insane speed and was probably the best car in the game. It was so fast that I often reached places before objects could spawn in and ended up in surprise fights. One time I managed to bail and run away before the spawning enemies noticed me. Then a gate spawned under my car, which shot into the air a bit before crashing back down. The guards never noticed. There was another time I took a police car that had metal armor strips across and down the front window, with gaps so small that I could not see well enough to drive faster than a crawl. What the hell, who designed that? Was there some biometric trick tied to the officers and this was kind of an anti theft measure, or did the developers not test first person view with this car? I mostly did not like the radio music and kept the car radio off, though the music certainly fit the setting. The only station with some decent music was Ritual with hardcore metal, and the best song was the one about “everything burns, I am a demon”. I would have preferred a classical station.

Final stats: 20 body, 18 reflexes, 14 tech, 9 intelligence, 10 cool, 8 athletics, 12 annihilation, 3 brawler, 13 handguns, 11 assault, 11 blades, 9 crafting. 8 engineering, 9 breach and hacking, 10 ninjutsu, 7 cold blood.

Talents:

Athletics 1/1 armor boost 1/1 immune to knockdown 1/1 taking hits does not interrupt hp regen 1/1 damage reduction 2/2 +melee damage 1/1 reload while sprinting and etc 1/1 hp regen during combat 3/3 hp regen threshold 3/3 faster combat hp regen 1/1 dodging does not drain stamina 2/2 +combat health regen

Annihilation 2/2 reduced recoil 3/3 +damage 2/2 +torso damage 1/1 +crit chance 1/1 +knockback 1/1 +damage to moving targets 2/2 shotgun dismemberment 2/2 +damage to staggered and knocked down

Assault 1/1 +crit damage 2/2 +damage to moving enemies 2/2 +headshot damage for sniper and precision rifles 3/3 +damage 1/1 +damage while aiming 1/1 +damage to enemies with high hp 1/1 +damage for long shots

Handguns 1/1 no damage penalty for long range 3/3 +headshot damage 3/3 +damage 2/2 +damage for long range

Blades 3/3 +damage vs full hp enemies 1/1 +crit chance 3/3 +attack speed 2/2 +armor while moving 2/2 +damage after dodging 1/1 healing on kill

Crafting 1/1 +components from disassembly

Engineering 1/1 immune to shock 1/1 fully charged weapons do not shoot automatically 2/2 +tech weapon charge 3/3 reduced damage from explosives 3/3 +loot from drones, mechs, robots 2/2 +damage to drones, mechs, robots 1/1 +damage for full charge tech weapons 3/3 +charge multiplier

Breach 2/2 +components from hacking 2/2 +money from hacking

Hacking 2/3 RAM regen in combat

Ninjutsu 2/2 +headshot damage outside combat 1/1 +movement speed while sneaking 1/1 +damage by silenced weapons while sneaking 1/1 +crit chance while sneaking 1/1 +damage to humans 1/1 cold blood (just to rank up the skill)

Cyberware:

Brain; blue mechatronic core (+damage to drones, mechs and robots), white RAM upgrade, green heal on kill

Eyes; purple optics with threat detector, green +crit chance, see grenade radius. I swapped in the target analysis for shooting non lethally as needed

Circulation; gold blood pump for activated healing (almost never used), purple biomonitor (auto heal at low hp), gold 2nd heart (auto heal on death)

Immune; green +resistances, blue immune to poison

Nervous; blue synaptic accelerator (slow time upon detection), gold neofiber (defense boost)

Integument; gold +armor, blue immune to burn, gold optical camo

Gold netwatch netdriver mk 5, equipped with gold reboot optics, gold cyber psychosis, purple cyberware malfunction, purple overheat, gold sonic shock, purple weapon glitch. Not equipped includes gold contagion, gold short circuit, purple detonate grenade, purple request backup, gold system reset, blue memory wipe, green cripple movement, green ping, green whistle. I never needed to use most of the hacks.

Skeleton; blue +melee weapon damage, gold +hp

The free smartlink tattoo

Gold projectile launcher with blue explosive shot, purple +armor and an empty slot

Double jump legs

Weapons: Purple Crash iconic revolver; 633 dps, blue silencer, green +damage, purple +damage

Purple zhuo smart shotgun; 1277 dps, 2 green +damage

Purple jinchu-maru iconic katana; 1807 dps, purple +damage, blue +attack speed. Not fully upgraded

Purple defender lmg; 1105 dps, green scope and no mods. Never bothered to upgrade

Purple dian full auto smart smg; 936 dps, 2 green +damage

Gold chao smart pistol; 880 dps, white +crit damage, blue +damage, 2 green +damage

Purple ashura smart sniper; 799 dps, green +damage

Gold nekomata tech sniper; 740 dps, purple no horizontal recoil, 3 green +damage

Purple Achilles tech precision rifle; 584 dps, purple +crit chance, empty mod slot. Not upgraded

Purple ofive power sniper; 501 dps. By far highest damage per shot but hardly ever used. Not upgraded

Blue overwatch silenced power rifle; 303 dps. I got this too early and it costs too much to upgrade

Armor: Gold double shelled AT AK modular helmet; 60 armor, 10% melee damage reduction

Purple chemically hardened tactical goggles; 56 armor, +8% damage to high and moderate threat enemies

Gold Arasaka polycarbonate laced bulletproof aramid vest; 280 armor, gold and green +armor

Purple puncture resistant NUSA t shirt; 229 armor, purple +mitigation, green +armor

Gold tactical armor weave pants; 156 armor, green +armor, immune to shock

Green heavy duty punk fleets; 140 armor, green +armor, not upgraded

$2.34 million, almost 1500 health kits, around 300 grenades, and a ton of food, drink and components. Oddly, the upgrade components that I ran out of while upgrading everything was the blue one.

This is a difficult game to rate. I am aware that it was released far too early and still isn't fully polished or bug free. It is inexcusable for any game to be released in less than complete state, and I hope the company learned its lesson. I experienced very few bugs: 1 gig did not spawn the objective so I had to load a previous save, my 1st fast travel crashed and there were a few more random crashes. For some reason the ending credits crashed multiple times. I had a couple graphics issues; an armor piece that looked like pizza, or something weird. Another piece during the nomad finale obstructed part of my vision. The game's writing alone is worthy of masterpiece. Much like Witcher 3, this game's story and characters are among the best ever among video games. The side quests are better than the main stories of most games. Even the gigs and police hustles have interesting writing. If you take the time to read every data shard and computer, there are references interwoven between the different activities. Familiar names and events pop up, making the side activities feel far more connected to the world building. Though I do feel that there was too much side content, despite it being much higher quality than other open world games. The world building is excellent and I really felt like I was playing a table top Cyberpunk campaign, even if it was a solo experience. I do feel that the open world was not needed and that the game would have been better with a more linear Deus Ex structure. The GTA style driving, npcs and wanted system didn't really add anything worthwhile and I felt there was nothing interesting to see outside specific objectives. While I liked how broken car windows caused outside sound to no longer be muffled, the cars felt like indestructible tanks with no penalty for dangerous driving. Otherwise the gameplay was excellent with plenty of futuristic feel. My only complaint is with the item and inventory system; the loot treadmill and leveled items that break immersion, the tedium of inventory management and huge amounts of junk loot, and the shocking lack of a favorite option to prevent accidental selling or dismantling of your best gear. And I was sick of the hacking mini game. Just like the hacking and lockpicking of Fallout/Elder Scrolls, tiles of Bioshock, hacking of Deus Ex etc, the mini game was decent but I did not sign up to do it 100s of times. If I play again on PC a mod to skip that will be mandatory.

9.0

Having very mixed feelings about this one. I enjoy the aesthetic, the vibe, the neons and cyborgs and culture the game is attempting to create. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes not. Often Night City just feels... empty. But the scripted character interactions and the general premise I find to be pretty interesting.

The game mechanics... maybe not so much. Let me paint you a word-picture. A room with three enemies. A pillar or four. A big, convenient lump of boxes. "I know!" I say to myself. "This is the perfect setup to show my cool stealth abilities! Very cool!" Boy was I wrong. After waiting for enemy #1 to randomly walk around (with no discernable scripted path) until I spied my moment, I successfully pulled off a stealth takedown and escorted the body behind the boxes. Damn, I'm good. No alarms, not even the whiff of a red eye of perception building up on the other enemies. I am prepared to bide my time, waiting to strike the next one down. Only, both remaining enemies inexplicably attune to my location and, without dialogue or alarm, proceed to flank my convenient boxes. Gunplay, here I come!

So my question is: Why would I put points into hacking and stealth if the enemies will just magically know where I am?! I was so beefed at that moment. There has to have been some behind-the-scenes bug that made that happen, and that's super disappointing. I was excited to lean into stealth/hacking to really cyberpunk my character up! But those points now feel wasted if invariably I'll find myself in a combat scenario anyway. What's more, the storyline moments don't feel like they're approachable with stealth. The corridor-ness of escaping this one area in a mainline quest in Act 2 necessitates combat. There was nothing to hack or override, nowhere to sneak. Oh well, I guess.

Unsure of whether I believe the game mechanics will get better, deeper, richer if I put more time and investment into them... I've decided to treat this game like a narrative game with intermittent basic FPS combat. Because the FPS aspect feels fine, if a tad spongey (hard mode is really bad in this way). So, I'm just enjoying the vibes and the music and blasting my way through the main campaign. Done and done.

Also, I do have to say, I waited for the PS5 version of this, so I don't have any of the residual rage from the game's launch. I'm glad for that.

About 6 hours in and wow, this game knows how to throw stuff in your face. :D Straight from the get go; here's gear with a bazillion different stats, and here is a bunch of loot with even more stats, and here are some skills, and some cyberskills, and some subtrees in those skills. Oh, did you know you can get implants here? And you can totally do this and this to upgrade these weapons, with 800 million different paths and crafting items, ah and here's some clothing which also changes things around, and here are 15 types of different missions and a map with 200 million icons in it. But wait, after the first mission you go to a different area of the map, with 200 million different icons. Now you want to read all that and learn? No no, we'll send you 200 texts on your phone to read first, and oh here's a vr mechanic that let's you explore areas in a different way, and have you tried all the different hacking stuff yet?

Geez, it's overwhelming, it feels like playing an oldschool tabletop game, without any rulebook :D The game IS interesting enough to keep playing and figuring it all out though!

Started on this as i could really not bring myself to start up tales to finish the last part yet :D

I think i'm one of the 'lucky' ones who didn't touch this game till now, with the ps5 patch and stuff. Seems like a really cool game so far! And oh my, does it look gorgeous in raytracing mode! I think i'll lose myself in this one for the coming days.

This CP2077 update livestream is hilarious. You can do a burnout in your car now, but the city is still empty with no increased crowd density. At one point they said "crowd density is increased during the day" and there were maybe five NPCs in a giant open area on the screen at the time. Yikes.

Combat is apparently better be to quote "you can't see the difference but trust us, it feels better." The next-gen footage wasn't great, with the same level of vacant spaces, bare minimum world interactions and dumb NPC. I feel like people hoping the PS5 and Series X would fix the game are going to be sorely disappointed.

Turns out Keanu Reeves never played Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077, the shit show that keeps on giving! (emphasis in the passage below is mine):

...when asked if he plays video games himself, he offers a quick, direct, one-word answer: “No.”

When asked in a follow up, even Cyberpunk? He responds: “No. I’ve seen demonstrations but I’ve never played.”

Now, compare that with what Kiciński told investors in CD Projekt Red’s third quarter earnings call. Translated by Seeking Alpha, a question from an unknown source emerges late in the call: Has Keanu played the game? Kiciński says, “Yes. Yes. He played the game. But as far as I know haven’t finished yet. So — but definitely, he played the game and he loves it.”

Decided to poke around and see if the game is still jank. Yup, jank city! I love that it still can’t even handle correctly rendering characters on spot. These aren’t even complex characters, just generic NPCs standing or sitting in place:

What’s even funnier is that if you look around the bar there’s only a handful of character designs and they are all copy pasted in multiple locations. This doesn’t feel like a lived in space, it’s just a weird land of doppelgängers. This feels especially uninspired given the game is set in a world where body customization is supposed to be widespread and where you can augment and reshape your body as you please. Why are there so many exact copies of the same body everywhere in this club?