Altman be Praised
 
 
Go Big or Go Home
Review Showcase
9.8 Hours played
Bugs saved the game and CDPR

TLDR: Not worth 30 bucks, unless you just built a new PC, don't have any graphically demanding games and want to get a piece of software with raytracing to stress your new GPU. Yes, I am suggesting the benchmark part has more value than the game itself.

A very disappointing game even after patches that fixed most of the bugs. Within 10 hours of playing time, many limitations are apparent. Here is a partial list:

1. Heavy reliance on scripting and discouraging exploration.
1a. Chase scenes are scripted, including traffic, so don't expect GTA level of thrill here.
1b. Braindance is a time waster, where even after the tutorial BD in which you were told to switch between audio and visual layers the heat layer is still locked and would only be accessible after the NPC specifically told you to switch to. Segments with stuff to scan to progress are clearly marked in the timeline and which layer to scan. Most of them are again clearly labelled by yellow marking even though the sources are often already marked by hot or cold spots in the layer. If this is the attempt of CDPR of making a detective segment, then they have failed miserably.
1c. The world has minimum reaction to the player. No changes in gang territory like in GTA SA. Many side encounters do not scale with the player, so even if you discovered them you must go back to clear it.

2. Broken AI.
2a. Vehicles still stop in the middle of the road with no reason at the Arasaka Roundabout.
2b. Need to get away from cops at max wanted level? Drive two blocks down the street and police can no longer get to you.
2c. Enemy stuck behind wall and does not know what to do after my character hopped over a hotdog counter. Some enemies can detect you hiding in totally dark places in an instant and others take 20 seconds of standing in the opening to find you.
2d. Calling your car over seems to pause all road traffic. Even with this, your car can still get stuck behind stopped cars and failed to reach the roadside near you. Yeah, AI drives in Cyberscum 2077 cannot detect and drive around stopped cars.

3. UI and UX designs are trash tier and a lack of visual clarity.
3a. The menu has multiple multi-level submenus with tabs. Character is one tab, skill is a submenu in the tab, Intelligence is another submenu in the skill tab and Quick Hacking is a tab in the Intelligence sub menu. Want to access data shard? Navigate to journal and then press Esc to a completely different overall menu that I still do not know any other way of access, and then choose the Shards menu from the last selection box.
3b. Take down takes two button presses, which can create some unnecessary tension during combat.
3c. NPCs like to move around during conversation but there is no camera tracking, so you want to look at the NPC as normal person would do during conversation you have to move the camera around yourself.

4. The world is empty and unintersting. NPC density is quite high but most of them are unintersting citizens, so no precedurally generated gang members, something even GTA 3 (a 2001 game) can do.
4a. Some places are populated with non-interactable objects, and other places are just empty, like the parking lot in the second mission. Hidden credits, skill points, emails, books, chat messages between NPCs and even hidden options to complete objectives? They don't exist here. I spent the second mission searching around the environment, ignoring Jackie for long time, but only found a few junk items that only worth less than 100 credits.
4b. No random encounters. Random encounter is a good way to add tension and choices and consequences to a game.
4c. Ubification. The map looks more like a Ubisoft open world than a Bethesda one. Icons everywhere and even fixers calling you up when you arrive in a new district. Non-existent enviromental story telling.

5. Story and railroading.
5a. Violation of Chekhov's Gun at the start of Corpo lifepath. I started my character with Corpo background. The game started with the corporation that I worked in suffered from a data leak just recently in another European branch and my character worked in the HQ counterintelligence department, so you would assume that my character would have a debriefing/email/chat with boss on what the data leak is, right? Nope. I still don't know what the leak is about. I only knew that my boss hired some hackers and murdered the European Space Council (ESC) because the leak might revoke the company permit of a lunar research station. Nor was the leak every mentioned again.
5b. Unrealistic settings. This ESC is also silly writing as we all know in real life corporations would usually resort to self-regulation (think of gaming industry and ESRB, or social media) to "show that they are taking steps to solve problems" and prevent governmental oversight, so such a Council will not even exist given the amount of power that corporations have in the Cyberpunk universe.
5c. Illusion of choices in multiple places. Many lifepath/skill specific dialogue are for asking for more information, instead of pushing the conversation forward. And during the mission to the Clouds to find Evelyne, you are required to use the safe word to get the "doll" giving you the information. In the same mission, successfully stealth into Woodman's office and knock him out without ever being detected and having the VIP card and turning off security will be no different from outright killing him. When you leave the office, the lights will turn red, all bouncers hostile and the security cameras that you just disabled magically activated.
5d. Show don't tell. So directly after the Corpo intro mission there is a cut scene that shows you the life as a merch of V and Jackie working together. Why not make these into missions? Make the player and Jackie climber the Night City merch reputation ladder, starting from nobody and pulled a few risky and insane jobs before getting the attention of Dex and setting up the big biochip heist. Building up the friendship with Jackie and reputation among other mechs and gangs instead of showing a cutscene. From rugs to almost riches, just one last heist to pull off but it goes horribly wrong and ends up losing everything.
5e. V will die in a couple of weeks, except you don't. There is even a percentage proudly called the countdown and displays a percentage, except it does not increase unless you progress quests. This could be a very deep and personal choice with some interesting mechanics when facing certain.

6. Boring loot, numerical modifier as perks and bad cover shooting mechanics.
6a. Interesting and unique loot is far and few in between, and many of the armor/clothing looks like ♥♥♥♥. V will be running around as a total buffoon with completely unmatching and often aesthetically clashing pieces of armor. The crafting system in Cyberpunk 2077 is not well designed and a lot of even the most common stuff ingame is not craftable.
6b. Perks in many RPG games can give you interesting new abilities. Not here. There are a few, but many are just numerical modifiers. Think of Skyrim perk tree but with only spell cost reduction.
6c. Cover shooting does not work in first person. You cannot hide in cover and blind fire because the game is entirely in first person. Corner peeking is inconsistent as again the game is entirely in first person.

So not 10 hours in and I already have quite a few complaints to make. I bought this game at 30 bucks knowing that it will be a train wreck, and still it manages to break through my worst expectation, though it works very well as a benchmark tool to stress my new gaming PC as I don't have any graphically challenging games released in recent years in my library. As the old saying goes, you think it could not hit rock button and could not go any lower, it finds an industrial mining drill.
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Comments
Sticky Goo 29 Jun, 2020 @ 4:56am 
游戏时长前三吓到我了:csgoskull: