Cyberpunk 2077
- Graphics
- I'm playing the PC version with an Nvidia 3090 at 4K Ultra settings with all Ray Tracing turned on except Ray Traced Shadows in DLSS Performance mode. I maintain 55-60 fps and with VRR the game feels smooth.
- There are issues with it's HDR implementation, but I've been able to get an amazing picture using these settings on my LG CX. TV Brightness set to 48 and Dynamic Tone Mapping turned off on the TV and the in-game HDR brightness set to 3000 with the midpoint balance set to .90
- With Ray Tracing it puts it above Demon's Souls as the best looking game.
- Walking down a dimly lit alley with water puddles on the ground reflecting a lonely red neon sign hanging from high above the building is a sight to behold.
- There is just so much to see it's almost overwhelming as the city is so vertical and densely packed, it's an amazing world to walk around and get lost in.
- Gameplay
- I was excited to see how they would improve upon the open world game formula and unfortunately they don't deviate very far from other open world games.
- I'm enjoying the game, but there isn't anything revolutionary about what I'm doing moment to moment. The world, story, and it's characters are the main draw for me.
- A lot of people are trying to compare the game to GTA V, but currently it's more like Deus Ex than anything else. Will you use stealth, hacking, or a gun's blazing approach to fulfill the mission.
- I was worried since it was their first game with guns that the shooting wouldn't feel great, but after tweaking some strange controller settings, it feels really good. Their default settings have some deadzone setup which makes it feel a bit sluggish but turning those down fixed the issue for me.
- The stealth is just ok. There is no real indicator you are being stealthy, each enemy has a cone radius and you have about 5 seconds to move out of the cone before being spotted. If one enemy sees you then all enemies do so I've reloaded quite a bit when that happened.
- The hacking isn't anything special either. Highlight a device and you can turn it off or use it to distract enemies by the press of a button if you have enough resources. Same for enemies, you can do various things depending on how you spec your character, but so far nothing that interesting.
- The skill tree is massive, but it's filled with a lot of add 3% to shotgun damage and stuff like that. There are only a handful of them that offer up any real game changing experiences.
- You do a lot of driving in the game and the cars that I've driven don't handle very well, it's not as responsive as I would like it to be. The way they offer up new cars is also strange as most characters you do missions for will try to sell you a car immediately after meeting them. Didn't know in 2077 everyone was a car dealer, also no flying cars.
- There is a ton of loot in the game that is mostly worthless. I have hundreds of special drinks that can alter your attributes, but I've never drank one so far. After each battle there are a ton of items to loot, luckily they are color coded so you can just loot the special ones.
- I'm playing on the hard difficulty as the normal mode felt like I could go on a rampage in every mission and not fail.
- It sounds like I'm being hard on the game, but I could say most of these things about every open world game and they would apply. I was just hoping to see something truly different.
- As I said earlier I am enjoying the game, the world is fun to explore and just look at the pretty graphics. The story and characters are interesting and I am excited to see the story through.
- The main quest can be beaten around 20 or so hours if you run quickly through it, but not doing side missions will affect the end of the story and how many different endings are possible so I'm trying to complete all of them. The side quests are varied enough to keep you interested and almost all of them have some story in them.
- Bugs
- The game was delayed a couple of times this year and honestly it should have been delayed once more even on PC.
- I haven't had any game breaking bugs, mostly visual bugs, but it does take you out of the game in those situations.
- The most irritating bug is sometimes when I die and the game reloads it puts the last subtitle on the screen and it stays there even though I don't have subtitles turned on. A quick game load fixes that, but it's happened about 8 times now.
- The combat AI is decent as enemies flank and take cover, but the pedestrian and car AI is awful. If you get out of your car in the middle of the street other cars will just stop until you move your car, they just sit there and pile up until you get back. Same if you park your car in a pedestrian's way, they wait as well.
- The Cop AI is pretty bad. If you commit a crime in front of them they will start shooting, but if you get in a car and drive about a block they stop chasing you. They will also magically appear out of nowhere when you commit a crime.
- There was a reddit post a couple of months ago where one anonymous developer said the game needed about 6 more months of development and that turned out to be true.
- CDPR does have a great track record of fixing bugs and getting the games where they need to be. The Witcher 2 really wasn't fun to play until a year later when the definitive edition came out.
- If you have a beefy PC or the latest consoles then you may want to go ahead and get the game, but if you are on a last generation PS4 or Xbox don't bother until at least February until most of the bugs are ironed out. No sense druding through a game that will be better in a couple of months.
