Recent reviews by Shmitz

If you told me a couple months ago that I will be writing a review (!), on this game (!!), with just 10 hours of playtime (!!!), I'd ask you who you are and why are you engaging in an unsolicited conversation with me. Yet here I am, trying to keep my conscience from clawing me apart as best I can.

Full disclosure, I preordered Cyberpunk 2077, I did not and will not be refunding this game. For what it's worth, here's an explanation: I enjoy diffirent games for a variety of different things and every once in a while I know from the start that I will enjoy a particular game even if it satisfies just one of my interests, but does it exceptionally good. Cyberpunk 2077 is just such case. The writing is good, characters are interesting, the story is engaging, so it's good enough for me.

However, I can not just sit quietly and enjoy my time with this game when there's this much wrong with it. Especially, when I see 8/10, 9/10 and 10/10's Cyberpunk 2077 casually receives. What this game is, the good it has, is well-praised already. Just read well-received positive reviews for that. I will try to show what this game is not.

Long story short, if you're not like me (and you KNOW IT if you are), do not buy this game. Not now, maybe even never, not for full price. This isn't Open-world AAA experience you're paying for. It is not about bugs. It is about the game itself. If you expect anything more than a story- and character-driven experience with serviceable, if outdated and rough gameplay, you WILL be disappointed. Please, do continue reading.

The game is riddled with bugs right now, you know it. If you follow the launch at all, you've seen it. Most of it is funny. Geometry breaking under your feet is less funny. Less funny still is scrpited sequences breaking, participating characters becoming too shy to talk and advance the scene. This one especially loves to happen at the exact moment you (and developers themselves) least expected it so there was no autosave for a while. For a game so reliant on quests and scripting, that's not a good show.

Performance, while not nearly as bad as it was expected after reviewers first received their copies, is unreliable at best. Looking down the store page, under System Requirements it reads "Note: SSD recommended". Don't believe it. SSD is required. This game demands quick access to its files at all times. It is beyond atrocious at caching dynamic objects. Which is, again, kind of a bad show for a game advertised for its massive sprawling city full of life. This life surrounds you the moment you step outside enclosed spaces, the streets are full of it... - but please, can you not turn around so much? We're having trouble spawning and despawning completely different NPC models every time. Cyberpunk 2077 fully supports widescreen resolutions... except developers didn't expect you to be so bold as to take it as an invitation and actually play it like that. NPCs blatantly spawning in near the edges of the screen can attest to that.

...or they would, if they had anything resembling AI. Know the joke, "all A, no I"? That's Cyberpunk 2077. I'm not going to pretend like the last years have been kind to us, - the kind of gamer who likes their computer-driven adversaries to be at least somewhat smarter when they're still alive than when they're dead, ya know? But local NPCs' collective IQ is few points below a lamp post they hide behind. Not just the "crowds"--- wait, actually now thinking about, you know what? Crowds of civvies might actually consist of the smarter ones. They convincingly pretend to worry about their survival. Sometimes.
Enemies, sadly, do not deserve such high praise. I can understand, it is CD PROJEKT's first venture into unexplored and barely known to science world of the fabled "shooty-shooty ranged games", rare as they are. Everything they noted from the scant competitors is that modern shooty-shooty needs cover. Because enemies in Night City, regardless of the type of a particular moron you're dealing with, - sure do LOVE their cover. They love shooting from cover. They love running from cover to cover. Wow, that's impressive, do they do it in any kind of sensible manner? No. They do not attack you. They do not flank you. They do not rush you. They see you, they shoot you, they throw a grenade in what can sometimes appear to be your general direction. But all that - it's the extent of their tactical abilities.

Moving on... wait, we can't move on, we haven't done with AI. You know what Cyberpunk 2077 has? Beaultiful sprawling city. What else? Cars - because of course it does, for some reason people in big cities like to move around using their cars, so how could Night City have none! You know what Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't have? Driving AI. Wait, what?! Yes. It is not a joke, it is not an exaggeration, it is not mean mockery like in the previous paragraph. Cyberpunk 2077 completely lacks AI routine responsible for driving vehicles. The game doesn't even attempt to hide it, you can notice it as soon as you're first let behind the wheel. You can leave your car on the middle of the road, - actually, you can park it on the sidewalk, seemingly creating no obstacle on the road, like a responsible citizen I know you are. Don't go far from your vehicle yet, I promise there's something to see. You parking your car in any vicinity of the road completely paralizes traffic. Night City drivers are apparently so disciplined they will never even honk at you, let alone try to break some strictly enforced local law that makes driving around player's vehicle a serious crime.

Speaking of crimes and enforcing the rule of the law. Just like you would probably expect from the genre, cops are all-knowing, no crime goes unpunished. Except for all the ones you commit in the story and side missions, but whatever. If you imagine going on a killing spree, with NCPD cars arriving at the scene, cops running out, possibly try to arrest you, dynamically evolving chases and you know, emergent gameplay or what's the latest word you absolutely have to use in a review? Also, LUDONARRATIVE. Anyawy, so Cyberpunk 2077 has none of that. There won't be any dynamic chases - the game has no driving AI, remember? Gang wagons will never come to help their brethren out of a stiky situation. Cop cars will never arrive, syrens blaring, to an epic shootout outside of scripted events in quests.
You know what cops will do instead? They will spawn in. No-no, don't be judgemental yet, they won't pop out of thin air in front of you. Give CD PROJEKT some credit here, I mean, come on. No, cops will pop out of thin air out of your sight. It doesn't matter where you are and what's behind you though, be it an appartment room, busy street, dead-end, elevator shaft, an edge of the roof... if it isn't a solid wall, the cops will pop right there. Why even have a Wanted mechanic like that? Invincible guards in Witcher 3 worked well enough.

Why am I tearing at AI and its mechanics so much, to the point of exceeding my god-given number of symbols per review? It's because there's no proper open-world game without dynamic gameplay, and there's no dynamic gameplay without mechanics to rely on. Cyberpunk 2077's AI shows like nothing else can, that it wasn't designed for open-world to begin with, it shows that CD PROJEKT weren't ready to make a mechanics-driven game. Witcher 3, deservedly praised as one of the best written games ever made, is often and rightfully criticised for its over-reliance on combat, something it just wasn't good at. Cyberpunk 2077 just doubles down on making the same mistake. Its world is indeed big, it is sprawling, it is magnificent. It is also just an expensive window-dressing. It only matters in how many shiny places you drive by on your way to the quest. You want to stop, walk in, settle in, live in it. But you're not allowed, the wall between you and its potential is just too thick, and it isn't something they can patch out.