Cyberpunk 2077 Mega-Review Thread (PC)

@plan6: My god, I could have sworn that just yesterday I saw a Fanbyte writer saying that she knew countless reviewers that didn't have the time to play the game and write a review without enduring a crap ton of super unhealthy crunch, and all the replies were juts people being shitdicks about how they would love to play video games for a living...as if staring a screen for hours on end is healthy for anyone.

In other words, the smooth brains are going to be pissed at games writers and reviewers no matter. I particularly feel like someone like Plagge could have given the game a 9/10, and if she listed a single negative thing in her review that's all "the discourse" would care about.

Hoo boy, lot to unpack there.

• First off, the literal sub-headline for Plagge's review mentions "standout side quests". In the review itself, she praises some of the side quests for being well written and memorable. What she skipped, according to her review, was the open world content -- the texts about cars to buy, gang hideouts, the crafting/loot, that kind of thing. I don't think it's entirely fair to claim she did "barely any side quests" when she clearly has, as she can talk about her experiences there. If she said, "I don't like the side stuff, whatever," that'd be one thing, but she talks about several side quests/content/characters.
• As for the parts she freely admits she didn't engage with, like the crafting and cars -- that doesn't make her opinion invalid. The onus for creating compelling systems and open world content is on the developer; if the systems aren't fun, or if, in her words, the game is literally dropping free gear on her at all times, removing the need to craft, it's not her fault that she didn't use that. Furthermore, someone doesn't need to engage with every drop of content to render an opinion. For example, I found the few open world activities in Grand Theft Auto V (hunting, tennis, triathlon, races) I tried to be super boring, so I didn't play those missions. But, I didn't play every hunting mission, so I guess that makes my opinion on the one I played totally invalid, right?
• It's very telling when you just come out and bring up "absolute dumb founded political Bollocks she tries to force down." Now, I'm just going to assume (as you didn't specify anything in particular) that you're talking about the fact she dedicated a couple of paragraphs, out of a much longer review, to the issues of trans fetishization in that game. First, this is a real problem that many trans people have already brought up, but it didn't affect the precious Metacritic average, so you probably just ignored that. Second, the body of the review, and the 7/10 score focuses much more on her perceived failings of the main storyline, the open world bloat, and the incredible bugginess of the game. But that's not as easily refutable as a blanket accusation of "political Bollocks", especially seeing as you haven't even played the game.
• By the way, Jeff of Giant Bomb has brought up a lot of the same concerns Plagge has. He thinks the crafting is pointless, he doesn't like the deluge of car texts, and he also dared talk about how the trans representation is poorly done. So why dunk on the Gamespot review and not him? Hmm.

@haz_kaj: I would say that you have shaky grounds at best throwing those sorts of accusations towards a review of a game you have not fuckin' played.

All the leaked footage I've seen has made it look like CDPR made a cyberpunk Skyrim and I'm okay with that.

I’m definitely on board with review scores continuing to be more and more pointless and if what’s going on here in with this guy in the thread and the comments section of the Gamespot review is any indication that scores have more or less just turned into pissing-match, shallow forum fights then idk what else is.

My bigger issue with that GS review were the constraints placed on that reviewer, like the rest of the reviewers, from the deadline but I get it, Gamespot is targeting a wide audience like IGN. They don’t have that kind of luxury like the GB guys have.

The other stuff like having an issue that the game’s narrative doesn’t have a central theme or something more to say are purely personal and I can’t say anything definitive until I play it for myself but as someone who’s looked at the source material for the game, Cyberpunk in general was never about some big some overarching “save the world” narrative and more about smaller personal stories in a future dystopia which I’m ok with.

I got way more out of that GB discussion between the Jeffs about this game than I ever would have looking at a simple score.

@haz_kaj: buddy, both the Gamespot and the PC Gamer review you cite as being "much better" clocked near-identical playtimes at 50 hours. It's in the body text of James's review and the footer of Kallie's.

Aaaaaaand the post has been deleted.

Is it just me, or has "the discourse" around big games and their reviews gotten much worse over the past decade? Like, I know there are some standouts in the past (Twilight Princess, Shenmue), but it seems like every other major release has something like a miasma surrounding it. Maybe its just a product of these times, or maybe I'm just online too much.

On topic, looks like Deus Ex GTA with Fallout 4 levels of jank. Looking forward to seeing if it's better or worse than Fallout 4 was at launch in terms of bugs.

@eroq: I think maybe the things complained about shift around but not the overall toxicity.

If outlets only got codes 6 days prior to release, you can hardly blame anyone for mainling the story or skipping side content, that's on CDPR.

Overall though the consensus sounds more postive than I was expecting, an open-world immersive sim was always going to be buggy. The Witcher 3 wasn't a very good game to play but Cyberpunk sounds like a better game in this regard.

@eroq: They mention it in the...most recent Bombcast (I believe?) but I think the console war, video game fan thing just keeps getting worse. I think a lot of us just sort of grew up and left that all behind, but many remained and you can find it so easily and its so much more vitriolic than I feel like it ever was...most likely because of things like Twitter which allow people to speak (see also: shout at and harass) game devs, game pubs, console makers, games writers any time they want. It all comes down to just "never read the comments" for me.

@eroq: I think it's a result of the influencer/twitch culture and how the marketing machine has adapted to weaponizing these people to be the company mouthpiece. You'd always have people that would go to bat hard for X game for no real reason, and do so aggressively, but I think now that it's so easy to have a platform and be "noticed" by companies, that spills into the audience of said person and we see these extremes we've noticed the past few years.

I also think score reviews don't serve any purpose anymore outside fanning these flames, and I'm thankful for places like Giant Bomb for giving more nuanced takes and not slapping a score to everything. Today's Jeff + Jeff Chat was perfect for letting me know what I needed to know about this game, and helped me decide on when I should pick it up.

It is worse than ever before, from a guy who has been in it since the 1990s. Social media has really give companies the ability to get people "invested" to a level that rivals sports fandom. And not like "I like the local team" levels. More akin to "local soccer team loses, so now riots happen" levels of investment. The difference is that when a sports team loses, no one blames the press covering the game for the loss. In video games people beclown themselves by attacking the reviewer for reporting that The Video Game is, in fact, not the best.

@takayamasama: Yeah, it may be that. It's like there has been a transition to the whole influencer route through things like twitch bounties, where the whole point is that the host doesn't say anything bad about the game for an hour, while parts of the community simultaneously holding onto this idea that the metacritic score means anything. The "lets talk about our impressions for an hour" is so much more informative.

@eroq: We really just need to get people more used to engaging critically with the things they like. It's okay to like and dislike aspects about a thing, and to have that be apart of the discourse around said thing. We'd probably have a lot less hype over games too if people would engage in more of this.

SethMode mentions it as well but it does really feel like a large group of people who grew up with the bad parts of the industry left it behind and then some decided to iron clad double down and make the toxic stuff and mix it into the culture of what gaming meant to them as a huge part of their identities.

My favourite review that I've read so far is Vice Games by Rob Zacny, no score so tough to show on a list but I recommend everyone check it out

The waypoint podcast is real good and the review makes me more interested in checking it out when it isn't broken.

Edit: Patrick talks about how CDPR did themselves no favors by sending this out early and having a weird embargo. How the reviews were always going to be a bit half baked because the reviewers didn't have time to do solid work.

So many big RPGs have this problem. They need to have better "breaks" in the action for you to go do stuff.

At least in Skyrim, you can go finish the main quest and then go gallivanting about the world.

@justin258: The Witcher 3 (one of my favorite games) is so bad about it, that at one point I was so engaged with the side content/DLC that I forgot what was even happening with the Wild Hunt and had to catch myself back up. It doesn't bother me as much as I can imagine it bothering others, so it likely won't bother me with Cyberpunk...but it is and always will be an exceedingly silly thing that has infected SO many games. The number of times AC Valhalla has said "Meet me here and don't tarry" and I end up going to like, what is supposed to be a very specifically timed ambush or something DAYS later because of distractions, has been comical.

OP should be updated with links to other reviews that don't have a score like from VICE and Polygon.

That's funny. I get it but it doesn't bother me at all. I put that in the same category as questions like "Why do these bad guys keep building elaborate temples and dungeons filled with convoluted but easily solvable puzzles?" or "Why do these NPCs keep saying the same things over and over?" The only answer is "Because videogames." But I'd much prefer this over being forced to go through the main story when I don't feel like it.

@sethmode: I can see why it's silly but also every time a game actually enforces its stakes and tries to limit what you are able to do it always ends up being a pain in the ass.

@efesell: Absolutely agree. Like I said, it doesn't really bother me (and I agree with you, more often than not strict time limits in those kind of games are more trouble than they're worth -- I'm flashing back to playing the original Fallout now), but I do find it funny. But if we were lining up all of the kind of goofy time jiggery-pokery AC games do we'd never stop.

I just read the Gamespot review. I thought it well written.

But that comment section...Is that how Gamespot is these days?

Wow, what a suck ass job to put your talent and professional perspective out there, and have it chewed up by that noise.

https://www.gameinformer.com/2020/12/07/cyberpunk-2077-epileptic-psa

This is going around but hey, in the odd chance someone who would be effected sees this here first then it's worth linking. Be VERY careful with this game if you or anyone you know is epileptic.

@takayamasama: Yeah this is pretty fucked up. This is probably a we shouldn't sell this to people until you patch this kinda moment.

@lethalki11ler: That was actually one of the things that soured me on the game early when I watched trailers. You can do so much with a Cyberpunk setting, and they just reused tired old gang tropes, put some googles and neon on them and called it a day.

I was already a bit sceptic about how CDPR's writing would hold up when they couldn't write the Witcher fanfiction any longer, and reuse plot points and jokes from a series of books. Those trailers didn't exactly make me confident in their abilities.

Edit: just to clarify - I did enjoy most of the writing in the Witcher games. And as a fan of the books it was nice to have a more... let's just call it 'satisfying' conclusion to the story (even if it is pretty much the opposite of the original in tone and execution)

@eroq: I think people just fundamentally misunderstand what a review is. A review is not an evaluation of the objective quality of the game, either by itself nor through consensus with its peers. nor should you exclusively seek out reviewers who line up with your opinions. There will be reviewers who like Cyberpunk 2077. There will be reviewers who hate Cyberpunk 2077. Both perspectives are equally valid, because an opinion is definitionally incapable of being right or wrong.

@wollywoo: yeah its 100% a me thing but it rubs me the wrong way. Same thing with my personal preference for scifi over fantasy. ShepShep can throw things because element zero treatments? Sure makes sense to me. Mage can throw fireball cuz magic? Whats magic? You made that up. Lame! (Despite element zero being a made up magic rock)

@bybeach: It has been like this for years. I have always mentioned in the past how talented people like Danny or Lucy or Mary Kish - whoever was working at GameSpot and specifically on the editorial side is making content for the dregs of the internet. That community is comprised of teenage kids armed with embarrassing takes like "lol paid review is paid review" or something equally stupid and cringe inducing. I know going to Waypoint would be a step down for Kallie Plagge but having read some of her stuff in the past and knowing her viewpoints, GameSpot is just not a place where she can ever thrive. She is always going to be fighting upstream there because of the unfortunate scope of the site and the audience it draws in.

@colourful_hippie: Done!

@bybeach: Yeah unfortunately Gamespot's comments section veered more towards IGN than GB imo... Thus why I put that little footnote for it, even minutes after the review was posted it was a shitshow.

stanning for a game you havent played yet is fucking pathetic. And I hate how "but they put so much love into their games" somehow becomes a way to dismiss any and all criticisms about the developer or the game. I"m excited about the game as well, but maybe we're all gonna have to step away from social media for awhile while we play it.

@lethalki11ler: thanks!

And if anyone feels like losing hope in humanity or feel marginally better about the GameSpot comments section should take a quick glance at the YouTube comments for the GameSpot video about the game. Yikes.

We are addicted to its world and everything in it, so we don't mind risking our reputation saying that it's easily our game of the decade, despite it missing out on the Video Game Awards for 2020.

...

We could wax lyrical about how good this game is for another ten years, and we still think the conversation would be relevant – so yes, we think Cyberpunk 2077 is the game of the decade.

digitalspy.com

Do they mean that it is the best game of the last 10 years or for the coming 10 years ?

Nothing says thoughtful critique like calling something “game of the decade” before it is even released for the public to play. Strong editorial team at digital spy.

@potatispress: translation: "see? We said Cyber punk is the GOAT. Please keep death threats to a minimum."

@potatispress: I feel like logically 2020 shouldn't be included in the last decade. General assumption is that's from 2010-2019 right?

Which makes the comment even more ridiculous because it then states that it's better than every game that will come out in the next ten years.

Or they're changing the range of the decade just to write a hype sentence.

@mezza: I feel like there’s a lot of fierce mind numbing debate over what decades are.

The comment feels dumb on both sides though.

@efesell: Very true either way.

I'm more excited for this game than I have been for any others since, well, The Witcher 3. With that said, I've known for a while now that it was going to be busted at launch and have set my expectations accordingly. From the aggregated reviews, Cyberpunk 2077 is exactly what I thought and was hoping it would be, an open world RPG from the developers of the Witcher series, set in a Cyberpunk universe. That's my take on the reviews.

With all of that said, more than anything right now, the discussion that has sprung up around the game is really bumming me out. It seems to have really brought the assholery out from damned-near everyone. Assholes lambasting reviewers critical of the game, like the Jeff's and Kallie. Assholes mocking and dismissing people like myself who are super excited for the game. Gamergate assholes performing their usual and expected assholery. I suppose this was all to be expected, given the fervor that has developed for this game in the past couple of years, but man, it's still disheartening to see.

How dare someone give a game I’ve never played anything less than a 10 out of 10? It completely invalidates my entire being.

@guns_n_rosaries: How dare they give it anything less!

@potatispress: I assume the this decade that we are leaving Jan 1 2021? I count 1 to 10 so count of ten would be 2011 to 2020, Also, it would be required they know the results of the upcoming 10 years, to say it is the coming decade that it is the best game..

Otherwise, I do not know what they are going on about, not knowing context, yet. If ever.

Some people talk about decades being xxx1-xxx0, other people refer to decades as xxx0-xxx9.

xxx1-xxx0 makes sense in so much as there is no year 0 in the Roman calendar. You go straight from 1 BC to 1 AD, so if you begin starting decades at 1 AD then counting decades as xxx1-xxx0 makes logical sense.

xxx0-xxx9 is more common place now though, because people speak about decades in terms of the 60s, the 90s etc. in which case you are thinking about decades in terms of xxx0-xxx9.

Presumably whoever wrote the digitalspy review was using the first meaning of decade.

This is something that I'm struggling with a lot. I liked Witcher 3 and I really do want to check out Cyberpunk, but this sort of shit from both CDPR and the extremely online gamers makes me not want to engage.

I don't want to feel like I'm being complicit or endorsing this atrocious behavior, but it's tough to get that idea out of your head when all of the discourse surrounding the game is a nonstop torrent of shit.

Gamespot's review seems pretty solid, and in-line with what Jeff and Jeff said. i haven't read any others yet though.

I do really feel bad for folks who just wanted to be excited for the next big AAA game to come out. Everything surrounding this game sucks right now. And for what it is worth, I wanted this game to be "Breath of the Wild" levels of good. I wanted the sprawling, open world filled with the weird side quest I loved in the Witcher and to have cool robot arms. I wanted another game about being the one of the few good, kind hearted people in an aggressively indifferent world. And from Rob's review at Waypoint, it sounds like the core of this game has that.

Sadly, I got the feeling early on that it was going to launch like this, a flaming hot mess filled with questionable choices. Because CDPR had not done anything like this before and has not been the best about learning from their past mistakes in design. I remember how in each Witcher game CDPR would return to the well of bad design decisions, to the point where it became comical. I have already seen screenshots of the inventory for Cyberpunk and I'm excited to find out what useless quest items will take up space there for months after release until CDPR patches the inventory. It is the cyber future, so there is no way my backpack can get filled with scraps of paper, letters and quest notices.

@chaser324: I'm pretty sure I'm just going to check out of discussion of the game for the first month or two while things calm down. I'm going to play, and hopefully enjoy my time with, the game, then come back to maybe have a more civil and clear headed discussion about the game, the hype, the bugs and eventual patches, and the community response as a whole. I don't know, it just doesn't seem like it will be possible to have a healthy conversation about any of it for the near future.

I get the bummer situation emanating from the conversation around this game but at the end of the day the gamer-sphere on the internet are not with you in the room while you're playing this game unless you're a streamer or have a second display active with #cyberpunk2077 on Twitter open. It's OK to just disconnect and enjoy a game.

That said everyone will have to come to their own conclusions over the idea that buying this game should be considered as some sort of endorsement of the horrible labor practices. On the other hand I don't know if I feel great either about boycotting a game that so many people worked their asses off on for years on end and more than likely want people to be able experience this project they put together. All of that doesn't mean either that I will dismiss the criticism against CDPR. People do need to be vocal about how they're fucking up.