Cyberpunk 2077 has its glitches, but still worth playing

How do you even begin to unpack cyberpunk 2077? I mean, this is a game that's been hyped for so many years that it already has tremendous shoes to fill. And to be perfectly honest, that's kind of not fair. So putting all the hype aside, does cyberpunk deliver? Well, in some ways, yes. And unfortunately in other ways [MUSIC] Cyberpunk 2077 is impossible to ignore and is organically interesting by nature of its amazing location and the world. It has created. Such a futuristic circus that you can't look away and it's forcing me to keep playing simply because I'm genuinely curious of what I'll see next. But does that make it good? I think so. At its core, it's a familiar open world first person RPG that front loads a ton of systems and mechanics Tries to do so much so quickly that a lot of my time has been spent working through what everything does and figuring out if it matters. There's a dizzying amount of hacking and body modification, cyberware systems to explore, layered skill trees and perks, crafting and even more. But all of these ultra ambitious aspirations and spectacle results in a chaotic experience that has its fair share of glitches sometimes be downright clunky. [MUSIC] So real quick before we go deeper, we're posting my impressions video now because today's embargo lifts the curtain on all custom captured footage. Everything you see here was captured by me on an NC machine running an Nvidia r tx 3080 in 4k, with ray tracing and quality settings pretty much maxed out And performance wise that GPU combined with this game is legit and at times absolutely jaw dropping. I ran into a little bit of wonkiness every time I tried to view my character in a mirror, but other than that everything looks fantastic the lighting the colors the painstaking amount of detail in night city is nothing short of remarkable. It's going to blow well. You are bombarded with neon soaked high candy from every angle. And in my 20 hours of playing so far. I'm still seeing new areas that are completely different from the next, all meticulously designed and crafted. There is a very specific vision for this world and CD project red [UNKNOWN] Now I'm gonna do my best to keep it spoiler free from here on out, but just a warning that some of the plot will be discussed. And I'll also be talking a tiny bit about Keanu so heads up in my 20 hours or so that I. And I've played so far, I've already had a couple bugs, where I'm forced to just reload to see. Thankfully, auto saves are generously abundant. I've also seen a ton of weirdness like floating objects and characters gliding around instead of walking enemies warping around and weird patterns. Dialogue stems playing over each other, and just some general weird character model behavior. From being honest, the whole thing feels a little undercooked and it's just something you got to know going in. CD Projekt RED says there will be another patch at launch, but I just don't know how they're gonna catch every Okay. And to be perfectly fair, open-world RPG. Jank is not exclusive to this game. It affects a lot of these massive titles, but beyond all of the hiccups, what we have here is a very familiar first person open-world RPG loop built inside a setting that is undoubtedly the server. The show Night City is wild. And let's be honest. It's super ****, like almost to the point where you can look away from someone or something trying to bang the character builder as well. It's thorough and it wasn't long before I was wishing that this game was presented in third person. And the more time I spend with it, the more I wish I had that option. First person shooting is a huge part of the game but not being able to see my character on screen is definitely a bummer. At the very beginning of cyberpunk gives you the option to start as one of three different personas a nomad street kid or a corpo. The last one is the character I chose to sort of kick things off with a unique prologue. Doesn't take long before you're merged onto that same storyline track that's going to drive the rest of the game. But your character choice does come back into play, giving you specific dialogue options and insight into certain plot points. So for instance, my corpo background means that I escaped and left the CD Corporation world behind. But I still carry the knowledge of that previous life with me as I go. There is a seriously dense amount of managing that you can do in this game and you're going to be tempted to loot and collect almost everything you see. But for all the shiny objects that are scattered around the world, start to realize that most of these things are extra curricular and don't really require your full attention. For players who want to get lost in the minutiae of choosing which sneakers are going to provide the most amount of stealth ability and armor, all that's there for you don't worry about that. And for those that just want to pay surface level attention to those kinds of details, there's no major disadvantage to neglecting that kind of granularity. So for example, there is an expansive hacking system built into the game, which costs you hardware points as you execute different attacks. You gain experience and can grow your expertise in the discipline, but rarely have I felt underpowered in a situation Then of course, is the cyberware system, which allows for body modification of everything from improved optics to upgraded bone composition, the list goes on. It's really an exciting idea and you can spend hours visiting Ripper docks to install these body mods, but so far I haven't felt A lot of pressure from the game to seek that out. But that's what's cool, right? I mean, you can choose to invest time into discovering what interests you and what's buried inside these systems and really decide how you want to dedicate your play. But as an overall experience, cyberpunk sometimes fumbles it's moment to moment flow. The problem is that it tries to do so much and throw so much at you at any given moment, that it can feel like you or your character don't really have a firm grasp of what you're trying to accomplish. New jobs pop up and step on each other side quests sometimes bombed the screen at strange moments and random messages or calls are very frequent. It makes it tough to know what job or quest is being updated in the background. Now for completionists you're going to be spending a long time in the journal menus, tracking everything down. But at least that's probably familiar territory. Now if you ignore all the side quests and try to mainline the story, there's a more cohesive narrative that's filled with enough surprising twists to keep you guessing and chasing. Ultimately, you are juggling three main progress trackers, one of which is tied to activities called street cred. Earlier I mentioned how I really like a third person option for this game, but I have found the first person shooting to be pretty solid. You can also wield melee weapons or just fist fight, but I haven't really been enjoying that as much. Just like Knights city, the storyline is a holographic acid trip that has you rubbing elbows with some of the town's CDs movers and shakers. Because you'll make temporary allies and enemies and never really know who to trust. And then of course, there's Keon reaps, who I got to admit. I was really on the fence about, but A how can you ever be met a Keanu Reeves and B I think the way Is implemented in the game is super smart. The character is perfectly suited for him. That part is great But when you're not following up on the main objectives, cyberpunk Side Story offerings have left me wanting more by comparison. There's fetch quests, and criminal encounters, and generic jobs for hire. But a truly engrossing sub story arc has so far been tough to find. If you open up the map and you'll see more icons and you can wrap your head around, but I'm getting the feeling it's deceiving compared to how much there truly is to do in Night City. And to that point. While the game does a great job of creating a densely detailed cyberpunk setting, sometimes a screenshot can say more about the personality of a place. Then walking around and it can. Sometimes this futuristic Metropolis can even feel emotionally kind of empty. Okay, let me let me stress that I'm under 25 hours in this game, and the main story quests have been the highlight so far. Hands down. [MUSIC] About halfway through, I was introduced to something called a brain dance. And that's been a really satisfying mechanic that lets you scrub through a recorded event and examine different layers of details like sound sources, visual clues and more. It's kind of like a VR detective. By now we're all familiar with that cyberpunk motif. It's not exactly the cult genre it used to be. And 2077 follows a similar implementation of the neon noir pacing, like we've seen in the Blade Runner movie Movies, a lot of it is spent in conversation, and it's gonna take up a substantial chunk of your time. At my point in the game though, it's tough to know how much of an impact my dialogue choices have made overall. And only a few times have I noticed a virtual fork in the road. I've been playing cyberpunk for less than a week and I know there's a long way to go. Anyone who's finished it at this point has not slept in six days. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying the moment to moment spectacle of it all. So yeah, there's a lot of bugs and it seems like you know, this game is sometimes fighting itself to tell you something, but it's so damn weird and fun to look at that. I can see beyond the things that it doesn't do so well.