One of the most anticipated video games of the last few years had been the multiplatform Cyberpunk 2077. Based on the tabletop RPG, the much-hyped title set in Night City and developed by CD Projeckt Red, the same folks that brought us the beloved The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077 was years in the making, and every little set back just had fans clamouring for its eventual release. It finally arrived for the PS4 and other consoles in December 2020.
And it landed hard and with a loud thud.
For very reasons, Cyberpunk 2077 was released broken, with multiple issues that dealt it and its developers severe bad press, so much so that the PlayStation online store went so far as to remove the game for sale, while multiple retailers, online and in persona, allowed for refunds. The next-gen console version of the game was put on hold, and when a patched version of the title was finally allowed back on the Sony store, it came with a warning about it’s playability.
You don’t have to be a gamer to know that this was not what anybody wanted for such a high profile title, one that even featured Keanu Reeves as a character. However, from that unfortunate start, an interesting thing happened with Cyberpunk 2077. CD Projekt Red didn’t give up on the game (not that they had a choice, mind you) and over the course of 2021 they continued to work on hard to fix the myriad issues the game arrived with, and with those fixes came more and more satisfied customers who were falling in love with the massive open-world game.
Finally, after more than a year, the next-gen version of Cyberpunk 2077 finally hit the PS5 in February, which is the one that I finally had the chance to experience.
Colour me super impressed.
From the moment I started in as V, the lead, first-person character whose appearance you can customize to you heart’s eventual content, I felt like I’d walked into Blade Runner. The night time skyline felt like something both Ridley Scott and Denis Villeneuve would approve of, and as V was sitting in the backseat of a car en route to a meeting, I couldn’t help but look around as the environs passed by and feel completely immersed.
As I played through V’s character development in the first few hours of the game, taking on tasks, and following the various stories and events, I was looking for some hints of problems or issues with Cyberpunk 2077, big or small, and I couldn’t find anything. All I found was a good looking game with compelling stories and characters that made me want to keep playing and experience this rich world.
While the initial release of Cyberpunk 2077 won’t be forgotten, the game is just too high profile for that, the black eye the title received has healed, and it’s fair to say that the title is now what all of us who had been waiting to play it had been hoping for. If you’ve ever wanted to play Cyberpunk 2077 and had been turned off previously, or had been waiting for its next-gen arrival to see how it was, I truly believe you won’t be disappointed.
Enter Night City now and see for yourself.
