IGN went so far as to split their Cyberpunk 2077 review into two separate reviews: One for consoles, and one for PC. Quote from the console review:

> The Xbox One/PS4 version is nearly unrecognizable compared to the PC version.

The PC version scored 9/10 and the console version scored 4/10.

They also concluded that console gamers should request a refund from CDPR as soon as possible. I suspect console gamers are requesting refunds in droves due to the issues, which is surely going to impact their long-term sales projections.

If one liked Deus Ex: Mankind divided they will like Cyberpunk 2077.

CD Projekt games historically have been PC with console ports after launch. They probably would have done the same here if not being pushed to be a launch title for "next gen" consoles.

I think Sony/Microsoft are just as much to blame. They also had to QA the game and sign off on it.

Refunds are actually up to the seller in question. They clarified how there's no refund arrangement with CDPR and Microsoft/Sony and that all refunds are subject to normal Microsoft/Sony refund policies. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are failing to get their games refunded.

I wasn't even looking for them, but they managed to find me. I still enjoy the game a lot, but combat has been nothing but frustration.

[1]: https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/10/22167436/cyberpunk-2077-w...

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/kbwpps/retic...

Theres a part where you're upstairs and you can hear the ai trying to attack you from the floor below. The game is fun but only barely and I think the novelty is going to wear off quite quickly.

Then once you know who's hacking you, you either need to shoot them, or disable the camera (by hacking or shoot) they're using to hack you with (they can use cameras to scan, just like you can).

The whole quickhack, netrunner aspect of the game is completely lacking in tutorials or explanation. Which is a real shame, because it looks like a really interesting mechanic.

Not that I'm complaining much. There've been tons of bugs and wonkiness for me, but I've been enjoying the heck out of the game anyway (wonkiness is par for the course in a AAA open-world game anyway). But it definitely has lots of room for polish. Given how above and beyond they went on TW3, I have no concerns it'll receive it eventually (hopefully -after- a well-deserved Christmas break).

Really looking for something that helps better explain how to fit quick hacking into broader combat. I have really progressed beyond pings and optical reboots, which makes me feel like I’m leaving at lot on the table, but the games hasn’t really expressed what that is.

The skill gives you a yellow damage indicator and highlights the hacker in yellow outline.

My guess is this is similar to enemy sniper sometimes can see you through walls. If they're close enough to a wall, then their line of sight is calculated as if they were in front of a wall.

The combat is simplistic. The AI opponents are basically broken. The quickhack system does indeed feel like a quickly hacked together game mechanic. V is stuck in a weird state between existing background (a la witcher) and player action defined: I didn't get the feeling of any player agency in what my character is, but neither did I get the warm feeling of learning/experiencing Geralt's(Witcher series MC) life. Life paths, also, are basically devoid of any meaningful relevancy to the storyline.

https://twitter.com/JumpOvertheAge/status/133892916630199091...

I've never seen a great interstitial "hacker" interface in a game. Unless you go full Shenzhen I/O, it has to be simplified into meaninglessness.

I wonder if some people just prefer dirt and elves and magic to steel and glass. I like Witcher 3 well enough, but it's not a world I want to spend endless time in. I see the charm, but I'm not that interested in that world.

Shadowrun is probably more engaging as cyberpunk source material, though.

While comical, the lore in the source material drives home that netrunners interact with 3D visualizations of the ‘net. There was a lot of fun gameplay possibilities here, but it was ultimately squandered for the poor breach mini game and quickhack system.

Also, can we talk about how atrocious everything involving driving is? The AI, GPS/pathing, handling, etc is all well behind what GTA IV was doing over 10 years ago.

Combat and hacking definitely felt noodley and weak at first, but after a few levels, some slightly better weapons (3 hours in?) and a new OS implant combat is much improved.

Pff. You kids. When I was your age, I once played a game so buggy that when my character walked back & forth to school he had to do in the snow & up hill both ways. Now get off my lawn.

I think that huge testament to quality of the story and game in general. Even if it's sorely missing a decent final polish, I'll be excited to play it second time in 6 months time once all the patches are out.

I'm going to guess that they released on all platforms at once because of contractual obligations.

Dum Dum followed me around until I met Keanu’s character. He would move in front of people during cutscenes and I couldn’t even tell what was going on. Sometimes he would attack Jackie during combat and other times help us.

The first scene with the ripper doc was scrambled. Cutscenes played out of ordered or repeated.

Combat is like someone took Mass Effect 1 and combined it with a bunch of Bethesda bugs from Fallout and Skyrim.

Totally agree with you.

In terms of gunplay, there are ancient PS3/Xbox 360 era games that are so much better. Deus Ex HR, Far Cry 3, MGS IV, Bioshock, etc.

Edit:

This gameplay from almost 10 years ago is way better than Cyberpunk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3eszAJWHKY

It's not really about Cyberpunk not worth playing, but rather that Cyberpunk severely underdelivered by raising the expectations of players who enjoyed these past games and were expecting something even better. I wasn't expecting something better than DeusEx or older Bioware games (knights of the old republic, dragon age: origins, mass effect, neverwinter nights), but I really wasn't expecting the mediocre story and the abundance of bugs.

And removed any semblance of a working cover system.

https://youtu.be/fIjkYrRKy7w

On Chrome on PC with a low-latency gaming monitor, you can notice the difference if you play a game natively and then stream it, but honestly you stop thinking about it pretty quickly as long as your ping is under ~25 ms or so. I'm loving Cyberpunk on Stadia and I've been playing shooters on PC since MoH:AA in 2002.

Edit: I have Comcast Cable, not fiber.

1. Not good

2. I have fiber

Obviously generalization and I don’t care if someone has 2008 DSL and it “runs awesome”.

I assume they don't release in markets that aren't physically close to the hardware though - it's not available at all here in New Zealand for example.

mobile broadband can easily have 20-30 ms latency to the ISP.

DSL is often 10-20 ms. Coax is in the same range, depending ont he provider.

Fiber is usually 1-3 ms.

I'd say play GTA V and the Witcher 3 for a comparison in immersive open world story telling and high caliber graphics. I haven't played Spiderman (2018, 2020) but in gameplay footage (which is only on console) it looks much better as well.

I feel like I'm crazy when I say that the graphics are incredibly underwhelming. It looks good, and there's neat stuff. But I don't care how pretty a shadow looks when the hundreds of NPCs walking around look so rough.

The game has some truly amazing aspects such as writing, characters, music, etc, but IMO it falls flat in terms of gameplay. Gunplay, stealth, hacking, open world mechanics, driving... it's all very mediocre even poor at times.

Stealth for example is not nearly as good as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or The Metal Gear Solid series. The tutorial seemed alright but when it came to real gameplay I felt like stealth just didn’t work and I just resorted to guns blazing. But after more effort and getting a better hang of quick hacking I have found stealth to be viable actually. You really do need to make heavy use of quick hacking though. Also that game is very visually busy which makes it easy to miss a camera.

Driving feels pretty good, but not as good as GTA. So far driving really seems to be a way to get from point A to point B and not a core gameplay mechanic like it is with GTA. The NPC driving AI and Cop AI is downright bad compared to GTA but besides being a little immersion breaking it doesn’t seem to affect the actual gameplay much. GTA is very focused around driving and avoiding police, most of the missions involve it in some way. Cyberpunk doesn’t really rely on driving so I can give it a pass on those faults.

Gunplay really bothered me at first. It felt chaotic and a bit clunky. Other FPS/RPG hybrid games have suffered the same issues. Shooting powerful or higher level enemies will just feel bullet spongy. Some of that just needs to be accepted as “this is an RPG, not a shooter”. The cover system isn’t very sophisticated or obvious either. However the more I play the more I get the hang of it and I have found the gunplay to actually be quite satisfying.

Great art, great story, great character/music.

I hated the gameplay. I don't know why, but it felt horrendously clunky, even after the rework.

This comment doesn't include things like traffic AI. Only combat.

Old school good open world AIs think of Far Cry and STALKER. Especially the STALKER AI is pretty much one of the main reasons I keep replaying that game, all the unexpected stuff happening.

the most annoying thing I've encountered so far is the way doors work. there are a lot of points where the door is supposed to automatically open. I feel like it always opens about 100 ms after I expect it to, making me wonder if I'm supposed to open it myself. maybe this is "working as designed", I dunno.

I'm playing on hard and other than the lucky shot when I'm doing content 10+ levels above mine (based on the level of the drops since you can't see NPC levels easily) I feel pretty invincible.

The cyberware launchers are also dumb as fuck no cooldown and infinite ammo you can just sit there and spam rockets all day and as long as you take the perk that makes you immune to your own grenade damage you can use them in CQC also.

The game looks great, the story is pretty good and CDPR really nails voice acting and direction but the actual game mechanics are retarded as fuck, everything seems unbalanced there is no real difficulty because you can heal as much as you like (you won't run out of meds) and hide behind cover without anyone rushing you and with smart guns that unlock way too early you can basically shoot at enemies without looking at them, aiming at them and when they are behind cover (that is if you get bored with 1 shoting enemies with the big bore sniper rilfes since they get 3-5 headshot damage multiplier which is enough to kill enemy of pretty much any level in this game with early level guns).

They really need to look at how Mass Effect solved combat...

A few hours in and I'm already invincible and I also found basically an infinite money trick, craft the blue incendiary grenades that cost 1 uncommon crafting item and 1 uncommon upgrade item and they disassemble into rare crafting items and money is no longer a problem either.

Oh and the driving which is supposed to be a big part of the game is so terrible I rather walk and use fast travel because the car handling makes driving painful it takes you like half a mile to stop and the cars start to drift if you as much as look sideways.

I don't know how much time it would take them to fix it but there is no way that these issues haven't been brought up in testing all previous CDPR games had balance issues but because all combat was essentially melee or within melee range you couldn't cheese that easily (well unless you went into a quen spec in the TW3 early patches, then you had an invincibility bubble that would damage enemies and heal you...).

This game is like 3-6 months away from release on all platforms, it's not just performance and technical issues the core game elements aren't anywhere near ready.

1. Friendly NPC left behind in mission area which was scripted to become inaccessible. Couldn't reach the NPC to finish the mission. 2. Killed an NPC two times: once in a side mission and once in a main mission 3. The player goes to sleep perpendicular to the bed and with the bottom half side of the body outside the bed. 4. Friendly NPCs start to shout randomly during stealth missions. 5. There's no driving AI, all machines follow predefined paths sometimes going through one another as if there's no collision.

And probably lots more I didn't remember. And these exclude the physics and rendering bugs and I encounter every 5 minutes.

A few other things of note. 1080p is the max resolution. Unlimited Internet is probably a requirement as its about 10gb per hour. After 6 hours the session ends and you need to save and relaunch the game. Your entire Steam library is not available, its up to publishers to allow their games on it.

;)

I've also had zero crashes but I do notice quite a few minor bugs. They're a little annoying but I've still sunk 30 hours in. I also can't remember the last open world game that didn't have similar bugs.

Try this tonight: make sure you're absolutely alone and shoot someone. A cop will spawn behind you. No AI, no chase, no nothing, just bloop here's a cop.

The game has destroyed the reputation of this company overnight.

Is this meant as an excuse? Because it's not. Either they left it out because they ran out of time, or they didn't bother implementing it from the beginning, but the result is the same: they released a game without core mechanics fully implemented and the critiques are justified.

That doesn't really make it good, but I don't think it represents the feature design.

Game goes through various phases of:

    A) This system is suboptimal but works
    B) Let's rewrite suboptimal system
    C) Oh god, we forgot our rewrite to propagate, so it's combination of A and B
    D) This system doesn't do anything let's delete it

    E) nVidia and rayTracing
    F) unreleased consoles
    G) consoles that are old enough to write
    H) OpenGL, DirectX, Vulkan, Mantle, etc.
    I) Marketing trying to hype gamers by promising Pie in the Sky
    J) Multiple platforms

Having "literally millions of weapons" looks good on paper, but it makes for non-engaging gameplay if done incorrectly, which it was in the numbered sequels, in my opinion.

overall, borderlands 2 and 3 felt like a chore to play, "get one hour of grinding in", regardless of how pretty it was or interesting the other mechanics were.

And you know what the main difference was between 1 and 2 & 3? Paid loot boxes / real money transactions.

Mass effect was also a RPG, but had much much better combat.

Combat in the witcher 3 was pretty good.

It does, because a common running theme in RPGs is that you get stronger as the game progresses, and in Cyberpunk, by the middle of the game every character build (melee, stealth, guns) easily dismantles enemies. It is only early-game where the enemies seem difficult because your character hasn't had their skill-trees built up yet.

The simplistic AI behavior makes stealth unengaging, the hacking feels really disappointing (why don't cameras or turrets get harder to hack?), the cover system is worse than Mass Effect, and gunplay is middling at best—better than Fallout: NV, but worse than Fallout 4 or Destiny.

Notice how I only compared it with other action/shooter RPGs? Clearly RPG progression isn't my issue with it.