Cyberpunk 2077 Reviews are Out and It’s Not Good

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most anticipated games of at least the last two years, and (as of the time of writing) it’s only three days away from becoming a reality. If you look at just about every gaming website that exists, they have a review of the game. For the most part, they’re glowingly good. CD Projekt Red is a powerhouse in the RPG genre and gaming as a whole, and it seems like Cyberpunk 2077 is set to continue that legacy.

Those reviews should come with far larger caveats than they actually do though. The biggest one, and the one that I (and all of you reading this) should be concerned about is the fact that most reviewers received their copies one week ago.

A week would be more than enough time for games like Black Ops Cold War, which have less of an emphasis on their story and instead focus far more on the multiplayer aspects, but Cyberpunk 2077 is a story-focused game, meaning that reviewers have to cram an entire RPG’s story into a week or less. One review I saw over on the Washington Post claims he got through the main story quest in 15 hours, which is more than a little worrying.

I know that reviewers have to speed their way through the game, foregoing any and all side content, NPC interaction, and basically everything about the game besides the main story and the things directly tied into it, but if the main story of Cyberpunk can really be finished in as little as 15 hours, that doesn’t bode well for the game as a whole. I wouldn’t be too surprised, as games this large (and with development periods as long as this one) should have plenty of side quests and other activities to pad out the experience, but even blitzing through games like Fallout: New Vegas leads to double that length in the main story. While I’m sure the side content is just as gripping as what we saw in The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, if so much of the game’s content is tied to side content, I’m not sure it’s worth doing.

If the content itself isn’t too much of a bother, then the game’s technical state should be. By all accounts, the game is a buggy, glitched out mess that can seriously impact the story and NPCs you meet, if not full on crashing the game. Again, Cyberpunk 2077 had an incredibly long development period, and while I know Day 0 and Day 1 patches are on their way, I’d have preferred if the game had been kept in development for far longer than it was already if it meant a polished game out of the gate.

The other important piece to remember is that all the reviews so far are only on PC. We so far have no idea how the game will play on next-gen consoles, although given the tech under the hood, I’m sure those consoles will be just fine. What has me far more worried is the original Xbox One and PS4, both of which are seven years old at this point. If you’re on the older consoles, I would seriously recommend staying away from this title until well after launch, when we can finally see just how the game runs on the older consoles.

Cyberpunk 2077 may almost be here, but I don’t think we’re getting it in the technical state anyone actually wanted. But only time will really tell for sure if it will be worth the money spent on it.