Babe, it’s 4am time to assault Arasaka Tower.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that left me in (what felt like) an endless cycle of I wanna play some more and I really feel depressed now and need to stop playing. I was one of the many that was incredibly hyped for this title, so hyped in fact that I built a PC so that I could play it. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Cyberpunk 2077. It’s one of the most immersive games I have ever played, but I have some qualms.
Is Cyberpunk fixed? Well yes and no. It has the same issues now that the Witcher 3 still has, such as floating and T-posing NPC and your rides spawning strangely, sometimes running you over. I do believe that they added all the things they meant to and the game is now more like what they originally said it was going to be. I would recommend (if playing on PC) a bug fix mod, I played vanilla because I thought my car raining down from the heavens doing a backflip off an on-ramp and exploding before I had the chance to get into it, was funny.
I should probably give you the rundown of the plot before going into my opinions. In Cyberpunk 2077 you play as V, you can pick V’s gender and even V’s backstory but you are not V. V is their own person who gets an experimental chip in their brain with the personality of long dead rocker boy terrorist Johnny Silverhand. Now V has to try and take Johnny out of their head before the chip kills V leaving only Johnny’s personality in V body.
The dynamic between Johnny and V is interesting. Johnny is hard not to like but he and V have brash and abrasive personalities. They tend to bicker a lot even if you have no problem with what Johnny is saying V will snap at him. They are supposed to be melding personalities into one another but I honestly don’t see it. It seems to me that you (as V) change Johnny more than Johnny changes you. This left me personally, feeling that the endings were disjointed when it came to the final decision between V and Johnny. Johnny is an unreliable narrator and forgets conversations that you had with him often. He is surprisingly quick to be your ally and I was confused what his motives were at the end of the game. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was on your side or not at the very end. If that was up to the player then should we be playing as Johnny and not V?
The cyberpunk genre is a debbie downer for sure. In preparation for this game I read the book that supposedly started the whole shabang, Neuromancer. Cyberpunk 2077 is a reimagining of Neuromancer in my opinion. I know, I know the tabletop RPG that it was based on was inspired by the book Neuromancer but the plot of the book is so similar I can’t help but call it a retelling. In the novel Case (V) has a heist go wrong and ends up with a personality in their head named (Johnny) Dixie. What it all comes down to is making a deal with the AI Wintermute/Neuromancer (Alt). Although Cyberpunk 2077 has multiple endings and different paths to getting Johnny out of V’s head. They are all really in depth. There is a secret ending that can only be unlocked after choosing the right dialogue with Johnny and the DLC added an extra ending that opens V’s eyes to all their fake ass friends.
The characters of Night City are memorable. I definitely cringed at the inclusion of so many “influencers” but if any game was going to have these shills , the dystopian game full of corporate sellouts and gross in your face ads is the perfect place for them. The crew you acquire throughout the game is an interesting bunch. You can even romance some of them. In an update they added not only the ability to buy more apartments around Night City but you can also go on dates with whomever your partner is at those apartments. It’s a cute inclusion to have more interaction with your partner and get more texts from them while you’re tearing up the town. Not to sound cheesy but Night City itself feels like a character. It’s a grimy little wasteland but it’s got personality. You can understand the infrastructure of Night City which is a level of detail that is absent in most games. There is so much to explore and do that this game took me months to finish. Every single shopkeeper has a different personality with at least one unique line they can say if V’s feeling a little chatty today.
Each district is run by a gang with different specialties although it doesn’t really matter what you do to these gangs they will be hostile to you regardless. Same with the police for some reason. V probably had a rap sheet and that’s why when the police are grouped together, they get mad at you for loitering around. I feel it is unfair when I run over someone (by accident) the police get called so fast but when I get run over, no police come to help me and I get in trouble for trying to blow out the tires of the car that ran me over.
Gameplay is fun, it’s mostly in first person until you drive a vehicle then you can choose to make it third person. Lots of interesting ways you can spec out V, you can make them a Netrunner who hacks their way into everything and frys peoples brains from a distance. You can do what I did and slow down time for everyone but you and punch them in the back of the head with your gorilla arms
I had a lot of fun with the photo mode in this game. You have a lot of options for poses and as you play through the game you unlock more characters to pose with. My only beef is that some poses are not available for certain characters, like Adam Smasher has a small amount of poses and can’t do the heart hands with me which is a huge disappointment.
Overall I think Cyberpunk is worth your time. It’s a huge immersive sim with an interesting story but keep in mind if you live in California it may hit a little too close to home and make you depressed.
Phantom Liberty Review
Cyberpunk’s DLC Phantom Liberty came out three years after the game’s release and it’s huge. It’s a game all in itself, in fact I think it took me longer to finish Phantom Liberty than the main plot of Cyberpunk 2077. Because of the different ways the main game can end, Phantom Liberty takes place during the main plot whenever V gets into Pacifica. You get access to the independent city (inside Night City) called Dogtown. You have to go to Dogtown in order to save the President of the New United States from Dogtown’s dictator Colonel Hansen. It’s basically an action packed spy thriller. This expansion raised the level cap and added more weapons, cars and quick hacks.
This expansion is huge; it not only adds a whole new area to explore but also it adds quests in the mainland of Night City. I would recommend doing it early to get the most out of your experience. It adds so many cool moments and set pieces that the main game just didn’t have. No matter what choices you make in the DLC you feel empty inside but I guess that’s just how the genre of Cyberpunk works. I am still surprised they managed to make a place that is even worse than Night City. Phantom Liberty is what I wished the main game was and I personally think it’s worth it. Although quick trigger warning V does say “amazeballs” in this DLC so player discretion is advised
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