Cyberpunk 2077

[Neon Ignition]

I've played the opening prologue and roughly I'd say an hour of the game now on PC. So close to release there are various ways people have been accessing it early via timezone changes, early arrivals etc but handily thanks to the lack of DRM the launch patch quickly did the rounds meaning you could just copy the files into the preload and off you go. Thankfully the game supports DLSS so I've been able to get this running at mostly what feels like 60fps solid with RT, effects etc in full flow at native 4K with ease. There are definitely bugs but so far they've been minor visual or sound ones that only last a moment, nothing that interferes with gameplay.



I chose the Night City based class which throws me in with much of the stuff we've seen in demo's. So far it's been very much a tutorial linear experience so there's no need to engage with the dedicated tutorial stuff. Gunplay is largely solid, it's generally unremarkable but given the nature of the game much better than when trying to play other such RPG games as though they were FPS. I've been reading a lot about visual issues and over softness etc on consoles no matter what option you go for so it definitely sounds like PC is the way to go if you have the means and don't want to wait for the next-gen console patches that might get held up waiting for other fixes people will be demanding here on out.

As someone who thinks Witcher is terrible, Witcher 2 weak and Witcher 3 bland and dull at best I have to say first impressions for me of this are much stronger than any of them. It seems like it will be engaging, the story sequences so far seem well done and it plays well enough. The bugs will get patched but based on what has happened so far Bethesda would die to have this level of issues in a new game so you've likely pushed through worse before.

[MartyG]

Very brief first impressions are excellent - performance on my PC has been flawless so far, but no ray tracing for me thanks to eBay scalpers.

Started as a Corpo as I didn't want to follow what's been seen on most the footage that's out there and it seems it still leads to the same initial path at least, but will have to leave it there for now as much as I'd like to play this through the early hours. The character creation screen has loads of parameters, although some of these have limited options within them - even so, there's a lot to play with just there.

It looks fantastic, so looking forward to exploring a bit more come the morrow.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, seems it's worth taking time with the character creation options because the game doesn't let you make changes later. Thankfully, I'm happy with the one I came up with. Manged to pick a decent outfit as well, weirdly when I used the bathroom mirror the game bugged out and every piece of clothing disappeared. I learnt that in the future people are cavalier about public nudity and it's good to manually set your clothing too.

[MartyG]

I'm not sure I like the combat in the game, the cover system doesn't work very well so you inevitably take gunfire. I'm not mad keen on the button mappings on the controller either and there doesn't appear to be a way of remapping them as you can the keyboard. There doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency with having to hold a button or just press it (and I don't like that X is confirm for most things, want to remap it to A).

[dataDave]

I fixed my audio, finally. Brought things back to 24bits/48,000Hz and that eliminated the crackle.

It's been pretty solid for me, so far. In all of four hours Jackie has walked through some shelves. Compared to Skyrim you'd think it were a Nintendo masterpiece.

[nonny]

Well I've managed about an hour and a half on Series X starting as a nomad and whilst it looks pretty decent I think the current state of the game in terms of bugs is going to force me to wait a while.

I've already had a few issues with characters clipping into the scenery, right through walls etc... which made it difficult to proceed because my next objective was to talk to them, and then just after a cutscene driving back from the first real mission the game crashed to a black screen with only music audio running the background and I had to quit.

It's pretty much what I expected and seems to run fairly well from a performance standpoint on Series X (defaulting to performance mode) but yeah, it is pretty buggy right now so not sure whether to ride it out or check back later once it's been patched a bit.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I've had a very quick go on this.
Gameplay wise its a FPS. Controls are as youd expect. It feels pretty solid. I had one weird glitch where someone just popped up in the middle of the road and I ran them over.
What I do like is the characterisation and setting. Everything flows quite organically. Similar to witcher in that sense. It doesn't try to explain anything to the player through the main character, it just gets on with it. I appreciate that.

[nonny]

I'm about an hour or so further in and it's improved both in story and glitches. I've just done a great mission where you have to retrieve something from a warehouse stronghold and it felt great once the shooting started and things went side ways. I'm not sure whether I want to setup my character as more brute force assault or stealth so I'm dabbling a little in both.

I've got a strong feeling this is going to take a good few hours before it really shines but the more I scratch the more I'm itching to keep going...

I've seen some videos of the last gen versions and oh my... I'm glad I'm on Series X and we haven't even gotten into patch enhancements yet.

[nonny]

Also if anyone is buying this digital on Xbox make sure you hit the rewards app first. There's 6000 points to claim but you have to activate it first... That's roughly £5 back. I bought my code off CDkeys way back for £38.99 so this shaved off a bit more to make it a real bargain...

[MartyG]

I've had a very quick go on this. Gameplay wise its a FPS.

It's very much not - it's more like Mass Effect 1 - all combat hits are stat based, so the mechanics of damage dealt are dice rolls. It might feel like a FPS shooter, but underneath it's very much RPG systems.

[nonny]

It's very much not - it's more like Mass Effect 1 - all combat hits are stat based, so the mechanics of damage dealt are dice rolls. It might feel like a FPS shooter, but underneath it's very much RPG systems.

It's actually giving me Fallout 4 vibes but with less brown...

[Cassius_Smoke]

It's actually giving me Fallout 4 vibes but with less brown...

Yeah I was thinking that. I don't mean it in a bad way, it plays really nicely.

[MartyG]

It's a world filled with very empty people and places though - NPCs don't say much and every building is locked - GTA IV was the same, a busy empty world.

I hate the vehicle handling - not sure if that's a skill you have to build up or not.

[Atticus]

It's a world filled with very empty people

That’ll be the dystopic vision

[dataDave]

I'm so distracted by the shinies that I'm not sure what it is I'm meant to be doing.