Despite the Bugs, Cyberpunk 2077 Is a Lot of Fun—Even for Some on PS4

Cyberpunk 2077 was in development for at least eight years, even predating the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the gaming consoles it was originally intended for. And ever since the gameplay reveal video that released two years ago, millions of gamers, me included, had been eagerly awaiting the release of the open-world action RPG. But now that the game has finally released after no fewer than three delays in a year that any escape from the real-world dystopia into the game’s imaginary one would have been welcome, the discussion surrounding it has focused on the buggy gameplay and the resulting drop in developer CD Projekt Red’s share value.

I’ve been playing Cyberpunk on the PS4, and while I’ll admit that my experience has not been totally bug-free, those issues have not much diminished my enjoyment of the game. I’m far less frustrated by my character refusing to put on pants or occasionally being unable to crouch behind cover during gunfights than I am by the missing branches of the choice-driven narrative the game was promoted as offering to the player.

Note: This review contains spoilers.

Keanu Reeves stars as Johnny Silverhand, the cyberized ghost of a dead radical who haunts brain of the protagonist, V. CD Projekt Red

In the prologue to the corporate lifepath, Jenkins, player character V’s boss at the Arasaka Corporation, directs V to either blackmail or defame Jenkins’s superior. The game doesn’t give you the option of going straight to HR with what has been discussed, forcing you to go through with the scheme . . . only to be immediately caught and terminated from Arasaka, which may or may not have been Jenkins’s plan all along. In a similar way, when Dexter DeShawn blows up at you over the murder of Saburo Arasaka, even though you had nothing to do with his death, you aren’t given the option of telling him so. In the scene where the murder takes place, I kept waiting for the game to prompt me with the option of preventing the man’s strangulation—something I like to think I would have done in real life were I in V’s place, consequences be damned. Now, I realize that a game this size cannot be 100 percent nonlinear, and some shortcuts such as these are necessary, but I would have liked if Cyberpunk 2077’s story had been written in a way to make these railroad tracks more subtle. Or maybe I’m just too much of an upstanding citizen to fit into the rough environment of Night City?

Apart from these and other missing choices, though, Cyberpunk 2077 is a whole lot of fun. First-person shooters aren’t usually my thing, but where there are plenty of choices in this game is in the many options for resolving hostile situations—from stealth takedowns to hacking enemy cyberware to just going in with guns blazing—and this variety makes combat an exciting experience that rarely feels repetitive. But for me the dialogue options have been the main draw, and there are indeed choices here that make a difference, sometimes in obvious ways, other times less so, instead impacting events later on.

CD Projekt Red

If you’re still on the fence about getting this game, it’s hard for me to say one way or another whether you ought to take the plunge. Unfortunately, if your heart was set on downloading it for PS4, that is no longer an option, as Sony has removed the game from its online store and is now issuing refunds to players who purchased it this way. The coming months will decide a lot with regard to the game’s future, with CD Projekt Red promising further patches to improve the its playability. For now, it’s probably best to wait and see, and to follow the reviews that assess these patches as they release.