CYBER KEANU
It’s the game you’ve all been waiting for
THE BIG RELEASE CYBERPUNK 2077 PS4, PS5, XO, Series X/S, Stadia, PC
IF YOU’RE going to star in a video game you might as well take a name like Johnny Silverhand. That’s exactly what Keanu Reeves does here, stepping into the pixel shoes of a surly futuristic terrorist. But as with Reeves’s career, the latest epic offering from the makers of The Witcher 3 has a fair amount of rough and tumble before the runaway success.
Alongside The Last Of Us Part II, CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 is the most hotly anticipated video game of the year – and despite some major issues at launch (the bugs are all but gone now) it’s an experience that lives up to the hype by the skin of its tech-augmented teeth.
Welcome to Night City, a dark and dishonest world that fuses the brooding underbelly of Frank Miller’s Sin City with Blade Runner’s 2019 neon-licked LA. It’s a place where legends get forged. As one early antagonist puts it, you can ‘live in peace as Mr Nobody or go down for all times in a blaze of glory’ – and being a video game, the latter is the destiny in store for V, the game’s male or female character, who has a choice of three background stories. There’s a predefined personality and numerous bodily customisations (including – and we’re not joking – penis and breast size).
Despite the on-the-rails character progression, V is one of a cast of characters that delightfully dazzles, bolstered with superb facial animation and believable cybernetic implants and quirks. From the dubious Dex to impregnable sidekick Jackie, each NPC is fully formed, with desires and regrets that burst through the thicket of dialogue branches like a hand reaching for your throat. Strangely, Reeves’s character is the only one you’ll get bored with quickly. As with The Witcher 3, the story unfurls like a pulseracing novel and as each frenetic chapter melts away, V is cast in a more tragic light as the naive moth, hungry for the flame in the city that takes no prisoners.
And that city is a character too, with every street corner, sushi joint and patrolling cop dripping with transhumanist vision (even if the bawdy sexual advertising feels a tad lad mag). Unfortunately, this is a world that shines far better on a high-spec PC than it does on the previous gen consoles, though a future PS5 and Series X patch will no doubt add much-needed polish. And that’s the word that springs to mind when trying to isolate what stops
Cyberpunk 2077 from beating off the competition for title of the year (that honour goes to The Last Of Us Part II). Presented as a roleplaying game, with stats, skill trees and a crafting system, these features combine to become overbearing and ultimately unnecessary. While learning new abilities should let you harness a certain playstyle, here it’s a largely cosmetic notion with many of the game’s missions simply descending into shoot-outs. There are moments of sneak-’em-up action and the use of Watch Dogs-style hacking (blinding the cybernetic eyes of patrolling guards or using mounted screens to distract enemies) is eye-catching.
But when Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t telling its blistering tale, it’s a first-person shooter with the heart of an RPG, with way too many guns and far too little dynamic gunplay. With less ambitious studios, such a conundrum would lead to an identity crisis but CD Projekt Red’s acumen for narrative and character wins out in the end… just. Look past the inconsistencies, then, and this is one cybernetic ride with a devastating gutpunch of a curtain call.
As with The Witcher 3, the story unfurls like a pulseracing novel