GET PUNK’D!
CYBERPUNK 2077
Xbox One, PS4, PC (PEGI 18) ★★★★ ★
IT’S been nearly nine years in the making, a brutally beautiful vision of a dystopian world where flesh and technology have been fused to create a new breed of criminal. Cyberpunk 2077 has had gamers salivating with anticipation since the first teaser trailer was released back in January 2013, and with each delay that expectation has only grown.
Cyberpunk itself stems from humble origins, based on a franchise that started life in 1988 as a tabletop RPG created by game designer Mike Pondsmith.
The story exists within its own fictional timeline, where global superpowers have fallen, and Megacorporations have risen to take their place. There is famine, war and nuclear wastelands – and in a bid to survive all this, bio-engineering has seen the rapid adoption of cybernetic prosthetics and direct human-machine interfaces.
It’s against this backdrop that V, a mercenary, sets off into Night City to hunt down a piece of tech which has life-altering abilities.
Cyberpunk boasts one of the deepest customisation systems ever seen in a game, even going as far as letting you construct the components of your gender.
From picking your character’s lifepath (Nomad, Corop, or Streetkid) to the tone of V’s voice.
You also get to pick a ‘class’ for V,
be it Netrunner; which means you’re a dab hand at hacking, a Techie; making you a skilled crafter, or a Solo, a mercenary that can handle themselves in combat.
Don’t be too torn on what you pick, because classes are fluid. The role you choose at the start may initially define your skill set, but as the game progresses you can add and build on your abilities until you’re an absolute jack of all trades.
It’s not hard to see where inspiration has come from for the game’s look, feeling part Blade Runner, part Ghost in the Machine, with a generous helping of 2000’s Deus Ex on the side.
It feels tangible – the searing neon lights hurt your eyes, and you can almost smell the sweat and alcohol in the dive bars and clubs that line the filthy alleyways.
Night City is as bleak as it is beautiful, but it’s also surprisingly easy to explore. Like anywhere, some parts of the city are much rougher than others, but you’re not going to be kersplatted for just wandering into the wrong part of town – trouble only comes if you go looking for it.
And once you find it, it’s an absolute blood-soaked gore fest – from straight-up gunfights, to close combat knife and sword battle. V’s story is surprisingly compelling, the slow burning plot giving you time to develop your own relationship with the character as you both explore the world around you.
You’re aided on your journey by Johnny Silverhand, Night City’s most notorious rock star – brilliantly brought to life by Keanu Reeves. V and Silverhand are intrinsically linked, and the dialogue between the two is genius in places. Just like the world it inhabits, Cyberpunk is itself a game of conflict – moments of pure brilliance contrasted with buggy slips that should never have been allowed through.
The most talked about bug is, typically, the most NSFW one – involving the game’s genital options. If you’ve chosen to make V a man, then for some reason he struggles to keep his bits in his pants, and that’s not something you need bobbing around as you prowl the mean streets. Likewise the ladies need better bras, as ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ really ruin the game’s gritty tone.
Less puerile problems see characters randomly standing in an arms outstretched ‘T’ pose, vehicles that disappear from under passengers in the blink of an eye, objects that float on their own – and the less said about the driving mechanics the better.
For a game that’s been this long in the making, you’d expect it to be near perfect.
The other shock is, depending on how you choose to play – the main mission and nothing else – you can ‘beat’ the game in just 20 hours, making it way shorter than CD Projekt Red’s other masterpiece, The Witcher 3. But why you would choose to throw away a much deeper experience with this game is beyond me.
Yes it’s flawed, and yes that lack of polish pulls you out of the game much more than it should, but this is still an astonishing achievement. The sheer breadth of choice and flexibility within Cyberpunk is unmatched in terms of RPGS, and the heart and surprising depth of the storyline elevates this above anything else I’ve played this year.
Buy It: £44.85 from base.com.