Game review 16 December 2020, 15:00

author: Michael Grygorcewicz

Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 is a Disaster. We Were Supposed to Burn City, not Consoles

Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game that can delight you. As long as you're playing PC or next-gen. I played on the basic PS4 and a great I have perhaps seen, but buried underneath a rubble of issues.

The review is based on the PS4 version.

A good few years ago, during one of our annual, editorial gatherings, one of my more experienced colleagues said a very true thing: The measure of how good a video game is, is how many of it's blemishes you're ready to condone. You don't have to look far to verify this statement. There's a whole range of crude games, that fans loved anyway, such as Gothic. These games were usually somewhat underdeveloped upon release, and often brought terrifying technical issues. This didn't stop hundreds of thousands of players from enjoying them, for years on end.

The Witcher 3 itself was struggling with a multitude of problems for the first months, which were subsequently forgiven in face of a well-conducted story and a perfectly created world. I myself have waved off so many issues of NieR: Automata, and I actually consider it one the best games ever made.

Cyberpunk 2077 has also been recognized by many people as an outstanding game that can be forgiven many of its sins. On the PC and next-gen consoles, at least. Unfortunately, when it comes to PlayStation 4, on which I've tested this game, the situation is quite... different. There is always a limit to how many technical problems you can shrug off, and when this limit is exceeded, even the best storyline and revolutionary solutions in gameplay cannot compensate for the slew of blemishes and issues. That's how it is with the latest CD Projekt RED game.

What starts with laughter...

However, before CP2077 showed me the middle finger, the first impression was quite good. I wasn't expecting miracles from the version on a console using the 8-years-old, 28-nm Liverpool GPU. The game may have not looked the most beautiful, but it kept a stable framerate, which I didn't expect, and everything worked roughly as it should. If instead of Cyberpunk , CDPR made a Mad Max, we wouldn't have to write a separate review dedicated exclusively to the console edition of this game.

The spell broke as soon as I finished the prologue and got to Night City. My subsequent adventure with CP2077 on PS4 showed that the game runs well only in wastelands without any particular objects. In the big city, full of skyscrapers, winding alleys, ubiquitous neon ads, people and (at least in theory) cars, Cyberpunk shows true colors. And these are not the colors you want to paint your room in.

So come, load the textures of my world

PS4 Cyberpunk 2077 could play the technical issues bingo and easily beat any game. Dipping framerate? Of course, sire – every goddamn time we sit behind the wheel of a car, the animation plummets, and if we move too fast, the things turns for a slide show to digital art exhibition. Complete freezing of the game? Why, of course! Not only does it require restarting the game: it often also resets your settings, so you have to reconfigure language, or graphical settings. By the way, settings like to reset even if you turn the game off the regular way.

Fonts that have nothing to do with legible? Of course, but this is also a glorious tradition brought from The Witcher 3. Non-intuitive interface, in which many elements are illegible and buttons are mapped so that certain actions interfere with each other? Well, if you've ever skipped a dialog by trying to exit crouch, you know just what I mean. An overwhelming amount of glitches? We have a whole chapter on them.

The highlight of the last-gen console version, however, are the problems with loading of textures and objects. This issue is familiar to users of hard-disk drives, but it's exacerbated here to stellar proportions. In these terms, CD Projekt RED sets a new standard with Cyberpunk 2077.

After entering a crowded alleyway (wide streets have been preemptively cleared of crowds and almost all car traffic, so it happens less often there) we may be greeted by a handful of character models straight from the first 3D games, which only gain details after a few seconds. Walls, billboards, ads, and neons all take shape in front of our bare eyes. Looking in the mirror, you can first see the naked torso of your character, which is only complemented with clothes, limbs and head after a while.

By driving the car faster, we can admire practically the whole city changing as we traverse it, as if it were some kind of living, organic creature. The game sometimes also needs even a dozen or so seconds before it allows to change the camera after entering the car. Don't let Cthulhu try to read the message you received while driving – you will lose control of the vehicle for a good few seconds and it will move inertly ahead before the game is finally stopped and you see the communicator screen.

Buggerpunk

I can't judge whether typical bugs are more abundant on PS4 or on the PC, or whether it's just the accumulation of the other problems that contributes to such an impression – either way, there's a ton. Apart from the cases mentioned above, the most interesting things that have happened to me are the following:

1. a momentary change of my V's gender, switching voice from female to male;
2. the opponent, who was probably supposed to be some kind of a badass spurring a large shooting, instead of attacking me fell into a loop of teleporting through the wall and going back to the starting point – the loop lasted until I mercifully ended his torment;
3. winning a gunfight before I even managed to start it, as my enemies perished under the wheels of a vehicle going way to fast for regular physics;
4. V was bald for some time (I gave her a pretty lush hairstyle) and there was nothing I could do about it;
5. and, well – this.

Apart from these more interesting bugs, badly loaded character animations, levitating objects, problems with quests (fortunately, in my case, none of them were permanent and usually the deviation from the marker at a longer distance was enough to make everything work again) and other typical errors – only in unusual intensity. In combination with the other problems, mainly the loading textures, this creates a highly combustible mix, which unfortunately influences the reception of the game more and more strongly – even if everything theoretically works as it should for a moment.

Instead of absorbing the gameplay, I started to get caught up in anticipating glitches and wondering whether everything was ok; whether I could finally play the game nominally. For example, there's a braindance mechanic in the game, allowing you to analyze recorded events. When we use it, the graphics are pixelized, which is an intended effect. Meanwhile, when I first saw it, I waited patiently for about a minute to let all the textures load before I finally understood that... it wasn't a bug.

The switching of voice was also an utterly bizarre event. Here, too, I was in a particular moment of the story, which made me uncertain whether I was dealing with a bug or not. Another time, while visiting a new district during a main mission, I witnessed a situation when a guy was firing at a flying vehicle – and guess what,at first I took it for some strange bug, not a scripted event. The jumble of glitches and technical problems does not allow us to fully feel the story and forces us to question further ambiguous situations – this discomfort is further aggravated by the fact that visual effects deliberately imitating glitches often appear in the game.

Back to the past

The first thing every Cyberpunk 2077 owner should do on the PS4 is to enter the option mode and disable all optional graphic effects. Well, maybe apart from the reflections. All the rest – film grain, chromatic aberration, depth of field and, above all, motion blur – makes the game terribly blurry, illegible and tiring to the eyes. After deactivating all this, the game still doesn't look particularly impressive, but you can at least look at it without pain.

Cyberpunk 2077 is miles away from the prettiest games on PS4, such asHorizon: Zero Dawn or Red Dead Redemption II . Even when everything works as it should, the game is still moderately detailed at best, with objects being pixelated and any kind of more advanced visual effects being beyond the console's capabilities.

On the other hand, we have to admit that despite all these problems, Night City has its charm – the city streets are crafted with apparent master, are full of ads, unique places, and the insane vibe can ultimately stand all the glitches. Even if it's broken and buggy, this world is still able to impress with its morsels.

Cyberjunk?

More than one and a half thousand words I above should give you a clear idea of what's the state of Cyberpunk 2077 on the baseline PS4 – if not, then I'll sum it up: it's a catastrophe that should have never happened. CDPR botched basically every technical aspect that could have been botched, creating a game against which No Man's Sky seems a solidly developed game. About the only positive aspect is that, with a bit of luck, you may be able to see the game through.

As mentioned above, the rating is low, but it applies to the PS4 version only Is this a bad game, or an overall flunked release? We're willing to risk it and say "no." CD Projekt definitely deserves the cascade of criticism that's currently falling on them – particularly the company's management (after all, it's weren't the decisions of deveopers that got us here). But we've still gotten a fantastic game.

Although glitches and technical issues spoiled my adventure, its plot drew me in with perfect characters and an extraordinary story. Side quests are an impressive blaze of really complex and layered stories. The world is vibing with unexpected references and details. The mechanics impress with the freedom of choice, available methods of operation, and the ability to switch between them at will.

Even with all this baggage of glitches, bugs, and disappointment, Cyberpunk 2077 still gave me lots of fun. It's of course nowhere near the experience next-gen will provide, but it was enough to keep me playing. To be honest, I don't recommend this edition to anyone – either play on PC or wait for the PS5 / Xbox Series version. Then, the game will turn from a glitchy abomination to a gripping tour de force. I myself, however, coming across as hypocrite, return to Night City to continue getting pissed off, delighted, and frustrated alternately. Because though the game wasn't so good that I would forgive all that, I want to fully discover its potential. It's a pity it had to come to this.