I suspect they hope it will be once the 1.2 patch launches within the week, assuming they managed to get the framerate up.
Nesrie
5864
It’s been over three months since they pulled this game largely due to the unacceptable status of it AND the refund disaster they tried to pawn off onto the storefront companies.
I mean it’s very clear some people enjoy the game; heck a few even love the game. That’s fine. How it was released and response to that release… not fine. There was nothing fine about how this game was released and how they responded to selling a game they knew was in such poor shape that they intentionally kept reviews away from those versions.
If they clean it up, and it finally gets listed on one of the storefronts again… great. But those who are thinking this will just be a long distance memory, … How many games has this happened to? No… no they created a nice hurdle for their next games, but I do hope they get to make more and maybe learn a few, dozen, things from what they did with this last one.
stusser
5866
The two newer Deus Ex games are on a whole different level, as far as gameplay goes. Just dramatically superior. Graphically they don’t compare but really nothing does.
Interesting. This is what I was looking to suss out. Comparing gameplay / systems quality of Cyberpunk against Deus Ex rather than what was promised ™.
@Paul_cze thanks for the response. Do you agree with stusser on gameplay between the two? In any case, sounds like Mankind Divided is worth my time.
I am not sure I understand stusser’s post correctly. If he means that HR/MD are dramatically superior to Cyberpunk in regards to gameplay, I disagree. I would say stealth is fairly similar and I enjoyed gunplay significantly more in Cyberpunk. Although admittedly I prefer to kill as few people as possible, so I relied more on stealth and hacking in both games.
Cyberpunk had the advantage in that it let me use nonlethal mod in my guns, so sometimes I went guns blazing just for fun of it, or when I messed up stealth I also did, instead of reloading.
In any case, MD is definitely worth the time. I would give it a 9/10, same as Cyberpunk.
stusser
5869
Stealth is actually viable in the DX games, there’s a reason to do it. Avoiding killing people has gameplay implications, unlike CP2077. Gunplay is comparable, but the game never gets trivially easy like CP2077. There is no way to clear entire levels while hiding in the bathroom. Alternate paths abound, they’re everywhere in DX, although they do over-rely on ducts, that’s kind of a DX staple.
rei
5870
The impressive photo mode screenshots and video recordings are always of the same tightly-scripted set piece sequences. Hey look it’s the same damned pics of Jackie, Panam and Judy.
You say that as if it was a bad thing that you can do that in Cyberpunk.
(yeah we will not agree on this and that’s fine. I enjoyed getting so powerful - eventually - that I could just switch enemies off).
If you are talking about the video I posted above, well yeah that’s the intro of the game. I also recorded one of a sidejob that wasn’t scripted. All the gigs in the game allow for quite a bit of freedom on how to tackle them and are mostly light on scripts. But I am sure you hate those too ;)
CraigM
5872
It is a fascinating game that has a lot to reccomend it. It also stumbles in a few places, especially when they try an inject current event allegories in the most insipid and banal ways. Like it is 100% ok to make a commentary on modern times, good even, but pick a perspective, have something to say about it. Bringing it up with thinly veiled references and having the engagement and depth of it be ‘hey, that sure is a thing, right?’ is dumb. But corporate gonna corporate, and can’t offend people so you end with things like posters for Augs Lives Matter without meaningful thought and engagement about that as a slogan, and how that ties in to real world today scenarios, so you wind up pissing everyone off.
But that is by far my biggest criticism. It does at times have meaningful things it wants to convey and say, less focused perhaps than HR, but still there. And it is a world that makes sense in a way many other video game worlds do not. Sure, as @stusser says the vents are hilariously huge and ubiquitous, but the environments do make a lot of sense otherwise, and there is a coherent connection between different elements of the world. Little side stories or even purely incidental scenes add lots of narrative world building. I would even look at the magazine covers and pictures found in different buildings, and clearly there was some thought put into them. Your aug repairing buddy has a really neat hideout, which I appreciated the decor of.
It’s not perfect, but it is certainly worthwhile if you like the genre.
stusser
5873
IMO, both of the recent Deus Ex titles are some of the best games of the past ten years. Not perfect, but excellent.
It’s a crying shame the developers were pulled into making the live service shitstain Avengers game.
Dikadar
5874
On that note, there’s a huge Steam sale on the Deus Ex games now, until 3/29/2021. On the recommendations above, I got the bundle of all 5 Dues Ex games, including DLC season passes for the last 2, for $11. Probably going to start with Human Revolution.
Still waiting to start Cyberpunk, I’ll get to it someday definitely.
I’m glad you all brought up Deus Ex in relation to Cyberpunk cause the parts of Cyberpunk that work best for me absolutely remind me of the fun I had in the two new Deus Ex games. When I think of Cyberpunk that way, the open world almost seems like weight they needlessly added.
I will say I thought Deus Ex did a better job with promoting a…less than lethal (clearly not non-violent lol) approach to getting stuff done than Cyberpunk overall.
Not that the choice and tools weren’t available, as Cyberpunk definitely has those, but there wasn’t much feedback in the game to make me care all the way to the end as eventually I just started violently carving my way through gigs and whatnot.
Shistain is super harsh, but…yes. Afaik third game in Jensen trilogy was even in preproduction, only to get canceled when the team got redirected to Avengers. I hope they will go back to it and finish that trilogy now that Avengers have shown to be…less profitable than expected.
Togra
5877
Cyberpunk 2077 could easily have been a proper sequel to the last Deux Ex-games. I am relieved there are barely any man-sized ducts/vents around in Night City since nearly every gig still has viable and properly believable alternate routes. For most of the gigs (aside from the psycho and car sales) this is a level design love letter to those kind of games and to a lesser extent to the original Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines as well. Still plenty of mainly graphical / UI bugs you have to see through and sure, you don’t need the stealth or even the guns to “win” this because of the overpowered hacking skill tree but that’s a choice you make for yourself. I know I won’t touch that hacking tree in a second run unless they balance the tree itself or even the odds with an AI that can counter it properly. Just like I won’t play an overpowerded race/faction in an RTS.
CDPR overpromised in several interviews on the living world but the big gameplay sections they actually showed to the public did hold up in the final game. I played that E3-demo completely myself in the final version and in the way I want so I could do other things that deviated from the shown footage. There obviously was a reason they didn’t focus their marketing material on the open world systems because those systems were barely present or working. And logically the same can be said of the base console versions, those weren’t in an acceptable state either. That’s a slight that’s not easily forgiven (deservedly so) or rapidly fixed even. People expected the GTA-basics here and didn’t even get those (like at all, it isn’t just a lack of polish).
I understand that frustration but I don’t get the size of the anti-CP2077 hate train with full-on death threats fueled by the raging internet and certain media outlets which would do anything for more clicks to pile on the game / CDPR itself. Anger can be justified and it was to a certain extent here because of the game’s bloated media campaign but after the last few months this feels more like having an agenda against the company and the developers themselves (not talking about the rightful criticism in this thread or Tom’s review which should be heard). I wasn’t surprised at all about that grave hacking attack either, that’s just a consequence of the months of bashing. It feels like a lot people don’t want the game to improve, that’s for sure.
And all that for what? Just as Paul says I could care less about playing CP2077 as a GTA-game. Aside from pure driving the devs never showed the game as a GTA-rival and I am somehow glad they dropped the ball on that part instead of what makes the game really tick: not the “living” open world but the sprawling gigs, the story and most importantly the characters. I can’t hate any of the NPC’s, I just can’t. Even the corpo swines are well done, I just want more (lines) of everyone. The core gameplay that does work is surprisingly traditional (aside from the immersive runarounds which are at top level during story missions) that it makes you feel nostalgic. Due to an open world not being fleshed out properly the missions and story feel disconnected from the big city which is more a hub and window dressing (cfr. Deus Ex: HR and Bloodlines). The core, variety and quality of most of the gigs/quests can’t be denied though. Even when a story quest just trods on without any combat, it feels like it always has a place and it does more in making the game setting real and believable than any GTA-system or loose repeatable activity could ever do. There’s a satisfying but scrappy gun and stealth gameplay loop hidden beneath an often dysfunctional skill tree and some filler content that could have been more focused (the psycho mission questline alone is a missed chance) but that doesn’t take away it reminded me in a good way of other great games, just not GTA V.
It does lean more into Deus Ex than into a real RPG like Bloodlines was and that’s a shame in some ways but at least CDPR did make the gunplay a lot more satisfying compared to all those games combined and that’s also a big part of the lasting appeal, despite the messy loot overload. You can go on a full-on double-jumping Doom killing spree here if you want. You need to keep looking for a long time for real choices after the E3-missions (that natural Takemura moment), stunning quests (the Peralez couple still rumble around in my head) or the tributes to the lore of the tabletop game (the flashback scenes are a delight the more you think about them in an unreliable narrator way which Johnny of course is, they’re wicked), a lot of the worthwhile things feel buried but they are there. Even till the very last story mission there’s so much that players risk of missing. There are folks who have never even heard of Kerry and the Us Cracks near the end. Amidst all the gigs splattered in an unglorious way across the convoluted map you have some real eye-openers that you can’t shake off. The snuff movie director family makes you go berserk like I haven’t experienced in a long time in a game. It’s raw but it feels like roleplaying a real V.
CDPR hasn’t had a release so bad since the original Witcher came out. They did wonders on that but a lot more work is needed for Cyberpunk 2077. Good things come to those who wait, I am just hoping the developers will get the chance to make at least some things right next to creating new story content.
It’s either that or Paradox announcing tomorrow that CD Projekt RED are the new developers on Bloodlines 2…
Great post, this particularly
rings true for me so much.
Seems the patch is being tested on steam internally? Last update yesterday.
https://steamdb.info/app/1091500/depots/
Idle question: since I recently acquired a Series X, and my i7 6700/GTX 1080 PC is no Überbeast (and I don’t want to cash out my 401K to buy a new graphics card at extortionate prices, assuming I could even get my hands on one), should I just play this on the Series X at some point within the next year or two?
No brainer I would think.
rei
5881
The on-rails setpieces from the critical path carefully manicured from their BS vertical size were the only sequences that held up. That’s not much of a victory as you’d think.
stusser
5882
Yes, it will be a better experience on the XSX, if you can deal with gamepad controls. If you upgrade your GPU to a 3060ti or better the PC wins out though.
