After roughly nine years of development, Cyberpunk 2077 was finally released on Dec. 10, 2020. With very high expectations for the game, many gamers were excited to get their hands on it. However, to many buyer’s surprise, the game was full of bugs and glitches and resulted in a poor player experience. But are these reviews showing gamers the full picture?

Cyberpunk 2077 had been hyped up around the gaming community for years. With the pandemic happening throughout all of 2020, it was hard to wait for such a game to come out. The release of the game was pushed back three times and originally was supposed to come out in the spring of 2020. Due to the game being massive, extra time was needed to ensure the game was ready to be released. When Cyberpunk released, gamers on all platforms of consoles and PCs spent their money on the game expecting the best and were surprised in a bad way. Gamers experienced many bugs throughout playing the game, but this was expected in a new game. But after its first week of release, the gaming community found more bugs and glitches in the game that made it hard to enjoy the game for what it is. People immediately began bashing the game for its state that it was in, and went on about how bugs were taking over the game. But there is a reason to explain most of the bugs and glitches. Cyberpunk 2077 was designed and made for next-gen consoles and gaming computers, not Xbox One and Playstation 4 consoles. Since it is hard and costly to get your hands on a new Xbox Series X/S and Playstation 5, many of the people playing Cyberpunk 2077 with bug issues were playing on older-gen consoles, which would explain some of the issues surrounding the game. Additionally, the game isn’t completely developed yet. Developers and creators of Cyberpunk have already announced that the game won’t run well on older-gen consoles so the amount of hate and negative reviews it is getting off the bat isn’t fair. Gamers playing on older consoles will most definitely experience some bugs and glitches. 

Cyberpunk 2077 has three different life paths players can choose from when they first start their game. Players can choose between Nomad, Streetkid, or Corporate. All of these paths start you off in a different life, but you end up following the same story in all three choices for the most part. Once players are done choosing their life path, they can customize their character in many different ways. There are many different hair choices and colors to choose from, different facial features, and so much more. The game does a good job at letting the player control things off the bat, making the game more interactive for the player. Once the players are done customizing their character, the game starts them off on the life path they selected. Each life path introduces different ways the player’s character does things and helps shape the overall story. For instance, if the player chose Corporate, they begin in Night City as one of the higher echelons, and Nomad places you in the badlands just outside of Night City. As the players go through the story, they learn how to do different things such as hack and upgrade weapons and much more. Players can also customize their character’s clothes, and as they go through the game they will gather and unlock more customizables to equip. There are many characters players meet along the way that help develop the story and make it much more enjoyable. The Cyberpunk story is about 25-30 hours total and full of fun action and character development. There are many different choices of different ways to develop your character as well, providing more control of the story.

“It offers a staggering amount of choice in how to build your character, approach quests, and confront enemies, and your decisions can have a tangible and natural-feeling impact on both the world around you and the stories of the people who inhabit it. Those stories can be emotional, funny, dark, exciting, and sometimes all of those things at once,” said IGN review editor Tom Marks.

Even after beating the main story, the game still delivers. There are endless amounts of things to do with very few restrictions, such as driving cars around Night City, doing side quests, and causing trouble. Even after playing through the whole story, Cyberpunk does a good job of keeping gamers entertained. Cyberpunk does a great job at keeping gamers engaged in the story, and keeping them entertained with the many different aspects there are to explore in the game.  Despite the issue with bugs and glitches in the game, the amount of fun to be had in Cyberpunk is limitless.