Almost seven years since its initial reveal, the release of CD Projekt Red's action RPG Cyberpunk 2077 is finally coming. With a highly-anticipated gaming release comes the highly-anticipated reviews that many gamers rely on to help them judge whether or not a game is worth their hard-earned money.
Cyberpunk 2077 was first announced in May of 2012, with the initial teaser trailer revealed in January of 2013. Similar to CD Projekt Red's other series, The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077 is based on an existing franchise, though this time around it's based on a tabletop game series by Mike Pondsmith simply titled Cyberpunk.
While the vast majority of reviews for Cyberpunk 2077 have been positive, citing the game's world-building, character immersion, and overall gameplay, there are still a number of poor reviews. The more critical reviews have reported Cyberpunk 2077 has a number of game-breaking bugs, as well as the confusion on whether or not the visual glitches were a symptom of the game's cyberware features or a technical mishap. While most of these reviews are not a particularly surprising sight to see, what is surprising is seeing Philipp Weber, a senior quest designer and coordinator of Cyberpunk 2077, go on to defend negative reviews of the game he worked so hard on for nearly a decade.
Weber's words are important and refreshing to hear in an age of heated opinions. Negativity seems to garner much more attention than positivity, and the gaming community is no exception. Philipp emphasizes that a negative review should be looked at as more than a number or a headline, but the words within the review are the important factor for a game like Cyberpunk 2077, which requires a bit of knowledge before a purchase. This sort of nuance and transparency is a rare occurrence.
With many game reviews focusing on a numeric scale, it's rather easy to write a game off simply because its score is below a specific threshold that a person is willing to risk the money on. A game that receives something as praiseworthy as a 7 out of 10 is often seen as a fairly bad game, where, in any other world, that kind of score would be rather impressive, though it is worth considering the review copies are not from the console versions of Cyberpunk 2077 of the game.
It's undeniable that there is a lot to unpack in such a content-filled game, even if the wait for the multiplayer expansion could be a while. What's important to keep in mind is that a lot of people worked really hard to bring this game to life, and fans should read as many reviews as possible before making their purchase decision.
Cyberpunk 2077 will be available on December 10th for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions currently in development.