Cyberpunk 2077 Previews

Following the latest episode of Night City Wire, we can check out a number of hands-on previews for Cyberpunk 2077 based on a 16-hour long demo featuring the game’s opening section and some early open world gameplay. And for the most part, the previews seem fairly positive, likening the game to Deus Ex at times while noting a fair amount of bugs still. Have a look:

PC Gamer:

I also like how exploration is handled. The map is covered in a mess of icons, because it is a modern open world game after all. But most of them are question marks, meaning you won’t know what they are until you travel there. This makes spending time exploring the world meaningful and surprising, rather than just feeling like you’re hoovering up icons. And some of the things you encounter, which trigger quests both big and small, include rogue AI taxi cabs, a body stuffed in a fridge, a talking vending machine, and a mechanical monk.

IGN:

Even still, I came away from my 16 hours with Cyberpunk 2077 hungry for more, and with the sense that it had certainly had more to feed that hunger. It’s rad as hell, a gorgeous world that you could get absolutely lost inside of in precisely the manner you choose to do so. It’s certainly not without its rough edges, especially when it comes to its menus, but those blemishes didn’t do much to stop what it does well from shining brightly. Even after two full days I feel like I’ve only barely started to see what’s here, and it only got more exciting the deeper I went.

GameSpot:

Then there’s Johnny Silverhand, played by Keanu Reeves, who’s a huge part of the story. The preview showed that Johnny isn’t just a digital phantom who wanders around scenes, dispensing advice and adding color commentary to whatever’s happening in the story. Johnny is an independent entity and your relationship with him matters as well. The biochip problem is a ticking clock–it’s slowly taking over V’s body and replacing their personality with Johnny’s–and you can choose to either have an antagonistic relationship with the legend in your head, or a friendlier one.

GamesRadar+:

Cyberpunk 2077 is clearly a huge undertaking. The density of the game’s systems is a testament to that, with me only feeling partly comfortable understanding the complexities of the weaponry loadouts, huge skill tree, perks, or my future in cyber enhancements – just to name a few. But that scale does come with some concerns, and while Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t present me with any game-breaking bugs, the visual bugs were plentiful – although CDPR says that it’s aware of them. I’m hesitant to suggest that they’ll all be fixed by the time we all get our hands on the full game come December 10, but with a game this ambitious – and frighteningly huge – I’m in the mind to forgive a few unintentional quirks. This is one hell of a game, a neon-soaked seduction from the first second.