Cyberpunk 2077: a 2022 re-review

polygon.com:

Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most anticipated releases of 2020.

The newest project from The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red, it was promoted as a sea change in video games that would merge the deep history of R. Talsorian Games’ sprawling cyberpunk Night City with storytelling chops that made Geralt’s adventures in The Witcher so compelling for so many of us. It was all portrayed in first-person perspective, to really sell us on our protagonist V’s embodied relationship with the world around them.

But in a move typical for the cyberpunk genre, there was a stark difference between the hype and the actual thing. The game landed with a dull thud, the stark reality of which could be blamed on any number of factors called out by reviewers and players: plodding cyberpunk gameplay, the general emptiness of the world, and a lack of compelling narrative. Over all of this loomed a series of technical problems that quickly transformed Cyberpunk 2077 into a generator of glitchy memes and exposed a rushed game produced under distressing crunch conditions. Substantial performance errors prompted its removal from Sony’s PlayStation Store, and the intervening months have been a slow crawl of CD Projekt fixing, adding, and tweaking the game in incremental updates — an extensive bid to bring it in line with its marketing promises.

Now, 16 months later, the prevailing question I am still regularly asked is, “Is Cyberpunk 2077 ‘good’ now?”

In February 2022, CD Projekt released a substantial patch, version 1.5, for Cyberpunk 2077. It contains a large number of tweaks and fixes, some new content, and native support for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Reading the patch notes is a lengthy time commitment, but the general gist is that CD