Night City Revisited

 

After many delays and much anticipation, the game Cyberpunk 2077 finally dropped on December 10.  I had already downloaded it the night before, and started playing the next day.

It's been a week now and it's fair to say that playing Cyberpunk has been my primary activity ever since.  I have 71½ hours logged on Steam, or something slightly over 10 hours a day.  

I'm getting near the end - I know this because I got an in-game warning that initiating the next main story-line quest was a "Point of No Return" and if started, I wouldn't be able to complete any outstanding side quests or missions.  I haven't crossed that Point of No Return yet, taking my time to explore the game's Night City a little more and completing said side quests and missions.  But I'll probably wrap it up tonight and complete the game, and then after a suitable rest, replay the game again as a different character (you can choose among three separate characters and pick a gender for any one for a total of six different avatars).

Much has been said and written about how the game is deeply flawed - buggy and error-ridden and borderline unplayable.  I honestly feel sorry for those who've had that experience, but overall it plays fine for me.  To be honest, I bought my new gaming PC a few months ago with this very game in mind, and picked the specs in order to best match Cyberpunk's demands, so there's that.  Most of the problems have been reported by those trying to play the game on Xbox or a PlayStation.  I have come across occasional glitches - a gun that remains hovering in mid-air after the character pointing it had walked away, two NPCs trying to occupy the same spot so that different arms and faces would emerge (sometimes at the same time), and a few times, my character simply couldn't unholster his gun (I'm playing through as a male character on this run).  But overall, these glitches were more humorous than annoying, except the gun thing, because my unarmed character would then got shot dead (although the gun then worked during his next incarnation). But I think the voices of the complainers have drowned out the voices of the satisfied players, and I maintain the game is nowhere near as problematic as the press would have you believe.

Okay, back into virtual game mode.  I've got some scores to finish.