Initial reviews for CD PROJEKT RED’s highly anticipated and extravagantly marketed sci-fi action RPG have begun pouring in, and to the surprise of no one, Cyberpunk 2077 has managed to win the hearts of many critics worldwide. Over on Metacritic, the game has already amassed universal acclaim with a handful of perfect scores that allude to one of the most epic gaming experiences yet.
Those of you who decide to adventure out into Night City this week may want to keep your expectations in check, however, as we’ve noticed a recurring theme among the reviews that have been published thus far: practically all of them admit to Cyberpunk 2077 being a ridiculously buggy experience. As the following round-up of criticism proves, glitches are a significant problem that early players will almost certainly run into.
Gamespot: Cyberpunk 2077 is phenomenally buggy. […] These bugs, more than any game I’ve played in years, took me out of the experience often. Non-interactable items like cardboard boxes will explode when you interact with something next to them; UI elements will stay on-screen long after they’re meant to, which is only solved by reloading a save; characters will interrupt themselves during proper dialogue sequences by repeating a throwaway line they’d say in the overworld, seriously disrupting key moments; I died once and, upon reloading my last save, found my hacking ability no longer worked, forcing me to roll back to an autosave 10 minutes prior. The list is extensive.
IGN: Unfortunately, the amount of bugs I’ve experienced really does need to be mentioned. I’ve only been able to play Cyberpunk 2077 on a PC with a GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, and as of writing this I have yet to lay hands on either the PlayStation or Xbox versions, but the issues I’ve encountered were extremely frequent and distracting. Performance on Ultra settings at 1080p with ray tracing off was largely okay for me, as you’d hope would be the absolute bare minimum on a brand-new and still-hard-to-get graphics card, generally only noticeably dropping in framerate while driving around busy areas or in certain weather conditions – but it was the routinely messed up animations, missing models, and glitchy dialogue that really got to me.
PC Gamer: Too bad almost every serious dramatic beat was undercut by some kind of bug, ranging from a UI crowded by notifications and crosshairs failing to disappear, to full-on scripting errors halting otherwise rad action scenes. What should’ve been my favorite main quest venture, a thrilling infiltration mission set in a crowded public event, was ruined by two broken elevators. I had to reload a few times to get them working.
VentureBeat: I have a high tolerance for occasional funny glitches. I have high expectations, but getting a simulation of a world to behave is too high even for me. But in my time with Cyberpunk, I saw objects float, vehicles disappear, and characters drive while standing up. Also, sorting items doesn’t work properly, and I couldn’t get the context-sensitive stealth takedown to activate after dropping behind a certain enemy.
Something tells us that CD PROJEKT RED was very close to delaying the game for a fourth time, but it opted to bite the bullet with a marred release rather than face the wrath of impatient fans and investors again. Here’s hoping that the game is patched and polished soon.
Cyberpunk 2077 will be released on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Google Stadia on December 10th, 2020. The game will unlock for PC players in the US at 7 p.m. EST on December 9.