I have to admit, I asked for this.
On sept. 2. 3, I was talking to my Gizmodo colleagues about whether people should stop buying a state-of-the-art console when they launch. “There is only one thing to consider for the launch: you want to play Cyberpunk on the next generation,” I said. “I want to play the next game on the next console.”
As a fool, I decided that I didn’t need to pre-order a PS5. 2077. Cyberpunk could be played on PS4, and it’s a long game. I would probably start with one generation and end with the next. And, if nothing else, the severe lack of PS5 seemed unlikely. I was wrong.
On dec. 3, following numerous major delays, news broke cyberpunk the date of the street had been broken. “Release the game, cowards,” I shouted at Slack at work – and I meant. I was completely ready to deal with a bug game, broken just to have something, whatever I was excited about. At that moment, it turned out that I was right.
If you don’t care about video games at all or even if you don’t, you’ve probably heard that cyberpunk was released in a unfinished state on consoles. Based on early reviews, was quite buggy and on a high-end PC. What’s worse, the game’s developer, CD Projekt Red, deceived the public by promising a lower-resolution version of the game that runs on PS4 and Xbox One, promoting it exclusively with PC images and boxing reviewers using only those better hardware for their tests. .
Within two weeks, I saw one of the most impressive reversals of a hype car in my life. First of all, I had fans gathering on reviewers who did not bend his knee at the alteration of Cyberpunk. Then we had angry players demanding CDPR refunds. Then we had the agreement of CDPR to issue refunds. The studio then withdrew because Sony and Microsoft did not agree to any refund. Then, in the most unexpected turn, Sony a tras the game from its entire online store and Microsoft agree to refund purchases made online. And now, the CDPR has done it has announced a comprehensive reimbursement plan aimed at obtaining a reimbursement for anyone who wishes.
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Despite all this, I’m having fun playing it on the PS4.
Let me be clear, the game is like hell. My console slips an inch from his life to play cyberpunk. Graphic fidelity rotates between PS3 quality and next-gen borderline, sometimes in the same setting. There are a lot of errors and pop-ins. The frame rate is extremely inconsistent. And yes, it is collapsing. On a more petty note, I saw a lot of minor mistakes in notes and menus, while other players discovered some major example. The game is not over, period. And users who are lucky enough to have a PS5 report many of the same problems minus dirty graphics – after all it’s the same game. (The PS5 version is expected next year.)
When I first played cyberpunk On launch day, my enthusiasm quickly gave way to a sense of uneasy compromise before I finally gave up. The moment I stepped out of the character’s creator and entered the game, the graphics were disappointing. Two NPC spectators drove past …but there was no car, only the NPCs sitting floating in the air. Eventually I got into a fighting fire that couldn’t be played because the framerate was so bad I couldn’t hit the enemies.
Video games are not my life, and I was not thrown into a rage. I was just disappointed. I don’t want to degrade the experience of people who have invested more in launching the game or for whom the purchase price has been a greater sacrifice. He just told me I can’t play it and I decided to wait for PS5 to do it right.
Unfortunately, if you think the game was destroyed cyberpunk is frustrating, you should try to buy a PS5. It’s the least fun game around. Every retailer’s website turns into an inoperable mess every time a new batch is announced. I spent one morning trying to make this happen this week and I will not repeat the process until next year.
Seeing that an update has been released for cyberpunk convinced me to try again, and I’ve been playing it for the last four nights. Folks, the game works and can be played. It is almost to the point of being in an acceptable condition for a launch day.
The frame rate is still unstable, but much improved in my experience. Problems are still present, but rare and I have come to love them. The problems are totally right in one cyberpunk game. The game is clearly full of stylized errors and intentional effects and it would certainly be nice if everything worked the way its creators intended. But I like video game mistakes, and they make sense in this world. It collapsed once every night after a few hours of play, but every time it collapsed it was miraculously when I should have gone to bed and no progress was ever lost.
Before starting a game session, I saw a viral video clip that someone shared in which their instructor Platoon spin took a moment to pay tribute to all the people in our lives who died this year while a pandemic devastated the world. We live in a dystopia that makes the world cyberpunk feel like an absolute joy to visit.
That’s what I want from a video game right now. I want to go visit a place that is not this place because I have no other place where I can be locked up. I want to have experiences that my subconscious can chew, because now I don’t have a lot of real life experiences. And I just want to do something cool.
When I was playing cyberpunk last night, a very dramatic thing happened and I was completely immersed in the story and my character. Without hurting anything, Keanu Reeves immediately made his first appearance in the game. It was the perfect time for this to happen and the way it was presented was impeccable. Our partner and I shouted simultaneously: “*** ***** !!!!!!!” We have to censor the quote exactly because it is a spoiler, but suffice it to say that we were very pleased. This is probably a memory I will keep with me.
I decided to play Skyrim for the first time earlier this year. For the same reasons I listed above, Skyrim It was a good game for quarantine and has a little good in common with cyberpunk. I remember horror stories with people who lost dozens of hours of play Skyrim when it was first launched. That kept me from ever playing it, and all these years later, I was still saved as a maniac for fear that it would happen to me. Today, Skyrim is a classic lover, and it is still full of errors. The things that destroy the game are mostly fixed, and its weird is weird.
I’m not saying this to defend the CDPR or to promote the company’s line that everyone will be happy after a few patches. I think it is illustrative of a change in how much we ask corporations when they fail to meet their own standards or deceive the public. Skyrim he was not snatched from the shops and life went on.
Obviously, the circumstances this year are a little different. CDPR is fighting to calm people down, and handled it in a much more obvious and dishonest way than the editors of Skyrim made back in the day. It seems that the directors of the company were faced with a choice: to delay the game again and drive everyone crazy or to release it indefinitely and only drive some crazy. I’m nice for the puzzle, but the big blows made a wrong decision and now he has to live with it.
CDPR directors deserve every criticism they receive. Before cyberpunk He was released, There have been numerous reports that developers working on the game have been forced to work overtime – or in crises – to prepare for it in time. Earlier today, Bloomberg reported that executors and developers held a controversial internal meeting to address the consequences cyberpunkrelease. Poor planning, the crisis and false claims that the game was over would have been at the forefront of the creative team’s concerns.
This is something else that I thought about a lot while playing cyberpunk. Aside from that, these artists are clearly working at the top of their game. The story is cinematic, the world is rich, the designs are incredible, the music is solid and merciful, non-repetitive. Those people did not deserve to have their work thrown into the world before it was ready and they still have a lot of work to do. But in previous years, the public was not even aware that the crisis was a problem in the gaming industry, and now it’s in the minds of fans asking companies to do better.
But how can we ask a company to do better without threatening the consequences? Probably the only way to send a message is refuse to buy the game or request a refund. But that hurts the artists who finish the game and build the multiplayer component expected next year.
cyberpunk it probably is too big to failSo if you want to give people a thumbs up by boycotting the game, I think it’s okay. But the anger I see online saddens me, and I hate the idea of it being completely removed from availability. Screw in the CDPR, but if you can resist with a little jerk, don’t get out of the fun when it’s currently little available. And when the time comes for you to hug your friends and have a cup of coffee at a table, do it instead.