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With the success of the Witcher series, many gamers were looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077. This title was delayed numerous times and was still released in a buggy state and nigh-unplayable for original Xbox One and PS4 owners. Because of the demands for refunds, Sony has pulled this title from their storefront. Though this game looks beautiful and ran well on my high-end gaming PC featuring a powerful RTX 3080 graphics card, I still experienced numerous glitches and crashes to desktop.

Not only is this game a buggy mess, but it’s pushing the boundaries of the Mature rating and I’m honestly surprised that it’s not rated Adult Only due to the language, gruesome violence, and frontal nudity which is enabled by default. I anticipated the possibilities for sexual promiscuity, but was totally blind-sided by seeing the bare chest of my female “body type” character. Male characters can customize the length of their manhood and see the outcome of their choices. One of the game's glitches sometimes has their private parts sometimes stick out through the player’s pants. If you don’t want to see breasts or sex organs, you can disable the nudity in the Game Settings menu. If you plan on streaming the game, you’ll also want to disable the copyrighted music to avoid any strikes on your account.

Along with your body type, you get to choose your origin story. The three choices are Corpo, Nomad, and Streetkid. Fans of the Mad Max movies will gravitate towards the survival nature of the desert wandering nomads. Streetkids are high-tech gangs and those familiar with Shadowrun will feel at home here. Corpos are looking to secure beneficial deals no matter the cost. I wound up choosing Corpo for my backstory. Your background will give you conversation options that may win over people of similar upbringings.

No matter the backstory or gender, the character will be referred to as ‘V’ throughout the game. Corpo V’s story begins with her puking in the bathroom of Night City’s biggest corporation, Arasaka. After emptying her stomach, she reports to her boss who gives her a hit job that she cannot refuse. As she contemplates her life choices at a nearby bar with her friend, some corporate hitmen pay her a visit and she loses everything but her life and payout money from the hit job that she no longer is required to do. It’s time for a fresh start as a mercenary!

The game world is quite large and there are various people in charge of each territory called “Fixers” and they can supply you with jobs as long as your reputation is good. By completing quests, jobs, and ridding the streets of riff-raff you’ll earn street cred which allows you to buy exclusive upgrades along with getting your name out there. Aside from the few street credit items, everything else is bought and sold with the in-game currency called Eddys.

Walking around everywhere isn’t ideal; running will get you around faster, but depletes your stamina. Vehicles can be purchased, and the one you start the game with doesn’t stay with you very long. There will be many opportunities to buy various cars and motorcycles throughout the game. Unfortunately, flying cars are not yet available in the year 2077. Instead of wasting money on vehicles that can be freely obtained through side quests, I recommend investing in your body’s cybertech upgrades at your favorite doctor (they’re called rippers in the game). One of my favorite enhancements is an arm implant that gave me a lightsaber-like glowing wire that I whip around Indiana Jones style and KO enemies before they even know what hit them.

Melee weapons like katanas and knives are available, but they’re not as cool in my opinion. Guns are everywhere and you can often loot them from fallen foes along with clothes and crafting ingredients. You can break down equipment and build you own if desired. I was content using what others dropped so I didn’t craft much in my 31-hour playthrough. Try to avoid picking up every gun you find because before you know it, you’ll be over-burdened with too much inventory. You can unload unnecessary items at any merchant and I like the menu option to automatically sell off your junk.

The game’s interface is well-designed. The jobs/gigs are sorted by importance and you can easily distinguish between storyline and side quests. Vehicle purchase opportunities are in their own separate category. You can call and text various contacts and everything is recorded in your character’s journal. Like many RPGs you can upgrade your character’s stats and the skill tree is broken down into five categories:

Body – Health points and stamina are determined by this.
Reflexes – Increase this for better weapon damage and reload speeds.
Technical Ability – Crafters will want to boost this stat.
Intelligence – The smarter you are, the better of a hacker you’ll be!
Cool – Stealthiness, resistances, and chance of critical hits are dependent on this stat.

There are many ways you can customize your character when it comes to skills and appearance, and not all of the options are appropriate. This game is very mature and I do not recommend playing it near or around children. Curse words and blaspheming happens constantly. F-bombs are dropped every few minutes. Blood, gore, and dismemberment happens quite a bit. There’s enhanced virtual reality, called brain dances, and many people in Night City live out their violent and sexual fantasies using this technology. Some side quests have you replay and analyze recorded brain dances to solve crimes and other mysterious things.

A stop at a brothel is required to finish the main story, but the purpose of the visit is to gather intel only. Though I wasn’t looking to pursue an intimate relationship I thought it was strange that the only in-story opportunities came from same-sex characters. As far as I can tell there were no eligible bachelors for me to romance, but some females looked at me longingly. If I really wanted to pursue intimacy I could have stopped by a brothel or found some romance in a side quest with minimal effort. There is an unavoidable sex scene and thankfully I had the nudity filter enabled for that one. There is another scene where my character caressed the crotch of a female character and without giving away the story, I’ll just say that she wasn’t in her right mind at the time.

The story is excellent and I’m glad that there are multiple endings to pursue. Before embarking on the final story quest, you’ll be prompted that you’re entering a point of no return. Be sure to utilize multiple save files! After completing the game you can still play and finish side-jobs.

The visuals are stunning and I’m glad I got to flex my 3080 for this game. I had the Ray Tracing enabled and high graphics settings enabled with no noticeable slowdowns. I did experience several crashes to the desktop. Thankfully, this game autosaves frequently so only 15 minutes or so of playtime was lost occasionally. I have seen some interesting graphical glitches including floating objects like a cigarette, invisible guns, and stuck menus that don’t go away until you reload/relaunch the game.

Another bug I experienced was during one of the side quests where my character’s male voice was used instead of the female’s. Other than that issue, the voice acting in this game is superb. I expected Keanu Reeves to be just a cameo, but his character is pretty prominent and he voiced a lot of lines in this game. When you’re driving you can change the background music/radio station and there’s a lot of music variety to choose from. Not all of the lyrics are family friendly though!

In fact, nothing about this game is family-friendly. Which in fairness, I didn’t expect. Having the nudity disabled by default would be less jarring in my opinion. The story is good enough to stand on its own and shouldn’t rely on customizable breasts and genitals to sell. Multiple religions and beliefs are presented in this title. There’s a Haitian voodoo gang and one of the characters does tarot readings. On a positive note, one of the themes in this game is immortality and there are many (some Christians represented) that oppose the technology behind it. One side quest has a character wanting to experience crucifixion through a brain dance. There's a lot of shady and strange characters in this game!

Though I wasn’t happy about the glitches, crashes, frontal nudity, strong language, blaspheming, and blood, Cyberpunk 2077 tells a good story and I enjoyed my time in this messed up future world. With the depravity going on in this game and in current times, I hope and pray that Jesus comes back before then.