So today would have been the original release date for CDProjekt's new highly anticipated game Cyberpunk 2077. I'd planned as a silly joke to put up this review instead and I'm too lazy to change the plans. Also I thought I'd put up some reviews of a few cyberpunk themed indie games that might help tide people over as we don't have Cyberpunk 2077 to keep people occupied and help them forget about the problems of the world.
So I bring to you my review of Cuberpunk 2089 a game about trying to escape a city... when ... a mysterious new.... virus ..... is...... wiping out the population....................You know something tells me I probably could have picked a better time to review this game. Don't worry though the game doesn't really do much with this story idea other than use it as an excuse for the lack of human NPCs. So on with the Review.
Name: Cuberpunk 2089
Price: £0.79 / $0.99 on Steam
Reviewed on: Laptop 1
Review:
So I picked Cuberpunk 2089 up because it looked fairly silly but it had a good user score at the time on Steam. For a silly game obviously trying to be a jokey game cashing in on the fact there was a big upcoming game in the form of Cyberpunk 2077. The user score however suggested maybe there was more too it. Could this in fact be a jokey game cashing in on the name that was also actually good. Spoiler Warning for the rest of this review! IT'S NOT GOOD. I entirely disagree with the user rating on this one as I can only guess it's good graded on a curve against some of the worst asset flips on Steam and broken or barely functional excuses for games that other people after a quick buck tend to put up.
It must be said as far as I can tell Cuberpunk 2089 isn't an asset flip. There has been some kind of work put. There is a spark of an idea. However what the title has turned out as feels more like a half finished mess thrown out the door long before being ready. The story elements are never really expanded on other than as an excuse for the lack of human NPCs about and the idea feels mostly wasted because of it. The game also has a multitude of other issues.
Gameplay wise the primary gameplay loop is almost entirely variations of fetch quests requiring you to go to a location and bring back one or more objects. You walk round the in game city going into the houses of various people and interacting with their smart AI hub things that will give you quests the people wanted done. There are attempts made to try and give the Hubs some different personalities but it's mostly not very deep, though surprisingly varied. Also you can pick up and find coins in games in various buildings which add to your in game currency. There is an upgrade system where you can upgrade your jump height and stamina allowing you to run further before tiring out using the currency but it's also worth pointing out some quests need you to spend some currency to acquire certain items from the shops for said quests. It should be noted there are a couple of attempts at variations on gameplay on some quests too beyond simple fetch quests but they are basic mini games of variations.
Examples of some of the more mundane quests include walking round the town zapping billboards to turn them off leaving them display an F (yes this game does have a number of meme references in it); fetching a battery from the store; trying to find missing components for a computer and a Breaking Bad reference quest which sees you mixing ingredients to make drugs. It's worth pointing out that with no actual inventory any quest requiring you to carry more than one item will require multiple trips OR taking the initial item with you adding the parts in and then returning with the item
The quest that try to go beyond this include hacking into a droid that has become a radical feminist to repair it's broken databases, this is done via playing a super basic Frogger esc game. There's also a quest to track down a missing graphics card which can be done by entering a portal into a supposed VR world which is a maze full of zombies you have to escape which leads to the graphics card's location.
The city is quite stylish in its look and there are NPCs in the form of robots who wander round the city and vehicles that hover round it. Oh and a surprisingly well done robot ghost thing.
If you're reading this so far and thinking this doesn't sound that bad, well it's time for me to talk about everything that doesn't work is broken or is generally poorly done.
From almost the very start I knew the game was likely not going to be great as it ran awfully and while my laptop is far from a powerhouse this game shouldn't be making it chug as much as it was. Next the game can't even manage to tell you the controls properly.
I mean I know you can argue alpha is a letter but I don't have a keyboard with the Greek alphabet on it. Oh and it's also worth mentioning the game only tells you these controls once and no-where in the menu does it show you the controls so hope you were paying attention.
It's also rather clear the game hasn't been playtested much as it's entirely possible to buy it's you don't need with no way to sell them back and end up at the end of the game unable to finish it as you have to buy at least the first jump upgrade to retrieve the final part of your car to escape the city.
The game really doesn't explain the mechanics to you either as sometimes a random drone with fly down and photograph you, if you're still out and about after a set time after this then a second drone will fly down and infect you with what I can only guess is the virus that's been killing off all the humans. However you can just go down to the shops and buy a thing to cure it, which if the game did anything with this interesting idea of a drone spraying people with virus and a shop / company handily selling the cure I'd give it some credit for but it goes no-where. The problem with this mechanic is if you're not paying attention that much you have to stop your quest to hide inside lest you be infected by the drone. This mechanic also creates the additional problem that if you get infected more than about twice in the whole game and buy the wrong upgrades then you can't really complete the game either due to not having the jump upgrade.
The zombie maze sounds cool and initially will seem cool but the developer managed to screw this up too. You can get a gun in the maze to kill the zombies, however it fires a strange vortex thing at the zombies and initially seems to do nothing as it goes through an approximately 5 second firing cycle. The zombies don't react and there is no indication you're hitting them, however after around 2 full cycles of the gun (which has infinite ammo) the zombie will just vanish. The game will respawn the zombies you've killed back in after a certain amount of time.
It's the zombie maze section that has the biggest bug in the game though as the idea being when you exit you're back in the real world. No-one programmed the game to realise that though so you keep the anti-zombie gun and the game will respawn the zombies into the main city map. This means you're now trying to do fetch quests where you can only carry 1 item at a time while stopping every so often to equip your gun (because you can't carry items and use the gun) so enjoy stopping to spend 20 seconds of time or so to kill off 2 zombies that will keep coming back. Oh I also forgot, the zombies aren't programmed to work properly with the overworld so they can and will walk through walls and buildings so you can be walking along and get randomly ambushed by a zombie coming through a wall. The zombie maze also causes another bug in the game such that when you exit the maze all the quests you have done will reset letting you do them again (you don't lose your coins from completing them). The only way to undo these bugs is to let the zombies kill you and luckily the game will respawn you back before you went into the portal to the zombie maze.
I also encountered a serious bug where the triggers for one of the main quests needed to finish the game (at least finishing it properly without using additional knowledge to cut the game short) wouldn't trigger so the I couldn't discover the location of a key item.
Oh also the game doesn't have a quest log nor dialogue that is repeatable to tell you about what your quests are so hope you were paying attention and can remember the correct ingredients or items needed and the correct amount. This is especially an issues and 1 of the quests that requires you to add multiple items into a pot doesn't seem to have the number of those type of items it will accept limited so if you're not paying attention or just forgot you can add too many of the items. Though it should be noted even adding too many of an item won't stop the quest completing normally it just means you might have spent too much to be able to afford the required upgrades needed to finish the game (if you buy the wrong ones).
Additionally the walk speed is pretty low and your stamina pretty low meaning it's slow to get round the game initially incentivising you to buy the stamina upgrades early to get around, however as I mention it's possible to screw yourself over and not have enough money to buy the last required upgrade if you screw up and bought both stamina upgrades. So the game actually incentivises you to end up in a potential (And I did end up in it on my initial playthrough) scenario where you can't complete the game due to these systems combined with poor explanation of mechanics and other flaws.
Doing nothing really with its more interesting ideas and mostly existing to reference other properties and spout out memes along with mediocre gameplay, Cuberpunk 2089 could have struggled over the line to manage average with it's unisired gameply and quest design. But with poor explanation of mechanics, control and a number of bugs and issues in the game including the fact it's entirely possible (and not that hard) to end up in a state where you literally can't complete the game and have to restart from the beginning again it falls well below that. Overall you can probably finish the game in a little over 2 hours. In writing this review I put in 8 hours doing multiple playthroughs to test how easy it would be to end up in a situation where you simply cannot finish the game and to test other bugs I'd found. Most of the bugs I was able to replicate with the issues with the zombie maze requiring doing nothing more than finishing the maze (which is always the same each time you play). Due to the bugs, the poorly done mechanics and all the other issues not least the game having an easy situation where it becomes impossible to complete I can't even give it a just below average score, this game earned it's 1 star by being just that bad.
I can't recommend this game to anyone looking for a good time as even normally it's a fairly slow slog with below average gameplay for it's about 2 hour run time even if you don't get screwed over. I can however recommend this game for student of game design, for people developing their own games or looking to get into the industry, why you may ask? Because it serves as a great example of what not to do. It serves as an example for the importance of QA testing your game. It serves as an example of the importance of thinking about the user experience with simple touches like how many games display the controls in the options menu or things like quest logs or repeatable quest dialogue. Cuberpunk 2089 shows what happens when you don't think about player experience, you don't test for issues and you just shove a game out the door you turn something with a spark of potential into wasted potential.
If you're reading this so far and thinking this doesn't sound that bad, well it's time for me to talk about everything that doesn't work is broken or is generally poorly done.
From almost the very start I knew the game was likely not going to be great as it ran awfully and while my laptop is far from a powerhouse this game shouldn't be making it chug as much as it was. Next the game can't even manage to tell you the controls properly.
I mean I know you can argue alpha is a letter but I don't have a keyboard with the Greek alphabet on it. Oh and it's also worth mentioning the game only tells you these controls once and no-where in the menu does it show you the controls so hope you were paying attention.
It's also rather clear the game hasn't been playtested much as it's entirely possible to buy it's you don't need with no way to sell them back and end up at the end of the game unable to finish it as you have to buy at least the first jump upgrade to retrieve the final part of your car to escape the city.
 |
| At least this one was intentionally put in by the developer |
The game really doesn't explain the mechanics to you either as sometimes a random drone with fly down and photograph you, if you're still out and about after a set time after this then a second drone will fly down and infect you with what I can only guess is the virus that's been killing off all the humans. However you can just go down to the shops and buy a thing to cure it, which if the game did anything with this interesting idea of a drone spraying people with virus and a shop / company handily selling the cure I'd give it some credit for but it goes no-where. The problem with this mechanic is if you're not paying attention that much you have to stop your quest to hide inside lest you be infected by the drone. This mechanic also creates the additional problem that if you get infected more than about twice in the whole game and buy the wrong upgrades then you can't really complete the game either due to not having the jump upgrade.
The zombie maze sounds cool and initially will seem cool but the developer managed to screw this up too. You can get a gun in the maze to kill the zombies, however it fires a strange vortex thing at the zombies and initially seems to do nothing as it goes through an approximately 5 second firing cycle. The zombies don't react and there is no indication you're hitting them, however after around 2 full cycles of the gun (which has infinite ammo) the zombie will just vanish. The game will respawn the zombies you've killed back in after a certain amount of time.
It's the zombie maze section that has the biggest bug in the game though as the idea being when you exit you're back in the real world. No-one programmed the game to realise that though so you keep the anti-zombie gun and the game will respawn the zombies into the main city map. This means you're now trying to do fetch quests where you can only carry 1 item at a time while stopping every so often to equip your gun (because you can't carry items and use the gun) so enjoy stopping to spend 20 seconds of time or so to kill off 2 zombies that will keep coming back. Oh I also forgot, the zombies aren't programmed to work properly with the overworld so they can and will walk through walls and buildings so you can be walking along and get randomly ambushed by a zombie coming through a wall. The zombie maze also causes another bug in the game such that when you exit the maze all the quests you have done will reset letting you do them again (you don't lose your coins from completing them). The only way to undo these bugs is to let the zombies kill you and luckily the game will respawn you back before you went into the portal to the zombie maze.
I also encountered a serious bug where the triggers for one of the main quests needed to finish the game (at least finishing it properly without using additional knowledge to cut the game short) wouldn't trigger so the I couldn't discover the location of a key item.
Oh also the game doesn't have a quest log nor dialogue that is repeatable to tell you about what your quests are so hope you were paying attention and can remember the correct ingredients or items needed and the correct amount. This is especially an issues and 1 of the quests that requires you to add multiple items into a pot doesn't seem to have the number of those type of items it will accept limited so if you're not paying attention or just forgot you can add too many of the items. Though it should be noted even adding too many of an item won't stop the quest completing normally it just means you might have spent too much to be able to afford the required upgrades needed to finish the game (if you buy the wrong ones).
Additionally the walk speed is pretty low and your stamina pretty low meaning it's slow to get round the game initially incentivising you to buy the stamina upgrades early to get around, however as I mention it's possible to screw yourself over and not have enough money to buy the last required upgrade if you screw up and bought both stamina upgrades. So the game actually incentivises you to end up in a potential (And I did end up in it on my initial playthrough) scenario where you can't complete the game due to these systems combined with poor explanation of mechanics and other flaws.
Verdict:
I can't recommend this game to anyone looking for a good time as even normally it's a fairly slow slog with below average gameplay for it's about 2 hour run time even if you don't get screwed over. I can however recommend this game for student of game design, for people developing their own games or looking to get into the industry, why you may ask? Because it serves as a great example of what not to do. It serves as an example for the importance of QA testing your game. It serves as an example of the importance of thinking about the user experience with simple touches like how many games display the controls in the options menu or things like quest logs or repeatable quest dialogue. Cuberpunk 2089 shows what happens when you don't think about player experience, you don't test for issues and you just shove a game out the door you turn something with a spark of potential into wasted potential.
Composite score
Overall Score
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