Hands on with Cyberpunk 2077 - Preview
I have had a lot of time with Cyberpunk over the years, from the games first ever showing at E3 2018, where I walked away with a very cool figure, to reviewing the game upon its release years later. I ended up with around 160 hours in the Xbox One version of the game, played via the Xbox Series X, so I was very keen to check out the game on Nintendo Switch 2 and I am impressed.
The section of the game that I was able to play was based out of the Phantom Liberty expansion, which in a strange twist, I have not played. When the developers released the 2.0 update, they nuked my characters stats and I just could not get them to where I was before, so I bounced out. That meant that the location, the mission and the characters in this area were all new to me and I enjoyed that. I will also freely admit that for the first few minutes of the game, I sucked, part of that was due to my brain forgetting the controls and the other part was trying to adjust to the Switch 2 having the larger Joy-Con. Thankfully my years of playing games kicked in and I adapted and was able to fight back and complete the mission.
Now running around a fairly large building was fine, but this was a game that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One could not run well, so I had to see how the world looked. Thankfully the mission being done, well the inside part, I was able to get out and see the world. At this point I went slow, because I wanted to see how it would load, would the game collapse under the strain of the large world or worse, would I see nothing but pop in. I didn’t have any issues, like there were some pop-in on minor items like trash tucked in a corner, but no cars randomly appeared, or people disappearing. There were sentries posted around the place, people sitting down to eat some noodles are cars just driving about, everything seemed to be working fine. Now after my hands on, I did get some b-roll for the game from CD Projekt Red and saw more of what the game looks like and if everything runs as smoothly as it appears to, it could be a great time on the go.
Playing the game though, that was done with the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller and while I would have loved to have played in handheld mode, it was just not an option for the event. The more interesting parts I wanted to try were motion control aiming, something not enabled for the build and the mouse-con controls, which given the set up was just not possible at all.
As someone who adores the world of Cyberpunk 2077, I am writing this while sitting in my themed chair and at my themed desk, this was the surprise addition to the Nintendo Switch 2 line up that really made me stand up and take notice. Having played the game, or at least one very minor part of it, I can honestly say that it works. Is this going to be the prettiest version around, no it won’t and it won’t be the best performing either. But the simple fact that you can take the entire game with you on the go and have it look great and run fine, is enough for me to revisit Night City.
