Late To The Party: Cyberpunk 2077

I blame Grand Theft Auto 3, honestly.

Back when Grand Theft Auto 3 was THE game, (21 years ago, for context) I remember one writeup saying: The genius of GTA3 is that they turned cruising into a game mechanic.

And it was true: driving around, listening to the radio-an experience particularly enhanced by incredibly snarky, satirical DJs- in GTA's remarkably realized city was just a cool thing to do.

Which was a good thing, because the driving mechanic itself was dogshit. The "Auto" part of GTA has always been its weakest experience, with cars feeling like boats, unwieldly and awkward to drive.  None of them having the kind of snap that comes from other driving-oriented games of that era, like Burnout.

In fairness, Burnout was a racing game-there was nothing else to do but go fast at precision speeds. Sure, your goal might be to cause the biggest traffic accident you can, but you wanted to do it immediately and so the controls needed to be precise.

GTA3 gave an entire world to play in; who cares if part of the game was kinda shit?

But, they never improved that. The descendents of GTA-and there are many-have all had to grapple with this problem. Some have gone the extra mile to correct traversal, others, like GTA itself, have decided to say 'fuck it'.

So it is with Cyberpunk 2077. Getting from point A to B sucks ass. Sure, you can set a destination and then hit Circle to skip the travel process but it's not as though you're instantly transported there. You have to look at a loading screen for however long.

Neither option is appealing to me.

Strike one.

"How do I hack this computer?" It was part of finishing an early mission in Cyberpunk 2077 and though I had been shown once, it had been days since I'd done it, and I needed to re-learn the skill. I didn't want to go online to figure out the solution: this was an early puzzle. It can't be that hard.

But I still couldn't figure it out so I did the next obvious thing: I checked the game's submenus for the 'how to' section. Every game has one now! 

The menus are obtuse, and filled with iconography I don't understand. Unlabled folders so I can't easily find what I need.

But it doesn't matter; what I need isn't there anyways.

I brute force my way through the puzzle. At least I won't forget how to do this in the future...if there is one.

Strike two.

Finally, there is one way to get me to instantly quit a game: force me into a fail-state with no understanding of why that happened. This happened for me in Red Dead Redemption, and I quit playing, halfway through what was a reasonably entertaining game.

It happened here, too. I tried to park my car-did so badly, and got a notice "The police have been notified".

Why? Why are the cops coming? What, exactly, did I do wrong? I don't know-there isn't anything helpful around me to tell me why-did I run over someone?

So after having to drive away (a feature which sucks ass) I find my way to an objective: Subdue this person without killing them. Great: I remember the moves for melee!

I enter the arena, my weapon is drawn and the only icons on my screen are; reload. No holster.

So I have no way to do the objective. I die, and one resounding bell goes off in my mind: Fuck ALL this.

Strike three.