New Cyberpunk 2077 patch is just as miserable as the old one

Though there have been many controversial game releases over the past few years, it's fair to say that Cyberpunk 2077 was the biggest mess in recent memory. But while the surprise launch of the game's 1.5 patch a few days ago has fixed many of the issues that fans and critics complained about back in 2020, many shortcomings remain.

A year ago, Sony took the unprecedented step of pulling Cyberpunk from the PlayStation Store due to its technical shortcomings. While players weren't happy with the bugs and constant crashes, even those who were able to play the more stable PC version were really disappointed by the lack of promised features. In response, developer CD Projekt Red removed the RPG genre label from the game's marketing materials. Very subtle, guys.

A mixed bag, literally — To be fair to CD Projekt, it's definitely true that this week's 1.5 patch does a lot to address the more obvious criticisms of the game. Unfortunately, when you read over the patch notes, it just reminds you that all these features should've been in the game 15 months ago. For example, players can now change the protagonist's appearance past the opening sequence, but you can't alter tattoos for some reason. Similarly, the patch also added organic police chases to the game for the first time, which is a nice feature for a supposed "GTA killer" to have.

Dead connection — Some of the changes are hilariously specific, like the ability to reject phone calls. (This is apparently a necessary addition because these unskippable calls were interrupting other cutscenes. Whoops.) You can also change your character's apartment, see additional scenes in the game's romance routes, and enjoy slightly-better looking puddles, too.

Even with all these changes, Cyberpunk still has more than its fair share of issues. Many PC players are reporting significant performance downgrades that are seemingly caused by the crash, and a number of PS4 owners are reporting a data corruption glitch that prevents the game from launching. There are also killer trash bags too, apparently.

As a whole, while it's nice that CD Projekt has continued working on the game, it still feels like a shell of what it could've been. While the die-hard fans can feel free to continue waiting for the developers to fix what was supposed to be one of the biggest games of all time, a lot of us have moved on in the intervening 15 months. At some point in the future, Cyberpunk might be worth playing, but it's still hard to recommend in its current state.