2025-06-07
Here comes the choom-choom train
It’s more often than not these days that a game released in an underwhelming state is left abandoned in a pool of its own minor updates. On occasion, though, we have a redemption arc like that belonging to 2020's Cyberpunk 2077.
Originally released in a state that was barely functional and riddled with more bugs than an anteater’s digestive tract, it’s safe to say that CD Projekt Red has not only redeemed its reputation, but the game is now celebrated as one of the strongest RPGs of the decade.
Somehow, this goliath of neon violence is now on Nintendo Switch 2 as Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, but how does a handheld deal with this phoenix-like, vindicated video game?
Well, firstly, this release comes with some swanky new controls. The most immediately impressive is gyro aiming, not a revolutionary idea by any stretch in 2025, but a hugely welcome addition that can really help with fine adjustments during gunplay. CDPR have also added a swathe of different options on how it can be implemented, adjusting sensitivity, when gyro becomes enabled (for example, only when you’re aiming down sights), and even how much your movements are dampened to avoid twitchy nonsense.
Mouse controls are also an option, but they don't feel quite as natural and well-realised. The game’s frame rate (more on that to come) limits responsiveness, but this could easily be a limitation of my own experience with mouse controls at lower frame rates; I’m certain there’s someone out there who will wonder how they ever lived without it, and more power to whoever you are. Frankly, I'd always rather have an option available and not use it, than not have it at all.
I did notice some inconsistencies with some actions, though, most notably reloading. For some reason hitting the 'Y' button just didn't always initiate a reload, to the point that I tested the Joy-Con 2 in the system settings to make sure it wasn't faulty, but it seems to be entirely specific to this control method. Hopefully this is nothing more than an oversight that can be patched in the future.
Last on the new control methods is ‘Motion Patterns’, a method that uses motion controls not just for aiming, but gestures for reloading, using health items, and more besides. It’s locked behind the T-Bug tutorial from the start of the game, and for good reason. I can only imagine some hapless sod turning it on by mistake and wondering why they’re using up their health items every time they scratch their nose. It’s only available when using two Joy-Con 2 without a grip, Wii Remote and Nunchuk-style, and a fun little distraction for a while, but despite its good reliability and responsiveness, it’s not something I felt any desire to enable outside of testing.
But onto the game itself. You play as V, and much like most RPGs with a custom character creator, V can be anything you want — male, female, young, old (ish) — it’s entirely your call, and the residents of Night City could not care less about any of it. They’ve got their own problems.
V is, however, a criminal to some degree, just like practically everyone else in the city. Law and order exists officially, but gangs roam the streets, taking hostages and murdering civilians without blinking if they think it’ll bag them some Eurodollars, or ‘eddies’.
One of the first things you’ll notice upon entering Night City is just how detailed and narratively well-built this fictitious world is; Night City feels like it could actually be a real-life place in many ways; with its blend of ramshackle streets and ultra-wealthy districts, it's shockingly believable. Culture, fashion, technology, language, it all feels like looking at a warped reflection of our own world, frighteningly well-realised, and terrifyingly bleak in so many ways. Yet that’s the joy of the world of Cyberpunk 2077 - you can see so much of the real world within its fantasy setting, only with more swearing. A lot more swearing.
Suffice it to say, Night City, and Cyberpunk 2077 as a whole, is very much an adult experience. Part of that is the sexual imagery plastered everywhere, the violence, the truly vile language, but more than that, it’s the characters, the dialogue, and the raging rapids of emotions you’re forced to contend with.
You see, V isn't alone. Lodged in their synapses they also have the personality of a long-dead terrorist and rockerboy Johnny Silverhand, breathtakingly realised by Keanu Reeves. Silverhand is slowly taking over V’s mind and body, but even he’s not entirely happy about it. The journey these two are forced to share is one of betrayal, death, impossible choices, and a hell of a lot more besides. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Cyberpunk 2077’s story might be one of the best you’re likely to come across.
What’s more impressive is how it presents itself. Just like CD Projekt Red’s previous efforts in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the line between primary story mission and side mission is furiously blurred. You might accept a mission that sounds basic and almost one-dimensional at first, only to be thrust into an entirely different thread of Night City’s ever-changing story. A simple spark of jealousy from a client fearing their relationship isn't as stable as they’d thought can spiral out of control into a multi-mission omnibus that asks you to define how far someone needs to go before they might no longer be considered human. A lighthearted romp for all the family.
I found myself second-guessing what missions were deemed ‘main story’ for a while, because the side missions get just as much care and attention poured into them. Chances are you won't even see all of them on your first time through either, as seemingly minor decisions you make at various points can have a noticeable impact on what characters and missions are available to you as you progress.
You’ll most likely not even realise, though. Hell, I’ve probably missed some massive missions I would have loved because of some seemingly innocuous dialogue option. It gives the game this great sense of replayability, heightened further by its other mechanics.
You’ll be doing a fair bit of fighting in Night City and its outskirts, and you need to decide how you plan to go about staying alive. You can focus on melee weapons, gunplay, or ‘netrunning’, which is arguably the game’s magic system. But as the old saying goes, the proof of the meat is in the detail, and Cyberpunk 2077 provides an awful lot of variance within these three categories.
Melee weapons range from hammers, to hinged blades that burst from your forearms, to a glowing wire that, again, comes out of your arms somehow. Guns can be powerful enough to shoot through certain walls, charged for extra wallop, or clever enough to fire their bullets around corners and directly into your victim’s skull. Netrunning enables hacking into nearby systems on the fly, letting you explode (presumably smart) fuel canisters, or even send a computer virus into your enemies causing a visceral illness that spreads between any other nasty person that might be standing too close.
This is only scratching the surface of the flexibility available to you, and this goes even further with cyberware. As you might expect, cyberware is a load of cybernetics you wear. Well, not so much wear as have implanted into your nervous system, legs, brain, the whole megillah. You can have these implanted at various locations by certified ripperdocs, meaning you can't change them yourself when you’re wandering around a nightclub or mooching around your flat. Probably for the best.
Every piece of cyberware comes with bonuses, some simple, like a faster rate of healing, and some that give you entirely new abilities, such as being able to jump ten metres into the air. You also have a skill tree to manage, which is thankfully fairly straightforward in isolation, and allows you to rework your unlocks whenever you like.
The customisation on offer in Cyberpunk 2077 is astonishingly broad, rewarding, and beautifully realised, but we’d be lying if we said it wasn't perhaps a little overwhelming, even after tens of hours of play. It’s unavoidable, really; offer a magnitude of possibilities and you’re inevitably going to leave players somewhat paralysed by choice. My advice? Just dive in, don't think too much about it. You can always make some more eddies if you want to change things later. Or just go with your choices and save the other stuff for a subsequent playthrough.
Thankfully, the processes for these elements are comparatively straightforward. Crafting, for example, is all managed using generic ‘components’ of various ranks, which you can find in containers all over the place. It makes the swathes of options available to you much more attainable, and makes experimentation something that’s fun to fiddle around with, rather than an exercise in frustration.
The game also places a degree of focus on stealth, a sentence that might fill you with dread, but luckily Cyberpunk manages to execute its stealth in a satisfying way. Yes, enemies are a bit unobservant, but they have to be to make sneaking around even remotely fun, and the various netrunning skills you have at your disposal to map out the area, distract foes, and even make a swift recovery when spotted — should you act quickly enough of course — makes stealth almost a highlight of the combat in many ways.
It’s deeply rewarding to infiltrate a building, take out guards, send them running in the wrong direction, or lure them towards an explosive container and… well, you can imagine. It makes you feel genuinely powerful and sneaky, but get too big for your boots and you will be spotted. It’s a great balance, and you can almost always ignore it and run in with a katana regardless, should you prefer, just be prepared to deal with an awful lot of angry firepower.
Stealth takes an even more important role in the included DLC Phantom Liberty, a substantial extra slice of Night City goodness that is ingrained so effortlessly into the base game (and included in this Switch 2 release), you’d be forgiven for not noticing where one ends and another begins.
As opposed to your criminal dealings in the rest of Night City, Phantom Liberty and the new area of Dogtown have you running around as an agent of the government. Don't worry, you’ll still be knee-deep in morally questionable actions throughout, but it’s a nice change of pace and setting compared to the base game.
You’ll team up with agents of the New United States of America, and some of them aren't even completely jaded by being chewed up by their country and spat back out. Good for them. The people you work with are some of the best characters the game has to offer, not least Reed, played by the ever-wonderful Idris Elba, and trust me when I say that the bar set by the base game is high. Their dialogue, motivations - it’s all so relatable in such an alien and unfamiliar setting, and it had its hooks in me almost immediately.
Speaking of setting, one thing I didn't fully expect my first time playing was that Dogtown could be worse than the other districts of Night City. This was a presumption promptly propelled out the window as the filth-soaked streets opened up to me. The whole area is run by Kurt Hansen, a man who claims he protects Dogtown and its residents whilst ruling with an iron fist, and his BARGHEST goons execute residents for sneezing without a permit. It’s a perfectly grim location for such a grim ‘society’, and I love it.
So, it’s a seriously meaty game; how does Nintendo’s new system handle such a demanding title? In short, it does an excellent job. There are two graphical modes: Quality, which targets 30fps and higher fidelity; and Performance, which ekes things out to an unusual (for a console) 40fps.
They’re both available in handheld no matter what, but Performance only works in docked mode if you have a 120hz TV or monitor, as 40 is not a factor of 60. Trust us, we worked it out on a calculator and everything, 40fps on a 60hz screen would cause some wild frame time inconsistencies, and would look awful.
Both modes are a delight, and for the most part I stuck with Quality as I was playing docked and don't have a whizzo 120hz TV. I originally played with motion blur enabled, but after getting used to it switched off, I can't ever go back. It takes the edge off the low frame rate at first, but the game is substantially crisper and better looking without it.
Where things really shined, though, was handheld mode; when docked I could forget I was playing on a portable device, but holding the game in my hands looking as good as it does, and at 40fps on the Switch 2’s excellent VRR display, was something utterly magical, and bizarre. Couple this with cross-progression and you have the ultimate way to play Cyberpunk on the go, even if you're not new to the game.
There are moments when the game stutters, mainly loading new areas when driving about, and a few little hitches in various areas of Dogtown, but overall? The performance genuinely delighted me. I did notice a few graphical anomalies where the geometry seemed to go bananas (again, mostly in Dogtown), but they never really impacted my time more than, ‘Oh, that’s odd, can I make it happen again?’ Truly, this is the poster child for what ports can look like on Switch 2.
Source: Nintendolife.com
