UPDATE:
With over 30 reviews in, it seems more publications had received a copy than we'd initially thought!
It's currently rated "Mighty" and hovering around a 90 top critic average.
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Original story:
If you've been waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 reviews to start rolling into OpenCritic, today is the day, but it might be too soon to expect many to appear, while even a single score seems unlikely for embargo day. Here's why.
The review embargo for Cyberpunk 2077 lifts today, December 7 at 9 am Pacific. When the embargo is lifted, publications will be allowed to start sharing their thoughts on the year's biggest game. However, very few outlets received review copies ahead of time. In fact, in North America, the PR team working on game key distribution had sent out no codes to anyone as of last Friday. That means the only outlets playing Cyberpunk 2077 have been those who either got a copy of the game from a different PR company or were able to procure a copy thanks to a broken street date.
Put simply, it will be very difficult for outlets to review a game that touts over 100 hours of content in such a limited amount of time.
On places such as Reddit, players who bought the game and received their shipments early have been sharing gameplay footage, but as they're all full of spoilers and not permitted just yet, we won't be sharing them. Many have been taken down using YouTube's copyright system. Suffice it to say, despite the review embargo lifting today, very few people in the world are yet to even boot up Cyberpunk 2077.
With that in mind, you can expect a slow trickle of reviews to come in starting today, and perhaps even a few that are scored from outlets that may have had the game for longer. But for most of the games industry, the first interactions with Cyberpunk 2077 will begin this week ahead of or on the game's December 10 launch.
On OpenCritic, we require at least five scored reviews to form an average review score, and though we may not find many reviews published with the embargo lift, we do anticipate enough to form that aggregate score. Then, over the coming days - and let's be honest, weeks - we'll see more reviews pouring in, first as "review in progress" features as critics tackle the massive game several hours at a time, before weighing in with their final verdicts sometime in December or January.
If you're reading this before 9 am on December 7, come on back at that time to see the first-ever Cyberpunk 2077 reviews in the world. And if that time has already come, well then we've already got your first look at the game's critical reception after its massive, sometimes controversial seven-plus year development campaign. Check out Cyberpunk 2077 reviews right here.
