PC Gamer gave Cyberpunk 2077 a 78 while reviewing the one version that could survive the landing.

The math aint mathing. PC Gamer gave Cyberpunk 2077 a 78%, which is the numerical equivalent of watching a car explode, noticing the cup holders are nice, and recommending the dealership with reservations.

To be fair, this is PC Gamer reviewing the PC version. That is technically their jurisdiction. But this review arrived in the exact launch-window fog where CD Projekt was handing out PC code, console footage was being treated like nuclear material, and the public was about to discover that the PlayStation 4 version performed like a PowerPoint presentation haunted by Keanu Reeves. A review does not have to predict the future, but it should at least notice when the publisher has built a suspiciously tall wall around half the product.

The review's own verdict admits the thing is 'undercut by jarring bugs at every turn' and still lands at 78. Seventy-eight. Not 58. Not 'wait for patches.' Seventy-eight, the score you give a hotel where the lobby is gorgeous but your room occasionally deletes the floor. This is the sacred games journalism ritual: describe a five-alarm fire in the body text, then put a polite brunch score at the top so nobody at the embargo party gets uncomfortable.

And the platform blindness is doing Olympic-level gymnastics here. Yes, PC Gamer reviewed PC. But Cyberpunk 2077 was not a boutique PC-only curiosity; it was the most hyped multiplatform release of the decade. When your review exists inside a controlled pre-release environment, the job is not merely to say 'it ran okay on my machine.' The job is to tell readers what conditions produced that score. Hardware. Settings. Bugs. Restrictions. Missing console code. The whole spreadsheet. Instead, we get a review that correctly sees the cracks, then grades the cathedral like the roof is merely expressing itself.

Cyberpunk later improved dramatically, which is great for Cyberpunk and irrelevant to this review's launch-day arithmetic. A 78 for a broken release is not criticism; it's score laundering with better adjectives. PC Gamer wrote the warning label, then slapped it on a box marked 'mostly fine.' We give this review a 2/10: statistically significant cowardice, with ray tracing.