Cyberpunk 2077
- Released
- 10 December 2020PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions from 15 February 2022
- Platforms
- PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, PS4, Xbox One
- Developer
- CD Projekt Red
- Publisher
- CD Projekt Red
Player ratings read 28 September 2026
The short version. The PS5 Pro patch landed on 7 April 2026, free, and added three modes. Ray Tracing Pro is 1440p upscaled to 4K with PSSR at 30fps, or 40fps if your display does 120Hz. Ray Tracing targets 60fps and drops global illumination to get there. Performance drops the enhanced lighting entirely and reaches around 90fps with VRR. I run Ray Tracing Pro with HDR10 PQ, because I would rather look at this city than move smoothly through it.
This shelf keeps asking one question: does the world stay open. Cyberpunk 2077 gives the most extreme answer I have.
406 hours, and I could not tell you what fraction of them involved a mission. I boot the game up to drive. I walk around. I stop somewhere with a view and stay there. That is not a failure to engage with the content. It is the content, and the fact that a game can sustain that for four hundred hours is the whole recommendation.
Night City
Japantown and Pacifica are not the same place with different textures on the walls. They have different densities, different light, different people, different pace. That sounds like a low bar until you try to think of another open world that clears it.
The neon at night is the reason I keep coming back, and I am aware that is a shallow thing to say about a game with this much writing in it. It is also true. Some worlds are worth being in for their own sake, and this is the best argument for that I have played.
That behaviour has turned up twice on this shelf now. In Red Dead Redemption 2 I keep restarting and stopping at chapter 2. Here I keep loading a save with no plan. The games that have taken the most hours from me are the ones that ask the least of me while I am in them.
It never made me play its way
I settle into netrunner and shooter. Stealth first, hacking as the primary tool, guns that genuinely reward the build. Melee almost never.
The game has never once pushed back on that. There is no encounter that punished me for refusing to punch people, no stretch where the build I had chosen stopped working. That flexibility is easy to claim and rare to deliver.
With one honest exception, and it is a small comic one. The game has boxing in it, which you do have to actually do. My solution was to spec Gorilla Arms for the extra six Body, which is a very Cyberpunk answer to a problem: do not get better at the thing, buy an arm that makes the thing irrelevant.
The endings and the romances are worth the multiple runs too. Romance availability depends on who you built V to be, which means the relationships are not a menu you work through but a consequence of a decision you made hours earlier.
Phantom Liberty, and what expansions can be
Phantom Liberty is the best argument I know for the traditional expansion.
It did not feel like extra missions bolted onto a finished game. Dogtown is its own place with its own logic, the story stands up on its own, and the cyberware rework that came with it changed how the base game plays. Most games would be better for attempting something at that scale instead of a content drop.
Which is a direct rebuttal to something else on this shelf. Game Science decided against a Black Myth: Wukong expansion on the grounds that they would rather build something new than extend something finished. Phantom Liberty is the case for the other side, and I think it is the stronger one, at least when a studio has a world this good to build into.
How it runs on PS5 Pro
CD Projekt Red said no to a Pro patch for a long time and then shipped one on 7 April 2026, free for Pro owners. It is the best-looking console version of this game by a distance, and I can say that first-hand rather than by reading a comparison, because most of my 406 hours predate it. I played a great deal of this game on a base PS5 and then on a Pro before April, so the jump is one I watched happen rather than one I was told about.
Ray Tracing Pro runs at 1440p upscaled to 4K via PSSR, targeting 30fps, or 40fps if you have a 120Hz display, with occasional dips. It adds ray-traced reflections, ambient occlusion and shadows. Ray Tracing uses the same resolution setup and targets 60fps, sacrificing global illumination to get there. Performance drops the enhanced lighting and prioritises latency, reaching roughly 90fps with VRR on a compatible display.
Digital Foundry’s review is enthusiastic about the gains and clear about the limits. The ray-traced reflections mostly show up on windows and glossy car surfaces, with other surfaces still relying on older screen-space techniques, so this is not the full path-traced experience PC players get. And the Pro’s extra hardware does not entirely fix the pop-in that comes with a city this dense.
The two shots above are the same doorway on the same street, taken about 45 in-game hours apart, and between them they show what you are paying frames for.
In the first the ground is dry. There had been no rain, there is no puddle, and it still throws the sign back at you, so what you are looking at is the lighting model rather than the weather. In the second it has rained, and the roof of the parked car in the foreground carries a reflection of the Lizzie’s sign clear enough to read. That second one is worth pausing on, because a car roof is precisely the kind of surface Digital Foundry says the Pro’s ray tracing actually resolves. The limitation and the reason to want it are the same photograph.
I run Ray Tracing Pro. I also run HDR10 PQ, which on my setup makes the image noticeably brighter, and I would call that a preference rather than a fix. If you are chasing responsiveness rather than light, Performance at ~90fps with VRR is a genuinely different game and a legitimate choice.
Who it is for
People who want somewhere to be. People who build a character and want the game to honour it. Anyone who has ever loaded a save with no intention of progressing.
Not for people who need a game to have a point every time they play it. Not for anyone expecting the PC path-traced showcase, because the Pro version is excellent and is not that. And if pop-in bothers you, a city this dense will find your limit.
Verdict: on the shelf. 406 hours across base PS5 and PS5 Pro, currently Ray Tracing Pro with HDR10 PQ, no score. One of the largest hour counts I have given anything, and most of it was spent doing nothing in particular. Red Dead Redemption 2, the other world I never finish
Sources
- Digital Foundry PS5 Pro review, via Notebookcheck, 8 April 2026. Ray Tracing Pro at 1440p to 4K via PSSR, 30fps on 60Hz and 40fps on 120Hz; Ray Tracing targeting 60fps without global illumination; Performance at roughly 90fps with VRR. RT reflections limited to windows and glossy car surfaces; pop-in not fully resolved.
- TechRadar on the PS5 Pro patch, patch released 7 April 2026, free for PS5 Pro owners, upgraded ray-traced lighting, shadows and reflections.
- GameSpot: the Pro update CD Projekt Red once ruled out
- Play impressions and hours: PS5 Pro, 406 hours logged, Ray Tracing Pro mode, HDR10 PQ.