Cyberpunk 2077 on Nintendo Switch 2 is technical wizadry, but it's not perfect

If you want a game to show how surprisingly powerful the Nintendo Switch 2 is, Cyberpunk 2077 might just be your best option. There is nothing that better ignites the sense of novelty in seeing such incredible high-fidelity games being played on a handheld device. If you remember when the pinnacle of handheld gaming was Pokémon Red & Blue, then laying in bed holding a screen rendering Night City at 40fps is the kind of mind-blowing future technology you could only dream of as a kid, and in a world where we’ve gotten used to devices like the Steam Deck, I’m glad something can still produce that feeling of wonder in me.

All that said, it’s by no means a flawless experience. The game does run at a steady 40fps when you’re just cruising around and exploring, but when the action gets more intense, things do get a little choppier. Weirdly, thanks to handheld mode having VRR, it’s actually an overall smoother experience playing it handheld in performance mode, which is where you’ll get 30fps even in more intense situations, as opposed to the shaky 40fps you get when playing with performance mode while docked.

This mostly holds true when you approach the Phantom Liberty content, too, though there, you’ll find quality mode starts to struggle to even hold 30fps during its more spectacular moments; but they are just moments, the vast majority of the time, performance isn’t much of an issue.

The same can’t be said for the game’s various control schemes. There is the standard controller stuff, which works perfectly fine, but aside from that, you have a couple of unique options. Firstly, you can aim using the Joy-Con’s gyros, and lol, no. I sure wish Nintendo would just let the Wii die and stop putting motion controls into stuff. I still don’t understand why game developers believe that making me think harder about the controller in my hands is somehow more immersive.

The other is the Joy-Con mouse controls, which are new to the Switch 2 and not very well thought out, at least in Cyberpunk. When you switch to this mode, you need to turn your right Joy-Con on its side, and the developers had the foresight here to switch the “fire” button from ZR to the R bumper, which on the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons extends down the side of it to be more like a mouse button. However, the game’s combat system still requires you to use the face buttons, and in order to have those buttons easily accessible to you while holding the Joy-Con flat to my desk for the mouse tracking, I have to hold it at an incredibly awkward angle that had my wrists aching within minutes.

Third parties are already coming out with mouse accessories to help with this, but it doesn’t change the fact that having to press the face buttons while the Joy-Con needs to remain perfectly on its side is too awkward to be viable for a first-person shooter, especially one that only runs at 30-40fps. However, if you’re someone like me who really struggles to play an FPS with joysticks, then there is some reprieve as this edition of the game does support mouse and keyboard. You can plug them into your Switch 2’s dock via the USB ports and control the game that way, which is a very nice thing I wasn’t expecting it to have.

So it’s a bit of a faff to find the right setup for you, but once you have it, Nintendo Switch 2 is a perfectly cromulent way to play Cyberpunk 2077. It’s by no means the best way, as it has performance issues and limitations that the other current-gen versions don’t have, but it’s still Cyberpunk 2077; it’s still one of the best western RPGs in recent memory, and the novelty I get out of playing it on a handheld device never ceases to make me smile.

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