Chinese Game Review: Cyberpunk 2077 《赛博朋克2077》

[StChris]

 

As one of the biggest releases of the past few years, the game itself doesn't need much of an introduction, so in this review I want to focus on what makes it such a good Chinese-learning resource. Even for people not usually into games, I think it would still be worth just setting the game to easy mode and exploring its huge open world, taking advantage of all the language practice opportunities along the way. Here's what makes it really a fun and effective way to use and improve your Chinese:

 

- it allows you to set the language of the audio, subtitles and menus separately, so for example you could set the later two to English if you didn't want to go fully Chinese.

 

 

- the Chinese voice acting itself is really good, much better than a lot of TV shows even

 

- you will spend a lot of time in conversations with the characters in the game (all fully voiced) and will have to choose how to respond. For most of these you can take your time and look up unknown vocab in your dictionary, although the person you're talking to will get impatient and tell you to get a move on if you make them wait too long!

 

 

- lots of reading opportunities. While exploring the world you will be exposed to a wide range of situations and contexts, and the type of Chinese used in these will differ accordingly. For example, you will often find yourself reading emails from hacked computers or just text from an ebook you find lying around. The type Chinese in these include super informal with lots of swearing (for example a record of text messages between friends), business emails with lots of corporate speak, poems, essays about history and technology and much more!

 

 

- the same goes with the audio. The type of Chinese you will hear during the game will be as different as listening to the news presenter discussing the latest events on the TV as you ride the elevator to your apartment (which sounds exactly like any CCTV new programme) and overhearing a conversation between two homeless people.

 

As of the time of writing this review the PC version of the game is on sale at 50% off, so now is the perfect time to jump in! 

[LiMo]

It's funny you should post this. I bought this a while back and finally started playing. It's an excellent game. I haven't gone so far as to use Chinese audio but I used Chinese subtitles for a while. I think I'll leave language learning to my second play through. 

 

For anyone else seeing this. It's the last day of the Steam sale so jump on it quick. It's not cheap at full price!

[StChris]

To be honest, I'm not really into these super long 50+ hours games, but the addition of the Chinese added an extra layer of fun and challenge that convinced me to go for it. It's a really fun game though, and I'm sure I would have enjoyed it in English too. I suppose the worst thing about using the Chinese audio is that you miss out on Keanu Reeve's voice acting, but all the Chinese actors do a great job!

 

Steam normally has a winter sale too in late December, so look out around that period if you miss the summer sale and can't pay full price.