Cyberpunk 2077: Turf Wars review - a shocking genre flip
Overview & Key Takeaways
Dave & Busters had the arcade exclusive on the new Cyberpunk game, and we've finally played it
It bears repeating because it’s still hard to imagine: Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the great comeback stories of modern gaming. After a disastrous launch, with bugs so severe that Sony temporarily removed the game from the PlayStation Store, the team at CD Projekt Red refined every element of the play. In 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 was a laughing stock. In 2022, Cyberpunk 2077 was everything action RPGheads dreamt of. In 2026, CD Projekt Red is crewing up for Cyberpunk 2, which will undoubtedly be hyped beyond belief (at least once Witcher 4 finally drops).
Cyberpunk 2077’s viability as a multimedia franchise is proof positive that the creatives at CDPR had a thing worth fighting for after the economic-driven demands of its first release nearly cratered it. The tabletop RPG version of the property, which predates CD Projekt Red’s AAA title, has only become more popular. The Phantom Liberty DLC redeemed lingering frustrations. The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime is revered (and award-winning). The official Cyberpunk TCG broke Kickstarter records and could become its own pillar in the gaming community. Six years later, the property is hot — which makes the fact that an entire sequel to the game has slipped under most fans’ radars: Cyberpunk 2077: Turf Wars.
Unless you’ve been to your local Dave & Busters in the last year, you have not played Cyberpunk: Turf Wars, the franchise’s first arcade cabinet (and released exclusively to D&B in 2025) . When I stumbled upon Turf Wars earlier this month, I eeped at the discovery and a chance to play what I assume was a first-person light-gun shooter that would put the original game’s open-world on rails. It’s easy to imagine “Time Crisis for Neon City.” Surprisingly, that’s exactly what Turf Wars isn’t.
Developed by LAI Games and manufactured by Sega Amusements Cyberpunk 2077’s arcade iteration is basically a 19th-century Coney Island shooting gallery dragged into the modern age. One or two players wield mounted airsoft rifles and blast away at physical targets. Projected images turn those physical objects into enemies, civilians, and power-ups. The whole thing has heft and grit: I have not shot many real guns in my life, but I was surprised by the bulky faux firearm’s recoil. Disturbing but true, the Cyberpunk 2077: Turf Wars rifle will jolt your body more than an AR-15.
Photo: Polygon
Maybe one day I will understand the “story” behind Turf Wars’ story mode but the gist is really vibes: it’s you versus rival gangs in the neon-soaked future world that console players know from the game. Other modes include a co-op for the story mode and a “versus” challenge designed for maximum bragging rights. There’s also a single-player sniper mode to give the game a bit of extraction-shooter-level stakes where limited ammo and tighter civilian shots pivot the game from a race-against-time experience to one where ever pull of the trigger counts.
The primal simplicity of Turf Wars feels staggering in the current arcade scene, which is rarely aiming for the basic pleasure of playing arcade games. Places like Dave & Busters and Chuck E. Cheese operate like casinos, and the non-ticketed games are mostly all mobile ports on giant vertical screens. The “retrocade” and “barcade” concepts exist to give lost Q-Bert cabinets a safe home yet rarely find room for modern originality. Somehow the pinball space is richer than video games — Pokémon just got one.
So, despite being a year late to D&B’s exclusive Cyberpunk 2077 game, consider me head over heels for it by virtue of its very existence. When Redditors caught wind this is how the series would enter arcades, they flipped out it wasn’t a light-gun game. To which I say: Why do the exact same thing at a different scale? What’s the point? Based on Edgerunners and the TCG, that’s not even the Cyberpunk playbook at this point.
Just like CDPR did with the core game, Turf Wars pairs newfangled design with time-proven mechanics for a singular live experience. The game won’t replace Cyberpunk 2 in anyone’s heart, but it’s a great reminder that the franchise prevailed and has plenty of room for expansion.
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The future of Cyberpunk is heart — real characters, real stakes, and a story that cuts deeper than chrome, unlike 2077.
