I mean Night City is probably the most beautifully crafted city i have ever seen in any game ,but what is the point of this city if i cant interact with it?you see all these ads ,arcades ,braindance ,all the potential content and it has NOTHING to offer you cant even get a fucking haircut ,compare that with a lower budget game like Yakuza which has a much lower budget but more than 20 unique mini games and many areas and locations that you can visit ,gaming as a medium is first and foremost an interactive medium the more freedom the game gives you the better its going to be.
what made games like Deus ex ,Skyrim ,Fallout NV and DOS 2 so memorable to so many people is how their systems allow you to create your own stories which gave a sense of discovery that you wont find in any other medium ,Cdpr devs wanted to create something special ,they wanted to make an Open world rpg that is interactable ,with many choices and consequences ,with character creation freedom ,something that is an evolution of The Witcher 3 a game that will define the future of open world games ,but sadly marketing and money making took priority it kept canabalizing the game more and more till we got a skeleton of a game that we have now.
Definitely we need minigames so video games will be judged as form of art. lol.
About topic: you can judge something as art only if you have some experience, knowledge about art. That's why older gamers are more eagle to do that.
Video game reviewers won't review soundtrack, because their knowledge about music is close to zero. Do you really want to hear clueless youtubers dicussing music in games? Even movie soundtracks are rarely discussed.
Same you can say about stories in video games, if someone plays only video games (not reading books or watching movies), how he can say story is good or not? For example I've seen comment that V/Johnny relationships is copiedfrom Batman game, if you don't know "Mr Jekkyll and Mr Hyde", "Ghost in the Shell", "Fight Club" etc.sadly it's this kind of copy
Same you can say about people wanting more Jackie in game. Jackie's arc is complete in game. We have full picture, there's nothing to add here.
But you won't see it, if you won't at least try to think more deeply about this character...
Most of reviewers can only say they liked/disliked story, music, graphics, they are not really intellectually capable to make more complex review. Not insulting anyone, it's fact. You can see renowned youtube movie critics, watching must see movie classic, when their channel is already very popular...
Your experience/knowledge will always determine your next experiences with art. Problem with video games, you can skip dialoges, you can skip city by fast travel, there's factor how someone will play game...rush, be patient, enjoy gameplay, not enjoy, it's way more complex than we think.
You can see that video games are not really strong form of art as whole, if game like Cyberpunk mostly references movies/books visually/storywise and game refernces often don't have any artistic form.
Just use one movie as example. Movie is about IIWW (kinda) , but if you see visual references you can perceive it as some kind of western. I think video games are still very far away from this kind of complexity...