Cyberpunk is usually a platform to examine corporate overreach, the chasmous rich/poor divide, or transhumanism in general. Everyone’s hardships are dumped on you relentlessly, and few of them are worthwhile.ĭespite all the dialogue, the game doesn’t have much to say. While the lack of a compelling gameplay hook is forgiven by the excellent aesthetic, underneath is a directionless narrative that never takes off.Ī major part of the issue is that none of the characters are particularly interesting, and some of them are simply annoying, but the game is committed to its world-building, so each one of them will provide you with ample backstory, whether you want to hear it or not. Swelling synth underlines all the driving and drama masterfully.Ĭloudpunk styles itself as a noir story, but it’s here that it stumbles the hardest. The music is also pretty spot-on, capturing the cyberpunk style quite well. You barely even notice the chunky cubes unless you get in close. Interestingly, this is all done in a voxel art style, but rather than using it to attempt a lo-fi visual style, it’s quite subtle and blends in well. The city is lively and believable, even with all its fantastical elements. Giant signs glow from monstrous buildings, flying cars zoom around in careful rows, bright lights illuminate windows, the city is drenched in an eternal rain it’s a visual treat. The cyberpunk city is well-realized, ripped straight out of Bladerunner. Not in the traditional sense of pushing polygons, but rather in its aesthetic. That may sound rather dull, but it’s helped by the fact that the game is absolutely gorgeous. You fly your car to a parking space, hop out, and you’re free to hit up the merchants or talk to passersby on the way to your destination. Gameplay is broken up into two modes: flying and walking. It’s not always so simple, but that’s the core of it. The gameplay loop generally involves going to a location to collect a package, then traveling to its destination. There are two rules at Cloudpunk: Don’t miss a delivery and don’t ever ask what’s in the package.Īctually, we’re told those are more of guidelines, which is a good thing, because the second rule is never, ever followed. She’s run into some financial trouble, so she takes a job as a courier for an elicit delivery company, Cloudpunk. Rania is a new citizen of Nivalis, a city of towering skyscrapers and cloudy streets, where it never seems to stop raining. Cloudpunk is essentially Flying Car: The Game, and it knows it.Ĭloudpunk (PC, Switch, Xbox One, PS4) It’s an aesthetic we haven’t seen much in video games, so how about a game that is all about it. Rows of soaring lumps of metal speeding through the air between massive neon-lit skyscrapers. Movies like Bladerunner and The Fifth Element offer a tantalizing peek into the air traffic nightmare that is flying cars. People can barely drive when they have four wheels on the pavement putting them hundreds of meters into the air just means they have further to fall when they botch parallel parking.īut it was a nice dream. Where once we were practically promised that we’d one day be soaring above the streets during the morning commute, we’ve now accepted that, yeah, maybe that’s not such a good idea. Welcome to Nivalis, home of the mid-air collisionįlying cars seem to have become a thing of the past.
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