![]() ![]() For the most part you’re just slowly flying a hover car listening to people talk. The walking sections are common but not the focus. The HOVA itself flies slow enough that it is maneuverable but doesn’t ever get a particular sense of speed when driving it around. In fact, between the dark color pallet and Synth-ambient music, I found myself struggling to stay awake while playing on a number of occasions once Raina’s com went quiet. I did a couple of times on accident and found that I had a smorgasbord of random things that never ended up having a purpose in my 13 hours of play time. You fly to an objective listening to the dialogue, land, walk around picking up collectibles, most of which didn’t appear to do much other than fill up an inventory that I never had to open. As mentioned before, the whole game feels like a walk-and-talk. It’s a shame then that with all the solid background elements and features in the game, that the gameplay itself is lacking. You can breathe in the scenery easier, and the camera controls are better. You’re going to want to stick to this more distant view in most circumstances though. On foot sections can be played from this distant third person view as well as a behind the back 3rd person, and 1st person perspectives. Plenty of those one off conversations or side mission stories are pretty enjoyable too. This goes for the story characters as well as the side characters. The voice acting is solid with only a couple odd portrait/vocal matchings. It tackles all of these themes well and it never struck me as condescending. I will say that while it deals with common Cyberpunk themes: the value of the individual, the evil of uncaring corporate feudalism, transhumanism, the way our luck and money changes how we see the world, etc. The story is the second best part of the game so I don’t want to spoil anything. The story is good, if not somewhat predictable at times, and I found myself caring about the constantly talking pictures that were floating on the bottom of the screen. There aren’t any cinematics, but it is still clear that story was the main focus of development. In fact I would go so far as to say that this entire game plays out like the Rockstar Games style walk-and-talk sections. Then you disengage with them and are almost immediately contacted by either your HOVA’s on board AI named Camus, a software designed to act like a beloved dog, or one of another2-3 quest givers you meet along the way.Ĭonversation and character dialogue are nearly constant if you’re actively pursuing the main story objectives. During conversation the voxel person you’re speaking with appears in a highly detailed, mildly surrealistic portrait on the bottom of the screen with the spoken dialogue subtitled next to it. Typically an NPC, and engage them in a short conversation. The game is essentially a delivery sim, you fly your HOVA to a spot on the map, land it at a parking spot, and walk around platforms of various sizes and complexity until you find what you’re looking for. ![]() The setting and atmosphere here are strong enough that I wanted to care about the inhabitants based on the strength of the world alone. It’s the same feeling I’ve had seeing downtown Denver lit up after dark. I found myself wondering what all the little voxel stick-figures behind the lights in the windows were doing, whether they were working late or if they just ran out to keep their HOVA (this games version of hover cars) from getting towed and forgot to catch the lights on the way out. It isn’t perfect of course, there are a couple of areas where you can clearly watch far off buildings slowly grow into existence as you fly closer, but in the moment to moment it’s truly impressive. This game uses voxel art (if you’re unfamiliar, think three-dimensional pixel art made of small cubes rather than other shapes of polygons). Let’s start with the game’s feature that provides the most striking initial impression: The visuals. ![]() Point A to Point B and the Sky in Between Can it stand up next to the two cousins it has in the genre as well as on its own merits? Let’s talk about it in our Cloudpunk review. This review will focus on the console edition since the PC version came out back in April. Part of this trifecta of gloomy hyper-techno future is Cloudpunk: an ambitious freshman outing for indie studio Ion Lands out of Germany. With Ghost Runner having recently been released on consoles and Cyberpunk 2077 coming out in December, there’s plenty in which to indulge. ![]() This fall is an exciting time for fans of the genre as three cyberpunk games are being released. Cities consisting of needlessly massive super structures reaching into the sky, the potential complexity and variation of NPCs one could interact with, all the elevators to hide load times strewn everywhere: it just makes so much sense. Cyberpunk is a genre and setting you would expect to be far more prevalent in video games than it is. ![]()
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