A gorgeous and relaxing Cyberpunk game.


I originally played on the Switch and that was a big mistake, I get that the Switch has hardware limitations but the dev said they'd better optimize the game but never did sadly. I bought it again for PS4 and got a free PS5 upgrade. This PS5 patch significantly upgrades graphics, frame rates, load times, and draw distance. There is no combat or real challenge just sit back and relax. I love the idea of being a delivery driver in a Cyberpunk setting. Music was very chill and I love it since I'm the kind of guy who loves to vibe with it. You have the option to fly around in your HOVA in First person view which I didn't use much since it made it difficult to park. There are many side quest to do where you help people who are struggling to live. You will make choices which gives this game replay value. The architecture is out of this world beautiful, and the better draw distance compliments that. One thing I do want to point out is that this game has a 3D pixelated art style, if that bothers you I don't recommend this game. Also you will get lost A LOT. Some of these areas are very complex.

Like many other Cyberpunk games this game truly lets you know how dark this future you live is. You'll meet all kinds of characters going through tough times. Their stories can really make you sympathetic. Story was pretty good. Your choices will hurt people for you own personal gain or you can help people out of the goodness of your heart but then again doing the right thing doesn't always benefit you. Voice acting sometimes feels forced and emotionless. It feels like they didn't really put their heart into it. And the world building and lore is great.

This game can get really boring at times but definitely had so much fun. The city of Nivalas is neon joy to behold and I'm very thankful for the PS5 patch which made my experience all the more better. While I do like this game the biggest problem with this game is the fact the developers don’t care enough for this game. There are so many bugs and glitches that haven’t been addressed nor fixed on the PS5 and the Switch version was NEVER optimized as promised.

Cloudpunk é bem atmosférico, e sabe usar essa característica tão bem adornada para te prender durante todo o jogo.

Não se trata de um jogo com mecânicas complexas, é simplesmente ir e vir, entregar pacotes e fazer escolhas binárias ao longo do trajeto. Mas os cenários e os personagens fazem, com excelência, que o jogo se torne muito mais significativo do que dizer,, como muitos já o fizeram nessa site, "a strand type game".

As dublagens também merecem ser destacadas, todos os personagens, sem exceções, foram muito bem representados.

Cloudpunk não é perfeito, porém. Em diversos momentos dirigir não foi tão prazeroso quanto deveria ser, seja por questões de mecânica quanto por fatores de otimização geral.

Enfim, jogue! É um jogo no mínimo interessante.

"É mais facil imaginar o fim do mundo do que o fim do capitalismo" Mark Fisher

Cloudpunk é a síntese de um mundo no mais tardio momento do capitalismo tardio, um mundo cheio de luzes neon e outdoors que fazem propaganda de uma vida melhor em que completa uma grande catarse com o quão cinza e sem vida o mesmo mundo é. Seus gráficos poligonais constroem uma cidade em colapso diante o próprio sistema, suas linhas de texto mostram um mundo sem esperança, onde os ideias capitais se encontro tão subjugados nos sentimentos das pessoas que o simples ato de viver parece absurdo.

É a dicotomia entre ser e essência, entre a estrutura e o discurso, entre a euforia e a melancolia.

A toda hora surgem diálogos sobre plantar arvores e construir lugares para crianças se divertir são movimentos de protesto, sobre o ato de se suicidar quando não se é mais produtivo é algo bem visto pela sociedade e sobre a arte ser apenas um produto de uma industria. Tais reflexões são o âmago de Cloudpunk e seu ponto mais alto.

Quando se busca pra outros quesitos técnicos do jogo, Cloudpunk se torna diminuto, sua gameplay de direção é medíocre, não chega a ser algo ruim mas também não é nada demais, se tornando enjoativa e repetitiva com o passar do tempo; os NPCs nos quais a protagonista conversa por diversas vezes não correspondem quanto a arte que representa eles nas linhas de diálogo e seu modelo poligonal.


No entanto nada disso tira o brilho, ou melhor, a melancolia deste game, é uma síntese politica do sistema vigente e como isso subjuga a essência da humanidade.

Jogue sabendo das limitações e sabendo o que esperar (textos e textos). Dito isso, Cloudpunk é fantástico.

The cyberpunk atmosphere is great, the story is interesting and yes, the social criticism is a bit in your face but still quite clever in places^^ Cool main character and really cool graphics style with a voxel look... but it does have a few problems: some of the paths are really extremely long and nothing happens, the atmosphere comes across well but it quickly becomes very boring. It's also nonsensical that parking and boosting are on the same button, when parking I don't want to speed up but slow down :D and it's annoying that conversations are held in the car without me having a destination point, so I sometimes have to stand around stupidly or drive around pointlessly to reach the end of the conversation and get a destination.

I've enjoyed a lot of my time with Cloudpunk but it's definitely a game that I think is difficult to recommend. Ultimately I do recommend it, but I think it's important to know what you're in for. I'll start with the good.

Nivallis is gorgeous. It's easy to forget the whole city is made up of voxels, honestly. The RTX makes it look even more gorgeous. Driving your HOVA around and even taking in the sights on foot contains some fever dream moments that please me as a fan of Blade Runner and similar cyberpunk worlds. The developers knew it would be this way too, as they included a dedicated button to turn off the HUD (right D-pad on controller!) So you can get some really pretty pictures, and cinematic pans as you soak all the neon in.

The HOVA drives exceptionally well, and it was very fun to zip around at high speeds when it was required. Driving a HOVA takes up probably 75% of the game, so having the driving controls be intuitive and dialed in enough to not be frustrating in any way is vital for what this game is trying to accomplish, so I definitely appreciated that they nailed that.

Cloudpunk also contains some great “cyberpunk” stories and conundrums. The narratives are at their best when they're exploring ethics and morality surrounding futuristic ideas like androids, automata, individuality, and megacorps. It's provoked some fun thinking in those regards and more with its rhetoric, and I absolutely am glad the writing is as good as it is in those breakthrough moments to facilitate that.

The true bread and butter of Cloudpunk is a combination of all of these things strung together through loosely linear delivery missions that made for a great “cozy” cyberpunk game. Nothing about Cloudpunk requires a lot of brain power, as much of the game loop is easy to understand, though a bit tedious and monotonous. But that pairing makes it an excellent game to play alongside watching TV or listening to a podcast or something. In that sense, I'm calling it a Strand-lite. It's not quite as demanding as Death Stranding and it definitely doesn't have as many engaging systems to compete on that AAA level, but the core of Cloudpunk still elicits some of the same emotions I had while playing Death Stranding (not to mention their obvious connection through deliveries).

But Cloudpunk is still difficult to recommend and here are a few points as to why.

The voice work is B-tier, at best. I can tell that a few voice actors tried to do many different parts, so I would constantly hear inklings of familiar voices throughout Nivalis. I also thought that a lot of the line deliveries didn’t land and they sounded like… I don’t know, an audiobook at best. I think that will be charming for some, but for me, I actually would have preferred a grunt for the text boxes or something similar, leaving the rest up for my mind’s interpretation.

The vendors and items wholly don’t matter. I’m amazed that there are so many vendors in Nivalis, you have food vendors and drug dealers, and smugglers of every kind, all of them with about 3 potentially unique items for sale. But there’s a catch. The items don’t do much of anything. The drugs provide small speed boosts at best, and the food… not sure if that has any effects. The items, from what I understand, such as clothes and things serve no purpose other than to exist for you to game the market and resell at a potential profit, which is cool if you need to do that. But I beat the game and had enough money for all the HOVA upgrades and apartment upgrades without needing to do that. There is no reason to interact with any of the vendors in Nivalis other than for a few achievements should you be seeking them, and the simple gimmicky nature of it… so why bother having them here at all? If the vast majority of items serve no purpose I wonder why the time was spent to include them at all?

The collectibles feel very shoehorned in. Many of them you just collect for resell value which is practically the only reason to speak with any NPC outside of deliveries. Others go towards a large collect-a-thon quest. I think the city would be a bit boring without them, as it does give you the incentive to visit new places, but I almost wish that these items served a greater purpose other than just resale value.

Picking up and playing Cloudpunk showed me that this studio has so much potential. The other day I saw their reveal for Nivalis, what I’m assuming is another cyberpunk game, and in the same world, kicked up a notch, and I’m super here for that. I think if they can iron out some of the finer details they’ll have a game that I won’t hesitate to recommend, and will certainly be eager to play. I’m very interested in keeping a close eye on them to see what they do next.

Ultimately I do recommend Cloudpunk but I know it’s not for everyone, and it’s not going to be the best experience for all players. There is a niche collective of people that will enjoy it as I have, and I think you’ll know if you’re that kind of person just by looking at screenshots and videos of the early stages of the game. It’s cozy, a bit tedious, cyberpunk, and just a superb little jam you can play on the couch, and if that sounds like your thing, pick it up and give it a go.

I came to this conclusion after playing Cloudpunk for a little over 11 hours primarily on SteamDeck, in offline mode (Steam does not add offline hours to your playtime). When I played on PC, I played on my RTX 3070 and Ryzen 7. Performance was great for both, though on SteamDeck it needed a lot of power to perform, which required a lot of cooling, and ultimately became the reason I ditched my crappy, whiney Delta fans and upgraded to the quieter set in my first-ever self-repair. So thanks for that Cloudpunk, lol.

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Cyberpunk é um subgênero da ficção científica caracterizado por um foco em alta tecnologia e baixa qualidade de vida.

Eu sou apaixonado por essa temática, acho incrível como é possível enxergar no nosso próprio mundo os embriões de várias idéias apresentadas em histórias desse gênero.

Mundos dominados por megacorporações, gentrificação urbana, propagandas em absolutamente todos os lugares possíveis e imagináveis, cidades cada vez maiores e verticais além de problemas sociais cada vez maiores porém relegados a segundo plano.

Meu nome é Thiago Lopes e o que me cativa em tudo isso é o fato de ser algo perfeitamente factível de acontecer em um futuro não tão distante.

Enquanto nos encontramos cada vez mais afastados de um mundo medieval ao ponto de histórias com essa temática parecerem cada vez mais recheadas de fantasia, a temática Cyberpunk dialoga diretamente com o nosso mundo atual e com os problemas existentes nele.

Se Neuromancer, de William Gibson é provavelmente a obra literária suprema dentro desse gênero, em termos visuais provavelmente a estética cunhada por Blade Runner é o que habita o nosso imaginário coletivo.

Mas na minha imaginação, apesar de Blade Runner ainda ditar o que eu considero como a caracterização de um mundo Cyberpunk, não é o filme que me vem a mente, mas sim o jogo do finado westwood studios.

Esse jogo era basicamente um point and click investigativo, eu lembro pouca coisa da história, mas o que me marcou e me faz lembrar desse jogo até hoje é justamente a sua ambientação, a construção daquele universo e como aquilo tudo era apresentado.

E eu não sei dizer se existiu algum tipo de inspiração nesse jogo por parte do pessoal do Ionlands, estúdio responsável por Cloudpunk, mas o tempo todo que passei com Raina e Camus parecia que eu estava jogando algo naquele mesmo universo. Talvez pela ambientação, ou talvez pelo uso de Voxels nos personagens, mas a verdade é que eu não conseguia parar de comparar os dois jogos.

Cloudpunk é mais um daqueles jogos que te pega de surpresa, apresentado inicialmente como um jogo de entregas em um futuro distópico, rapidamente as entregas deixam de ser o centro da ação e o jogo começa a ganhar corpo.

Mas vamos partir do começo, Raina é uma recém chegada na cidade de Nivalis, e essa é a sua primeira noite trabalhando para Cloudpunk. Um serviço de entregas semi-legalizado sediado na cidade. A bordo de seu Hova, um carro capaz de voar pela cidade e acompanhado por Camus, uma inteligência artificial instalada no Hova e que já foi o seu cachorro, cabe a Raina efetuar as entregas determinadas pelo seu contato na Cloudpunk.

A cidade é gigantesca e a Cloudpunk atende a todas as camadas da sociedade, desde a sua medula, onde vivem aqueles que não podem pagar por moradia até as torres de marfim que perfuram o céu cinzento.

O jogo é baseado em histórias e apesar de muitas delas serem desenvolvidas a partir das entregas repassadas a você por Controle, o seu contato com a Cloudpunk, eu senti que as histórias mais interessantes se encontram ao abordar pessoas aleatórias na rua.

Por se tratar de um jogo pequeno, é claro que o estúdio não teria como criar diálogos para qualquer um que você encontrasse na rua, então só existem algumas pessoas com as quais você pode conversar, mas o trabalho em tornar a cidade de Nivalis em algo vivo é de tirar o chapéu.

O fio condutor da história são as entregas, e em diversos momentos é possível escolher o que fazer com elas. É interessante como o jogo te deixa no escuro sobre a maioria das consequências de suas ações mas ainda assim parece que você realmente está fazendo alguma diferença naquele mundo.

O trânsito é caótico, as pessoas se espalham pelas ruas e interagem entre si, vendedores, traficantes de droga, oficiais da Corpsec, empresa responsável pela manutenção da lei, humanos, autômatos, andróides, e toda sorte de “pessoas” se encontram espalhados pela cidade e adicionam uma camada a mais na ambientação do jogo.

A cada entrega Rania é recompensada com créditos que podem ser usados para abastecer o Hova, comprar modificações que melhorem a sua performance ou até mesmo itens cosméticos para o seu apartamento.

Pilotar o Hova de Raina pela cidade é extremamente divertido, os controles respondem como esperado e o fato de não precisar se manter em uma pista pré determinada causa uma sensação de realmente estar livre naquela cidade.

Ao estacionar o Hova é possível caminhar pela cidade e recolher cada um dos coletáveis que se encontram espalhados pelo mapa. Também é nesse momento que se torna possível conhecer pessoas e saber mais sobre a história delas. É nesse momento também que surge a minha maior crítica ao jogo, sua câmera esquizofrênica.

Durante a pilotagem do Hova a câmera funciona muito bem, possuindo até mesmo a opção de mantê-la presa a traseira do carro ou soltá-la para que você observe o mundo a sua volta. Mas ao descer do carro os ângulos de câmera passam a ser fixos, o que acaba causando “brigas” sérias entre a câmera e os controles. Nada sério, mas incomoda e acaba impedindo que você observe melhor o cenário em alguns momentos.

O que é uma pena, porque o jogo é lindíssimo. Ele possui uma estética diferenciada, tudo no jogo é construído com Voxels. Pra quem nunca ouviu falar em Voxel, ele seria o equivalente 3D ao pixel. Minecraft por exemplo é outro jogo totalmente construído com Voxel.

Mas o visual de Cloudpunk é realmente um show a parte. O que o estúdio conseguiu fazer com essa tecnologia, a paleta de cor utilizada, a iluminação do cenário e o uso inteligente de partículas criaram um visual de tirar o fôlego. Eu tirei diversos screenshots e se eu pudesse pedir só uma coisa pros Devs seria um modo foto.

A trilha sonora também é muito bem feita e trabalha totalmente a favor da ambientação. As vozes também são muito bem feitas, apesar de ser nítida a diferença de qualidade entre personagens principais e secundários. Mas para um jogo que podia facilmente ser apenas legendado, o esforço de fazer com que todos os diálogos fossem dublados é louvável.

Além disso, o jogo já foi lançado com as legendas totalmente em português e a localização se encontra muito bem feita.

Cloudpunk já estava no meu radar a algum tempo por conta do seu visual, mas ainda assim acabou superando muito as minhas expectativas. Visual belíssimo, narrativa que prende, excelente trilha sonora, voice acting de qualidade mas o que realmente me prendeu foi a sua ambientação.

Eu curti demais o jogo e assim como o jogo de Blade Runner fez parte do meu imaginário durante anos, eu acredito que por enquanto, quando eu pensar em um universo Cyberpunk vai ser o jogo da Ionlands que me virá a mente.

Cloudpunk is an open world simulation game where you make deliveries with your flying vehicle in the Cyberpunk universe. Of course, while you are doing all this, all kinds of things and events will happen to you on your first day of work, and you will begin to understand the people living in Nivalis and the events that are happening one by one. The game has done a pretty successful job as an atmosphere. You can relax with rain and retrowave music while traveling through the skies of the Cyberpunk universe with your flying car. Although the side quests and the main story are a bit monotonous and boring, the game is quite successful as an indie. Of course, there are many things that need to be improved, but I can say that it is one of the most successful Cyberpunk games on the market right now.

Cloudpunk is more an immersive mood piece than it is as a compelling video game. The sparse gameplay elements are more an afterthought, tacked onto a stylistically competent if cliche cyberpunk dystopia. To me it makes the creators seem almost desperate, more proud of the world they've rendered than eager for me to play their actually viable interactive game. The third person camera is pulled way back - so far that it is sometimes hard to discern the player character from the blocky denizens of this trite metropolis. They're practically begging you to take your hand off the keyboard to step back and marvel at the volume of voxels displayed.

But is the world truly that interesting? It's a one note cyberpunk megalopolis, where even though individual apartment blocks are visually distinct, they lack an emotional distinction. What remains is a muddy pastiche of obvious influences without a coherent design statement of its own. I searched for something to attach to here, but was left floating on the breeze.

I don't doubt that some will love the atmospheric driving, revel in the tales told on the radio, and fall into a complacent enjoyment of Cloudpunk's meager interactivity. Certainly this looked compelling enough for me to try it. But just like the city itself, looks can be deceiving. With a little more edge, a little more focus, and a lot more player input, perhaps Cloudpunk could have risen beyond it's mood board aspirations.

I was really hoping to enjoy this. In theory it sounded pretty cool, a cyberpunk delivery game that would use the framework to explore the moral grayness and themes of the setting through driving around delivering packages to people.

Now, that is still a fairly good description of what the game is at a surface level and in all honesty I could see others enjoying it more than I did. The main issue is twofold. One is that gameplay is not particularly deep, this in itself is fine. Driving doesnt require much finesse or speed, the time limits are generous and any damage done by bumping into stuff is swiftly repaired with basically no cost other than a tiny fine.

There is also a lot of just parking and then walking to your destination that can get tiresome at times. There are collectibles about that serve some sidequests and general vendor trash acquisition and sometimes there will even be an NPC or two to interact with (I will note my favourite characters are the entirely optional encounter with a gang dedicated to urban renewal).

I will reiterate however that prioritising story over gameplay is fine (I enjoy walking sims from time to time) and whilst ideally you would use your gameplay as storytelling, dialogue heavy games are A-Okay with me. However and heres where we get into the real crux of what made me stop playing : your story has to be good!

You may have noticed I have abandoned this game, so maybe it all really gets redeemed by the end but in the 3.5 hours Ive played I got no indication that my issues with the narrative would be adressed. First of all most of the dialogue feels redundant and overwritten, most exchanges went on for longer than they needed or felt natural to. Second of all, the protagonist is pretty unlikeable. And she is supposed to be. They do this thing where most jobs require you to interact with some 2dimensional rich asshole or another so Rania can get sarky at them but shes also kind of an asshole herself. The voice acting in general is spotty (save for your tech support guy, his performance is nice and layered I thought) but good god is Rania's actress incapable of emoting. Maybe she got bad direction or maybe its just her annoying "american equivalent of Received Pronunciation" accent but it made me sour on her.

Another thing that whoever came up with the idea for the dog character should be tried in the Hague. Disclaimer : I am not a dog person, so maybe this is really cute to someone who is but having a human voice a "dog" character AI who has actual human speech but in what we imagine a dog would speak like for the majority of this game is not endearing, its just stupid and embarassing.

Anyways I had enough of this and I doubt I will be revisiting it anytime soon. It is a shame cause the world is fairly well realized visualky and the music is alright.

"We need to help each other. Help each other be better. Like saving a little girl. Everything is so complicated in the city. You do something and it is a bit good but a bit bad too. But saving the little girl is only good. I can't explain it very well." - Camus (not the philosopher but a Dog Automata)

Cloudpunk is a game with a lot of heart. It is set in a dystopian mega-city were corporation have absolute control like so many other cyberpunk games/ media - but this one is actually punk. The cyberpunk genre wasn't just used for a cool look and setting (even though the game is incredibly gorgeous and even made me like its "voxel graphics") but instead to tell a multifaceted story about worker exploitation, several forms of discrimination but also about the ordinary lives of people.

As a delivery driver you will meet all kinds of people. Exploited workers, Androids that want to live as humans (but can't because they can't legally buy the pharmaceutical products to get closer to passing as human), debate bros, white supremacist conspiracy theorists, rich snobs, a video game archeologist, internet celebrities (that want to use your cool exotic cultural symbols for their next music video), music enthusiasts (that play secret shows not approved by corporations) and my favourite: a gang that does the most hardcore shit against corporations: urban gardening and building community spaces like playgrounds on disused corporate property.

This game is just so full of cool commentary and heartfelt dialogs. While many might dismiss it as an "elaborate walking simulator" - which it is, driving around the city, picking up stuff and talking to people aren't the most gamey things to do in this game. But personally I really enjoyed driving around the city and just feeling the vibes. Shit's cool. Shit's punk.

P.S. the only complaint I have is that the Switch port I played isn't the best. It takes quite a while to load between areas and freezes for a couple of seconds when you reach an area. So I wouldn't recommend you getting the Switch port... If I didn't like driving around the city while laying in bed so much.

Cloudpunk caught me by surprise. After being close to put it down in the first hours, I surpassed the point of being intrigued, by how things are going to shape up for us. As a delivery-driver, we are hovering through the cyberpunk-metropolis of Nivalis trying to make a living, getting caught up in criminal activities and ticking boxes. The gameplay loop is plain and simple - pick up package, drive to location and deliver. But the conversations with our dog automata Camus spice up the long, repetitive rides. The encounters are meaningful and the writing is surprisingly good. Even the choice of an edgy voxel-look does not crash with the consistent atmosphere of never-ending night and rain. A game worth checking out, especially if you want to get immersed in a neon-enlightened and laidback adventure.

Cloudpunk is atmospheric and engaging throughout. The worldbuilding, storytelling, and overall feel of this game is just plain excellent. I'd been struggling to play story-based games for some time lately but I think this is the one that will break my plateau. I miss unique designs and characters in short-form titles like this. It's my first story-based game I've completed in a long time, but it absolutely earned it's right to do so.

Also this was almost exclusively played on my Steam Deck in Medium settings at 40fps. I used my main PC for cleaning up some achievements. Game runs very well on Steam Deck and is a blast on the go.

The things that this game does well are great.
The construction of the city environment, the atmosphere, the visuals, the sounds, the car handling. All of those things amount to a superb ambiance and a great foundation for the game. I have minimal complaints. I think you can get a fair amount of mileage out of just vibing in this city, taking in the sights and atmosphere.
Even though I'm going to complain a lot, I want to underline that those aspects are very strong.
How is this great foundation used, however? The game, and the overall experience? That's where the problems begin.

Instead of a twist on a driving delivery game like Euro Truck, the developers decided to instead make the game a vehicle for story. You're driving around not because you need to deliver packages, but to hit dialogue triggers. In essence this game is a walking simulator with more engaging movement mechanics.
The delivery of the packages presents no challenge, your skills aren't being tested nor is your performance rated in any way. You're going from A to B to C effectively just to hear the next dialogue sequence, and that's it.
A game like Euro Truck Simulator presents minimal challenge, but it's more than this. It has other advantages too, like being able to have your own music or podcasts on the background since there's no dialogue from the game to interfere with your experience.

So they made a narrative based game. That in itself isn't a bad thing. It's not what I would've wanted from the game initially but I still like a good narrative. I personally even like walking sims, so I can get on-board.

The problem is that neither the narrative nor the writing is very good.

The writing is not absolutely terrible, mind you. It's just inconsistent, derivative and boring.
The entire story is delivered in dialogue, and it drags on and on. It felt like nearly every dialogue sequence had so much filler that could've been cut. The writing felt like the work of a hobbyist writer who sorely needed an editor.
There's a lot of jokes that do not land. There's a lot of emotional moments that feel weirdly paced and un-earned. There’s a lot of emotional whiplash with how the tone seems to be able to hold no continuity from one dialogue to the other.
There's a lot of characters who are either one-dimensional bordering on caricature, or complete charisma-voids. Unfortunately, the main character is one of the latter, and her companion is one of the former. For the entire game you're listening to the least interesting character drone their way through every dialogue, and her companion prolonging this experience with variations of the same joke for the duration of the entire game.
There's world building that might feel fresh if you've never read a work of cyberpunk in your life. Even then it's very inconsistent in quality.
Overall, the writing and narrative feels like a mish-mash of ideas that were half-thought out. The main narrative is lacking as a story. It feels slow because there's not much to it. The game is mostly disjointed side-stories with a couple of hints toward a narrative throughline, but doesn't end up amounting to much. Could’ve been interesting, but ended up half-baked.
What makes this all worse though, is that it's all delivered in fully voiced dialogue, and the voice acting is a very mixed-bag. Not all of it is bad, mind you, some of it is even great! The main character's voice acting was unfortunately some of the worst in the game and it's what you're hearing for the majority of your time. When the character you're hearing the most throughout the experience is marred with bad delivery, it becomes a fatal flaw.

And a special note on the social commentary.
Cyberpunk is a genre that is inherently tied with class and social issues. A foundational idea of the genre is to depict a world where technological progress leads to more inequality, not less. A cyberpunk game with no social commentary is cyberpunk in aesthetics only.
However, the nature of the commentary in this game is so shallow and heavy-handed that it borders on satire. At times characters completely discard their established personalities, just so they can deliver messages that are about as profound as a typical political tweet. The world is filled with metaphors that are not only well-traveled territory by works that have come before, but also delivered with complete lack of subtlety. This hurts both the verisimilitude of the world and the impact of the message.
As someone who enjoys this aspect of Cyberpunk, and doesn't mind political commentary in my media in general, I am still disappointed with what I got.

So that was a lot of griping about the story. I still liked a lot about this game. However, the developers decided to make this a narrative game, and a narrative game lives or dies on it’s writing.
If only they would have used their foundation differently. There’s so much good to work off of. This game could’ve been great.

As it stands, this game is squandered potential. Impaired by the story it’s forced to serve

David’s 30 Platinum Trophies Before Turning 30

9/30

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: As close to perfection as one can get.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5: Excellence incarnate.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Amazing experience.
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5: Good game.
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Fun enough to be worth your time.
⭐️⭐️.5: Missed the mark in a considerable amount of elements.
⭐️⭐️: A trudge towards progress/completion.
⭐️.5: A great deal of regrets playing this.
⭐️: Truly disappointing.
.5: Kudos to anyone with a shred of bother.

The above rating descriptions pertain strictly to the overall rating after taking into consideration the elements below, for which I’ll still employ a five-point rating to get an average afterwards.

Graphics: 4.5 - One can see the meticulous detail put into building this game’s voxel cyberpunk dystopia. Neon blue everywhere, and reminiscent of Blade Runner and the very obvious Cyberpunk 2077.

Gameplay: 3 - Driving around to see the world is fun, just make sure to progress far enough to get vehicle upgrades that’ll make you more appreciative of doing so. Running around, however, isn’t as much. I think the ability to switch between first person, third person, and a side scroller perspective is great, but it also made it feel like I was running oddly when I was in third person mode. It didn’t help that navigating on foot felt like purposely made to be a chore, with convoluted paths which otherwise could have easily been a quick trip. Taking in the sights does make up for it, though.

Audio: 3 - Not much by way of soundtrack; the few that were there did complement your futuristic adventures. Voiceover was admirable, save for a few characters that sounded like they didn’t know they were recording dialogues, especially your character, who felt flat for a good amount of time in the beginning, but in my opinion, redeemed herself for the majority of the story.

Replay Value: 2.5 - Side quests had a lot of potential, but I’m delighted that there was a bit of variety. Making a decision to progress forward didn’t really have heavy implications, but it does add some replay value.

Story: 3 - The main plot felt disjointed. The themes and ideas were there, but it just didn’t seem to click together towards the end, which was quite unfortunate since there were the expected existential and philosophical questions inherent to science fiction that demanded more exploration. The missions that progress the story all felt like their own side quests.

Overall: 3.2 - It truly did feel like the sky high ambitions were there, but the execution was not as punk as was hoped for.

The inverse of Death Stranding? Or maybe the baby sibling of Cyberpunk 2077?

It is a dark and brooding night and you just want to drive your delivery ship to the place to get a thing to deliver to a different place. It is raining and hard to see due to all the pixels. You land, but you have to walk very far to get the package which takes forever, so you chat with a friendly stranger but it seems no one wants anything other than deliveries or transportation from you. There's a mood, but I think it might be slight annoyance? Anyways, you should probably save the city on your first night here, I guess.

There are a lot of good ideas in this game but they don't quite hit right. It is interesting looking but hard for me to maneuver around in a ship with squishy steering and moderately poor depth perception. It is an ambitious story but the voice acting is kind of a letdown and characters don't seem to be speaking to each other at times. It's a moderately large world, but there isn't a ton of difference between regions and having all the items on the map right from the get go makes navigation repetitive and kind of boring.

Overall, the 9 hours I spent with Cloudpunk were fine but not awe inspiring. I really could have used a chapter select or something when I messed up a timed delivery, and fast travel would be a wonderful addition, but otherwise I think just a slightly better execution of these good ideas would have made this great for me.

I did like Camus, even though they pronounced his name wrong.

Review from thedonproject.com