Cloudpunk Review: I Want More Life

If you were to ask me to compare Cloudpunk to any other video game, it would have to be just the long, purposely drawn out segments from GTA 5 where you have to escort someone across the city, while the characters have semi-important banter. The stuff that builds character, but kind of oversteps the bounds of what we should know, into what we really don’t give a damn about. They made certain deaths in the campaign almost gut-wrenching due to having to replay these scenes again and again. This is what most of Cloudpunk offers in gameplay; you’re basically driving around the city, listening to people talk or engaging in the conversation, and occasionally stopping to make morality-based decisions.

You play the game as Rania, a delivery driver on her first night in the city of Nivalus. She signed on with the company Cloudpunk and essentially drives from point A to point B, picking up and dropping off packages while bantering with her boss, known as Control, and her dog turned AI car companion. You have to park your car regularly to explore on foot, offering the opportunity to chat with a gigantic cast of NPCs. It’s a world that is finely crafted, and at times, so detailed it became downright annoying, thanks to the never-ending, seemingly pointless chit chat between characters that is about as important to the story as what Rania had for breakfast. What really saved the narrative for me was the bonding between Rania and her dog, Camus, who despite being able to talk and living as an AI within her car, still has some downright dog thoughts that remind you that even if your dog could talk, he’d still be kind of dumb sometimes.

The city you explore is a bustling futuristic cityscape that gives you the feeling of driving around in a multilayered cityscape in the vein of The Fifth Element, at least for the first few hours before it occasionally dips into Thanksgiving-eve traffic territory. The art style looks incredible and keeps up with the illusion that Nivalus is a real city full of real people, which is kind of true. There are tons of NPCs that are more than willing to tell you everything about them. Their dialogue can either enrich the story by giving you important info about the actual narrative, bore you with their current personal events that really have nothing pertinent to do with you or anyone you care about, or occasionally make you laugh your ass off. The problem is, you can’t tell where most of the conversations are going until you’re done, and some of the voice actors sound so bored that it’s a rough road to traverse.

You are occasionally presented with moral dilemmas that are very reminiscent of the Telltale style games, but have less of an impact on Rania as they do on the narrative as a whole. These are often black and white style choices, some of which are as obvious as delivering or disposing of a bomb, making it clear to you which falls under good or bad on the spectrum. Unlike any of the Telltale series, I doubt I would ever want to revisit the world of Cloudpunk a second time to see the other options.

I think Cloudpunk’s greatest crime is its length, at least for what the game involves. It took me around 11 hours to finish the main story, ignoring most of the side quests for the sake of time for this review, and it could have easily been trimmed down to around five without losing anything contextually. On the flip side, I could also see this being improved had the game added some additional mechanics. Outside of the narrative, it’s driving around a city, picking and dropping packages for money, and then you turn around and buy gas, upgrades for your car, and food, which is never used for anything. It’s like there was at one point going to be some survival mechanic, and at the last minute it was pulled with the ability to buy food was forgotten.

Much like the Telltale games, Cloudpunk is rich in story content, but even leaner when it comes to gameplay. If you’re someone who enjoys futuristic science fiction, you’ll likely find a story that is worth digging into, but it lacks in most of the other areas due to its singular gameplay element and inconsistent quality.

6 out of 10

Pros

  • Camus
  • A Bladerunner-esque Style
  • Super Detailed Voxel Art Design

Cons

  • Inconsistent Voice Overs and Writing
  • Long Load Times
  • Lacking in Gameplay

Cloudpunk was developed by ION LANDS and published by Merge Games. It is available on NS, PC, PS4, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Cloudpunk, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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