Have you ever wanted to travel among the skyscrapers of a gloomy and futuristic metropolis? Tall skyscrapers and neon signs, large zaibatsu, okonomiyaki kiosks on the corners of the elevated streets and lots of packages to be delivered.
Yes because the new adventure of Ion Games speaks of a futuristic delivery boy who has to deliver packages for everything Nivalis, the city of play. It may seem like a tedious activity but it is not, because around cloudpunk - the shipping company that gives its name to the title - there is mystery, conspiracy and the life of our young protagonist, a former musician with an uncertain past.
They are tears in the rain, it's time for… deliveries!
Cloudpunk catapults us into the heart of the delivery activity from the very first minutes. It is the first day of work Rania, must replace an old colleague who for reasons to be ascertained (or perhaps it is better not to) no longer works for the company. We are aboard our HOVA, the flying vehicle that will be our trusted companion throughout the adventure and we must complete our first delivery. A fundamental rule for all Cloudpunk employees is “never ask what's inside the package“.
It can be an excellent solution to get your job done, but various situations will put us in a position to do it. We gamers are required to choose which route to take and which situation to choose: is it better to safeguard our work or ourselves?
This moral question elevates Cloudpunk's gaming spirit which - from a simple futuristic delivery boy simulator - becomes a title with a deep and never banal plot which manages to blend well the themes that have made cyberpunk famous.
Cloudpunk will amaze you because inside it contains everything a title like this needs: moral dilemmas, freedom and side quests to complete. There are also talking dogs, what more do you want?
Deliver it again, Sam ...
That was "play it again, Sam", but there it is. Many compare our Rania to the famous one Sam Bridges in Death Stranding and they refer to Cloudpunk as a cyberpunk-style Death Stranding.
It is not entirely false, but it is necessary to do some distinctions.
Obviously, Cloudpunk is an excellent indie that does not reach the levels of the triple A Kojimiano, but the premise of the deliveries is that.
Our "missions" are quite competitive and never lose their bite during the hours in-game. It would have been nice, considering not only the nature of the title but also the context in which the game moves and develops, a system of sharing with other users.
A cyberpunk strand game in which the connection with other deliverymen of the skies was available for the exchange of information, suggestions and useful items.
However, Cloudpunk, despite being a title single player, performs its function very well and is a balanced open world and well done.
Cloudpunk contains many references and takes heavily from extremely good cyberpunk titles released on the market, such as Deus Ex, Syndicate, Remember me, Blade Runner but also more recent titles such as ruiner, VirtuaVerse e The Red Strings Club as for the settings.
But do delivery guys dream of cloud warehouses?
Everything that's inside cloudpunk it works.
The interface is quite simple and clean. At the bottom right there is a map that shows us where to go and the location of the main mission with a specific colored symbol as well as many other small colored icons that indicate collectibles to take or people to talk to.
The world of Cloudpunk is teeming with strange men, androdis and salesmen capable of serving you anything from alcohol to pheromones. Food kiosks, typically Japanese, are present on the raised roofs of the tall skyscrapers, it is possible to buy sushi or delicious noodles. We will always accompany Radia around with hers WHERE, the hyper-futuristic flying machine obtained thanks to the company.
We must pay attention to the vehicle and keep it in extreme care: it is very fragile to impacts and - in case of damage - Cloudpunk will take away part of the money from our fee to buy spare parts.
Along the elevated roads, there will be gods meccanici, where we can buy new parts for our HOVA (so as to make it more impact resistant or faster) and various gas stations in case we run out of gasoline.
It is not possible to park where it happens, but in the special parking areas indicated by a "P" on the map.
Once out of the vehicle, we can use the third or first person. Rania cannot fight or enter buildings, she can just run, retrieve items, talk to a few NPCs who will ask her to retrieve items around town or whatever.
We can only enter her small apartment, which she does not consider as such, "it's just a place to sleep", totally customizable. With the money we get from our work, we can buy new household items, clothing and even new accessories for HOVA.
The only note of demerit, in the driving phases, is the cumbersome controls in the first minutes of the game, as it is difficult to understand how to go up e alight in the atmosphere as there is no real tutorial, you are practically thrown into the fray right away.
Block cybernetics
The Cloudpunk graphics engine is very particular and can make someone turn up their noses, it is made entirely by voxel: the result is as if we were flying in a metropolis recreated on Minecraft.
It would have been nice to have a product such as next generation 3D graphics, like the expected cyberpunk 2077, but after several hours in the adventure, you get used to it and this particular style gives an almost cartoonish vision of the title, in visual terms, which better fits with the idea we have of the Eighties and the idea that we had a future in those years, the decade in which cyberpunk developed.
An honorable mention goes to the music that is absolutely in line with the context in which the game develops, with the massive use of tracks which make extensive use of synthesizers which refer to the works of Vangelis, Kavisky e Tangerine Dream, proponents of the genre. There is no shortage of sounds of the metropolis such as police sirens and noises of the city that catapult our attention into that world as a whole, in which we must move and explore with a careful and watchful eye to complete deliveries.
Cloudpunk is a pleasant discovery and it is a relatively simple game, it would be a really good game if it were not for some bugs due to the persistence of some active missions on the screen despite these being completed or the small freezes between one area and another of the big one. metropolis of Novalis while we are aboard our Hova.
For the rest, the plot is absolutely interesting and feeds a gameplay that - for its own sake - would tire; graphics and sound catapult into a world absolutely different from ours but full of charm and mystery.
Cloudpunk is a excellent title for appreciating cyberpunk and it can be a good "training" to prepare for Cyberpunk 2077 coming out next month.
Cloudpunk is currently available on PC, PS4 e Xbox One.
Cloudpunk will drop you into a smoky and vibrant metropolis where you have to be the delivery boy for an illegal company. The watchword is “don't ask what you're delivering”, but Rania - the young protagonist - will ask for it more often than not, appealing to her moral thought. On board her HOVA, the city is totally at your feet, the Minecraftian graphics and the synthwave soundtrack will transport you to a world that has nothing to envy to other exponents of the genre. Cloudpunk is a work to try, cyberpunk lovers or not. It will amaze you!
