A Neon Punk Future.
Cloudpunk is certainly a visually striking game, there is no doubt about that. Its colorful and neon-lit city, taking place during a dark and rainy evening, just pops out at you, begging for you to just ignore your quests and just explore. While the story and characters are more than capable of adding to this gorgeous release, there is a strong degree of repetition and poor design work that does hold the game back, not to mention some less than stellar performance issues. While Cloudpunk is an experience I strongly recommend at least trying, I know it will certainly not be for everyone.
If I had to summarize what Cloudpunk is, at least visually, I would say it takes the colorful and sci-future aesthetic of something like Blade Runner, as well as the flying car scene from the Fifth Element, and recreates it in a Minecraft type foundation; a colorful and detailed voxel world that all comes together to produce some insanely cool environments. While much of the city does look the same, there are countless structures and arches and underground locations that do shake things up from time to time. While the flying car nature of the game is a huge selling point, you do get out of your car as well, walking around either in a first or third-person view and talking with characters, buying new outfits, or enjoying some ramen. You also have a home you can furnish and spend much of your hard-earned money enhancing, even if you don’t’ really use it for anything practical, at least until the final moments of the game.
Cloudpunk has you play as Rania, a young woman who has come to Nivalis from the Eastern Peninsula, taking a job at Cloudpunk, an illegal delivery service that oddly enough, a lot of people seem to know a great deal about. Apart from a few missions, the illegal nature of the service is rarely included as part of the gameplay, despite how cool it could have been to outrace police cars or other avenues of authority. In fact, some of the game’s best missions are built around beating the clock, so it’s a shame this aspect of the game wasn’t more focused on.
The game takes place during a single shift, a dark, moody, and rainy night that has Rania get caught up in a few conspiracies and some events where she may or may not have delivered a bomb to one of the districts. Never open the package or ask about its contents is rule number one, after all. The game does dive into these themes and stories rather well, with the game eventually combining the conspiracy angle about an old AI and that of protecting a client, something that is heightened even more so by the fantastic voice work, and some great dialogue, especially through a detective that talks as if he is narrating his own Noir novel. This mission, and a few others, really dive into why the game works, it’s just a shame the entire experience isn’t as consistent.
Being a delivery service game, you largely just travel from point A to point B, picking up and dropping off packages, and sometimes people, and then listening to the stories that are built around them. While the gameplay aspect of the title is performing the same tasks over and over again either on foot or in your car, it’s the design of those quests where the game suffers most. Many, if not all of the quests, have you moving from zone to zone, loading into new hub worlds where you’ll likely drop off your package, collect a few items, and then travel back into another zone. Loading into new locations comes with a lot of stuttering, frame rate drops, and in several instances, I’ve had the game just simply lock up for around 5-10 seconds, depending on the zone. This loading seems to translate to being on foot as well, as I’ve had the game drop to single frames after leaving the apartment, stuttering in the same way, as you can see in the below video. Now, granted, this is the experience I’d had on Xbox One, so your mileage may vary on your own platform.
those frames... pic.twitter.com/v9iW46rzkG
— ASG-Screenshots (@AsgScreenshots) October 23, 2020
The game does also suffer from a fair bit of pop-in, but considering much of the city is covered in a fog, it does hide a bit of it here and there. I’ve also had more than a few instances of buildings or arches just appear out of nowhere, causing me to slam into them. While I’ve never had my car explode, you can head to a mechanic to repair the damage, upgrade your car, or visit a gas station to fill it up; though, to be fair, I never did once run the car to empty. From a controlling point of view, the vehicle does ascend and descend a tad too slow for my liking, as you cannot dive or rise up quickly, only moving your vehicle straight up and down, or turning left and right. You do have a boost you can unlock, as well as different vehicles to have as your cab, and lastly, you can change the color of your vehicle’s motion blur to various neon colors.
While a somewhat strange comment about the game, I’m actually glad I didn’t recognize any of the actors, therefore allowing these voices to stand out and embody these characters more so. Andrea Petrille, as Rania, is often great and does a good job carrying much of the narrative with a few other characters like Mike Berlak as Control, and Cory Herndon as Camus, your AI dog companion, who was a joy to listen to. The Blade Runner’ish synth soundtrack is another highlight as it’s rather impressive and something I could easily find myself putting on in the background as I write.
But, for as good as the story is, and the interesting themes it tries to tell, the game ends very abruptly, and its conclusion simply comes out of nowhere, introducing us to a fairly important character, as we are led to believe, in the game’s final minutes. I enjoyed the final few missions as they held my attention greatly, but for as enjoyable as they were, it felt like I was wrapping up a side quest that just so happened to then become connected to the main story, and then it just ended. I enjoyed where certain characters ended up, and your relationship with your dispatcher, a man known as Control, was another aspect of the story I felt that was done remarkably well. The last interaction you have with Camus was another high point that just made me smile.
Despite the technical problems that affect this game on a near-constant basis, I was still engaged with the title from the start and through to its a bit too abrupt ending. Several of the characters were enjoyable to interact with, and with some of the missions having different outcomes, it does offer a bit of replayability to see how certain missions could have gone. Despite the pop-in, Nivalis is a gorgeous city that has several standout locations, with a stunning degree of detail amongst its simplistic voxel visuals. The gameplay may feel a bit too rinse and repeat, but the charm this game oozes is still highly addictive.
Developer - ION Lands. Publisher - Merge Games. Released - October 15th, 2020. Available On - Xbox One, PS4, Switch, Windows PC. Rated - (M) Drug Reference, Sexual Themes, Strong Language. Platform Reviewed - Xbox One X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.