Visalis is a rain-drenched labyrinth of buildings cloaked in perpetual nighttime, tattooed by blazing neon and smothering corporate advertising if you’ve seen Blade Runner’s vision of a future Los Angeles, then you’ve seen Visalis. The story may not feel cohesive, but it does capture a fully realized world. Cloudpunk feels like a hodgepodge of stories and ideas combined into one, ideas that would work episodically when focusing on multiple characters, but here in a single story focused on a single character they feel chaotic and confused. In particular, a subplot involving a CorpSec agent named Reoh dominates a large portion of the plot’s middle section and permanently changes Rania’s future in Visalis, but has no actual connection to the plot’s climax. Many plot threads chase Rania through her first night on the job, and though they all conclude, they don’t all feel related.
The biggest problem with Cloudpunk’s story is it lacks cohesiveness. She always comes out on top in their exchanges. Rania encounters all sorts of Twitter trolls on the streets of Visalis.
#CLOUDPUNK REVIEWS DRIVER#
But soon her competence as a Cloudpunk delivery driver catches up with her when an illicit delivery crosses her path with a figure responsible for Visalis’ decaying state. She can have many more encounters with parodies of the worst sorts of men, and Rania satisfyingly always comes out on top in their verbal exchanges. One early story beat has Rania take a coffee break where she playfully fends off a date request from an overly-interested Nice Guy. I appreciate that the plot isn’t kicked off by the obvious choice of Rania opening a package she’s not supposed to the story feels quite slice-of-life at times. While I walk and drive between the waypoints marking Rania’s delivery jobs, Cloudpunk’s story plays out through fully-voiced dialogue that runs at the screen’s bottom, and the voice talent does a good job of making the setting feel real. Their inclusion is a mundane detail that adds veracity to the setting. Cloudpunk isn’t that kind of videogame having to manage a fuel resource and spend time respawning from a fatal car crash would distract from continuing the story. Money is also used to refuel the HOVA and repair it from damage, but not once in my playtime did I feel it was in danger of being destroyed or running out of gas.
#CLOUDPUNK REVIEWS UPGRADE#
In addition to payments for completing deliveries, I can use Rania’s earnings to upgrade the HOVA’s speed and handling and purchase decorations for her apartment. Some of these are keys that open locks, such as Coolant that repairs broken elevators and CorpSec Flyers that open security barriers, while others exist only to be sold for profit. Strewn across these structures are dozens of pickups.
Traversing a floating city “block” outside the Cloudpunk headquarters. These structures aren’t exactly mazes, but navigating them is the most taxing game design I encountered in my entire experience. These sequences are where Cloudpunk asks the most of my ability to navigate, as I must sometimes use elevators and doorways to ascend and descend levels to reach the waypoint. From there I walk in first- or third-person perspectives along catwalks connecting Visalis’ floating island-blocks. A waypoint guides me through Visalis’ various boroughs to a floating city “block” where I will make Rania’s next pickup or delivery, but I must first find a parking spot for the HOVA so she can proceed on foot. The HOVA is a vehicle to deliver myself and the player character between plot points, not a thrill-seeking hot rod, just as Cloudpunk is a self-paced narrative adventure and not an atmosphere-burning racer.īut it’s not enough that I drive between destinations. There are a few timed missions, but they are easy to finish within the limit. That’s not the kind of videogame that Cloudpunk is. I cannot do loops through Visalis’ cloudy alleyways or dodge oncoming traffic with a well-timed barrel roll. It’s a bare-bones vehicle, able to accelerate, brake, drive in reverse, turn left and right, and ascend and descend, but there are no handbraking shenanigans here. Most of my time in Cloudpunk is spent driving around Visalis in a flying car called a HOVA. Flying down one of Nivalis’ highways in Rania’s HOVA.
0 kommentar(er)
