CLOUDPUNK Review for PlayStation 4

Under the leadership of Cyberpunk 2077, a kind of pursuit of punk style has emerged in the gaming circle in recent years. Although the Cyberpunk 2077 did not come to our sight yet, there are still many outstanding games that we can try first to experience a futuristic punk world. Cloudpunk, by developer Ion Lands and publisher Merge Games, must be one of the games that you definitely should try. 

With a first look at this game, Cloudpunk’s beautiful and voxel world may let feel like you are playing a cyberpunk’s version Minecraft.  All the structure of the game display is pretty simple, but the display didn’t prevent the developer from showing us a fascinating future world. Neon lights, huge billboards, we cannot see how high the building is, nor where the ground is below. This city named Nivalis, just like a future city would appear in our imagination.

We start our journey by driving a hova – a flying car. We play as Rania, who comes to Nivalis from their hometown, and we work with a company called, Cloudpunk. During our first day of working, a person from Cloudpunk will contact and deliver the job to us, which is an old man known as Control.  You also have a cute AI installed on your hova, named Camus. It displays as a cute dog, with a naïve personality.  

The story is the biggest part of the game that interested me. With the development of our main story, we can know more about Nivalis from a perspective of a courier. Cloudpunk is a company that will accept some illegal business; in that case, we will not only encounter with the ‘bright’ side of this city, but also more of the hidden secrets.  

The more interesting part is we are not only a bystander, we have to make a choice during some event, and most of time, the choice doesn’t have a clear answer; the judge of ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ is only dependent on our value. Once Rania was asked to deliver a package as soon as possible, but we could hear tick-tock, tick-tock from the package. Rania wanted to ask for more details about it, but only got the response from Control “do not ask anything, just deliver it with the fastest speed.” The game gave us a choice now, to finish our job or throw the package to the landfill. No matter which way you chose, you cannot see what happens after that. But we knew that something would change if we chose differently.  

Spoiler: The other story that I like the most is about when Rania was asked to deliver a package to Anderson, but when you arrived the destination you find there are so many people named Anderson in that company. Later on, we found that the CEO of that company is the person we looked for. He cut the link between company and outside. He mandated every android to work endlessly. But he was died, the only person who can change that command. Now the game gave us two choice, left them or reset their memory (things might not change but at least this day will become the first day of their work). The choice is pretty hard to make, right? 

There are so many similar choices we have to decide through the whole game. The developer gives us many options worth thinking about. And that lead us to understand not only the gaming world, but some real-world problems.  

The country system for this game is easy, you can go wherever you want using two joysticks. And only takes about couple of minutes for you to fully become adapted to the operating mode. Even more, you can use money to upgrade your hova. 

Furthermore, you can change your graphical perspective when you get out of hova. You can switch between first person and third person, and that will give you a totally different experience about the cyberpunk city. 

The main fault of Cloudpunk, in my opinion, is the repetitive work and that the main objective for each mission is the same. So, after a couple of hours, you may feel a little bit bored. But overall, this game was good for me. A whole new life in a cyberpunk future city.

Check Out the Cloudpunk Trailer:

For more information, please visit: https://ionlands.tumblr.com/tagged/ionlands

Jiarui Chang

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I'm a graduate of Columbia University. The Game, never just entertainment in our leisure time. More like an attractive book, lead us to a fantastic adventure; a good friend, sit down having a deep communication with our spirit. Explore more, happiness is just the most basic benefit that games can give us. Personally, I enjoy every type of game, but especially I love ACTs(e.g. Sekiro, Dark Souls, Devil May Cry, etc.), I like that you overcome any difficulties by ourselves, and feeling about how I grow up with all the techniques learned from gaming. The world in the game also attracts me, stops our step, and looks around, the beauty of the world often lets me forgot I am playing a game. The last wish every gamer "Good luck, have fun!"

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