![]() I was forever smashing into things - even in the air, I'm a magnet for other vehicles - and while you'll eventually unlock upgrades that make it easier to manoeuvre, the gentle simulation features - repairs and refuelling - feel like time (and money) wasters added to pad out the shallow gameplay. You'll spend much of your time in your HOVA, a flying delivery truck that handles as delicately as a shopping trolley. It's an intriguing dilemma - does she do as she's told, confident that Control wouldn't put her in harm's way? Or does she decide it's too great a risk? The choice is yours - but there's so little of this, along with a dearth of dialogue choices and decision making, it feels like it's a tease that it appears in the game at all. ![]() For instance, early game 14FC can decide whether to deliver or dump the suspiciously ticking parcel she's been charged to drop off. Perhaps most frustrating of all is the snippets of agency we're sometimes given. The rhythm of the game is soothing and undemanding, yes, but it lacks bite and passion, too. Rania is little more than a futuristic Postman Pat, picking up and dropping off parcels from one anonymous, indistinct area to another. These perplexing vignettes would be forgivable if there was some momentum behind Rania's story, but again, this too feels as though it's never given a chance to breathe. While you'll learn snippets about Nivalus' people and its places each time you pick up and/or deliver a clandestine package, fragments are all we ever seem to get. Though fully-voiced, Cloudpunk's performances are uneven, too, wavering from terribly brilliant to brilliantly terrible and everything in between. Most, sadly, are dull, two-dimensional stereotypes - the preppy android, the smarmy CEO, the dodgy salesman - that lack any real purpose or value. Cloudpunk is forever dangling unusual, interesting characters in our faces, only to yank them away moments later, never to be seen again. I have no idea what I think about her AI companion, Camus - an AI reimagining of her beloved pup (though initially, he's undeniably adorable - naive and curious and achingly supportive - the Doug-from-Up schtick gets old fast). I wish we'd gotten to know Rania a little better. Stunning voxel visuals are an effective, atmospheric backdrop. Rania, our protagonist, appears at odds with the dubious morality of her employer, but it eventually becomes clear that when indebted, beggars can't be choosers. Cloudpunk dances on the line of legality, it seems, happy to deliver whatever and whenever and honour its clients' confidentiality at all costs. Its moniker comes from the delivery service you, Rania - or the dishearteningly impersonal "14FC" as your controller calls you - works for. Despite its impressive backdrop and intriguing premise, Cloudpunk is a game that never gets started. But the more time I spend with Rania, whizzing along the neon tubes to pick up and deliver packages that I've been instructed never to ask questions about, the less I feel I know. Despite the disorientation it gives me, I want to creep over every inch of Nivalus, poke into its secrets and burrow down into its underbelly. These characters won't help pack meat onto the bones of the tale of Rania, our mysterious protagonist, but they will add colour and spice to the world she's found herself in. ![]() Even fewer will have a meaningful impact on your story. Some will want to talk to you many more will not. Would the people you meet - the people who seem so at home under cover of the rainswept night - be different then? Would sunlight help soften the claggy apprehension that clings to each uncertain encounter?ĭespite the darkness and continual rain, the city is nevertheless very alive, bustling with the type of folk that only venture out at night. You can't help but wonder how different Nivalus' seedy world - this battered, broken cloudscape that's perpetually shrouded in darkness - might look under the harsh, cold light of day. You'd think that, high up in the clouds, you'd be beyond the mercy of such humdrum inconveniences, but the downpour is endless. Maybe it's the unblinking stare of a million windows looking out at you. Maybe it's the constant stream of anonymous vehicles that chunder past you. There's a nagging sense that wherever you are, someone, somewhere, is watching. The flashing lights of the billboards and advertisements - in select shades of blue, yellow, white, orange - bounce off concrete walls without ever softening the city's razor-sharp edges. Nivalus - the metropolis stretched out for miles beneath the jets of your HOVA vehicle - is vast and unwelcoming, a disorientating complex of highways and highrises blinking neon under the clouds. Cloudpunk offers a beautiful city to explore, but unfortunately there's not much to discover there once you delve deeper.
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