My 2021 Year In Games – part 3
CLOUDPUNK
Nivalis is a futuristic, cyberpunk city build over the ocean, that is slowly falling away into the water. As newly arrived refugee Rania, you take a job with Cloudpunk, a delivery company that kind of does shady stuff, but whom the authorities ignore as long as they don’t cause too much trouble. It’s your first night, and within hours, you are up to your neck in hackers, gangs, ancient AIs, and people thinking you’re a taxi. That last one really pisses you off.
The voxel (blocky) rendering style of the massive city is deliberate, and along with the weird rolling clouds, the persistent rain and moody synth music, creates a fantastic atmosphere. Even better is the writing, and you warm to Rania and Camus, her AI pet dog, quickly, as you meet a cast of quirky characters and get involved in a conspiracy or two. The bulk of the game is driving your HOVA (flying car) through the city from pickup point to your destination before going on foot to drop off your package, and while this can feel a bit samey if you play for extended sessions, it’s the dialogue and wacky scenarios you get caught up in that kept me hooked.
The ‘City of Ghosts’ DLC (DownLoadable Content – basically, an extension to the game) contains a brand new story set in the city, featuring Rania and introducing a new character – both of which cross paths as you play. I’m currently playing through this and enjoying it just as much 🙂
And always remember the two rules of Cloudpunk: don’t miss a delivery and don’t ask what’s in the package.
IN OTHER WATERS
It’s hard to imagine that such a simplistic-looking game can create such strong emotions, but this one did. As a xenobiologist searching for her ex, who disappeared years ago, you find the remains of research outposts on a supposedly inert water planet that turns out to have an abundance of life. But you don’t actually play as her in the game, rather you are the Artificial Intelligence that controls her deep diving suit, which is why the game is presented as an abstract representation of the ocean and the suit controls. And the controls are simple: line up your navigation device with the next waypoint and scoot the suit over there, retrieve samples of the alien life to study back at your base, and discover logs left behind by your partner and the doomed scientists to uncover what happened and why nobody knows about this place.
From such a basic interface is created a truly living world. You will sense the danger when floating through clouds of toxic spores or skipping across sulphur pools, you will feel the weight of water above you as you dive deeper under the surface, thanks to a simple change to the colour palette and audio, and you will panic when your oxygen and power start to run low, forcing you to use some of the samples to temporarily boost your supplies. Oh yes, these creatures, once examined in the lab, can and often need to be used to help your investigation. Not only can they give you more air and energy, they can be dropped in the world to cause a reaction from the wildlife, such as causing long fronds to pull back inside their shell to allow you to pass, or indeed the opposite, making them burst out in huge fans, blocking the fast flow of water for a moment.
Combine all the above with some evocative writing, and a tranquil music score, and you have a game that made me want to 100% it by finding and identifying all the samples, just to make sure I’d uncovered every corner of this underwater world. Lovely stuff.
DEPANNEUR NOCTURNE
It’s your partner’s birthday, and you forgot to by them a gift! They aren’t back from work yet, so you quickly nip out and find a small shop that’s open that looks like just the place to find the perfect present. A cheap DVD? A one-eyed sculpture? Maybe this hockey mask? Or this workers lantern that is lit even though it’s not plugged in? What’s that, salamander-proprietor of the store? You might have some ‘special’ gifts out back? And what’s the deal with the cat that disappears when you’re not looking at it, and that huge basement with the prison cell and giant stone hand? Never mind, I’m sure one of these gifts will be perfect, whatever it is! 🙂
CYBERPUNK 2077
Only bought this in the recent winter sale and after three patches had fixed the many, game-breaking bugs that plagued it on release last year. Based on the old Cyberpunk paper role-playing games, and made in conjunction with the chap who created the world, it’s very clearly millions of pounds of money on the screen. Night City is HUGE, with thousands of citizens, dozens of vehicles and weapons, loads of side jobs to do for fixers and the police, and an impressive number of characters and animated cutscenes in the main campaign.
You play V, and after a short intro where you start either as an Nomad, living outside the city, a Street Kid, who knows how to live rough, or a Corporate, doing the dirty work for your boss in the Arasaki Corporation, you soon become independent again. Working with your long time friend Jackie, you begin to pick up your life taking on small jobs here and there, until you get the chance to enter the big leagues. A risky mission to steal an experimental chip, which itself has been pilfered in a complex web of corporate family backstabbing, could net you millions of credits and a reputation to die for! Of course, it all goes badly wrong, and you soon have a long-dead terrorist living in your head and a few weeks to live, unless you can find a way to separate the two of you before he takes full control over your mind.
Outside of the main story, the game sees you travelling around the city, shooting up gang members, rescuing people, stealing stuff or doing a spot of detective work. And all along the way are strange characters and bizarre situations which really bring life to the city. I am barely anywhere into the central plot, but loving exploring the world they have made.
And there we have it for 2021! Quite a varied diet of games there – as you can see, I like a bit of everything. And I’ve barely made a dent in my massive Steam games backlog, so plenty more where they came from.
See you in 2022! 😀
