On the flip side, I could also see this being improved had the game added some additional mechanics. ![]() It took me around 11 hours to finish the main story, ignoring most of the side quests for the sake of time for this review, and it could have easily been trimmed down to around five without losing anything contextually. I think Cloudpunk’s greatest crime is its length, at least for what the game involves. Unlike any of the Telltale series, I doubt I would ever want to revisit the world of Cloudpunk a second time to see the other options. These are often black and white style choices, some of which are as obvious as delivering or disposing of a bomb, making it clear to you which falls under good or bad on the spectrum. ![]() You are occasionally presented with moral dilemmas that are very reminiscent of the Telltale style games, but have less of an impact on Rania as they do on the narrative as a whole. The problem is, you can’t tell where most of the conversations are going until you’re done, and some of the voice actors sound so bored that it’s a rough road to traverse. Their dialogue can either enrich the story by giving you important info about the actual narrative, bore you with their current personal events that really have nothing pertinent to do with you or anyone you care about, or occasionally make you laugh your ass off. There are tons of NPCs that are more than willing to tell you everything about them. The art style looks incredible and keeps up with the illusion that Nivalus is a real city full of real people, which is kind of true. The city you explore is a bustling futuristic cityscape that gives you the feeling of driving around in a multilayered cityscape in the vein of The Fifth Element, at least for the first few hours before it occasionally dips into Thanksgiving-eve traffic territory. What really saved the narrative for me was the bonding between Rania and her dog, Camus, who despite being able to talk and living as an AI within her car, still has some downright dog thoughts that remind you that even if your dog could talk, he’d still be kind of dumb sometimes. It’s a world that is finely crafted, and at times, so detailed it became downright annoying, thanks to the never-ending, seemingly pointless chit chat between characters that is about as important to the story as what Rania had for breakfast. You have to park your car regularly to explore on foot, offering the opportunity to chat with a gigantic cast of NPCs. She signed on with the company Cloudpunk and essentially drives from point A to point B, picking up and dropping off packages while bantering with her boss, known as Control, and her dog turned AI car companion. ![]() You play the game as Rania, a delivery driver on her first night in the city of Nivalus. ![]() This is what most of Cloudpunk offers in gameplay you’re basically driving around the city, listening to people talk or engaging in the conversation, and occasionally stopping to make morality-based decisions. They made certain deaths in the campaign almost gut-wrenching due to having to replay these scenes again and again. The stuff that builds character, but kind of oversteps the bounds of what we should know, into what we really don’t give a damn about. If you were to ask me to compare Cloudpunk to any other video game, it would have to be just the long, purposely drawn out segments from GTA 5 where you have to escort someone across the city, while the characters have semi-important banter.
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