Relying on a predefined camera perspective means every shot is designed to best showcase the frequently jaw-dropping environment, with the scale working hand in hand to make you feel even more in awe of it all looming over you. At first the lack of camera control feels restrictive, but soon the intended purpose becomes clear.
Here, the camera is locked to a certain view, typically showing a side-on vantage that takes in the street you're running along, with your character often rendered with no more than a tiny handful of voxels in the middle. Yet it's even better when you get out of your hover car and traverse the city on foot. To be honest, this review took longer than it should have because I had to pause every few seconds to snap off another screenshot. When you're flying through the city in your hover car, each turn delivers a spectacular view, each ascension over a row of high-rises greeted with a dazzling neon-drenched vista. Skyscrapers almost recede into negative space, their facades composed of hundreds of tiny boxes of light, alternating in lurid pinks, yellows and blues. Terrific use is made of contrast and lighting. Nivalis is constructed out of voxels, big chunky bricks of solid colour that give the urban landscape the feel of an enormous, elaborate Lego diorama. Simply put, Cloudpunk is a stunningly gorgeous game. You've seen it all before, of course, yet this well-worn set dressing is rendered in such singular fashion it remains striking throughout. Towering neon spires thrust out of the climate-ravaged ocean and, eventually, emerge through the clouds at the top live the privileged few, the self-dubbed CEOs secluded in their stratified penthouses, while underneath everybody else ekes out a living in the dense urban sprawl where every city block has a noodle stand, night is permanent and it's almost always raining. Nivalis is the last city, or at least that's what people say. Familiar tropes are rejuvenated with mostly smart writing and consistently striking art direction, but there are also opportunities missed thanks to undernourished, by-the-numbers design. Cloudpunk is a complex and uneven narrative-heavy adventure game that trades heavily in cyberpunk cliche. In the nearly 40 years since Ridley Scott's film established a visual aesthetic for what would become known as cyberpunk, we've seen these things many times now. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe," begins Roy Batty's dying monologue in Blade Runner.
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