What is everyone’s recommendations for great Cyberpunk games?
Following from a comment I made elsewhere about my conflicted feelings on 2077;
I had a great time with it myself, despite many obvious flaws. It seems to scratch an itch that I’ve yet to find an alternative way to scratch!
Maybe it’s as simple as cyberpunk fallout? But the worlds texture (again despite it’s imperfections) feels more than just cyberpunk. The fallout comparison has other similarities too (apart from the buggy engine lol), I love the active and relatively expensive mod scene too.
I was definitely disappointed that the story felt a bit limited, but I’m looking forward to a new play through when the DLC is out, even if it’s another trainwreck.
I loved the anime too which makes me excited for my next play through, similar to how reading the Witcher books opened up a whole new lover for the Witcher 3, although there’s much less of a connection between the Cyberpunk game and the anime obviously.
Long story short, I can understand others frustration with the game, and I hope (perhaps naïvely) that CDProjectRED get their shit together with how they treat there devs. But despite that I loved it, and deeply hope they don’t abandon the franchise due to how badly the first release went. I must guiltily confess that it’s a real struggle not to preorder the DLC out of the vague sense that it’d count as a vote to stick with it. I won’t, mostly because corpos don’t work that way, and I don’t want to endorse the bad behaviour towards their Devs especially, but still.
So yeah anyone got anything else to scratch that Cyberpunk itch, especially cyberpunk worlds with a similar texture and/or with a fallout/Skyrim style game loop? But frankly all cyberpunk is of interest.
Off the top of my head I can recommend;
- Satellite Reign - Great action RPG (or can can be played in a more strategic turn-based-via-pauses mode). Really like the freedom to go anywhere and try anything and all discovering all the ways to combine those classic cyberpunk skills. Coop mode is great too.
- Shadowrun Returns - All I can remember based on my 2014 review is I liked it, but evidently it didn’t stick with me mentally 🤷 I vaguely remember the pacing and gameplay felt a bit off, but the story felt very rich, if a tad inaccessible.
- Deus Ex - I’d say has a tangible different feel of cyberpunk to what I’m aiming for here, but obviously can’t be ignored. The first one is obviously a classic, but some fun was had with the more recent iterations, but if I’m honest I prefer Cyberpunk 2077 to all but the first (forgive me my sins)
Actually while I’m bothering you people, I keep meaning to go back to the Shadowrun series but I find the situation with sequels, addons and DLC in the series hella-confusing! Recommendations welcome!
One that doesn’t fit the usual but is very much right in the middle of the genre is VA-11 HALL-A. You’re essentially playing a background NPC in a place away from all the action of a cyberpunk story, you can see that it’s all happening elsewhere but you’re just in your small bar serving drinks and dealing with your personal life. Loved it.
Definitely agreeing with VA-11 Hall-A (though biased). Not much in gameplay but I loved how it felt to be a mostly normal person in a world where everything else is messed up. How seemingly normal their problems are despite all the changes in the world.
Also pretty good music.
I have enjoyed Cloudpunk greatly. It is a low budget title, but the characters and anti-corp themes are great. Plus it has flying cars.
You could obviously also pick up Bladerunner. I think all the versions are back in order now after some initial chaos around a re-release.
+ 1 for Cloudpunk. I’m also very curious to its more extensive sequel Nivalis!
You didn’t mention System Shock, so maybe System Shock.
It was originally released in 1994 but a remake was just recently released and has had favorable feedback. Deus Ex, BioShock and Prey are spiritual successors.
If you liked Shadowrun Returns, I’d definitely recommend the sequels - Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong. That first one was more of a proof of concept kind of thing. It was fun, but it was more about showing the gameplay could work. The other two are a massive improvement in the level of storytelling.
I say sequels, but they’re not actually related story or character wise. They can be played in any order. I’d say Dragonfall has the better story and Hong Kong has the better characters, but they’re both great and well worth your time.
The Ascent and Citizen Sleeper come to mind.
+++ for the Ascent, it nails the cyberpunk aesthetic flawlessly and it’s a very fun game to play
Just it’s aesthetics I guess but ghostrunner is great
I’m not sure if Stray counts as Cyberpunk, but it has most of the trappings and is a great game. A bit short. It’s kind of like the futuristic part of Cyberpunk taken beyond the extinction of the humans.
You play a cat that has accidentally fallen into a walled city that’s full of human-like robots and uncover what happened to the humans as you try to get out.
Ghostrunner is currently cheap in the Steam Summer sale.
I recently played Detroit: Become Human for the first time. That’s pretty good, although it’s a little bit more grounded in reality than the usual neon light infested stuff.
And of course there’s the Blade Runner point and click adventure. But I haven’t played that yet.
The Westwood Blade Runner game is utterly fantastic. You can also play it using ScummVM.
Transistor is close to cyberpunk, if you’re into indie top down view games.
Even though it is firmly a walking sim and has various issues, Observer by Bloober Team absolutely nails the dingy cyberpunk aesthetic. I enjoyed it for its atmosphere, despite its flaws.
Beneath a steel sky
Shadowrun
Deus Ex
System Shock
Perfect Dark
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
…sorry all I know are old games lol
It’s not out for a few more months but I recently tried the demo for Fortune’s Run, which is now one of my favorite depictions of a cyberpunk world in a game. It’s an immersive sim, maybe with a bit more focus on direct combat than most. The gameplay is fun if a bit rough in some spots, hopefully it gets polished up for launch but it’s very promising. Everything about the presentation though is top notch.
- Ghostwire: Tokyo
- Stray
- Cloudpunk
- Broken Reality
- Neo Cab
- Paradise Killer
One game that no one’s seemed to mention is ANNO: Mutationem. It’s more of a hack and slash type 2D pixel style game, but the cyberpunk themes and settings are all there.
