Cyberpunk games: about the games
Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world action-adventure RPG set in a grim future. The story unfolds in Night City, a perilous megalopolis where residents are consumed by the pursuit of power, glamour and constant body modification. The game blends action-adventure and RPG elements, so players move through and explore this dangerous setting freely.
Players take on the role of Marcus Holloway, a gifted young hacker living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the birthplace of the tech revolution. Together with the DedSec group he sets out to carry out the biggest hack in history and take down ctOS 2.0, an invasive operating system used by criminal masterminds to monitor and manipulate citizens. Players explore an open world, hack into connected devices, control city infrastructure, develop skills to suit their playstyle and upgrade tools such as RC cars, the Quadcopter drone and 3D printed weapons. A co-op and adversarial multiplayer is included, along with optional Tobii Eye Tracking features.
The game takes place in 2029, when mechanically augmented humans have been declared outcasts and live in total segregation from the rest of society. Crime and acts of terror serve as a thin veil for an overarching conspiracy aimed at controlling the future of mankind. In this action RPG you play Adam Jensen, an experienced covert operative forced to work in a world that has grown to despise his kind. You pick from an array of cutting-edge weapons and augmentations to suit your playstyle, explore diverse near-future locations, and your choices and actions decide how the story ends.
Ghostrunner 2 is a hardcore first-person slasher set in a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk future. Playing as Jack, one year after the first game, the player takes on a violent AI cult gathered outside Dharma Tower, the last refuge of humanity. Katana combat, nonlinear levels with motorbike sections and bosses that can be faced in several ways form the core, while enemies respond to the skills the player uses against them and the soundtrack is synthwave.
Soul Hackers 2 is a supernatural RPG set under the neon lights of a cyberpunk Japan. Players take on the role of Ringo, an agent of Aion, who must save the world from apocalypse. Throughout the game, you collect demons and unlock fusion combinations to create stronger allies with lethal abilities. You also deepen bonds with your teammates, relive their past adventures, and uncover the truth behind their stories and your own.
Stray is a third-person adventure in which the player guides a lost cat that is alone and separated from its family. To get home, the cat must unravel an ancient mystery and escape a long-forgotten, decaying cybercity bathed in neon light. Players roam the surroundings high and low, defend against unforeseen threats and solve the mysteries of a place inhabited by curious droids and dangerous creatures. On the way the cat befriends a small flying drone called B-12, and the pair must find a way out; the game is developed by BlueTwelve Studio, a small team from the south of France.
Ghostrunner is a hardcore first-person slasher built around fast, brutal combat. It takes place in Dharma Tower, a cyberpunk megastructure and humanity’s last shelter after a cataclysm ended the world, where people fight to survive as resources dwindle and the strong prey on the weak. The player climbs from the bottom to the top to face the tyrannical Keymaster Mara and take revenge. As the most advanced blade fighter ever created, the player cuts enemies down with a monomolecular katana, dodges bullets with superhuman reflexes and uses specialised techniques, while one-hit one-kill mechanics and frequent checkpoints keep fights fast and intense.
In New York in 2329 immortality is available to anyone who can afford the subscription: consciousness can be stored in memory banks or transferred between bodies. Detective James Karra of the Mortality Department hunts a serial killer who targets the city’s elite citizens, risking everything in the process. At crime scenes he uses time-manipulation augmentation and advanced technology to reconstruct the events leading up to each murder and to uncover the horrifying truth behind them. This interactive detective story is set in a dystopian future and explores the dangers of transhumanism and eternal life.
Observer: System Redux is a first-person cyberpunk horror detective story set in a decaying future scarred by neon lights. You play as an Observer who invades suspects' minds, sifting through corrupted memories to track down a mysterious killer while confronting your own dark past. The protagonist, Daniel Lazarski, is portrayed by the late Rutger Hauer. Using the Dream Eater device, you enter the minds of the dead and dying, relive their final moments, and search for clues leading to the elusive killer.
Hacknet is a terminal-based hacking simulator for PC. After the death of hacker Bit, whose demise may not have been the accident the media describe, the player receives automated emails with instructions and must uncover the mystery. Gameplay uses old-school command prompts and real processes based on UNIX commands, with minimal hand-holding in a world full of secrets. The goal is to keep Hacknet-OS out of the wrong hands.
ENCODYA is a point-and-click adventure set in a dystopian future. Nine-year-old orphan Tina lives in a makeshift rooftop shelter in Neo Berlin, a dark megalopolis ruled by corporations in the year 2062, surviving by scavenging scraps. Her clumsy robot guardian SAM-53 stays with her, programmed to protect her no matter what. When Tina learns that her father left her a mission to finish his plan to save the world from grayness, the two set off across different realities. The 2.5D story with two playable characters leans on puzzles and dialogue across more than 100 locations.
METAL GEAR RISING: REVENGEANCE, developed by Kojima Productions and PlatinumGames, takes the METAL GEAR series in a new action-oriented direction. It blends pure action with an epic story about Raiden, a child soldier turned half-human, half-cyborg ninja who uses his High Frequency katana blade to cut through anything in his vengeful path. The PC version adds three DLC missions (Blade Wolf, Jetstream, VR Missions), customisable bodies for Raiden including White Armor, Inferno Armor, Commando Armor, his MGS4 body and Cyborg Ninja, and a menu with options to play cutscenes, codec conversations, boss battles alone, graphic settings, and ZANGEKI, which adjusts the number of cuts.