I absolutely adore Cloudpunk, the cyberpunk delivery-driver game, but the one thing it was missing when I played through it earlier this year was a proper cockpit view. The third-person chase camera is great for getting a look at the city of Nivalis, but for a pure sense of immersion you just can't beat actually getting behind the wheel. A first-person mode was added to the game in June which was a big step in the right direction, but a driving game without a proper cockpit view is, well, just incomplete.
Today it is incomplete no longer: A new update from developer Ion Lands adds the long-awaited cockpit view to the game. The camera can be unlocked to look around inside your car and out through the windows, and to facilitate parking (which can be dodgy even in third-person), a holographic down-looking camera will appear in your dash during your approach.
And let me tell you, it is spectacular. I took Cloudpunk out for a spin to try out the new camera, and it works wonderfully well. Visibility is reduced, but cruising aimlessly through loud, busy cyber-streets looks and feels better than ever. I don't know if I'd want to play with this perspective full-time—the spatial awareness enabled by a chase cam is tough to beat when it comes to getting things done—but for those times when I just want to do some sightseeing, this is it.
The update also makes some of the items in your apartment interactive (you can actually watch your fish swim in their tank now), makes a few level design changes, and makes some tweaks to smooth out controller input. And that's not the end of it: Ion Lands said that "big story update" is in the works that will add new characters (and bring back old ones), a vehicle constructor, and "racing jobs," although there's no time frame on that yet. "These will take us longer to develop," the studio said. "It'll be like a second game."
