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- Hacker News
- I recommend the Shadowrun series on Steam. Not large games but really fun.by try-working
- Get Shadowrun 2058 for the Genesis/MegaDrive version ROM plus an IPS patcher and enjoy a much better gameplay experience (and balancing).
On Deus Ex (the first one) installing GMDX and playing it with that MOD it's a must. No, forget that crappy HDTP or whatever it's called, it has broken Chinese/Japanase Hanzi/Kanji in Hong Kong and it looks tacky as hell. GMDX it's tons better and it expands the game areas, interaction, objects and such a lot. For instance, the NYC Statue Park looks far more realist this way, with logically (and architecturally speaking) set objects for a more lifelike environment.
by anthk - Not mentioned, but probably my favourite cyberpunk game of all time: Satellite Reign (2015).
It's a modern Syndicate remake in spirit, and a relatively small indie game (to set expectations), but the gameplay loop is tight and rewards experimenting. I still like to do a quick playthrough occassionally and it has aged great.
by flohofwoe - I absolutely loved Burn::Cycle on the Philips CDi, where it was the definitive version (apparently the visuals were much better than the PC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoLw7SEmLYk
The gameplay itself was a bit rough, but the music and immersion I felt while playing it I still recall to this day.
by supermatt - Syndicate (1993) should be on the list.by 0xbadc0de5
- 100% I spent endless hours playing this on my Mac back in the 90s.by macshome
- I loved Syndicate, but I never beat it. There was a mechanic I couldn’t figure out that caused my whole operation to fall apart after a certain amount of time.
- Gamedec is a cyberpunk story driven , sort of rpg game with a very interesting dialog system that makes reading the dialogs and sometimes picking bad options worth it.
What's a fluff text in other games in Gamedec gives you psychological affinity point. With enough points in relevant affinities you can retcon a specific background for your character that lets you to perform cool actions later (basically like a special perk/trait).
The story is decent too. Society where messy virtualization of huge chunk of human experience is common.
by scotty79 - System Shock should be on this list.by redbluething
- I second that - they do write "this list has been truncated to those titles with heavily involved narratives with settings and themes that are decidedly within the genre", but a game about a hacker hired to hack the AI controlling a space station, who gets a neural implant as a reward for completing the task, and then wakes up after the operation to find out that they're the only survivor after the AI ran amok, is as cyberpunk as it gets...by rob74
- I would add Citizen Sleeper to the list. Board-game inspired narrative cyberpunk RPG with a nice story. I loved it and currently I'm playing the second one. It's a short game. Took me around 10 hours to finish though I didn't go throught all the tasks or the full DLC.by kreddor
- Citizen Sleeper portrays exactly the kind of future I have nightmares about. A rented artificial body owned by a megacorporation with a required subscription and planned obsolescence built in. And this was why the game really clicked for me.by sunrunner
- That's one of my favourite games in terms of narrative/characters. I usually have troubling reading through too many dialogues etc in games, but in this one the storytelling was great and it made you really care about the characters and their stories, that it was easy to read through it all with pleasure.by freehorse
- I love cyberpunk as a genre/style/aesthetic but there are almost no open world videogames that actually nail it.
For me the cyberpunk aesthetic basically requires bustling small streets with tons of detail (shops, trash, crowds). That's where most games that try to use an open world fail in my opinion. We just don't have the technology yet to create these dense detail rich scenes without a lot of work on the developers/artists side as well as keeping it performant so it can run on mainstream gaming PCs.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a prime example of that in my opinion. Most parts of the city look like it's Covid again and people must stay at home. Some parts of the map come remotely close but the illusion breaks once you inspect your surroundings.
I like Cloudpunk (https://store.steampowered.com/app/746850/Cloudpunk/) a fair bit but even that suffers from the walkways and buildings feeling slightly empty. At least the pixel art style helps it from falling in the uncanney valley that cyberpunk constantly dips in.
by ghosty141 - by metalliqaz
- Is there any open world game in any genre that manages the "bustling city" effect well? I didn't play Cyberpunk 2077 but Witcher 3 never quite got there either. It seems like 'detail' is a fractal/exponential problem that scales poorly in many respects.by big_toast
- I think Cyberpunk has a good basis but as you say, it's heavy weight; they did increase or tweak crowd density in an update I think, but also it's a PC game so it can be modded and improved as hardware gets better. The challenge - and you already see it on lower crowd density numbers - is getting enough unique and different characters. Cyberpunk seems to have a number (dozens?) of NPC characters making up the crowds, but it gets repetitive and you frequently see identical ones.
Procedurally generated characters would already improve that, and some games do have it but they tend to pick from a fixed set of animation and behaviour stereotypes still. More of those stereotypes make it better (think GTA), but it's still fixed.
I don't think going all in on procedural generation or even AI would fix it though; especially AI has a tendency to go for a mean / average character quickly. And in video games, you still want predictability.
That said, maybe a different visual style (lower fidelity or 2d) would work.
by Cthulhu_ - There is currently (for a week, until 2026-08-10) a Cyberpunk-themed sale going on on Steam:by teroshan
- Beneath a Steel Sky (1994) should be on this list.
It's freeware, available from GOG: https://www.gog.com/en/game/beneath_a_steel_sky
by DaOne256 - Even worth playing through with a guide for the story, pretty trippy.by kcaseg
- I started playing that at least three times along the years (if for nothing else, then for the dialogue: "You need a rad suit to go in there! -- What do you mean?! This suit is totally rad!"), but somehow never got very far...by rob74
- Cyberpunk 2077:
> Gameplay Type: First Person Shooter Role Playing Game Summary: A long anticipated release with eight years of development time, the game’s launch has been plagued with bugs and poor performance as well as decidedly mixed reviews. Regardless, the title offers gamers the largest open world cyberpunk universe thus far, so despite the rather uninspired art design and a plot that brings nothing new to the genre, this game is the best available to allow players to immerse themselves in a cyberpunk setting.
This is a very dated and seriously opinionated review.
by geuis - I mean, yes the technical problems have been fixed, but it's still the same old boring story, repetitive gameplay and a very abrupt ending. And for being a cyberpunk game there's definitely too little cyberspace and 'netrunning' in the game. It's essentially a "GTA 2077" with slightly better gunplay (FWIW though, I still enjoyed the first playthrough for what the game is - e.g. a first-person-shooter with some very light RPG elements, but I couldn't endure a second playthrough, for that the different character stories and builds simply don't differ enough).by flohofwoe
- Calling art design uninspired and plot that brings "nothing new" has to be the dumbest take about art I've seen in a while.
I wonder if they actually played the game to write such nonsense.
by izacus - It had nice cinematic moments - but it felt like GTA with a Hollywood cyberpunk movie attached. Going from bunnyhopping around rooftops and killing 1000s of gangsters and cops in broad daylight with heavy weapons and ridiculous cyberware, to a fairly railroaded narrative about apparently obscure mercenary V barely surviving was some tonal whiplash.by gregoryyy
- > this game is the best available to allow players to immerse themselves in a cyberpunk setting
Depends what you mean by "immerse". If it means driving through Night City on your bike and enjoying the view, sure.
If it means role-playing as a character and building it your position in the city via meaningful choices with consequences, really not.
by teroshan