Glitchpunk is a Cyberpunk take on the traditional top-down shooter format that the original Grand Theft Auto games were based on.
Players take control of a male or female android bounty hunter. To make a living, they must accept contracts from various factions. They must also navigate a desolate world filled with corruption and moral decay, and wage a war of survival and profit. To do this, they must complete missions, get credits, buy guns and get modules. The primary objective: to hack and destroy anything that stands in their way in this High tech low-life nightmare.
The best parts of Glitchpunk are the refreshing open-world, and accepting contracts from various factions. The missions are well laid out, and the factions are very interesting and build up the strange dystopian hellscape’s world. Gunplay is also decent, and it’s easy to get lost on some distant neon street blasting away gang members or deranged cultists.
Hacking also plays a role as a way to gain an advantage over the world around you. Sometimes missions will require you to use specific hacks, which makes the feature feel not only necessary, but practical.
But to use hacks, players must get items called modules and equip them, which creates a nice loop of farming missions to gain money to purchase better modules and gain more hacks. Overall, It’s a nice system that both complements and ties the gameplay together. Although this is just early access, I can’t wait to see how the missions expand in the future.
The world of Glitchpunk is also highly enthralling and features a ton of interesting characters and lore that constantly builds the world around you. However, beyond missions and another activity called headhunts, there isn’t much available to truly lose oneself in the world.
Headhunts, a mission type outside of the regular contracts, can be accepted anywhere on the map and will task you with killing a certain number of faction members. It’s an interesting activity, but just those small missions with contracts alone makes the game feel rather empty and lacking. It’s also one of the game’s weakest points in its current state. But of course, this is still early access, so more content is bound to be added in the future.
Other than this gripe, I encountered some issues with driving cars, which feels clunky. You are more likely to hit something than reach your destination on time. This makes trying to complete missions sometimes annoying, and even a chore, since it is so easy to accidently ram into a cop car, get a wanted level, and die.
It’s a real shame, as the game features heavy emphasis on using vehicles, even going as far to list requirements of maintaining a low wanted level as the main objective for certain missions. So when you crash into something and cause the police to come after you because the vehicle movement is so clunky, it ends up ruining your enjoyment of the game because of the loss of progress. Sometimes the game will also trigger fail missions if you get thrown out of a car, and when this happens it is truly annoying and adds further frustration in addition to the clunky vehicle movement.
Because of this, the experience in Glitchpunk comes off as a buggy frustation. Regardless, the game still has some engaging elements, along with tons of character and humor like a radio station system filled with funny dialogue.
Pros and Cons of Playing Glitchpunk
Verdict - Hold off for now unless you are a Cyberpunk Fan
Overall, if you are looking for a decent game to support in the long run and are a fan of the Cyberpunk genre, then Glitchpunk is the game for you. It features a ton of love for the genre and just the right amount of content to please any Cyberpunk fan. Despite feeling a little lacking with the missions, the gameplay is, ultimately, fun. The game will soon get upcoming content expansions and updates as well.
But beyond being a fan of Cyberpunk, you are best off waiting until some of the bugs and other issues get ironed out and more content gets added to the game. Because as it stands now, the driving feels too clunky to be enjoyable, and due to being such a major focus of the game, it’s way too off-putting to play at this current stage.
