Whether it's a systematic point-and-click adaptation of Blade Runner or a high-speed shooter, video games of all kinds have tried their approach to the cyberpunk genre. There's just something about futuristic hacking, substantial body augmentation, and tackling mega-corporations that seem to work so well in so many different types of games. With Cyberpunk 2077 on the horizon, cyberpunk is also on the minds of a lot of gamers right now. While we still have a few months to wait for CD Projekt Red's highly anticipated RPG, there are already plenty of cyberpunk games out there for you to live out your dream of hacking the planet right now.
Shadowrun series
Of all the games on this list, the Shadowrun series is perhaps the one that conveys the cyberpunk aesthetic the best. There's hacking, body mods, heroes on the right track, oppressive mega-bodies, and tons of faux-futuristic slang thrown in for good measure. Of course, there are plenty of fantastic elements in it too, from spellcasting elves to accomplice dragons, which can turn sci-fi purists off. If you can digest its mix of genres, the three games in the recent Harebrained Schemes series - Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and Shadowrun Hong Kong - deliver thrilling tactical combat, deep RPG progression, and an incredible story.
What brings Shadowrun to life is the way it weaves its cast of memorable characters into the city life it takes place in Seattle, Berlin, and Hong Kong. If you have to pick just one, Dragonfall is probably your best bet. He refines a lot of Shadowrun's Return systems and is generally considered to have the most developed characters and to be part of the series.
Deus Ex series
The original Deus Ex is a classic first-person cyberpunk RPG. Put yourself in the shoes of JC Denton, he relaxes you to investigate a terrorist plot and fight the spread of a disease called gray death before plunging headlong into the conspiracy to end all conspiracies involving governments. world, secret societies and powerful AI. Deus Ex may seem a little clunky by today's standards, but the unprecedented freedom to approach the game the way the player wants it more than makes up for it.
If the old-school feel of the original Deus Ex isn't to your liking, the more recent entries in the series, Deus ex human revolution and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, are more than competent cyberpunk adventures, modernizing the feel of the first game but unfortunately removing some of its complexity at the same time.
Observer
Rather than using cyberspace, artificial intelligence, and body augmentation to empower his characters, Observer delves into the scariest side of cyberpunk. This first-person horror game puts players in the role of a cybernetically enhanced sleuth with the ability to hack people's brains as the ultimate interrogation technique. Not for the faint of heart, the sometimes gruesome and often terrifying Watcher goes to very dark places throughout his sci-fi sleuth story.
Subserial Network
Subserial Network is a true original, both in the way the game is played and in the story it tells. Launching Subserial Network opens two different windows on your desktop, and throughout the game you will have to "download" files from its fictitious version of the Internet and run the programs you find there, blurring the line between game and reality. .
Set in a post-human world, Subserial Network turns you into a digital sleuth tasked with hunting down rogue programs that attempt to upload their consciousness to the internet. He tells his story through chat rooms, forums, web pages, and other ways of interacting with his decidedly non-human characters. While everyone in the story is a machine and their way of life is totally alien, their struggles and the way they express them can make their concerns eerily relevant to some players.
Black Future ‘88
Black Future '88 uses cyberpunk more as an aesthetic than a storytelling style, but it does so well that you won't even bother with the paper-thin narrative. This fast-paced, fast-paced shooter takes place in a world time has forgotten, where it's still 1988 - or at least, an alternate reality version of 1988 heavily influenced by synthetic wave music and overlaid. of '80s sci-fi action movie references.
In Black Future '88, you choose from a handful of unlockable characters and try to climb to the top of Skymelt's Death Tower, dodging traps and blowing up robots along the way. As you go up the tower will improve with the loot you leave, but you will also become stronger collecting weapons and increasing your skills with powerful but poisonous drugs. But even that won't keep you alive for long. Each time you start a new run in Black Future '88, you only have 18 minutes to live. If you like your sleek, action-packed cyberpunk games rather than cerebral, you can't go wrong with Black Future '88.
Gemini Rue
The point-and-click adventure genre is far from its peak, but Gemini Rue proves there's still a lot of life left in the format. It brings a unique twist to its gameplay by including more action-oriented shooter sequences, but what makes Gemini Rue stand out is its story.
Throughout Gemini Rue, you will switch perspectives between characters to explore its fascinating world from multiple perspectives. As you control both an assassin turned detective and a prisoner in a shady research facility, you'll follow two separate stories that slowly unravel a global mystery from different angles. Gemini Rue makes excellent use of cyberpunk tropes like weathered memories and morally compromised antiheroes to tell a story so intriguing that you won't want to interrupt the game until it's over.
