I never finishedCyberpunk 2077. I bought it when it came out, then refunded it when myXboxcould barely play it due toall the bugs and miscellaneous issuestheCD Projekt Redtitle famously faced on launch. When I finally got around to playing it proper, around the time thePhantom Libertyexpansion launched, nobody wanted to read about it.
Still, the dozen or so hours or played told me plenty about Night City. It was a beautiful place, but it wasall a facade. The narrative didn’t embody the spirit of the cyberpunk genre as much as the cheap aesthetic. Despite the game’s name, Cyberpunk’s interrogation of the genre and embrace of its themes was surface-level at best. It was fun to play as a linear narrative, but it wasn’t cyberpunk.
The one exception to this was the Trauma Team. The state of privatised healthcare half a century in the future is a captivating concept, and even if 2077 didn’t interrogate this particularly well,the existence of the Trauma Team in itself caught my attention. Imagine if the NHS was a subscription service where the nurses carried assault rifles. Now I want a game where you play as the Trauma Team. And no, I don’t count that bullet hell platformer in Night City’s arcades and bars.
Why am I writing about Cyberpunk 2077 in 2024, I hear you ask? I just played an indie noodle delivery game called Death Noodle Delivery, and it’s comfortably more cyberpunk than Cyberpunk 2077. It’s got its pitfalls, however I can’t help but imagine what could have been if 2077 had this level of insight and satire, or if Death Noodle Delivery had the budget and scope of 2077.
You’re a delivery driver in the far future, riding some kind of hoverboard fashioned out of an old bin and throwing noodles at passersby who’ve put in orders. Also, your toilet is broken and you’re desperate for a poo. Seriously, there’s a lot of jokes about needing to poo.
While piloting the hoverboard is awkward and escaping from a rival delivery driver (he works for the local pizzeria) is often frustrating, the time you spend at home in your block of poky flats is where this game really shines.
There are just seven other apartments to explore, but it quickly becomes clear that everyone here knows each other. And everyone has serious problems. Moana, who you seem close to, is fed up of selling herself as a VR sex worker to pay her bills. There’s a camaraderie between the two of you, as you effectively, albeit non-sexually, do the same thing. You’re sacrificing your physical health to pay your bills just as she is sacrificing her mental health.
Upstairs is a couple going through relationship problems, the problem being that one of them won’t take off their VR headset, even to eat or drink. This has deadly consequences and you end up supporting your neighbour through a VR funeral. Your best friend won’t let you use his loo, and you’re struggling to pay your bills yourself. You resort to hacking your hoverboard in order to deliver more noodles, breaking the law time and time again in order to survive in this capitalist hellscape.
None of your neighbours are up for long conversations, but each of them has real problems that hit dangerously close to home. Every character is struggling to make ends meet, and every one has a different way of dealing with these issues. The character work in Death Noodle Delivery is truly exemplary, but it goes further than that.
When not riding about yeeting noodles, your character walks with a stoop and a limp. He’s been broken by carrying his heavy backpack of noodles around, his body falling apart under the weight of his hoverboard. He’s malnourished and healthcare is clearly unaffordable.
This simple detail, the character’s animations, sells the dystopian world better than anything in Cyberpunk 2077. It makes it clear that this is no power fantasy, this is a story about broken people desperately trying to survive. Death Noodle Delivery understands the cyberpunk genre deeply, and I’m forcing myself through every shift in order to find out more.
