Cyberia from Interplay is a good attempt at a mix between an adventure and an arcade game. The only problem is that neither the adventure or arcade portions of the game are developed well enough to make this game really work. A lot of work was put into making a great looking game but at the cost of playability.
You are Zak, some kind of computer hacker agent type who was put in prison. In the future this is set in the criminal cartels fight against the rest of the free world for control of the planet. It seems that someone has discovered something in the frozen wastes of Northern Russia and the good guys have pulled Zak out of prison to go check it out before the bad guys can use it to wreak havoc on the rest of us.
Cyberia is basically two games in one. The first you experience is the adventuring part of the game. All of the characters are represented by computer-generated "synthetic actors." They tend to look blocky, but the animation and lip-synching is generally better than previous examples of this technique. You control Zak by pointing him in whatever direction the computer will allow and the computer moves him along invisible paths to certain problem solving or obstacle points in the game. You can only move Zak from certain specific points, called "nodes," to other specific nodes. Zak walking from each node to each other accessible node is a pre-rendered animation, kind of like a short movie. As a result, while the animation is awesome and the backgrounds stunning compared to games which generate 3D graphics on the fly (like Descent), freedom of movement is essentially an illusion. You can only go where the computer allows, which gets frustrating at times and takes a lot out of the mystery.
Arcade sequences comprise the other part of the game. At certain points the story is linked together by arcade games which you must get through in order to get to the next part of the story. The main arcade sequence (but not the only one û the first arcade game I played was painfully boring and ugly but you only have to play it once) is flying a fighter towards Cyberia. The automatic navigation is turned on but the firing mechanism is broken so Zak has to shoot the bad guys while the ship flies around. This is accomplished through some drop dead gorgeous 3D rendered animation sequences. The only problem is that the sequence is exactly the same every time, and the targets that come after you attack from the same place at the same time EVERY TIME. After two or three runs through a sequence you start memorizing where the next attack is coming from. And firing at a target consists of moving a targeting cursor with the mouse and firing by pushing the mouse buttons. So remember, the attacks are going to be the same every time through, the flight path is the same every time through, the backgrounds are the same every time through. All you do is point and click at the bad guys. It gets boring after a while. Even the incredible graphics can't pull through this shortcoming.
The strongest part of the game remains the adventuring segment, which is the only part that advances the story line. I wish they had made Cyberia entirely a 3D adventure and saved the flying around portion for a game of its own. When you get into the story line and start discovering bit by bit what's going on, it actually begins to get interesting but there just isn't enough of it to satisfy. As is often the case with such efforts, trying to incorporate the best of both arcade and adventure gaming worlds resulted in the impoverishment of both. It looks great, but the gameplay comes up short. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's a BAD game. At it's best it can be absorbing, and the flying around is fun at first, though it quickly gets old. I hope that Interplay or someone else will pick up on what's been done in Cyberia and run with it. I saw glimpses of greatness just waiting to be incorporated into a groundbreaking game, but unfortunately, Cyberia is not it.
