I thought it was time I gave
Burn:Cycle a try as I'd heard good things about it, and whilst I've had the CDi for quite a while it's never had much love. I'd picked it up as part of a deal with a boxed Sega Saturn and a handful of games.
Burn:Cycle was released in 1994, and it shows it's age, coupling FMV sequences with VR imagery that could have come straight from Lawnmower Man, albeit with fewer chrome reflection effects. It's not terrible, but it's not exactly easy on the eyes either, favouring reds and blues, and not much else.
The look and feel is total cyberpunk, exactly right for the era; 80s 'what the hell are you wearing?' fashions; Hollywood style technobabble; a fairly predictable plot - data thief infected with a computer virus that's set to kill him must find out why before the 'cure' can be found.
The opening of the game sets you up for exactly how the rest of it will play out - make a few random clicks around the screen, interact with a couple of objects, turn around and get instantly killed.
GAME OVERGet used to the sight of that, you'll be seeing it a lot. The 2 hour real time dead line for the game means that it's artificially lengthened by a punishing difficulty and frequent insta-death(tm) I'd forgotten just how annoying games can be when they get the basics wrong.
The save/restore mechanism is absolutely dire, using the point and click system like it does you can lose precious seconds just navigating around the menus, and the lack of 'snap to' on the default options is a serious omission.
The scenery makes navigating extremely difficult, amd the point and click interface means that you don't always head off where you think you're going, nor is it easy to see entrances to new areas. I've frequently had to resort to a walkthrough to find where I need to be going, but once there the puzzles are reasonably entertaining.
The game is frequently let down by 'Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins' accents, I just can't abide them, and find them incredibly jarring. What is it about games designers that think they can get away using a friend of a friend for a voice over? And why is it that the only English accents that exist outside the real world are either Queen's english, or Cockney?
The sad thing is I really wanted to like this game, I'm a huge fan of cyberpunk. I grew up reading William Gibson novels, I played
Cyberpunk and
Shadowrun RPGs on paper, my first email address alias was '
thecount@someuniversity.ac.uk' and no end of home electronics projects ended up in matt black boxes with an
Ono Sendai brand label applied somewhere discrete
End ResultTotal play time: 9 hours
Bad English accents: 3
Deaths by meteor: Millions
'Screw you!s' shouted at the screen in frustration: Too many to remember
Final VerdictIt's a passable game spoiled by a poor interface and an incredibly frustrating level of difficulty. In it's day it was probably incredible, but is now over shadowed by current gen cgi and an audience expecting much more in the way of interactivity.
