13-Aug-2001 Cyberia's back. So too is Chris Anderson. Except he never went anywhere (Eh? - Ed).
I suppose now would be a good time to warn off anyone who might be wasting their time reading this review. Did you like Cyberia? No?
Fair enough. How about Rebel Assault 1 or 2? Oh dear, you didn't like those either, did you? Alright, I'll be seeing you all later then, because Cyberia 2 is an action-based adventure game which features all the gameplay elements (or lack of them, some might say) which made its predecessor and the Rebel Assault series so successful.
I'm sure you know the sort of thing. Just in case you don't, here's the gist of it: clutch your mouse or joystick, move the cursor round the screen 'clicking' on enemy thingies, marvel at wonderful, wonderful backdrops that impress all your friends and reassure you that you did the right thing buying that costly Pentium machine, solve a few easy puzzles (Cyberia only), and generally delude yourself that you're a dab-hand at computer games because you've completed the thing in a day or two.
Cyberia 2 is basically an amalgam of all the above things, with a truckload of smart-looking rendered cut-scenes chucked in for good measure. At this stage the cynics among you will prob-ably be likely to opine that Cyberia 2 is an utter waste of cd space. Not so, I say. There are a couple of things about it that save its beautifully rendered hide. More on that later. In the meantime, I'm sure you'll no doubt be wanting to know about the plot...
Bald bloke in world-saving shenanigans
Having spent a pile of dosh buying Cyberia 2, you are rewarded with the opportunity to save the world, a feat you'll probably have accomplished in countless other pc games before, so you should be pretty good at this sort of thing by now.
At the start of the game Zak (your alter-ego) reawakens from a cryogenic freeze. He quickly discovers that he's been captured by the fwa (the manual doesn't explain who this fwa lot are, presumably Virgin couldn't think up a suitably world-dominating-type name to go with the acronym). This is pretty bad news for Zak: he's lost his freedom, his cool-looking spaceship, his self-respect and, worse still, his hair. Your objective then, with the aid of your female sidekick Novelle, is to help Zak get away from the evil fwa. Anyway, enough of this world-saving bollocks already, let's get back to the matter in hand here (aka the game).
Die. Die a lot. Die often etc
I have to admit that I wasn't exactly kicking people out of the way to get at this game - I saw it at beta stage in LA and was less than impressed. Okay, the graphics are absolutely amazing, but the fundamental gameplay shows no great improvement over the original.
Firstly, the biggest single problem with the first game is still there: during the walkabout sections you can expect to die approximately every 30 seconds. Is this fun? Methinks not. I'll give you an example of the sort of profoundly frustrating (and pointless) problems you'll come up against... I was walking down a corridor with my gun at the ready. I spotted an enemy guard, who didn't see me. I thought it might be a good idea to shoot him, but the game thought differently - every time I went to fire at him, he turned round and yelled something like, 'Hey you, stop!' and then... I died. Shit. What was I doing wrong? I could see this bloke who couldn't see me, yet he managed to shoot me every time. I eventually discovered (after spending ages arsing about with the same scene) that the way round it was to walk down the part of the corridor that the guard couldn't see, timing my movements so that they corresponded exactly with his. What's the bloody point in that? Why couldn't
I just blast the bastard?
Generally speaking, the walkabout bits involve wandering around, taking a wrong turn, and dying. There are a few puzzles thrown in to break the monotony of dying all the time through no fault of your own, but ultimately it's a fatal flaw in the game's design that you're constantly punished for no reason.
To make matters even worse, I seem to remember that the adventure sections in the first game were bad for the same reason, but not this bad. Fortunately though, there's another side to Cyberia 2, a much more friendly side, a side that doesn't wish to frustrate and upset you, a side that you could safely put your hand on your heart and call... fun.
My kingdom for a mouse
The arcade sections in Cyberia 2 look a lot better graphically, and they're much longer too. Apparently a lot of people preferred the arcade sections in Cyberia 1 to the adventure sections (funny that, people preferring fun over instant death) so the game's designers decided to lengthen the arcade bits. So what you get now is not the quick blast you had last time, but a long and very pleasurable ride through beautiful scenery, and lots and lots of enemy nasties to put an end to.
It all sounds pretty fab and groovy, but if you played the original you'll remember it was sometimes a bit of a nightmare to control the crosshairs on your weapons. Not this time though, because you can now aim and shoot your weapons with a mouse. This makes the arcade sections an absolute joy to play. It's a bit like Operation Wolf (a top game on the Amiga about two thousand years ago) except that the graphics are gorgeous. There are new ground-based sections too, which are very similar to those in Rebel Assault 2 (and for my money, they're better too).
So why am I scoring this game lower than Rebel Assault 2? Well, I'm afraid that the shite adventure bits take a lot of the fun out of an essentially sound game. Fortunately though, the arcade bits still make it worth recommending. Z
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