You have to hand it to the folks at Philips: despite disappointing sales, they're just not going to give up on CD-i. For this, their entry in the cyberpunk-thriller game wars, they've pulled out all the stops. A complex blend of live-action and 3-D animation, Burn:Cycle offers some innovative thinking about "cinematic" interactivity. It boasts a slickly crafted plot, original visual puzzles, and an impressive, highly stylized, futuristic city.
Sometimes you watch an actor move through a canned sequence, sometimes you act from the perspective of that same character, and sometimes you hear a monologue representing "your" voice. All these fairly complex techniques are pulled together quite seamlessly.
But do you really want to be Sol Cutter, a "small-time data thief" caught up in conspiracies beyond credibility in yet another bleak, morally bankrupt future dominated by sinister corporations and runaway technology? You play a sleazy guy with a sleazy job who got caught trying to steal some data and ended up with a software/wetware virus implanted in his head – a premise straight out of William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic." You have two system-clock hours to figure out what's going on before the virus kills you. This is a neat motivational device for the action.
The stylized look can be impressively moody and starkly beautiful. It can also seem peculiar, as it does in the 
= ø Bar, where you zoom between motionless 2-D figures while "your" voice intones, deadpan, how warm and at home you feel here among the freaks.
The mock-Chandler dialog, world-weary posturing, and sarcastic portrayals of data-laundering New Age cults lack the ironic depth of works that defined the cyberpunk genre. This is the kind of world where enemies spill graphically gruesome blood but then conveniently disappear so you don't have to step over them on your way out the door.
Moral scruples aside, I have to admit I got caught up in the story enough to keep going. The action sequences and interactive puzzles, which regularly appear on various pretexts such as Broadway musical numbers, are not too difficult. The hard-working British creators (Eitan Arrusi, David Collier, Olaf Wendt, and Graham Deane) have nicely balanced action, reflection, exploration, and aesthetics.
But too many stories about jaded burnouts in a technological dystopia can leave you, well, jaded.
Burn:Cycle, for CD-i: US$59.98 for a limited edition with soundtrack. Philips Media Games: (800) 340 7888, +1 (310) 444 6600.
| STREET CRED
| QuickCam
Surfing the Other Internet Wave
It's a Beautiful, Dystopian World
Jaded Again
