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Cyberswine

aka: Cyberswine: Part Cop. Part Machine. Full Boar Hero.
Moby ID: 157

Description official descriptions

The protagonist of Cyberswine is, as the title implies, a cybernetic pig on a race to save CyberCity from a deadly virus. Helping him on his perilous mission is his partner, Sara Lee. The game is essentially an interactive movie done with 3D graphics. The player may interfere and choose the course of action for the hero. There are no action-based sequences beside a time limit imposed on these decisions. Most of the choices are purely cosmetic and do not influence the course of the story.

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Credits (Windows version)

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Original Characters by
Graphics Production
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Art Direction
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Music by
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 46% (based on 1 ratings)

Players

Average score: 0.9 out of 5 (based on 2 ratings with 1 reviews)

All the quality you'd expect from a title named "Cyberswine".

The Good
I found it in a bargain bin for 99 cents ($0.99), which was, indeed, a bargain.

The voice acting is surprisingly good for an interactive movie of this calibre. Half of the voice talent (including Cyberswine himself) sounded good enough for traditional movie or radio work.

The Bad
Good Lord, where do I start? There's too much to list in a narrative form, so I'll just drop down to the bullet points:

  • Realtime rendered 3D is a neat concept, but not when your software engine can't even match 15fps on a 200MHz machine. (A 3D card helped immensely, to be fair.)
  • While half of the voice talent was pretty good, the other half was simply terrible.
  • The keyframing was really bad (ie the motion of the characters didn't look even close to normal). I guess they thought this was acceptable for a "new approach" to interactive movies, but if this were pre-rendered for a traditional IM, it would get laughed out of the business.
  • Many of choices throughout the game only affected what Cyberswine would say, not do. Geez, why bother? (I guess to give the player the illusion that they are actually affecting the story...)
  • You can't save multiple bookmarks, only a single one.
  • It is not clearly explained what the effects of hitting "Y" or "N" are, and how they compare to adjusting Cyberswine's "emotions". It's pretty self-evident once you play the game, but the docs could have been better.

Here's the worst thing: Any "interactive movie" worth its salt allows you to come to different conclusions depending on the choices you make. I played Cyberswine passively one game (letting people live, trying to talk things out, etc.), then quite aggresively the next (shooting at anything that moves and acting quite the asshole), and I came to the same conclusion. But here's the kicker: If you don't choose anything at all, a default decision is made. I decided to start the game and then just sit back, letting the computer take the default path, and I came to the same conclusion. So, it appears that any choices you make don't affect the outcome at all. What a crock.

To top it off, I didn't see any credits for the voice talent, which is the only thing worth crediting in this game.

The Bottom Line
Playing Cyberswine is like watching an automobile accident--it's disgusting and offensive, but you can't seem to tear yourself away from the carnage.

Windows · by Trixter (8952) · 1999

Trivia

Comic

Cyberswine was the 'second tier' comic book title by Issue One of Australia (there hit title was Zero Assasin).

Development

Cyberswine was originally developed for the 'new' Sega Saturn (which flopped outside of Japan), (and it was supposed to be an arcade game, not interactive movie.)

Influence

You can't really tell from the screenshots but the texture for the female police officer's face was originally a photo of Pamela Anderson.

Multipathmovies.com

Cyberswine is less of a game (what little game there is) and is more of an advertisement for the www.multipathmovies.com website, where you can download and view many more "episodes" of multipath movies (for a fee).

Technology

Unlike most "interactive movies", Cyberswine (and all Multipath Movies) is completely real-time 3D. This is unlike traditional interactive movies, which are pre-rendered or live action and stored in a traditional video format, like MPEG, Smacker, Indeo, Cinepak, etc. The disadvantage of having all actors/scenes rendered real-time is that slower computers render out a slower framerate (unless you have a dedicated 3D card). The advantage is that the user can control the camera angle and positioning at any time.

Information also contributed by Andrew Reid and Yakumo

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  • MobyGames ID: 157
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Trixter.

Additional contributors: formercontrib, Patrick Bregger.

Game added June 12, 1999. Last modified October 25, 2023.