Cyberia

The Good
Golden rule is not to make many cinematics iin between missions of some shooter game, golden rule is to make a cinematic out of a shooter game. And thus, Cyberia was born. Using extremely beautiful graphic and pre-rendered animations all throughout the game I can undoubtedly say this game got me hooked like no other. It's not that I'm a sucker for beautiful graphic, but I am for good cinematics.

You are cast in a role of Zak, a computer hacker of some kind who was waiting to be executed, but got a tempting offer which he chose instead of his execution. At first it is har to tell what are you doing and why, and are hoping that more of the plot will be revealed to you as you move along. The game is generally comprised of three parts, the adventurous one when you're doing the regular exploring from a third person perspective, the mindboggling one where you use your special glasses that are more than meets the eye to hack into whatever opportunity brings. And the last and most amusing and amazing one is the sheer shoting which is done from first-person perspective.

For when I said the entire game is like one big cinematic, what I meant is there's everything prerendered, including your own moves (you just tell Zak where to go, but you don't go there, he does), but some other cinematics there sure are present. Tops ones to be while you're reaching Siberia in a prototype craft with autopilot and your only worry targeting cursor. Music in those 6 or 7 flying missions is so perfect for action scenes and short cinematics in between shooting I haven't encountered better assemble of music and cinematic ever since.

Sure, people may not like games with little influence to the course by the player, where everything is majorly done by the computer AI, but that's why it is called a cinematic, and no matter graphic on some nowadays games may exceed the look of these cinematics, I find this game to be one in a lifetime. I still am bedazzled why it didn't pass as well enough to conclude the trilogy but only to get a sequel.

The Bad
Solving certain puzzles may be a bit frustrating, especially since you can get killed pretty easily whenever failing to deactivate or bypass something. But these puzzles are what keep this game under balance and just to prolongue the inevitable.

The Bottom Line
This is one of a definite classics if you ask me. A game that brought something fully pre-rendered to our computers, and the developers that knew how to make the recipe for the right mixture of all the elements that make this game so good. Depending how much you like self-driving games like this, where you enjoy cinematics to the top, you may also try Cyberia 2 and Rebel Assault II.