Burn:Cycle

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"It ain’t easy bein’ a two-bit thug in an eight-bit town."

A first-person Cyberpunk Adventure Game which incorporates puzzles and Full Motion Video, similar to that of The 7th Guest. Regarded by retro gamers as a Cult Classic and one of the best games on the Philips CD-i.

You play Sol Cutter, a small-time thief who ferries stolen data inside of his brain (à la Johnny Mnemonic). While he's robbing Softech Industries, a deadly Computer Virus known as Burn:Cycle is downloaded into Sol's mind. It's dormant now, but if Sol doesn't get that virus out of his head within two hours, his brain is yogurt. This countdown occurs in real time, essentially boiling down the game to one big Timed Mission, but there are enough save opportunities to see gamers through.

Despite having decent graphics for the time and comparably-good acting, Burn:Cycle is infamous for both its kitschy aesthetic and nutty (yet oddly straight-faced) storyline. Sol's hard-boiled narration riffs on Blade Runner, and the colorful characters he meets along the way are arguably the game's biggest strength.

Tropes used in Burn:Cycle include:

• Always Night: Actually, twilight.
• Anti-Villain: Vielli.
• Artificial Intelligence
• Back-Alley Doctor: Doc.
• Badass Longcoat: Gala.
• Badass Native: Gala belongs to an entire gang of these. Take Sol's word for it; Native Americans don't fuck around in the future.
• Bare Your Midriff: Kris's outfit in the Televerse.
  • After Sol's brain gets transferred into a woman, he wakes up in a spandex outfit with a navel-baring window.
• Batman Gambit: Everything Sol does in the game is according to Vielli's design -- even his failures!
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: The Rail Shooter segment versus Sol's Rage.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Dealey turning his back on Sol. This mere moments after gloating over how he killed Sol's partner. True, Dealey's men were just about to burst in, but Sol had literally nothing to lose in shooting him.
• Brain Uploading
• Call Reception Area
• Camera Abuse: Dealey shoots out the camera after delivering his final ultimatum to Sol.
• Casual Kink: When Gala and Sol arrive at his old hotel room, she peeks into the minibar to look for drinks. Instead, she finds a chainmail harness. Sol's nonchalant response is priceless.

"Don't touch those! I get charged for what I use."

• City of Adventure
• Coincidental Broadcast: The announcement of NAMO's hacker attack.
• Computer Voice
• Coolest Club Ever: Sum Zero.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Dealey.
• The Cracker: Sol himself.
• Cyberspace: Referred to as the "Televerse".
• Dark and Troubled Past: Sol Cutter.
• Easy Listening: The obnoxious hotel theme.
• Enemy Without: While exploring the depths of his mind, Sol is confronted by a personification of his own rage.
• Evil Laugh: Dealey's distinctive snicker. "Eheh heh heh heh!"
• Faking the Dead: Vielli is believed to be dead in the live world. Actually, he downloaded his consciousness into the Televerse.
• Femme Fatale / Woman in Black: Gala.
• Flying Car
• The Future: Circa 2043.
• Gender Bender: Under duress, Sol agrees to be downloaded into one of Vielli's spare bodies: a "pleasure model". Ick.
  • Cutter's nemesis mentions he looks better now.
  • First Law of Gender Bending: Sol Cutter's original body is pretty much unusable now, so he's stuck with the good-looking, athletic body.
• Generic Ethnic Crime Gang: Puerto-Rican pharmaceutical smugglers.
• Gunpoint Banter: "When God was crapping stupidity, he dropped a shitload on you!"
• Hair Decorations: Gala wears red feathers in her hair. If it's not cute, it certainly looks badass.
• Heel Face Mole: Doc.
• History Repeats: Sol and Dealey find themselves in a pistol standoff twice during the game -- once in a flashback, and again at the end of the game.
• Hologram
• Immortality Immorality: Vielli's aim is to preserve the minds of Earth's greatest thinkers by downloading their brains into the televerse, whereupon they can Body Surf between artificial bodies in perpetuity. Softech seeks to sell his technology to the highest bidder.
• Inside a Computer System
• It's Quiet... Too Quiet: Sol remarks on this after gaining entry to his hotel room.
• It Was with You All Along: See "Master of Disguise".
• Joke Item: A porno mag. (Wet When Slippery)
• Kavorka Man: Sol is an average-looking bloke with a thinning hairline. Judging by the contents of his hotel room, though, he's been busy. Gala also comments on his "cute ass".
• Kill'Em All: Only Sol and Vielli survive the game... and technically speaking, Vielli's already dead!
• Kiss of Death: Gala plants one on Sol before holding him at gunpoint.
• Logic Bomb: The "Burn:Cycle" virus acts as one of these to a human brain.
• Losing Your Head: Sol's last task is to smuggle away Vielli's severed head, which contains the information Softech is seeking.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: Sol makes an off-hand comment about having "a different face" when he crossed paths with Gala previously.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman: Sol adjusts to his new body briskly; he's already thinking along those lines in the epilogue.
• Man in White: Vielli.
• Master of Disguise: Virtual Kris turns out to be the elusive Vielli in disguise.
• Mega Corp: Softech.
• Mexican Standoff: Sol and Dealey.
• Mutilation Interrogation: Inverted with Dealey, who threatens to keep chopping away at Sol's (unconscious) body until he delivers the software. Sol gets around this impediment by switching bodies altogether.
• Neck Lift: "Sol's Rage" throttles Sol while rattling off his past failures.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Subverted in NAMO's backstory: Whenever an undercover agent is found within their ranks, they give him a pistol and an hour's lead to run away. Once it's elapsed, a cadre of ladies with short-bladed knives are sent out after him. According to Sol, not one of those agents survived with their scalp attached.
• Night Vision Goggles: The hotel level.
• No New Fashions in the Future: Epitomized by the characters' clothes and hair styles, which more resemble late-80s punk fashions.
• Nothing Personal
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Averted with the New Age Movement.
• Playful Hacker: Zip.
• Safecracking
• She's Got Legs: When we first meet Gala.
• Show Some Leg: Sol arranges for Gala to use this trick on a guard patrolling outside his hotel.
• Slow Doors: Averted in the prologue; Sol doesn't make it, and Kris is shot dead on the helipad.
• Tap on the Head: One karate chop from Gala is enough to lay a mook flat.
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: "Those who rush, and those who don't."
• Threshold Guardians: The gold Buddha.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: The scattered flashbacks to Sol's days as a corporate "adjuster".
• Two Decades Behind
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Nobody inside the nightclub seems to bat an eyelash when a gunfight erupts.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Kris in the intro. Zig zagged when Sol rediscovers her in the Televerse -- only for Kris to morph into her true form, Vielli.
• Welcome to My World: Vielli in the Televise.
• We Will Spend Credits in the Future
• White Collar Crime
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: Dealey's mocking reference to Kris' death, revealing it was he who shot her.
• Yet Another Stupid Death