Platform:  Atari Jaguar

Release Date (NA):  November 23rd, 1993

Developer:  Attention to Detail

Genre:  3D Shooter

Rating:  1.5 out of 10

I believe in giving all games a chance, no matter how insipid they first appear.  After a few hours and several Dramamine later, I must honestly conclude that Cybermorph is without redemption.  I have so far been unable to make any sort of sense of this game, and while “missions” are doled out before playing it’s almost impossible to tell what’s happening onscreen.

Curious about the graphics?  Just take a look at the images on this page.  Now normally I appreciate bright colors, but this is beyond ridiculous.  The ground can be any number of colors and so can the mountains(?) as well as any other geographical features.  There is also some question as to what count as items that can be collected and what causes the plane/spacecraft to crash and explode.  Enemies range from vague objects resembling flying machines to amorphous blobs.  Is it biological?  Mechanical?  Biomechanical? Who knows, and frankly, who cares? Rarely does anything change or exhibit unique features leading to extreme frustration in knowing where one is at any given time.  Strange teleportation portals exacerbate the issue of getting one’s bearings.

Cybermorph contains a detailed HUD, but without being able to tell what’s going on or distinguish one object from another its usefulness remains limited.  Controls offer little precision and lead to lots of needless crashes and great difficulty aiming and firing at “enemies.”

A menu is show at the beginning where different worlds can be selected but it doesn’t matter since they all look the same.  From reading the mission statements at the beginning of each game it would seem that there is some sort of linear story in Cybermorph but it’s hard to care when so many other shortcomings are present.

Cybermorph was the pack-in game with the Jaguar until Atari’s last push to sell all their units and threw another 2 games in, and it’s easy to see at least one factor that contributed to the Jaguar’s negative image.  For someone to decide to buy a Jaguar over the other mainstream competing consoles of the time and to have only Cybermorph to show off the capabilities of this “64 bit system,” it’s pretty clear that bad publicity quickly spread, due to word of mouth.  Perhaps part of the reason for this game’s monumental failure is that it was originally designed as a game for the never released “Atari Panther,” a 32-bit console that was scrapped in order to focus on the Jaguar.  If you ask me, Cybermorph ought to have been scrapped as well.

Reviewed by The Cubist