Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure
| Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Cryo Interactive |
| Publisher(s) | Mindscape |
| Producer(s) | David Locke Jean-Martial Lefranc Steve Hutchins |
| Designer(s) | Olivier Venet Olivier Train Cyrille Thomas |
| Programmer(s) | Nicolas Choukroun |
| Artist(s) | Bernard Bittler |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS |
| Release | May 25, 1995 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure is an adventure game developed by Cryo Interactive Entertainment and published by Mindscape for MS-DOS in 1995. It is loosely based on the Aliens comic book series with many references to the graphic novel Labyrinth.
Gameplay
![[icon]](/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2015) |
Plot
Players take on the role of Lt. Col. Henry Hericksen, an ex-Colonial Marine aboard the USS Sheridan who is now the commander of a three-man terraforming team. Your objective is to travel to the remote outpost on B54C in order to find the cause of a distress call your vessel received. You must search the mining complex and piece together the scattered evidence to learn exactly what and who is behind the sinister experiments that have gone horribly wrong.
Development and release
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In 1994, Jean Martial Lefranc who was the CEO of Cryo Interactive charged Nicolas Choukroun, a French video game author, to build a small team in order to create an adventure game based on the Aliens comic book published by Dark Horse Comics. Mindscape was the publisher and Fox gave their authorization as long as the game would not have any characters from the movies and would have a realistic movie style. The new ideas from the Dark Horse comic inspired the team who created an adventure with a lot of innovation. In the game, the player can use synthetic Aliens in order to study the real Aliens. Also the concept of a military base, using the Aliens to build an army against the Earth was original and was opening new horizons.
The main protagonist, Lt. Col. Henricksen, is a nod to famed sci-fi actor Lance Henriksen, who played the android Bishop in Aliens and Alien³, and Charles Bishop Weyland in Alien vs. Predator. This game had some interesting and innovative concepts. At the end of the game, the "Space Jockey", the huge dead creature found in the spaceship in the first Alien movie appeared, rendered in a 3D modeled form, and was coming to save the player in extremis. This game created the concept of a war between the two Alien races shown in the first Alien movies but was never exploited by Fox.
In October 1994, the USA version was finished and Mindscape duplicated 120,000 pieces for Christmas sales. In December 1994, Fox sued Mindscape for copyright violation and gave Mindscape the right to sell the stock, but not to continue to duplicate and market the product. The whole staff in Mindscape US and Mindscape UK were fired and the German and French version of the game were released unfinished.
Reception
Upon its release, the game received mixed and mostly mediocre reviews, but also got some good scores such as an 80% in Polish magazine Secret Service.[1] In a retrospective article, Alexa Ray Corriea and Danielle Riendeau of Polygon wrote Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure "not only made the Aliens feel scary, but added a little more to the franchise by spinning different plot threads through the game."[2] According to Pete Worth of Thunderbolt, "The game featured some high-end graphics and a certain degree of tension but the inventory-based puzzles and grid-based combat were often tedious. Still, it was interesting to see xenomorphs regain their fear-inducing deadliness after being reduced to mere cannon-fodder so often in other games."[3] On the other hand, Stephen Cleckner of GamesBeat opined "Aliens: The Comic Book Adventure is a frustratingly plodding and tedious excuse of a game." He recommended to "sit through a Let's Play video if you need to experience this thing. For your sake, don’t actually try to play it."[4] In 1996, Computer Gaming World ranked it as the #24 Worst Game of All Time as "bad art, plot and action shame the Dark Horse comic series on which it was based."[5]
References
- ^ "Gambler Magazine (May 1996)". Archive.org. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
- ^ "From Atari to Isolation: A video and written history of Alien games". Polygon. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
- ^ Pete Worth (2013-02-11). "An Alien Retrospective - feature at Thunderbolt". Thunderboltgames.com. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
- ^ Stephen Kleckner (2014-10-06). "Games of the Alien franchise, Part 1: The bad, the canceled, and the weirdly cool page 2 | GamesBeat | Games | by Stephen Kleckner". Venturebeat.com. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
- ^ Computer Gaming World No. 148, page 94.
