Iron Helix

aka: Iron Helix: A deadly war game gone awry...
Moby ID: 679

[ All ] [ Macintosh ] [ SEGA CD ] [ Windows 3.x ]

Critic Reviews add missing review

Average score: 71% (based on 21 ratings)

Player Reviews

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 49 ratings with 4 reviews)

A harbinger of things to come

The Good
You know, there was a point in time where the Mac was a better games platform than the PC. No, stop laughing, I mean it. While PC's had VGA and a beeper, the typical Mac of the mid 90's was running 640x480 or higher at 8bit, 16bit multi-channel sound, and - this is the important part - a CD. So all the interesting firsts showed up on the Mac first.

Such is the case for Iron Helix. In some ways IH is similar to Myst, in that the CD is basically a collection of graphics for scenery, along with clips of films for action. But the two games couldn't be more unlike each other, Myst is an adventure (sort of) whereas IH is an action game.

The basic premise is that a Navy ship has "gone bad" due to the release of a deadly virus onboard, and as a result it's going to blow up a planet. Your cargo ship is the nearest, so it's up to you to stop the disaster.

Of course, with a deadly mutagenic virus on the ship, you can't go over in person. Instead you send over a maintenance robot from your ship while you fly in formation. With this robot you need to penetrate the ship's defenses and lockouts, and somehow stop it.

The game is played as seen from the robot's control panel. About 1/4 of the screen is a view of the ship from the robot, while the rest of the screen is taken up with various displays, maps, and command buttons. You play the game by sending the robot through the ship using the buttons, and plugging into data ports where you try to learn what happened.

Some of the ports are used for simple things like opening doors or moving the elevator. Others are computer interfaces that contain entries and logs from various crew members about what's happening on the ship. For instance, plugging into some of the ports in the medical lab will give you clues to the nature of the virus. The captain's personal log may give you clues on controlling the ship.

However all of the ports are protected by reading the "persons" DNA when they try to use it. Typically the ports can be accessed by everyone on the ship (ports for doors and the elevator for instance), but most of the interesting ones can only be operated by a small subset of the crew. To operate these, you must first find a sample of that crewmembers DNA, which you can find in appropriate locations with a scanner device. So quite a bit of the game concerns finding these samples in likely locations - crew quarters are a good place to look, but to get in them you might need someone with security clearance first...

The game is thus a puzzle, where you have to find the right samples in the right order to eventually figure out a way to stop the ship. A body's sample gets you into the medlab, where they were working on a security swabby, who gets you into the security office where you find the 2nd in command's DNA... etc. Eventually you'll have enough "keys" (DNA samples) and information to get into the navigation controls and stop the ship. I believe there were actually three ways to stop it, but this is the solution I discovered.

Making the puzzle harder is the presence of a security robot. At lower levels of gameplay the robot basically travels around the ship randomly and will only start following you if it gets close. Meanwhile you can see it on your 3D map. As you increase the difficultly, the robot gets a lot smarter. Every access of a dataport sends it rushing to that point in the ship, and since you use a dataport to travel between levels in the elevator, this can get very difficult. There's also a shaft you can use to move levels, but at even higher levels it knows this and spends more time hanging around it. If it does happen to catch you it will kill your robot, and you have only three.

Someone had to be the first real CD game, and Iron Helix was it.

The Bad
For a game that's all about plot, the plot seems terribly weak. So apparently this virus is mutating people, eventually to the point where the security robot thinks they're aliens and starts killing them. Ok, that I can buy. But why the heck is the ship going to blow up a planet as a result? And since the game starts with the ship moving out from what looks like a fleet, why don't they just blow it up? Good game, but definitely a 1+1=3 situation.

And while the difficulty levels certainly did change the nature of the gameplay, it didn't change the mission itself. So basically there's no replay value at all. After solving it the only thing to do was crank it up and let the security robot kill us so we could see what it looked like.

The Bottom Line
Definitely worth the one play, if you get the chance. It only takes about three hours from start to end, so give it a whirl.

Windows 3.x · by Maury Markowitz (266) · 2002

CD Games Begin

The Good
When I first saw the video bits in this game, I was blown away. I would hate to think how it would look today, but in 1992 on an old 486 system, it was a sight to behold.

The cat-and-mouse gameplay was simple but exciting; in fact, there were times I wish the rouge hunter character (the cat, if you will) would relent for a bit so I could pause.



The Bad
The lack of variety in some of the location designs made getting around a little difficult. The game sometimes felt like a maze -- and nothing bothers me more in games the running around a maze.

The Bottom Line
Simplicity ushers in a new world of gaming.

Windows 3.x · by Game22 (35) · 2004

Great idea, but zero replay value

The Good
When Iron Helix came out the whole idea of a CD-based game was very new. I think this might have been the second or third I remember on the Mac, and the Mac CD games generally predated the PC side. So as you might imagine, the game is heavy on the loaded visuals, and they did a pretty great job of it. There's also voice recordings from the crew and some animations as well. All in all a very worthy first effort.

The Bad
The utterly ridiculous story, for one. Ok so the crew of a ship is infected and dies. Gotcha. Then it flies to an enemy planet with the intent of destroying it? Huh? And is Iron Helix the virus that attacked the crew, or the virus that eats planets, or both? And the opening movie shows the O'Brien in the middle of a fleet, why didn't they just shoot her? How did I become the closest ship? Ok whatever.

Actually the only serious problem with this game is that is has zero replay value. I won't go into describing it, it has to be experienced. That said, the first play-through is fun enough to make this a worthwhile experience overall.

The Bottom Line
Iron Helix is basically a graphical adventure game, but rendered in 3D and including animations and other flourishes. The basic conceit of the game is that the different areas of the ship are locked off by scanners that examine the genetic material of the person before allowing them to pass. When the virus attacked the crew it mutated their DNA and they were unable to operate the ship. Eventually the ship's defensive robot started attacking them.

You are called in as the closest ship that can reach the O'Brien and stop her. There are a couple of different ways to do this, from simply pressing a button on a command console, to causing her engines to explode. However, you'll have to get to these controls first, and you'll need to find unmutated DNA to do this.

After the game starts and shows you sending in your robot probe, you start the game in an access area. By scanning the walls you can find the original DNA, pre-mutations, of some of the low-level workers. That will get you into the first few areas of the ship, where you'll have to find the haunts of the higher ranking members of the crew, collect their DNA, and continue. You'll also find crew recordings which can be helpful in telling you ways to find other DNA or solutions to the game.

Eventually you'll find DNA that will allow you to access critical areas of the ship, ones that will allow you to take control of her and stop it from attacking the planet.

While your robot is moving about the ship, the defensive robot is still active. At the lowest level of the game it is visible on your map, and is thus fairly easy to avoid. It does respond to you opening doors or using the inter-deck elevator, which means you have to keep moving to avoid it. At higher levels it responds to more events, moves more quickly, and is no longer visible on you map. This makes an encounter extremely likely, and they're always deadly.

The idea of moving around and pressing buttons to unlock areas might not sound like much fun, but the graphics really added to the immersion. The defensive robot was also a feature that has to be experienced, there were many moments of heart-pounding fear when I just scrapped past it and didn't know if it had seen me yet.

Macintosh · by Maury Markowitz (266) · 2009

A great game in its time. More important for what it foreshadowed than for what it was.

The Good
For its time, Iron Helix was technologically spectacular. Great graphics, great sound. Even now, it's not bad, though it does look dated.

What really makes Iron Helix worth the play is the gameplay. Particularly, the desperate race to evade the security bot which chases you throughout the game. This cat and mouse game is actually very thrilling. Your heart pounds as you dash frantically down corridors to try to find some temporary haven from the ever-searching security bot. You hold your breath as you lay in hiding while the bot scans the area nearby. Every moment you stand still, something inside of you bags at you to move on before it catches up. It does not reach the levelof terror one experiences in a game like System Shock 2, perhaps, but it certainly gets the blood moving.

But more than the actual game itself. This was one of the precursors to today's first-person sneakers, as well to such later adventure games like the Journeyman Project series.

The Bad
There is very little replay value.

The Bottom Line
A fun adventure that keeps you occupied long enough to be well worth your money. With moments of pulse-pounding tension, this is one of the better games of its era.

Windows 3.x · by Steelysama (82) · 2000

Contributors to this Entry

Critic reviews added by Bozzly, Patrick Bregger, Havoc Crow, Big John WV, shphhd, Tomas Pettersson, Crawly, Wizo, Alsy, Ryan DiGiorgi, Omnosto, Scaryfun, Parf, Sun King.