BioForge

The Good
This is an action-adventure of grand proportions. The game has an excellent storyline, and a demanding but effective way of evolving the intricate plot. The game starts out with you waking up in an alien jail, as a nearly finished cyborg, with no memory whatsoever of your past, or even your name. From here on, the player is left completely on his/her own. This is what makes the game so great. There is a constant feeling of threat. Weird experiments, weird aliens and weird machines all threatens to kill your character. The game does not tell the player or show the way in any obvious way. There are clues, in the many, excellently written, journals that are scattered throughout the base, but the game offers an immense feeling of freedom, and confusion for that matter, this is a difficult game. You become very involved in the poor character's destiny and because the plot is so good you really do everything you can to find out more. The character descriptions in the journals are excellent and gripping, and I haven't seen anything like it since this game. When the end finally comes, the character has gone through changes, been through a lot of disturbing situations and seen things no human has ever seen before. Afterwards the game leaves you with an empty feeling in your stomach, hungry for more. Indeed a grand adventure.

The Bad
However a great game, it is a VERY difficult game. It is a must to save at many different locations. Do not use only one save-file, because you WILL find yourselves in situations where you are done with, where the only option is giving up, loading a previous game and trying a different approach. This can be very frustrating, when you think you've done something right, just to realize that you should have done something else first, and therefore are doomed to a certain death. This sometimes adds to the suspense and the great feeling of constant threat, but sometimes it just makes you crazy. It is not fun replaying large parts of the game just because you forgot some little thing. After all, the cyborg moves very clumsy and slowly, which can be frustrating in itself, especially in the action sequences. Imagine trying to fight a space marine when your character moves like a rusty old garbage-can. I especially recall a very frustrating sequence when the character is attacked by some strange robotic shrimps. It was hell beating them up. These aspects can make the game harder than it needs to be. It is challenging as it is already. Bad controls and extremely difficult puzzles and the fact that you have to do certain things in the right order, with very few clues on what to do, makes the game a bit frustrating at times.

The Bottom Line
A grand action adventure with one of the best plots, and best character-descriptions in the history of computer games. A game that is actually gripping, disturbing and exiting all at once.

The Good
BioForge is an ace game. The amount of fun, wacky stuff you do throughout the story is just mind-boggling. The aforementioned severed arm bashery actually exhibits how well BioForge can satisfy the puzzling and beat/shoot-em-up impulses at one stroke. After using this blue bludgeon in a most satisfying visceral way, you might pick up the dead prisoner's log and read it. Then you might notice a lock elsewhere that is palm-print activated... hmmm. :-) While this puzzle is rather simpleminded, there are complex brainfreezers all over the place. The intimidating reactor segment, the bomb, the hellish asteroid-chucking alien puzzle, etc. Most of these combine smarts and dexterity in new, fun ways--much like another classic, Out of this World.

Another key element to this game is the buildup of your character's strength, not through leveling up or anything so mundane, but through play experience increasing your skill, and better equipment to maximize that skill. A single space marine will probably be your most frustrating opponent early on, but by the end you'll face down an entire squad of the bastards with hardly a scratch, if you know what you're about.

Solutions to puzzles are also charmingly non-linear. The devilish reactor scene is a good example. You can run in, beat the hell out of the Trogg and then try to shut things down, or things can be greatly simplified by sniping that itinerant alien dozens of times with your laser pistol first to soften him up. Things get even -more- simplified if you figure out the controls of the light bridge spanning the massive chasm which isolates the reactor. :-D Occasionally you encounter this open-ended approach to solving puzzles or defeating enemies, and it is enormously satisfying when you find a more elegant way to surmount an obstacle. Taking on the walking robot guards in the facility is a great example.

The graphics are also -incredible- for the time of release. And as other reviewers have mentioned, the physics of firing lasers is enormously satisfying, and proves that most of the pre-rendered backgrounds are mapped for interactivity. In general, this game does a great job of allowing static backdrops to do the work of real-time rendered environments. Except for the lack of camera control, natch. ;-)

The neat (if partly wacky) part of combat is the one-liners! Once in a while when someone is knocked down in combat, you or your opponent will gesticulate dramatically to spit out some line of Schwarzenegger grade action-movie nonsense. It's cool! It's fun! It's ridiculous! I'm sure it was meant in all seriousness, but this bit of kitsch really adds to the game.

The Bad
The combat system, however (at least before you get your hands on a gun or big batteries) leaves a bit to be desired. Laying out a copious amounts of melee whoopass is possible, but feels a bit sluggish. The system tends to get jammed up, where either you or your opponent keeps falling down under a fusillade of blows. The catch to this is that if you keep mashing buttons and don't stand still, your character will slowly spin off target and you'll miss, again and again. This took me quite a few battles to figure out. Don't just mash buttons! Wait a bit for your mug to be re-centered on the prize!

Running around can also be cumbersome. When a small metal grating is all you have to maneuver on, and death lies on either side, a little bit more precision in the basic controls would be a plus.

The plot is full of cliches, despite being engaging, and the ending is lame and a definite anti-climax.

The Bottom Line
A great romp through a well-designed, fun world. Lots of great stuff to do, lots of cheesy one-liners from your cyborg-avatar, and some great puzzle design. You'll feel great if you claw your way through this one.

The Good
On the planet Daedalus lies a genetic research complex that is lead by a Dr. Mastaba. Mastaba belongs to a group called the Mondites who abduct people and subject them to cybernetic experiments. One of their latest victims is Lex who gets turned into a cyborg and thrown into a prison cell. He recovers shortly only to discover that he is made up of human and alien technology, and that his memory was wiped – he has no idea who he is and why he is there. If he escapes his cell, he needs to unravel the truth about himself, the research complex, the Mondite movement, and the alien civilization that once inhabited Daedalus.

Most of this information can be found by examining monitors scattered throughout the complex, and reading through logbooks that he picks up. If the information that he discovers is relevant, he records it in his journal. (He has no idea how he does this.) BioForge requires a lot of reading, but I found what I read interesting, as I read about experimental subjects losing their memories and are driven to the point of insanity. It makes the story flow on.

BioForge is an action-adventure game. Although you have the opportunity to explore the complex in full, and enter rooms that have advanced technology and gadgets that go clickitty-clak, there are situations that you have to deal with someone or something through hand-to-hand combat. An example of this is defeating the NurseBot at the very start of the game, as well as the marines that occupy the interior and exterior of the complex. By pressing the [Ctrl] and [Alt] keys, you can punch or kick enemies. Enough of these and you bring them down. An alternate to fighting with your limbs is using the blaster, which you won't pick up until late in the game. If you manage to pick it up, it can be used against the mechos that run up and down the corridors.

You may be faced with some puzzles in the game, but again, the hints on solving them are found in logbooks and on monitors. The puzzles range from getting a robot opening a door that requires a palm print to playing “mix-and-match” and open a sarcophagus. For me, they were not hard, and there were little times that I had to refer to a walkthrough because I had no idea what the objective is.

When Lex is hurt by an enemy, his body shows some blood to indicate that he has been damaged. If he takes several hits, he starts to limp when he walks. One more hit and he is knocked out. His health can be restored by collecting and using medical devices. The animations of Lex and his enemies are done with rotoscoping, which is one of the techniques that few games use.

Before I actually started playing BioForge, I read through the Personnel Files, which I found rather interesting. It is the personal log that belongs to one of the prisoners you meet in the game. Furthermore, it gives you an outline of what has been going on in the complex.

The Bad
During hand-to-hand combat, the two people (Lex and his enemy) exchange dialogue when they deliver a blow to each other. This dialog is boring, as the same conversations get repeated over and over again in the same fight.

I don't know if it is my fast system, but there are situations that I think rely on the timer. For example, I have to shut down the reactor and a voice says “The reactor will reach critical state in 30 seconds”. I don't get a chance to shut it down in that time, as you hear “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, etc.” in five seconds. Another is trying to drop a bomb near a steel door. You are constantly reminded of the seconds you have. When you have plenty of time, you know that you are safe for the time being. But when you decide to drop it in the wrong spot shortly after, the timer counts down to its last seconds, making sure that you are blown to bits.

The ending for the game is rather disappointing, and it raises a few questions that I had. It deserved a sequel, whether it sold poorly or not.

The Bottom Line
In conclusion, BioForge is a game of exploration. You move Lex around the research complex, admiring the rooms and the technology that they contain, looking at monitors and logbooks, and finding useful information that may or may not be recorded in your journal. Once you obtained the most important information, your next task is to escape Daedalus. The game required a 486-33 with 8MB RAM, which were hefty system requirements at the time that the game was made. However, newer systems can run it if they can boot into MS-DOS. BioForge has great graphics and animations, and also contain puzzles that are easy to solve, depending on what you have learned so far.