Alien Carnage

The Good
Apogee is best known for creating their finest platform games for the PC, such as Duke Nukem, Monster Bash, Bio Menace, etc. The trouble was, with all of them, they were in EGA. So sometime in 1993, Apogee got together one day and decided to push the latest technologies to the limit with the release of Halloween Harry. It featured jaw-dropping VGA graphics and digital music consisting of MOD files since MOD was a popular music format. Not only that, it featured several cinematic sequences that were only viewed at the start of each mission, as well as the end.

Later, Apogee renamed the game Alien Carnage. The name was probably changed because It wasn't related to Halloween at all. Furthermore, each of the episodes was reorganized and the game had a lower price than Halloween Harry. For this reason, Halloween Harry wasnÂ’t supported since Alien CarnageÂ’s release.

In the year 2030 AD, Harry is called in to Space Station Liberty where his lovely boss, Diane, briefs him about Aliens taking over the earth and taking hostages with them. Not only that, but the government was told by the Alien Leader that they have 24 hours to surrender their planet, or innocent civilians will turn into zombies that will help destroy the planet.

Harry is beamed down to Earth where he must find his way through office blocks, factories, sewers, and finally, the alien ship. While he gets through each level, Harry must also rescue hostages that either walk around or are stuck to the floor with green crap. Harry can use his radar to help him find them easier. Harry canÂ’t access the elevator to get to the next level without rescuing hostages first.

Some hostages are blocked by walls that can only open if Harry flips a switch. Each switch has a color block under it. When flipped, the wall that has a color block, that corresponds to the one under the switch, will open up. It is easy to get lost in a level while finding the right wall and switch, so it pays to know the level really well.

There are four missions in which Harry must accomplish, which are basically destroying the bosses at the end of each mission. Including the boss level, there are five levels in which Harry must flame zombies and rescue hostages. He comes equipped with a flame thrower, which also serves as a jetpack. Unfortunately, the flame thrower relies on a lot of fuel in order to function. When Harry hasnÂ’t got enough left, he canÂ’t use his frame thrower to flame zombies and canÂ’t use his jetpack to get to hard-to-reach places. Also in each level, there are rotating disks, and collecting these will allow Diane to tell you of any dangers or secret passages nearby. And believe me, you will need to go through the secret passages.

When Harry flames a zombie, he can get a coin that can be used to get better weapons, including micro nukes, missiles, photons, and the Omega. Each coin is worth five credits, but he can get more by shooting green drums using his flame thrower to collect money bags that drop down from nowhere. All the weapons in the game have a limited supply, and using all your supply up causes the game to default to the previous weapon that has ammo still in it.

Harry has three lives and he loses a life when his energy is depleted, and, as usual, he loses energy by touching a zombie or come in contact with a set of spikes. Chances are, however, that he may come across a hot dog, a walnut, or a cup of coffee once in a while to get his energy back up. If he loses a life, Harry will start again at the start of each level unless he passes a terminal.

The graphics, and also the sound and music, are excellent. Besides Mystic Towers, Apogee has never used the MOD format to compose music, making it sounds a bit electronic. ThereÂ’s a program that comes equipped with the original Halloween Harry, which lets you listen to all the tunes in the game. For some reason, Apogee removed this program when they were creating Alien Carnage.

The Bad
This game was programmed in Pascal, and you can tell if you attempt to run the game on a fast computer: It will produce a “Runtime Error 200”. If this happens, you might want to disable the L2 cache in the BIOS.

The Bottom Line
A good game that outsmarts any Apogee game. If you like programs that involve rescuing hostages while getting through the level, then this game is for you. ***