CRYOSURGEON

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold (DOS)

One of my childhood memories right here

The Good
Don't know how I got to know about this game in the first place. I think my dad, who used to be huge fan of Duke Nukem, downloaded it from 3D Realms site and showed it to me one day back in the mid 90's. What I saw was awesome, and I still find it quite cool even to this day. Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold delievers everything you want from a game like this. Cool soundtrack, huge and many levels, badass weaponry and a score system. I dare even say that the graphics are cool too, being runned by an overhauled Wolfenstein 3D engine. Planet Strike!, the second instalment in the series even implemented bobbing for the weapons.

The Bad
Sadly however, me and other fans of the game were a few bunch. The others had already gotten into Hell, known as Doom, that recently came out shortly after Blake Stone, nearly killing it. Every level has a theme that reminds of a labyrinth, exactly like Wolf3D. And just with that game, some levels are really easy to get lost into and may take quite alot of time to navigate out of. There are many weapons in the game, but none really feel better than the other despite how awesome they look. You can easily "snipe" a guy across the map with one bullet with your starter gun, which also is silent. The keybindings in Blake Stone can't be bound the way you want, and there's no Y-axis for looking up and down with the mouse. (Luckily though, since DOSBox lets us rebind however we darn please, that problem now becomes a memory of the past, and there's a tool that disables the Y-axis, so you can play almost exactly with WASD keys like today).

The Bottom Line
I'd describe this game as a cool FPS from the past, that's sadly is hugely underrated. "Thanks" to Doom.

By CRYOSURGEON on November 28, 2014