Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold

Lots of fun is how I'd describe this game. oddly every time I go back to play it the files either got corrupted or I got tired of the level design. After an hour or so or a few as a younger man the so so maps got old.. And very annoyingly certain files get corrupted in "All" Apogee classics that make them stop working. This title is the most problematic the problem stems from an old anti piracy system "they would have called it theft" back then :) or unauthorized distribution. I hope gog has found a way to eliminate the fileid.diz glitch..

If you want a frankly merciless Wolf3D styled game that doesn't hold back? Blake Stone is probably the game for you. Frankly, I prefer games that want the player to actually win. So what does this game feature that made it unique? A Sci-Fi pastiche, persistent level states and being something the jock could play instead of System Shock, frankly. Your goal as the titular Mr. Stone is to rescue your mother and your sister who are being held prisoner on board one of the stations where Dr. Goldfire is doing unethical mutation experiments on just about anything he can get his hands on. ...Stretched over 60 levels of nigh identical tilesets of twisty passages. The only saving grace is that they didn't figure out pseudo 3D in this engine.

I enjoyed playing this classic game when I was younger. It is a fun and interesting game.

Ok, that game is good, it has some good ideas that were not widespread at the time, like interaction with the NPC's and the environment. The graphics are not bad, but the main thing is the gameplay, the damage and the aiming. If you are to enjoy this game, you will have to cope with a LOT OF RANDOMNESS! And I mean A LOT. By that I mean that a lot of things seems to be highly unpredictable. Movement for one. But the most egregious is the variability in the number of shots needed to destroy opponents. Sometimes you will kill a guard with a single shot of the base pistol at a long range, other times you will be spraying the same guard with an automatic weapons at close range for 5-6 rounds before it's down. Highly annoying. Same thing goes for the turrets for example, sometimes you need a single rifle bullet, other times you spend 7-8 bullets before it's destroyed, at similar angles and ranges. Which brings us to the next topic, probably the most annoying to me. Medium difficulty is very easy, but at the higher difficulty levels, THAT FRIGGING GAME DOESN'T GIVE YOU ENOUGH AMMO!!!!!!! LIKE EVER! You will always be facing 4-5 tougher ennemies and you will have around 10 bullets in your machine gun before it's empty. Combined with the aforementioned variability in the ammo needed for a kill, and you can see the problem. That combination made me quit the game in frustration many times. I'm more than halfway through and I plan on finishing the game, but mostly so I can say I finished it, it is not that enjoyable. As I said, mostly for nostalgia and very tolerant players...

I'll be honest; I played this game simply because Doom would not run on my computer. A step above Wolfenstein 3D, Blake Stone was a solid FPS at the time but lacked the features it needed to meet the competition. It was great when I couldn't play Doom, but I still always felt like I was missing out. I have good memories of this game, but wouldn't play it again now.