Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold

Score: 7/10 Pro: *Evolved Wolfenstein game engine allowed for texture mapped ceilings and floors and greater environmental interactivity. Instead of only picking up food from the ground, you can use vending machines to obtain life refilling “food like substances.” Your A.I. companion (Cortana?) provides mission data on the fly, such as the type of enemy you are engaging with and your current food token balance. Check what percentage of enemies or secrets remain on the current level whenever you like. *AUTO-MAP that fills in as you go! You can also revisit previously cleared levels to collect remaining ammo, food and treasure or find any missed secrets. *Environments are colorful and textures, although low res, are well drawn. A convincing vision of a living animated world. *The score by Bobby Prince of Wolfenstein and Doom fame. There is no denying the power of the bass line in this soundtrack. Funkified beats and some catchy tunes keep your toes tapping while you run face first through alien blood splatter and visceral gore. Con: *The energy plasma aliens. These guys regenerate rapidly and endlessly within rooms that have energy sockets. There is no way to turn off their spawning. Each one launches volleys of energy blasts at you, and one direct hit can almost completely drain your health. You will quickly be overwhelmed. Difficult to explore rooms where these guys roam. *Wow, this game is too long. 60 total levels, (54 if you don’t find the secret levels), with each one ranging between 15-30 minutes long. The game starts wearing thin around the 40 level mark. It took me 24 hours of play time to beat, which is really too much for a FPS built on the Wolfenstein engine. *The controls require a little tweaking to feel right. I recommend binding your "Interact" key to one near your arrows so that you can quickly open doors or test walls for secrets. As long as you have a large flat surface for mouse movement, you should do alright.

It's a good old Retro game , easy and fun. You can also get to the end of it. 8\10. Thanks

I want to start by saying that I really enjoyed mt time with Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. I enjoyed looking for the Red Access key to get to the next floor. I also enjoyed that you could go back after you complete a floor and look for secrets or any enemies you didn't find the first time around to make your score better (if you're into that kind of thing). I appreciated the in game map compared to a lot of other maps in old boomer shooter games. But there are a few things that hold Blake back from being one of the great ones. Pros - -I loved using coins to replenish health from vending machines. Nice touch. -The in game map is really well done. - Level layouts are well done and do take a little time to explore. - I really enjoyed the soundtrack for Aliens of Gold - The Informants helping out Cons - -There are a lot of hit scan enemies, and they almost always seem to land a shot before you even have a chance - Enemies can feel a little too tanky at times - On higher difficulties it feels like you go from 100 to 0 health way too quickly - Damage feels random at times - Later levels feel rushed with imbalanced enemy placement - The dang lightning orbs - The visuals are nothing to write home about - The Informants getting in the way - Vending machines running out If you are looking for another Wolf3d style game to tackle, I found Aliens of Gold to be well worth it. It might not be the most exciting game out there, but I found it fun

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold was one of my first PC games back in the days and my very first shooter. If you intend buying this title, I can only support this. You should not look at it with todays shooter criteria (as with most games on gog...). Of course, the graphics are not "up to date", but gameplay is still fascinating. The story is a bit sparse - but honestly - that's same with many of todays shooters, too. You are agent Blake Stone and you are sent out to stop Dr. Goldfire to infest earth with his army. To do so, you fight your way through various levels with different themes and monsters. The variety of monsters was one thing I really liked (and still like today). They start with human guards, marines, troopers, ... over monsters like "Frankensteins", robots, slime creatures, ... to automtic gun turrets or alien-like-bosses. To kill them, you are armed with five different weapons (guns, rifles, grenade thrower) and some of them are more or less useful against special kinds of e enemies. Another aspect I liked were the huuuuuge hidden areas. Searching for them can be a bit nerving ("searching" means walking along the walls and trying to open hidden doors everywhere), but at the same time I always try to get the last hidden treasure to increase my score. The other nice gimmick is, that there are often some switches opening doors or pathways in other levels - so sometimes it is useful to go back in previously solved levels. All in all, Blake Stone is one of the true classics of the shooter genre and worth its price and has many aspects that were really great at its time. The only "negative" issue is, that some levels get repetitive after some time despite the given variety of the game. But in my opinion, this is only because of the huge number of levels available.

I grew up on old school FPS games like Doom, Wolfenstien and Blake Stone. Of these three, the two I have the fondest memories of are Doom (As everyone probably does.) and Blake Stone. Even though I only ever owned the Freeware version of the game when I was fifteen, I fell in love with it. Now that I'm almost 22, I can buy the whole game, and mine everything out of it. Thank you for bringing back so many fond memories of my childhood.