classicgames.org - Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold

Scene: British Intelligence (Intergalactic Division)

A young secretary is speaking on the phone. He looks very disturbed. Hanging up the phone, he announces grimly to his superiors, "The situation is dire. Dr. Goldfire, the genetisist gone mad, has created a super-race of mutant warriors."

"Blast!" shouts the Intelligence Minister. "Do you have any more information concerning this crisis?"

"Well, it appears that the genetically superior race has one weakness: if you shoot them a few times, they die."

The Prime Minister breaks down crying. "You have to shoot them more than once?! Heaven have mercy on us all..."

The Intelligence Minister raises his voice, "Wait! There is hope for us yet. What we need is someone with three, possibly four times the ammunition of any normal man... we need Agent B.J. Blazkowicz!"

"Sir, he's been dead for over a century."

"Okay, then, find some other bloke and give him some guns."

"How about Blake Stone? He's one of our men."

"What do I care?"

----

Let's set the record straight: this game is essentially Wolf3d set in a future world. With marginally better sound and a few quirky additions to the gameplay, it is no surprise that the game did not do very well commercially.

Gameplay is exactly like Wolf, with a few exceptions:

1. There are people you are not supposed to shoot. Provided you succeed in not shooting these people, they give you keys, ammo, and coins for the vending machine.

2. This feature leads directly into the next one: the existence of vending machines. You can spend a coin to buy some food and increase your health. This adds some strategy to the game, but not enough to keep me from recoiling in disgust from its sheer mindlessness.

3. There's better sound. Well, not better sound. Just more sound. If you kill an innocent scientist, he yells "I'm innocent!" or "Don't kill me!" or something along those lines.

4. There's more art. This is the only thing that really makes this game stand out from its predecessor. Lots of colorful mutants and people to kill. Unfortunately, the graphics are worse than those of Wolf.

5. Increased realism. Not only are there innocents, but when you get off the elevator, you have to retrieve an access code and return to the elevator and continue your adventure. The fact that you are invading a research compound and not a dungeon is made evident during the game, so the nonlinearity is refreshing.

6. Horrible, horrible AI. Even the Nazis of Castle Wolfenstein were smarter than these bad guys, who patrol around, stop when they see you, and open fire. When you leave their line of sight, they tend to believe you are not there anymore.

Blake's adventure also boasts tons of mutant goo splattering all over the place. I assume that this is to compensate for the poor level design. In the end, it's the overall tedium of working your way through all the levels that gets to you.

If you liked Wolfenstein 3d, you might like Blake Stone, but then again, perhaps not.

Posted by Darius on 2000-08-08

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