Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure (1995)
Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure is a 1995 point-and-click adventure developed by Cryo Interactive and published by Mindscape for MS-DOS. The player controls Lt. Col. Henry Hericksen, an ex-Colonial Marine in command of a terraforming crew on the USS Sheridan, after the ship wakes them for a distress call from the mining outpost B54C. The story runs through that mine and an artificial hive, then off the planet before Space Jockeys destroy it.
Plot Overview
In 2158 the USS Sheridan was on the way back to Earth from a Colonial Intelligence Command terraforming assignment. Mission commander Henry Hericksen, Captain Williams, Science Officer O'Connor, and Doctor Lora McGuiness had been in hypersleep for 200 days when the ship's computer, MOM, picked up a Class III distress call from a mine on B54C. Standing orders required the crew to answer, so MOM woke them, brought the ship through an asteroid belt, and landed at the outpost. Colonel Crespi had sent the call, and he was dead in the Xenomorph attack by the time the Sheridan landed.
The four of them climbed into MK exoskeletons before they left the ship. Hericksen took the command suit, which carried a shoulder-mounted Gatling laser and extra tactical software, and Williams, O'Connor, and McGuiness wore the MK4 Maintenance, MK2 Communication, and MK3 Light suits. All four suits could jump in the corridors, and in the mine Hericksen fired on an M-03 maintenance robot he mistook for a threat, killing the man who was operating it. That killing split him from the crew during the rest of the search.
Deeper in the Under Zone the crew opened a cold laboratory. The files there covered the Xenomorph life cycle and a formula for Royal Jelly. On B54C the jelly was a narcotic sold to fund the research, and people who used it died after two or three months. Professor Church, the outpost specialist on the creatures, had built a synthetic Xenomorph so someone could walk into the artificial hive without an immediate attack.
Colonel Whitekov, an officer on the outpost, wanted the Xenomorphs trained as infantry for a coup against Earth's government. The Sheridan crew found Professor Church deep in the hive, safe among the creatures. He had been running illegal experiments on human subjects, and he presented himself as the first person who could control the Xenomorphs. He shot out the glass between the crew and the hive, the Xenomorphs came through that breach, and Church took the Sheridan during the attack.
Hericksen Finds The Space Jockeys
Lora McGuiness drank a dose of the Royal Jelly in the cold laboratory, and the dose brought a vision of pilots like the fossil crew of the derelict in Alien. The vision warned her to get off B54C before those pilots destroyed the planet. After Church took the Sheridan, Hericksen led the others to the pilots in person. The Space Jockeys were alive in the control seats, with their legs free of the chairs, and they wore leather and high boots. They held their fire long enough for the humans to leave the surface.
Space Jockeys Destroy B54C
The pilots' ship was a rectangular hull with biomechanical markings across the plating. From orbit it fired two red beams into B54C, and the blast destroyed the outpost world. Church had taken the Sheridan, so Hericksen's crew fought Colonel Whitekov and his soldiers for another craft, defeated them, and lifted off with all four of the crew before the beams struck. They planned to hunt Church, then returned to hypersleep.
Gameplay
Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure is a first-person point-and-click adventure with inventory puzzles and a clock on many stretches of the mine. Cutscenes switch to a third-person view of the crew in the corridors, and fights switch to an isometric grid. Each of the four crew can hold eight items, and they have to eat. Moving food into a full inventory means clearing a slot onto someone else first, and the timer continues during that swapping.
Once the crew leaves the Sheridan, a failed save puts them back at the moment before they put the exoskeletons on, so the rooms they just crossed have to be walked again. The game is on two CD-ROMs, and running out of time on the second disc means reloading from the first disc, watching a shortened cutscene, and inserting the second disc again before play can continue. The only mode is single-player, and most actions are mouse clicks.
Development
In 1994 Jean-Martial Lefranc, Cryo's chief executive, asked programmer Nicolas Choukroun to build an adventure from a Dark Horse Aliens comic, with Mindscape as the publisher. Fox approved the project on the condition that the cast come from outside the films and that the scenes use a realistic film look. Bernard Bittler led the art, and Steve Hutchins produced the American release. Crespi and Church take their names from Aliens: Labyrinth, and Whitekov takes his from Patrick Wyckoff in Aliens: Genocide. Hericksen is named for the actor Lance Henriksen.
Mindscape bought the license from Dark Horse and treated that comic license as permission to ship a game. The American build was finished in October 1994, and 120,000 discs were manufactured. In December 1994 Fox stepped in, because Dark Horse's rights covered printed comics only. Fox let Mindscape sell the discs that had been pressed, and it blocked new copies, further ads, and any port. A PlayStation version was dropped after that dispute and after the PC reviews.
Release And Reception
The MS-DOS discs reached North America on 25 May 1995, and the reviews came in mixed to poor. PC Gamer scored the game 59 percent, praising the graphics and the cutscenes while marking down the voice acting, the dialogue, and the timed puzzles. Joystick in France praised the look and the length of the adventure. In 1996 Computer Gaming World ranked the game 24th on a worst-games list for the art, the plot, and the combat.
Conclusion
Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure is Cryo Interactive and Mindscape's 1995 MS-DOS adventure about the Sheridan crew's distress call on B54C. Lt. Col. Henry Hericksen loses the ship to Professor Church in the hive, and the crew escapes on another craft before Space Jockeys destroy the planet. Fox halted further copies after the first pressing, and the game remained that one DOS release.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Games | Alien Merchandise
