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Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure is a 1995 point-and-click video game developed by Cryo Interactive Entertainment in partnership with Dark Horse Interactive, and published by Mindscape[1] for the PC.

Publisher's summary[]

UK release[]

No warning. No mercy. No escape. For the average player, that means no chance.

The ultimate nightmare begins when you and your crew are awakened from hypersleep by a distress call. It's from a vast top secret genetics experimentation laboratory. The military have been messing with the Aliens.....and unleashed and unimaginable horror.

The ultra-fast point and click interface adds a thrilling new dimension to your challenge. You move around the sinister laboratory in an armoured exo-skeleton. You'll have to fight and reprogramme lethal attack robots and assemble vital high tech equipment.

But will it be enough to save your skin?

Only your strength, cunning, and experience can help. You'll have to use real-time audio video communications to manipulate your crew with orders and threats, drawing on their unique abilities and knowledge. Only then, will you have a chance against the relentless Alien hordes.

They're after blood—you're blood—and you'll have to dig deeper than ever before to outwit them and survive. How are you going to do it?

You're the one in charge. You work it out.

US release[]

On a distant, isolated space outpost halfway across the galaxy, an unspeakable evil stirs.

As Lt. Col. Hericksen, commander of a terra forming team, you must quickly respond to a mysterious distress call. Once you've landed you soon discover that something cruel and vicious lies beneath the outpost's surface. Something that terrifies even you.

Unravel the deadly mystery of Outpost B54-C in this mesmerizing graphic adventure, and defend against the seething horrors within.

Plot[]

2158. The USS Sheridan was returning to Earth from the distant site of its latest Colonial Intelligence Command (CIC) terraforming assignment. Mission Commander Hericksen, Captain Williams, Science Officer O'Connor, and Doctor McGuiness had been in their hypersleep pods for 200 days when the Sheridan's control system, MOM, received an automated Class III SOS from a mining company on planet B54c. CIC protocol dictates the "mud farmers" respond, whether they wanted to or not. MOM automatically defrosted them in response to the SOS, which could mean an epidemic, environmental failure, anything.[1] It is revealed that the SOS was sent by a Colonel Crespi, who was then killed during the ongoing Alien attack at his outpost.

After retrieving coordinates from MOM, maneuvering the crew through pre-landing preparations, and actively avoiding a belt of asteroids, the Sheridan landed safely on B54c. The entire crew then secured themselves into their protective MK model Exoskeletons before disembarking to investigate the SOS by exploring the mining colony. Upon entering the facility, Hericksen comes face to face with an M-03 maintenance robot that he perceives as a threat and attacks before realizing there was an innocent man inside the machine who is now dead, creating a rift between Hericksen and his crew.

As the Sheridan's crew continued exploring the facility, Hericksen and his team had many interactions with others and were met with a number of obstacles along the way. Throughout their expedition, they:

  • Found individual pieces of an X-Scanner that Captain Williams was able to assemble into a device that was useful for finding hidden compartments.
  • Discovered one of the facilities staff members cocooned against a wall, screaming for her boyfriend Vaskal, who may still be alive somewhere in the facility.
  • Retrieved a microchip that containted the digital diary of a staff member named Chipster, detailing his account of the facilities Alien infestation.
  • Attacked three more maintenance robots, all of which were destroyed.
  • Discovered the disemboweled body of Colonel Crespi who sent the SOS, and severed his hand off to access zones secured with fingerprint technology throughout the facility.
  • Found Morlack, the head of the base who said Chipster released the Aliens within the facility and revealed that he had a chestburster inside him before shooting himself in the head.
  • Discovered a "cold room," or a laboratory under deep-freeze, after descending into the facilities Under Zone, that contained information about the Aliens life-cycle and a formula for producing Royal Jelly, which Lora drank and experiences visions of extraterrestrials that she said "...looked like the skeleton they found in the original Alien spacecraft several years ago..." (see Alien), and told her she needed to flee before they destroyed the planet.
  • Found a synthetic Xenomorph, activated by typing in the code MYYRMIDON.
  • Explored a labyrinth of tunnels that lead them into an Alien hive that they described as being made out of "human flesh and bones," and battled with a Queen in her nest.
  • Found Professor Church, the facilities leading specialist on Xenomorph biology, deep within the hive. Ultimately, Church released a hoard of Aliens.
  • Fought off a scourge of Aliens and destroyed a number of eggs.
  • Discovered a lab where Church had been experimenting on human subjects, one being Vaskal, whose hand had to be severed from his corpse to operate a vehicle Hericksen used to get his team back to the Sheridan.
  • Fought off Colonel Whitekov and his small group of soldiers, who were ultimately defeated, to get back to the Sheridan, giving them just enough time to dust off before planet B54c is completely destroyed by the extraterrestrials from Lora's vision.

Voice cast[]

  • Dennis Lancaster
  • Jenna Logan
  • Marie Simon
  • Art Freedman
  • J.S. Gilbert
  • Gary Ware
  • Leslie Hedger
  • Brian A. Vouglas
  • Timothy Enos
  • Colin Hussey
  • Brian Session

Gameplay[]

Gameplay is a point-and-click adventure with limited, inventory-based puzzles. Grid-based combat is present as well. The player is given what amounts to timed objectives throughout the game, and must uncover the truth about the mysterious outpost's history before the colony's sudden destruction.

The game uses a first-person perspective that switches to third-person during the cinematic sequences, showing the player's party exploring the base. A third person 'isometric' view is also utilized during the combat sequences.

Trivia[]

  • The packaging for Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure reused Den Beauvais' artwork from issue 2 of the 1989 comic book series Aliens.
  • Although titled Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure, the game has more in common with Alien than Aliens.
  • While the game's manual says the story takes place in 2157, Chipster's digital diary entries found within the game are dated March 12 and April 20, 2158.
  • The game also shares common themes with several Dark Horse Comics series, notably Aliens: Labyrinth, and although the characters, events and locations are different, the game uses the same premise.
  • Additionally, the game includes the iconic substance Royal Jelly, and characters with the names Professor Church, Colonel Crespi, and Colonel Whitekov, which are obvious references to Paul Church and Toni Crespi from Aliens: Labyrinth, and Patrick Wyckoff from Aliens: Genocide.
  • The synthetic Xenomorph Hericksen's team finds by entering the code "MYYRMIDON" is similar to Stan Mayakovsky's synthetic Xenomorph, XL-1, from Aliens: Hive. Similarly, Mayakovsky used the word "Myrmidon" as a verbal kill-switch to control his creation when it got too aggressive.

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure User's Manual

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