Alien / Anonymous (1982)

Game Information

I believe the year was 1985 when my father brought home an IBM PCjr and changed my life forever. He had already played a large part in it, actually, being involved in the conception and what not. But... he didn't stop there! Oh, no. His choice to invest in an IBM compatible machine may have originally sprung from the fact that he wanted to be able to "take work home with him" (he was employed with Eastman Kodak at the time) but the repercussions of such a decision have had a lasting and positive effect on me until this day. Rather than get the kids what they wanted -- a Commodore 64 -- he got me a machine whose architecture is still being used fifteen years late. It also allowed me to play the 1982 BASIC text adventure Alien for much longer than any sane human should. 

Back in the day, my brother Mike and I didn't have any games for the PCjr. While our friends were playing Impossible Mission and Gauntlet on their C64s, we were out of luck. There was Shamus, sure. Zork would come around a little later. So we got a bunch of BASIC games from one of dad's co-workers and went to town. Remarkably, one game concerned the sole survivor of the spacecraft Adonis. Yes, that's right, someone wrote a computer game where a guy escaped from the "Adonis." Granted, the favorite past-time of most RTK readers is laughing at my Interactive Fiction Hall of Shame photo and pronouncing me a fruit, but Christ -- I would never write a game where the ship was called frigging "Adonis." I wonder, really, just what kind of ship it is. My money is on a futuristic trans-sexual prison ship, Constitution class. But that's just me.

The best part about the game being in BASIC is that I can cut and paste text from the game right into my review. The worst part of the game is, funnily enough, playing it. It's unfair. The planet you find yourself having crash-landed on is a wasteland of rapidly changing weather conditions and home to ravenous slog monster. The name of the planet is not actually given, although we are told it is the fourth planet of Procyon II. Consulting my star chart, I think that would make it "Greeley." Natch. You are told that a human outpost center remains and you have found it. All that is needed now is to get inside before the weather starts changing. Good luck. The game's parser is an adventure in self-abuse.

The thing is, however, that only a crappy parser could convey the sense of getting trapped in the middle of a storm. The player will feel helpless and will die before figuring out a way to get in. If you buy the fact that the game "works" at all, it's only because trying to do anything in it is sickeningly difficult. No other game creates such a palatable effect of horror tinged with impotence. Mostly because no other game is this bad yet written this well. Sure, it has a level of cheeze: frequently the game will spout something like "GAAAAH!!!!" before telling you the awful thing that just happened to the player character. But it's second to none in terms of mean catch phrases.

"Looka like a storm is brewing." Say this phrase to my brother and I and you have instantly used a form of modern thieves cant. "You is dead, buddy." The game pretends to be your pal, slapping you on the back, ever confident that since classics like Duke Nukem 3D, X-COM, and, uh, even Burn: Cycle weren't around you had no choice but to spend your time playing the same piece of awful freeware. Alien's confidence is surprisingly high. You have to respect that.

Getting into the human MET station offers many ways to die. There are not really "insta-death" rooms, per se, but the game is hardly fair and coddling. You wouldn't want it babysitting your first born, in other words. As for the conclusion, well... it's not going to be challenging Tekken III for post-game cinematics and depth.

Alien is a bad game, all the way around. The author, however, can write somewhat effectively. Pity we may never know who cobbled together this ware to see if he or she had other IF projects. It's still better than Burn: Cycle, though. Admittedly that's like saying that a night with the king's favorite concubine is better than a night getting drawn and quartered by the King's favorite mare but it doesn't make it any less valid.

(And stating that the worst of IF is still more entertaining than typical FMV-based fare is what we do best at Reviews From Trotting Krips.)

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