Bioforge

by Origin

Product Features

• MS-DOS CD-ROM
• E A 10083

Product Details

• ASIN: B0007PM0IS
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,187 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creepy, beautiful, tough space-adventure, December 3, 2009

By 

Wux Iapan "Fantas" (Zurich) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Bioforge (CD-ROM)

WHAT A GAME!

Loved it and still do. Played it with a DOS box (well, somebody installed it for me)

STORY
You're a nameless victim, very alone, very isolated, very very far away from home. You don't know your identity nor the circumstances that lead you here. You just remember pieces of recent memories: a space vessel... some people transporting you to a tiny moon orbiting a huge planet where there's a secret installation... a twisted "doctor" playing around with your body that's fixed on a robotic operation table. Then... fade out.
Your cell is shaking, you awake to some water being splashed into your face, coming down from the ceiling. Earthquake. Where are you and what's this place? A bot starts to hover and commands you to lie still again, to not resist. If you don't, it will give you medication to knock you out until later, the waters will wake you again. If you enter FIGHT MODE and kick it, it will tell you that it is "tremor resistant". But hey, what's that, there's a damn metal plate in your face, one arm is a peace of metal, you got headaches like hell. With some metal fist/feet blows, you send it straight into that deadly prison beam where it blows up and defects said beaming device. Wait, what was that painful screaming from around the corner? Anyway, you're free! But heck, there's 5 more cells outside and a big door. In front of another cell lies a separated, blueish arm. The rest is inside: an insane inmate that tells you that if you want the fork, you'll be dissapointed. The other cells are empty, but one of them looks especially strange: the interiors clearly demolished and a special security system.
Bit later: the blue guy is dead though you did not wanna kill him. Now you got the fork with which to over-ride some security system. You enter some sort of reception area. There's some talking throught some loudspeakers about a digging site and another prisoner. You check the computer and find lists of employees, many employees, but only around 6 out of many are still 'here'. All the others are "evacuated" or simply "dead". There's a list of scientists: same there, only few around. And, there's a repairing system where you can read reports about some accidents and stuff.
At this point you might discover that strange button on your arm. You press it, and up comes some diary, telling you that "I just left my cell, where am I, who's the blue guy?" and stuff. You wonder and exit, and when you re-enter, you find a new entry: "Who wrote that? That's my experiences there, my thoughts! Did I write this? That's my subconscious being transferred into this diary..."
Then you find the diary of another person and you learn that he was traveling with a huge space ship recently, and when they made their space jump, the engines flipped out, so they were flying in light speed for hours and hours, to finnaly find themselves in an unknown system. 3 days later, some space vessels approached whilst crew members were dying. Instead of being helped, they faced some really gruesome ordeal. Believe me: reading this diary is definetly shocking and creepy. Brutal and bloody, and damn insane!

The folks who created BIOFORGE really did a good job. The feeling of being lost, of being in the middle of some big catastrophe, of mysterious secrets concerning a wiped out alien race, of evil-doers having uncovered something that began wiping THEM out in turn, of you entering this situation, and in which you, the good unexpected guy, can hand out merci- and revengeful coups de grace against the insane lunatics... is simply ASTONISHING. This game would adapt greatly to a little, grim, dark, spacey SciFi-horror movie. Sure, they'd spoil it completly like they always do.

GAMEPLAY
Like Resident evil. But you gotta fight with your fists and feet. There's a lazer gun in your arm, but it requires a lot of energy. That you also need to heal yourself, but, logically, the battery will empty itself that way. Game is pretty HARD. Played it on easy and damn, even then some fights seem to go on forever. On the other hand, it's not respawn enemies, you don't fight really often, maybe 7 or 8 times, and every time the opposer's got a real identity, no respawn enemy clones, every enemy is introduced very well and very personal.
The game is pretty brave in also putting you into imoral situations you can't escape from. In one scene, there's a frightened, harmless survivor you need to beat up so that he activates something for you. Afterwards: coup de grace. "I didn't need to kill him, but I must say, I enjoy the silence now." Badass you are! Anyway, fighting is hard, it wasn't that much worked out back then, the animations of striking take long and aggravate the fighting difficulty, 'cause often he'll miss the target even though it seems clear that this shouldn't happen in the actual position.
But it's managable. Sometimes, unfortunatly, you'll find out the pattern of well-timed punching/kicking, which is good but feels a bit strange, like cheating. In one, difficult fight, you gotta "just" manage to keep the opposer in some angle, and keep punching with perfect timing. It looks bad, always the same fighting animations, but once you miss him, you'll be beaten up really bad untill you get back to the recent position/pattern. It's clearly outbluffing the fighting mechanics, but almost the only way. Being too flexibel in a fight doesn't serve you that well here.

Get it, and find somebody to install that DOS box for you.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Coulden't get it to work with XP, March 30, 2009

By 

A. Aguilar "TAPC" (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bioforge (CD-ROM)

I used to play this game when it first came out and it was great.

I bought the CD and for what ever reason, I coulden't get this wo work on my XP machines.. I tried 2 different PC's and I coulden't get it to work...

I work for IT....lol.. so good luck.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars well, I asked for it, June 6, 2010

By 

Robert Cothran - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bioforge (CD-ROM)

I could not get this game to run on my windows xp machine. I attempted to use dosshell with no luck. I probably just don't know what I'm doing. Anyone out there know how to set dosshell up?