Bio Menace

The Good
This is one of the better Apogee-style games, I have enjoyed it a lot.

The Bad
This game has some terrible bugs. Some versions of the game start up with a screen of troubleshooting tips to get the game running. On most of my old computers it crashes when you start playing (typically, the first time you shoot). I never got it working on a recent computer (such as a Pentium with Windows 95).

The Bottom Line
If it was more stable, it would be a typical Apogee platform game. It uses the Keen engine, so the gameplay is much the same as Keen, but the theme is more like Duke Nukem.

The Good
Snake Logan, a top CIA agent, is called in to investigate incidents where gigantic mutants are causing destruction in Metro City, and to find out where they are coming from. So he must fly over Metro City, investigate what is going on, then report back to the captain. Unfortunately, Snake’s plane is shot down, forcing him to walk the streets and kill mutants.

Playing this game reminds me of when I played the Commander Keen games – the start-up screen, in-game menus, and even the same sort of gameplay where you run to the other side of the stage, possibly finding crystal shards and using them to unlock barriers. You also have to rescue hostages before you reach the exit. When you do this, they will give you some information on the enemies on each stage and give you a keycard that you will use to open the exit.

One bit of the gameplay that I really like is collecting the gold keys and opening the cabinets that require them, in order to find items that increases your score. They are not floating in the air, making it less than easy for a player to stock up on infinite lives.

The enemies are clever and require more than one shot to destroy. There are much tougher enemies you encounter in the later stages, and these also go for hazards. (The turret guns, for instance, attempt to wound you before you can take action, even if you do not see them on screen yet.) The enemies that I enjoyed are the purple blobs, as well as the green alien that looks like Cosmo without the spots. I like how big and aggressive that the bosses are in all three episodes. In my opinion, they outnumber the bosses in other Apogee games.

Although the game uses EGA graphics, they are colorful and made me feel like I am actually walking through cities, parks, construction sites, sewers, and factories, each with their own dangers and annoyances.

The sound of the weapons that you use in the game are perfect, in that they sound similar to the weapons used in cartoon shows. The grenades make a cute explosion sound when they impact with something. The sounds of the robots are awesome when you kill them – they make a low, growling noise. There is some energetic music, some of them blend in with the environment that you are in.

Controls are easy to learn and use. [Ctrl] to jump, [Right Alt] to fire, and [Enter] to throw grenades. I like these controls. They were easy to learn straight away when I played my first Apogee game.

The Bad
You cannot just save anywhere in a stage. Part of the beauty of playing the Keen games is that you can save anytime at anywhere in the game – whether it be the world map or normal level. In Bio Menace, however, saving the game in the middle of a stage is useless, as restoring it will only take you way back to the start of the level. Sure, there are restart beacons, but I just am not used to them yet.

You cannot change weapons in the game, from a useless weapon to a weapon that does more arm to enemies. If you have the plasma bolts, for example, and you get the machine gun, then you will lose the plasma bolts, regardless of how much ammo is still left in it. And there isn't a key (on the keyboard) where you can change weapons. The same problem goes for grenades and land mines.

Bio Menace was released with a severe bug. Every time you kill the first purple blob or shoot it, the games just locks up. Since DOSBox does not fix the problem, you are forced to use a third-party patch or just add a STACKS command in CONFIG.SYS

The Bottom Line
Overall, a good game with excellent music. Bio Menace uses IDÂ’s Commander Keen engine. If you like platform games like Commander Keen, then this game is worth paying $5 for. ***

The Good
The graphics of Bio Menace are very nice: colourful and fun---with just a splash of gristle. The player is also treated to globby synth music and sound effects. Gameplay aspects that make this game somewhat unique are its crystal-shard system (usually the player must find crystal shards to unlock the exit to a level), its key system (almost all doors must be opened with keys---laser walls must be opened with special keys called key cards), its colour-codes (to unlock hidden stores of booty the player must memorize a sequence of colours and input them in the correct order using colour switches; if the player fails to put them in the correct order, the floor collapses and the player falls into a trap---usually a deadly pit or a room of monsters or spikes), and finally its weapons (there is a wide assortment of weapons to collect, some of the powerful weapons even going through multiple enemies). There are also a lot of enemies in this game (mutants and robots), and some are very unique; one never gets bored with fighting the same things. Finally, the backstory, while not very involved and a tad cliche, has classic appeal: a psychopathic doctor performing hideous genetic experiments and creating an army of mutants and robots to take over the world, and a shadowy, evil mastermind behind it all.

The Bad
The player cannot switch weapons. The most powerful weapon must be depleted before the player can use the next-most powerful weapon and so on. As soon as a player gets a more powerful weapon than the one he or she is using, the player must use that weapon until it is depleted. This can be annoying. For example, if you want to lob grenades over a wall and you just picked up some landmines you have two choices: (1) waste all ten landmines to get to the grenades, or (2) don't. This problem, however, is very minor; most often any weapon will suffice in killing hordes of enemies.

The Bottom Line
You play a mustachioed, mulleted, bad-ass CIA operative trying to save the world from masses of mutants and swarms of cyborgs all to modish, gloopy synth tunes.