ALIEN FIRES 

 I first saw ALIEN FIRES running on an Amiga at the Summer '87 CES
(Consumer Electronics Show). I stood transfixed for several minutes
by the beautiful graphics, the digitized rock 'n' roll soundtrack, 
and the funny questions and answers that came snarling from the
voice synthesizer. Cautiously, I approached the (equally
transfixed) young man who was giving the demo. "Will ALIEN FIRES
ever be ported to the Atari ST?" (Dare I hope?) 

 "Sure will," he replied, "in a couple of months. Around August." It
was June and I thought this wasn't such a terribly long time to
wait. But because I'm in the software development business, I knew
there'd be a couple of months' worth of unanticipated debugging. I
started watching for ALIEN FIRES in October. 

 Christmas arrived and departed, followed by several other
holidays, and still no ALIEN FIRES. In the meantime, Amiga players
were leaving questions about it in Gamers' Forum and no one could
help them. Where was the long awaited port? (Sounds of ST disk
shuffling.) Ah, here it is. 

 ALIEN FIRES, written by Jeff Simpson and Sky Matthews of Jagware, 
involves locating and thwarting a deranged scientist who is running
even more amok than usual: He's developed a time portal that
threatens to obliterate the universe as we know it. You create your
"time lord" by distributing 99 points among seven statistics, such
as Marksmanship, Tracking, and Diplomacy. After creating this time
lord, you give it a name, and soon afterward, a decent burial. If
you thought character survival was tough in BARD'S TALE, you've not
seen the half of it! At least in BARD'S TALE, you had five other
characters upon whom you could depend or blame your defeat. Not so
in ALIEN FIRES: It's you and nobody else. 

 Well, almost nobody else. During your exploration of the Octo Space
Station, you'll have an opportunity to meet (ad nauseam) various
characters whom you may question in hopes of deriving valuable
information. When you first meet an alien, the screen is cleared and
a beautiful "painting" of the alien appears until you press the
space bar or click the mouse button. Then, the normal room is
redrawn and a gray outline of the alien is displayed. (Ditto for any
items you encounter.) 

 Of the six-odd (take that any way you wish) characters I met, none
had anything to say that was even remotely worth hearing. Nor did
any impart their information upon my initial "Hello." I had to
question them over and over, zeroing in on key words and phrases
before they'd give forth. Half of the time, my reference to what
seemed like a key word produced a response reminiscent of Gabe
Kotter's "sweathogs." 

 It goes without saying that the nifty voice synthesizer is totally
absent from the ST port. No problem. We're all used to reading and
typing. What grinds on the nerves is the terrible looping of the
music soundtrack. The boot-up screen's musical background is very
well done. Although it's repetitive, you can't detect the loop in
the music no matter how hard you listen. Enjoy it. The rest of the
looping sounds like a record with a skip in it. I'm still looking
for a way to turn the music off without muting the volume. Overall, 
the best sound effects occur during the death sequence; you'll get
to hear these a lot. 

 ALIEN FIRES' locale is huge. I've only explored levels one and two
of the colony -- not very thoroughly -- and have become totally
lost, turned around, and confused every step of the way. As far as I
can tell, the game is thoroughly unmappable. The majority of the
rooms are not square; rather, they're octagonal, oval, round, 
triangular, and dodecahedral without any parallel lines. To make
matters even more frustrating, merely entering a room won't
necessarily render everything visible. You'll have to walk all the
way up to every wall surface before an item will be revealed to
you. 

 Speaking of entering rooms, every time you do so, there's disk
access. It occurs when you encounter an alien, and each time you
bump into the same alien (which happens frequently, because aliens
move around a lot). Before music is heard, there's disk access. 
Access takes place when you find an item, when you look at an item, 
and when you pick up an item. In other words, there's a LOT of disk
access. I played the game on a 520 ST, and I understand that 1040 ST
and Mega ST users fare no better, although the instruction pamphlet
does mention that a RAM disk may be used to store some of the game
data. Hard disk storage is also supported. 

 ALIEN FIRES comes on three single-sided 3-1/2" diskettes. The
no-frills packaging includes an Atari ST-specific instruction
pamphlet and a ten-page player's guide. 

 ALIEN FIRES is, without a doubt, a very difficult game to play and
master. I wouldn't recommend it to novice role-playing gamers; 
however, I would recommend it to those of you who have successfully
tackled one or more of the BARD'S TALE games. Aggravations aside, 
it's the ultimate in computer role-playing game challenges. 

 AMIGA VERSION NOTES 

 ALIEN FIRES is an Amiga-original science fiction game. Its first
release last summer was met with some disappointment because of a
few obvious problems in game play. Several of the problems were
corrected in an updated version, but there are still many obstacles
that can block a player's path to gaming enjoyment. 

 The game comes on two disks and is copy-protected using a
disk-based scheme. For Amiga owners who have more than 512K of RAM, 
the included reference card suggests that some of the files from the
second disk be copied into RAM to cut down on disk access. Now, 
that's fine, except the files take a while to copy, and then the
program must be started from CLI: The reference card neglects to
mention how to start the game once the files are in RAM. 

 I found the three-dimensional graphics confusing. It's hard to
determine where you've moved in relation to your last step. 
Therefore, mapping is difficult, if not impossible. The graphics
also slow down the movement of your character; you can easily lose
patience while attempting to navigate the various levels. 

 When you encounter another character, the program uses a
combination of speech synthesis and text to communicate his message
to you. The speech synthesis (in standard Amiga voice) is all but
unintelligible. Paragon Software added the text after the first
release in order to help clear up the confusion. But why use speech
at all if it can't be understood? This is obviously a case of
incorporating a useless hardware feature to try to sell a game. 

 The music in the program is very good, but it becomes extremely
repetitive after the second or third attempt at the game. This, 
again, is a game "feature" included only to make superficial use of
the machine's hardware. It doesn't add anything to the game and, in
fact, it's quite irritating. 

 Overall, I can recommend ALIEN FIRES only to those gamers who are
hard-core science fiction role-playing fans; this is the one group
who'll be able to look past the myriad of problems. Inside ALIEN
FIRES, there is a very good game struggling to break out. But the
number of people willing to work hard enough to find it is
indeterminate; the average gamer will become discouraged (it's
difficult to survive even the first dangerous encounter) and will
move on to something else. Try this one before you buy. 

 IBM VERSION NOTES 

 While ALIEN FIRES is no less frustrating on the IBM than on the ST
or the Amiga, a measure of thought has obviously gone into the
port. FIRES makes excellent use of the IBM and provides exceptional
graphics, good music and sound effects, and several nice menu
options that may be peculiar to the IBM version. 

 ALIEN FIRES comes on three 5-1/4" disks and two 3-1/2" disks (both
in the same package). The game requires 512K and a CGA; it also
supports EGA in grand style. Because the graphics are so detailed, 
the disk arrangement is a bit strange, but convenient -- especially
for hard disk users. On the 5-1/4" disks, one is devoted to the
program, one to the CGA graphics, and one to the EGA graphics. 
Therefore, it's only necessary to install one of the two graphics
disks -- either EGA or CGA. With the 3-1/2" disks, the program is
contained its entirety on each of the disks: one in EGA and one in
CGA. This eliminates the need for any disk-flipping. 

 The program comes without any kind of copy protection, making
backup or hard disk installation a breeze. Saving a game in progress
requires an additional disk (unless you're using a hard drive). One
flaw is that you cannot restore a saved game except after booting. 
This means that if you die, you'll have to exit the program and
reboot if you want to return to a previous position. On the other
hand, you are given several lives in the game; it's not always
necessary to start over from an earlier game. 

 Several improvements over the ST and Amiga versions are contained
in a text file on the disk. Be sure to print this file and keep it
with your manual. One of the improvements is a "jump-frame" key. 
Because the graphics are intense, the animation can sometimes be
annoyingly slow. Using the jump-frame key, you can skip the
in-between frames; this speeds up the gameplay significantly. I ran
FIRES from a hard drive and used a CPU speed of 7.14 MHz, and even
with these advantages, the animation was still a bit poky; the
jump-frame key made movement a lot easier. 

 Another addition is an overhead map view of your current location, 
with a pointer showing the direction you're facing. This makes
navigation quite a bit simpler, as you might imagine. 

 The EGA graphics are terrific -- colorful, unusual, and plentiful. 
In CGA, they're naturally less impressive. The program uses the
yellow-red-green-black combination for the CGA graphics (and for
some of the EGA graphics as well). The CGA graphics are also
displayed in the opening of the EGA version; this is disconcerting. 

 Most of the commands (and a decent help menu) are accessible from
the function keys. ALIEN FIRES doesn't support a mouse or a
joystick, so the screen is less cluttered with icons than in other
versions. My complaints are few. The opening sequence is
interminable and cannot be bypassed. The special "extended music" 
driver -- despite its fancy name, I detected no difference in the
overall quality of the music -- stays resident even after you've
quit the game. Several times the music played on and on despite the
fact that I had exited the game and booted my word processor! 

 Although it's harder than usual to become accustomed to ALIEN
FIRES, its very dissimilarity to other CRPGs renders it intriguing, 
and the changes implemented in the IBM version make the game
decently user-friendly. I concur with Ken Hill's "try before you
buy" caveat, however. 

 ALIEN FIRES is published by Paragon Software Corporation and
distributed by Electronic Arts. 

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253