Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure

Development and release

In 1994, Jean Martial Lefranc who was the CEO of Cryo Interactive charged Nicolas Choukroun, a French video game author, to build a small team in order to create an adventure game based on the Aliens comic book published by Dark Horse Comics. Mindscape was the publisher and Fox gave their authorization as long as the game would not have any characters from the movies and would have a realistic movie style. The new ideas from the Dark Horse comic inspired the team who created an adventure with a lot of innovation. In the game, the player can use synthetic Aliens in order to study the real Aliens. Also the concept of a military base, using the Aliens to build an army against the Earth was original and was opening new horizons.

The main protagonist, Lt. Col. Henricksen, is a nod to famed sci-fi actor Lance Henriksen, who played the android Bishop in Aliens and Alien³, and Charles Bishop Weyland in Alien vs. Predator. This game had some interesting and innovative concepts. At the end of the game, the "Space Jockey", the huge dead creature found in the spaceship in the first Alien movie appeared, rendered in a 3D modeled form, and was coming to save the player in extremis. This game created the concept of a war between the two Alien races shown in the first Alien movies but was never exploited by Fox.

In October 1994, the USA version was finished and Mindscape duplicated 120,000 pieces for Christmas sales. In December 1994, Fox sued Mindscape for copyright violation and gave Mindscape the right to sell the stock, but not to continue to duplicate and market the product. The whole staff in Mindscape US and Mindscape UK were fired and the German and French version of the game were released unfinished.

Reception

Upon its release, the game received mixed and mostly mediocre reviews, but also got some good scores such as an 80% in Polish magazine Secret Service. In a retrospective article, Alexa Ray Corriea and Danielle Riendeau of Polygon wrote Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure "not only made the Aliens feel scary, but added a little more to the franchise by spinning different plot threads through the game." According to Pete Worth of Thunderbolt, "The game featured some high-end graphics and a certain degree of tension but the inventory-based puzzles and grid-based combat were often tedious. Still, it was interesting to see xenomorphs regain their fear-inducing deadliness after being reduced to mere cannon-fodder so often in other games." On the other hand, Stephen Cleckner of GamesBeat opined "Aliens: The Comic Book Adventure is a frustratingly plodding and tedious excuse of a game." He recommended to "sit through a Let's Play video if you need to experience this thing. For your sake, don’t actually try to play it." In 1996, Computer Gaming World ranked it as the #24 Worst Game of All Time as "bad art, plot and action shame the Dark Horse comic series on which it was based."