The next time someone complains to you that there are no good platform games for the PC, crack them in the head with Abuse. This is one hot game - everyone I've shown it to in the office has been wowed - and it comes with some built-in surprises that make it too good to pass up.
The premise is . . . well, to be honest, the premise is the lamest part. Take a bit of Scott's *Aliens,* mix in a LOT of Steakley's *Armor,* with a touch of Doom thrown in for good measure. (Developers crack dot com are related to Doom-creators id Software in a vaguely incestuous way that isn't quite clear to me.) Basically, you're a one-man army whose job it is to blast through 15 levels of nasty aliens (which bear a strong resemblance to the acid-bleeding nightmares created by H.R. Giger for the films). Along the way, you pick up weapons, ammo, health and special power-ups that give you special abilities ranging from fast running to flight to increased max health.
What you've got is a platform shoot-'em-up that rivals the best of anything I've seen on the PC or a home system. The action is fast and ferocious, and the enemies deadly. This makes for a fun and exciting gaming experience. One standout feature is the game's unique control scheme: arrow keys to move, CTRL and INS to change weapons (look at your numeric keypad. Get it?) and the MOUSE to target and fire. Here's the cool part: aim at a target above you, and your dude does, too. Aim behind you, and he twists his little torso around to shoot backwards. Firing is completely independent of the direction you're moving, a laudable scheme too-long overdue in games of this ilk.
One other game element bears mentioning, and that is sound. The ambient sounds in this game rock, plain and simple. Groans, dripping water, vague and distant mechanical noises. They're creepy. They create such a tense atmosphere that when a bunch of Ants leaps out at you with a loud shriek, you may just jump out of your chair. The game absolutely draws you in, and sometimes, it's downright frightening. A first-class effort on the designers' part.
If there's anything I have to complain about in this game, it would have to be the utter lack of primary colors in the tile design. The entire game was drawn in different shades of mud - grays, browns, blacks, an occasional ochre - with the exception of bright yellows and oranges in the excellent explosions - and, of course, lots of red when you die :-) I could have done with a bit brighter color from time to time - I don't hold with the notion that "darker is better" - but I suppose it suits the atmosphere the designers were trying to create - dark and moody.
Besides, if I had half a mind, I could change things around. Forget WAD files - Abuse is basically a tightly-coded graphics engine that runs a bunch of LISP programs. All the programs are in source format, and could be modified by an experienced programmer. You can change the graphics, sprites, AI, system logic - everything. In fact, you could rebuild the game completely, so that it merely used the Abuse engine to handle input and graphics rendering. If you're not feeling that ambitious, you can use the existing tileset to make new levels, using the built-in level editor. The editor's a bit clunky - it's definitely closer to the "in-house production tool" category than "commercial-quality end-user software," but it gets the job done. Best of all, you can run the game (and hence, the editor) in SVGA, to make level design that much easier.
I could go on and on. I could mention the light sourcing. (Light sourcing? In a 2D game? Wow.) I could talk about the general excellence of the level design, and how they give you just enough ammo to complete any given level - not too much, not too little - and the puzzles are just challenging enough to drive you to complete them without becoming TOO frustrating. But I'm not going to talk about any of those things, because I figure you should get a look at them yourself. First, you can check out the shareware version of the game, which (God willing) should be on this episode of IE. I promise you, if you have even the slightest interest in twitch games, you'll LOVE Abuse. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to kick some thorax.
