Alien Legacy
by
Sierra 1995
The Earth has for the first time encountered extraterrestrial life. However, unfortunately for the citizens of Earth, these aliens are hostile. As the alien probe heads towards Earth, the governments of the world agree to work together to defeat the probe. At a great cost to the governments of Earth, the probe is destroyed, although not before millions of people die on Earth because of an alien biological weapon.
The governments of Earth create two plans. One plan is to deploy a space armada to take the fight back to Alpha Centauri and destroy the aliens before they can annihilate Earth. The second plan is to launch seed ships that will take some human settlers to new worlds. The game places you in command of one of these seedships. It is your goal to lead the crew of the Calypso to saftey beyond the reaches of Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, as you enter orbit of the new planet you attempt to make contact with a seedship that is supposed to have arrived ahead of you. However, the only thing you hear is silence. Even worse, you have lost all contact with Earth......
This is one of the greatest games that I have ever played. Although it is pretty old, the original version was released before 1995, it is still one of my favorite games. Essentially, Alien Legacy combines empire building with mystery solving, which forms a surprisingly entertaining hybrid. One of my favorite parts about this game is the fact that I constantly felt nervous while I was building my bases. In most games you know that you are going to have a certain amount of time to set up your forces. However, in Alien Legacy, I felt that I was always just on the verge of being attacked. This creates a sense of urgency for your survival that very few games even come close to matching.
The story line is also great. While the idea of being attacked by an evil alien race is not stunning (or all that original), the overall story is very compelling. As you progress, you uncover what happened to the previous seedship. You also have to determine if what happened to them will happen to you. Of course there is also the mystery of what happened to Earth, and will the Alpha Centauri planet killers find you? With so many different plot elements to keep track of, you tend to focus on the plot and hurridly build bases as a way to reveal more plot elements. This is a good thing too, because this game can easily take 100 hours to play, so if you focused only on building and maintaining colonies, you would probably drop dead from boredom...of course then you wouldn't need to worry about Alpha Centauri anymore.
As for graphics, they are pretty bad. Even for a game that was pre-1995. However, unless you are a graphics junkey, it doesn't really detract too much from the game. The biggest problem right now is finding a computer that isn't too fast on which to run Alien Legacy. Even my lowly pentium 233 is almost too fast.
Review
Graphics 5.6
Gameplay 8.5
Plot 9.8
Overall 8.8
Bottom Line: This is such a great game. I really liked it, but by todays standards it is a bit outdated, so I can't give it a really high rating. If you want to see how far computers have come, then check out this game. Despite these problems, few games can match Alien Legacy in suspense and storyline, which makes it a classic.
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