A
PC CD-ROM game by
Origin Systems, released in
1994. It was known during development by the
working title Interactive Movie 1. Bioforge tells the story of a mysterious character (the player) called '
Lexx', who wakes up in a
prison cell in a
research facility built on a (supposedly) deserted alien planet. His memory has been wiped. Most of his body has been replaced with
cybernetic implants that give him great resilience and strength, provided he can supply them with power. After trashing the
nurse robot in his cell, Lexx begins a quest to escape from the research station and find out who the hell he is, and who has
zinc-plated his
crotch. On his travels he also runs into some super-tough aliens that have been
hibernating in the planet core, and has to figure out their part in the story.
The game is surprisingly overlooked these days. The presentation style is similar to Alone in The Dark (and the later Resident Evil), although the polygonal characters are texture mapped. The prerendered backgrounds are realistically lit and animated, and at one point Lexx gets to wear an impressive reflective suit. The game makes good use of the CD medium, without resorting to extensive use of FMV. There is a lot of text (mainly the journals and computer logs you can find in the game) as well as audio dialogue. There are a variety of puzzles as well as frequent (complex for the time) hand-to-hand combat.
The game was worked on by 3D artist Paul Steed who later went on to work for Id Software. There are some definite parallels between the (biomechanical) elements of the Quake II and Quake III Arena game world and characters and those seen in Bioforge. (For instance I think that the character Keel in Q3A might be a reference to one of the test subjects in Bioforge, but my memory has been wiped isn't so good.)
I recommend this game to anyone interested in the evolution of action-adventure games, although as uses DOS extenders and extended memory voodoo, you might have trouble getting it to run on a modern machine.