CREATURE SHOCK

You are mankind's last hope. Sent to investigate the space-drifting remains of the UNS Amazon, a survey ship deployed in 2123 to find a new home for a dying planet. Earth.

The metal carcass of the ship appears to be devoid of life. But in fact the ship is crawling with creatures just waiting to kill you. Tracking your heartbeat as you move through a tangle of dead-silent tunnels and arteries. Turn fast and shoot faster - before they slash from inside the wall behind you. Or ooze out from an air duct. Or they mutate from human flesh.

If you can defy their grotesque powers, if you can pilot your treacherous way to their starship and destroy the ultimate alien, if you are up to the challenge, you're in for the shock of your life.

FEATURES

• CREATURE SHOCK features full screen completely 3-D rendered animation.
• Two styles of gameplay - First-person perspective adventure game and interactive flight simulation.
• One-on-one combat plus shooting galleries.
• The eeriest music and sound effects heighten the already unbearable tension.

~ from the back of the box

 

There was a time when Argonaut Software seemed like the future of gaming. Having already helped push the Super Nintendo into new dimensions with Star Fox, the British developers struggled to make anything quite so impactful when they turned their attention to PCs. CD-ROMs were the shiny new things, and they were going to make use of them no matter what. Creature Shock arrived in 1994 boasting some astonishing cinematic visuals, full-screen full-motion video and a spooky science-fiction adventure to go with it. Notice the lack of gameplay being mentioned? Perhaps the game had succumbed to the "good graphics, bad gameplay" mantra which was becoming a thing during the early days of FMV obsessed CD-ROMs. Creature Shock, however, does have some interesting design choices that seem to test this theory, but did it succeed back then and can it hold up three decades later?

The story takes us into a future where Earth is becoming rather crowded, prompting humanity to investigate other worlds for potential colonisation. The spacecraft UNS Amazon has been sent to explore the Saturnian region, but contact is lost and a distress signal is all that remains. Naturally, somebody has to investigate, and that somebody is you. The game presents its tale through lengthy cinematic sequences, establishing an ominous atmosphere and showing off the locations with plenty of dramatic flair. Unfortunately, these scenes are rather better at setting the mood than moving the plot forward. Dialogue is sparse, and much of the background information is tucked away in supplementary material rather than being explained through the action. If you skip the extra reading, you may wonder exactly what is happening and why, but you won't be completely lost. The essentials are straightforward enough: explore an alien-infested environment, find out what happened, and shoot anything with teeth. 

It's best to dodge obstacles than shoot them in the rail-shooter sequences (left).

Until you get to the boss that is. This one's weak spot is in the guns (right).

Visually, Creature Shock is almost unbelievable for its time with only the low-res pixelation belying its true age. Otherwise, the pre-rendered environments are detailed, the creatures grotesque, and the lighting and composition give the whole production a genuinely foreboding atmosphere. The sound design deserves similar praise with sparse effects and ambient audio to build a cinematic tension. It brings to mind the oppressive atmosphere of classic science-fiction horror such as Alien. You could quite happily spend time admiring the artistry on display and wondering how on earth Argonaut managed to produce it on contemporary hardware. The trouble is that admiring the scenery is considerably more enjoyable than interacting with it. 

In terms of gameplay, Creature Shock is something of a dud. At least that's what some scathing contemporary reviews thought at the time. While I wouldn't quite say there's no innovation or thought in this regard, it certainly isn't without some major flaws. The bulk of the experience is a first-person shooting gallery, with occasional opportunities to explore the surrounding corridors bookended by a couple of on-rail sequences thrown in for variety. Think StarFox stages next to 7th Guest-style adventuring Frankensteined with a slow-moving light-gun shooter. The basic controls are simple enough: aim with the mouse, fire with the left mouse button, hold the left button to activate the shield, and reach the keyboard's spacebar for a smart bomb. It's no more difficult than that.

The closest you get to a decision is choose a path to go down. They do lead to very different encounters (left).

Rare circular cabinets host these red dots which fill up your health, energy or bomb slots (right).

Your first encounter with the gameplay will be one of the rail-shooter stages, and it's a mixed bag. You'll be navigating a fixed route while blasting enemies and avoiding incoming hazards. It's all controlled exclusively with the mouse, and the sensitivity makes it feel rather more difficult than it ought to be. You can't confidently line up targets in a satisfying arcade shoot-out, so you'll often default to dodging objects and enemy attacks while hoping your shots just happen to hit something. The first of these stages culminates in a boss encounter, but its weak point is frustratingly obscure. You need to attack when the underside guns are exposed, and the game gives no feedback as to whether you've hit the right target. No flashing light, no crunchy sound effect, no shaking animation. Nothing. It looks terrific, with the kind of flashy spectacle and changing scenery that could have made these sequences a real highlight. Sadly, awkward controls and unclear objectives undermine the whole affair. The second rail-shooter stage offers more of the same general idea, taking place in a canyon trench run instead of outer space, but the same problems remain.

But these sequences do not make up the main bulk of the game. There are three so-called exploration stages that has you navigate a locating first-person-adventure style with the odd gallery shooter thrown in for some action. Sadly, the graphics over gameplay curse is just as present. You'll wander through twisting corridors and alien passageways that have a nasty habit of repeating themselves to occasionally encounter a creature that needs putting down. Mechanically, there are three types of encounters; shooting galleries that has many multiples of enemies, individual encounters that rarely present much of a threat, and the boss fights that provide the real challenge. These bosses are easily the most imaginative enemies in the game, with distinctive designs, attack patterns and weak points that thoughtfully change depending on what you're fighting. One encounter of note has a ghostly alien made visible by a flying projector that marks its weak spot. Unfortunately, they're also where Creature Shock's shortcomings become almost unbearable. Like that boss in the arcade stage, vulnerable areas aren't always clearly signposted with little feedback given when you've found one. It's not that the designers don't know how to do this - a wall-crawling spider boss has a green underside that flashes when hit - so there's no excuse when other bosses give you nothing. To make matters worse, incoming attacks can't be dodged, so damage becomes an inevitability rather than something you can consistently avoid through skill. The result is a war of attrition in which you try to identify the right target before your health disappears. Worse still, sustained firing can cause your basic weapon to slow down, making those brief opportunities to hit a weak spot even more aggravating. Red dots found in circular cabinets replenish health and power, while bombs and shields offer limited assistance, but these resources can't disguise the lack of a satisfying combat strategy. The bosses look fantastic, but fighting them is frequently frustrating.

This spider-like mini-boss has a green weak spot that flashes when hit. It's the only one to do so (left).

These lizard-like foes have a weak spot in their mouths. Good luck trying to hit them (right).

Despite its mixed reception, Creature Shock became a useful showcase for the expanding CD-based gaming market, appearing on the 3DO, PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Philips CD-i in addition to DOS. However, each of these do offer some differences. The 3DO port retains all three exploration stages and both original rail-shooter sequences, while the PlayStation, CD-i and Japanese Saturn versions omit those original flight sections. The North American Saturn release, subtitled Special Edition, reimagines the rail-shooter sequences as fully polygonal space shooters instead (and are visually worse for the effort). Out of all of them, it's ironically the CD-i version that is perhaps the most interesting. While the rail-shooting sequences are missing, the main game supports a light gun. It's a welcome addition, even if it can't repair the underlying design. Creature Shock's presence across so many CD-based systems says a great deal about the industry's enthusiasm for multimedia gaming in the mid-nineties. It also says something rather less flattering about the market's priorities. When a game could serve as a demonstration of what a new machine was capable of, its cinematic presentation sometimes mattered more than whether anyone particularly enjoyed playing it. Of all systems, it became something of a killer app on the CD-i, which is very fitting for Phillip's ill-fated console.

Creature Shock is a fascinating relic of an era when developers were racing to make games look like films, sometimes forgetting that films don't require the audience to fight a badly behaved mouse cursor or repeatedly shoot a monster in an indistinguishable lump of anatomy. Argonaut deserves credit for the ambition, the visual design and the sheer amount of work that went into creating its alien world. The graphics remain striking, the atmosphere is excellent, and there are glimpses of a much better game hiding beneath the layers of pre-rendered spectacle. But the controls are awkward, the exploration is repetitive, and the combat too often confuses obscurity with challenge. The result is a game that's considerably more interesting to look at than to play. If you're curious about the early CD-ROM era, Creature Shock is worth experiencing as a historical artifact if anything. If you're hoping for a genuinely rewarding science-fiction shooter, however, you'll be left wanting. There's a good creature lurking in here somewhere, it just never fully materialises.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox to bring the game to modern systems. Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 11.

File Size: 804 Mb.  Install Size: 1.14 Gb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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Creature Shock is © Argonaut Software Limited
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me

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