Darwinianevolution

User Score
3.0

Presentation - 4.0
Gameplay - 3.0
Value - 2.0

Successful games tend to generate a massive amount of copycats. That is true for the video game industry as it is for all other industries. The popularity of certain art styles and genres have started through imitation of the newest and most attractive new trends on the market at the moment, and in a space as experimental as was the PC market in the 90s, everything could happen. With the ever increasing capabilities of personal computers and no real restrictions established by manufacturers (unlike the console market) meant that there was potential for real fortunes to be made here, and thus developers and publishers jumped at a mad race to dominate this new wild west. Some of the biggest and most prestigious videogame franchises ever were born here during that period: Command & Conquer (1995), Age of Empires (1997) and StarCraft (1998)for the RTS, Myst (1993), Day of the Tentacle (1993) and Grim Fandango (1998) for point and click adventures, Sim City 2000 (1993) and Roller Coaster Tycoon for the simulation genre… Though it’s arguable that the genre that evolved the most during this period was the shooter genre: Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993), Quake (1996) and Quake II (1997), Unreal (1998) and Unreal Tournament (1999), Duke Nukem 3D (1996), Half-Life (1998)… each one pushing the genre further and further. And with so many great games taking the world by storm, thousands of smaller teams tried to take a cut of that pie too by making other shooters as well. Imitation after imitation, this Doom-clones like they were called were of varied quality, most of them just chasing the trend, trying to make a quick buck. And it was during this time that the Corel Corporation, the owners of software such as WinZip and WordPerfect, were trying their brief attempt to enter the videogame market. After a couple of educational titles, for some reason in 1996 they did a completely 180º, getting the Deep River Publishing to release 1st person shooter Ashes to Ashes: Feeding the Fires of War.

Ashes to Ashes: Feeding the Fires of War is a 1st person shooter following the steps of Doom and Quake. Before I start this review, a bit of warning. This game is really old, and it was made with only Windows 95/98 in mind. As such, I haven’t been able to play it in an OS newer than W98, not even with the compatibility mode options. I’ve had to play it on a Virtual Box, and even then, it needs a 256 colour configuration, so it means it can’t be played out of the box. And even after all that, there were considerable problems with the audio, sometimes having to play the game mute. I know for a fact the game does not have those kind of audio problems on its own, having played this game more than a decade ago and having watched a couple of videos of the game, so I’m not going to hold them against the title. Still, this quite an annoying to get running again, so if you ever want to try it, be warned.

The plot of the game is a product of the times, both as a child of the 90s still trying carrying many of the 80s sci-fi tropes, and clichés, and as a follower of over the top games such as Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem. And what I mean by that is that the story is barely there, and what’s there is a mix between over the top epic and stupid. The game only explains its story by an option of the menu called “the story so far”, basically a brief text dump explaining the whole thing, which I’m going to put here:

“Earth’s future is bleak. Devastated by decades of brutal warfare, life on the planet barely survived in the 22nd Century. As the world’s governments crumbled a single unifying force arose from the ashes. THE ORDER was created to preserve the art of war while preventing global annihilation.”

“Under THE ORDER’s control, all disputes, whether personal, political or corporate would now be settled by armed combat in sanctioned arenas around the world. Professional soldiers armed with state of the art weapon systems fight to the death to decide everything, from corporate take-overs to trade deficits.”

“The combatants begin as equals searching for the firepower that will help them destroy their opponents and ensure victory. Every soldier is trained to use any of the war machines supplied to an arena. The advantage goes to the first soldier that hops in a vacant vehicle and has the guts to pull the trigger.”

“The process of controlled combat has maintained the peace for twenty years. But now the arenas have become slaughter houses, as men turn on each other killing everything in sight. Reports indicate soldiers are being controlled by alien brain implants. These corrupted men are spreading rage and paranoia throughout the arena system.”

“With no technology to counteract this mind control, THE ORDER’s only option is to send in their best agent, that’s you, to “clean house”. You’ll be dropped into each arena to ferret out the brain controlled soldiers and destroy them. Don’t waste time looking for allies, you won’t find any. You’re on your own. Stay sharp and you’ll stay alive.”

As you can see, the plot is basically an excuse to justify the gameplay and sound cool, which is fine, though it is still a massive bundle of clichés. Also, why is the arenas becoming slaughter houses a problem, when that’s what they were designed to be? To be fair, this intro gives us this great gif, which is worth it.

Anyway, after this introduction, you are released into the first arena, starting the game. There are around 60 levels in the game, separated into 8 arenas. The objective in each level is to find three soldiers controlled by the evil brains, destroy them and capture the brains. After you do that, you advance to the next level. Also, when the story says that “soldiers are being controlled by alien brain implants”, it is meant literally. When the enemies are defeated, they explode into pixelated bits of gore, and from them a talking brain comes out. The aliens didn’t add implants on the soldiers’ brains, they implanted whole brains! Brains that talk! When you capture the brains, they will speak to you, threatening you or asking for mercy. That’s just wonderfully excessive and silly. There’s no way to differentiate the possessed soldiers from regular ones, so you have to basically kill everything on the level and just hope to get lucky. The enemies are basically carbon copies of you, though with an AI so clumsy that you can just snipe them from afar. They are only threatening in great numbers or in strong vehicles (which, granted, the game does a lot, especially in the later levels), otherwise you can just hit them from afar rather easily. The game includes an auto-aim feature, and it’s quite overpowered, to the point of aiming almost not being necessary, you just point to their general direction and they’ll get hit. From a distance this feature won’t work as well, but they can’t really hit you either, so you have all the time in the world to snipe them from afar. With such a simple gun system it’s not surprise to see that you only have one weapon available to you. If you want variety, you go to the vehicles. Each one has one kind of weapon, some being very good, and others just barely above the standard gun you get while on foot. There are six vehicles: the floating scout pod, the most basic vehicle, the falcon speeder, a faster and stronger version of the scout that can’t stand still, the roller tank that can squish soldiers on foot, the walking exosuit, that has a ton of firepower and defense but takes a ton of ammo to use, and the alien vehicle, that basically can destroy anything but does a ton of damage to you if it takes a hit. They all have different performance when in one terrain or another, so you have to take that into account when going near lava or crossing through mountains.

And that is kind of it, really. The game takes less than a day to complete if lucky, even in the hardest difficulty setting, of which there are four to choose from. One of the big problems of this game is the enemy density and map size. In theory, this game should be about either ripping and tearing through hordes of enemies until you find the brains, similar to Doom, or more precise and limited encounter on small and well-designed maps, like Wolfenstein. The developers made a terrible mistake here when they decided to add huge maps and not that many enemies to fill them with. Whether this was a technical problem or not, this means that, without a vehicle, you’re going to spend most of your time searching for small pockets of enemies. And that’s no fun, it’s just a waste of time. The maps themselves are somewhat bland too. The graphics are your standard 3D pixelated fare, think about Duke Nukem 3D but with much less detail to focus on. Outside of the occasional decoration and actually useful teleporter (useful because at the other end there are usually plenty of enemies). The soundtrack is mediocre: it has three sweet rock themes and the rest is standard ambient MIDIs. That is except for that one level where the developers suddenly decided to add a caribbean tune for no reason. It’s so out of place that it will shock you. It’s just a calypso loop of less than 20 seconds, this is one of the oddest stylistic choices in the game. And that says a lot, considering the game’s tone and presentation is all over the place, sometimes trying to be serious and dark while in the next moment it goes to fun and satire, with wacky death messages popping up once you die.

In the end, the game did not convince the suits of Corel to continue with their videogame line. In 1997 they sold all of their line of Corel Corporation's CD Home Collection (which included over 60 multimedia titles, not just games) to Hoffmann + Associates Inc. And as far as I know, they stopped producing games too.  And considering the game’s quality, it’s hard to see why. While I had fun playing this game, I have to admit this was mostly nostalgia doing the work. There is nothing remarkable in here, outside of a couple of odd choices. Repetitive and simple game with very little depth, and without the finesse, style and technique of the games it was trying to ape, this is one of those games that is forgotten in the sea of unsuccessful games that appear during the seasonal copycat races with every single successful title.

Score: 3/10