Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold is a first-person shooter for DOS created by JAM Productions and published by Apogee Software in 1993.

Plot
The story is set in the year 2140. Robert Wills Stone III, also known as Blake Stone, is an agent of the British Intelligence, recruited after a highly successful career in the British Royal Navy.

His first major case is to investigate and eliminate the threat of Dr. Pyrus Goldfire, a brilliant scientist in the field of genetics and biology, known for his outright disrespect of professional ethics. Backed by his own organization, STAR, Dr. Goldfire plans to conquer Earth and enslave humanity using an army of specially trained human conscripts, modified alien species, and a host of genetically-engineered mutants. Agent Stone is sent on a mission to knock out six crucial STAR installations and destroy Goldfire's army before it can assault the Earth.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Each level awards bonus points for killing all the enemies, collecting all the items, and keeping all the informants alive.
 * 2) Some enemies can drop Food Tokens, which can be used on Food Units to heal.
 * 3) There are more weapons than in Wolfenstein 3D and unlike that game there is a reason to use more than just the most powerful weapon. The Auto-Charge Pistol is silent, allowing for sneaky kills that don't alert other enemies, the Plasma Discharge Unit functions like a grenade launcher, and the Slow Fire Protector, Rapid Assault Weapon, and Dual Neutron Disrupter function like the Pistol, Machine Gun, and Minigun from Wolfenstein 3D.
 * 4) This is the first FPS game to feature an automap system, which is helpful in seeing what rooms you've visited and give an idea as to where secrets are.
 * 5) Unlike other FPS games, you have the ability to revisit earlier levels in an episode, which is a system that even later FPS games don't have.
 * 6) Great graphics that enhances the cartoony pixelated style of Wolfenstein 3D and the audio is a lot cleaner allowing for less compressed audio.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Informants are indistinguishable from lab techs that are loyal to Goldfire until you talk to them, and in heated firefights they tend to run around at random, which means you can accidently kill them.
 * 2) Just like Wolfenstein 3D, there is a lives system but this is pointless because there's a quicksave feature.
 * 3) The Plasma Aliens are very annoying to deal. While the enemies go down in one shot, there are generators that spawns them in that you can't destroy and they do an insane amount of damage.

Reception
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold received positive reviews with Computer Gaming World reporting in March 1994 that while not quite as good as Doom, "Blake Stone is nonetheless a high quality, first person blast-fest". The magazine concluded that the game "delivers the goods on all counts" and was worth the registration fee.

Civvie 11 has gone record of calling the game a "better Wolfenstein 3D".