Iron Helix
I'm not going to talk long about Iron Helix, it didn't create a lot of memorable moments for me and contained few relateable characters. But despite all this, Iron Helix still stands out in my mind as a really neat title that was well executed. It was a terrific piece of science fiction that took advantage of the new technology on the market at the time. A technology that became quickly outdated, but presently felt like it was to be the future. CD media now allowed games to contain tones of prerendered or live action footage, so a number of games now used that for realistic visuals instead of trying to push current computers to render the impossible in real-time.
Iron Helix, like Sewer Shark and Rebel Assault, revolves around prerendered footage. In this case, the interior of a ghost filled warship abandoned in space by all except the ship's computer.
In Iron Helix, Humans are now a space-faring species. As you'd expect, they are not on the greatest terms with other species out in space. Currently in a state of cold war with the Thanatosians, the Human ship Jeremiah O'Brien is testing a world-destroying weapon the Iron Helix. Something goes wrong and the crew is infected with a mutilating virus. A virus that alters the crew's DNA causing the ship's AI to eradicate them all in fear of invasion. Furthermore, the ship had now decided to move forward to a peaceful Thanatosian world to unleash it's horrible weapon.
As a player in Iron Helix, you control a remote vehicle from a science vessel nearby, commissioned by Earth forces in order to get the O'Brien back under control. With no real idea of what happened on the ship, you slowly learn from clues discovered during your investigation the terrifying truth.
The game was slow to navigate, since it moved at the pace of the rendered video. Controls were not what you'd have in a game currently, instead everything is laid out like the ROV's console. This leaves you with a tiny screen on an already low-definition game, which made finding clues within the game somewhat difficult.
Iron Helix was great, just a little bit held back by the available technology. When we see remakes in Hollywood of movies, it seems silly at times, but with games, so much of the ideas couldn't be properly accomplished due to the lack of computing power. Iron Helix is easily one of those (many) games that I'd love to see rebuilt from the ground up using the tech that is available to us today. Truth is, it's simple enough in gameplay it could be created in Flash browser code. Maybe someone else out there agrees with me and it will show up, one day.
I'm not going to talk long about Iron Helix, it didn't create a lot of memorable moments for me and contained few relateable characters. But despite all this, Iron Helix still stands out in my mind as a really neat title that was well executed. It was a terrific piece of science fiction that took advantage of the new technology on the market at the time. A technology that became quickly outdated, but presently felt like it was to be the future. CD media now allowed games to contain tones of prerendered or live action footage, so a number of games now used that for realistic visuals instead of trying to push current computers to render the impossible in real-time.Iron Helix, like Sewer Shark and Rebel Assault, revolves around prerendered footage. In this case, the interior of a ghost filled warship abandoned in space by all except the ship's computer.
In Iron Helix, Humans are now a space-faring species. As you'd expect, they are not on the greatest terms with other species out in space. Currently in a state of cold war with the Thanatosians, the Human ship Jeremiah O'Brien is testing a world-destroying weapon the Iron Helix. Something goes wrong and the crew is infected with a mutilating virus. A virus that alters the crew's DNA causing the ship's AI to eradicate them all in fear of invasion. Furthermore, the ship had now decided to move forward to a peaceful Thanatosian world to unleash it's horrible weapon.As a player in Iron Helix, you control a remote vehicle from a science vessel nearby, commissioned by Earth forces in order to get the O'Brien back under control. With no real idea of what happened on the ship, you slowly learn from clues discovered during your investigation the terrifying truth.
The game was slow to navigate, since it moved at the pace of the rendered video. Controls were not what you'd have in a game currently, instead everything is laid out like the ROV's console. This leaves you with a tiny screen on an already low-definition game, which made finding clues within the game somewhat difficult.
Iron Helix was great, just a little bit held back by the available technology. When we see remakes in Hollywood of movies, it seems silly at times, but with games, so much of the ideas couldn't be properly accomplished due to the lack of computing power. Iron Helix is easily one of those (many) games that I'd love to see rebuilt from the ground up using the tech that is available to us today. Truth is, it's simple enough in gameplay it could be created in Flash browser code. Maybe someone else out there agrees with me and it will show up, one day.
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