Microcosm, Rise of the Robots, Megarace, Sewer Shark, Novastorm, I'm sure there are more.
The conversation must have gone something like this:
'We need rendered quality graphics, in real-time!'
'You sure?'
'Oh yes.'
The problem as the developers scurried off, back to their nests, I mean desks, was and is patiently obvious; the machines they were intending to deliver said real-time rendered quality graphics on, simply didn't have enough 'grunt' to do the job.
They were faced with using either polygons and all the blocky lack of realism that entailed, go and see Alone in the dark for details, or they could use their swanky new Silicon Graphics machines to generate some pre-rendered back drops, enemies and introductions and then overlay some regular sprites on that and all the crapness that generally entailed.
Decisions - tricky - decisions.
Pre-rendered, to be fair, didn't generally generate the best games. But, and this is a Oprah Whinfrey sized 'but', it did generate the best screen shots for the magazines and back of the game box. And this perhaps could be the litmus test for whether a company is run by technical or whether it is run by marketing.
Creature Shock by Argonaut is easily amongst the best of the - streamed from CD lets put some sprites on that - category. So maybe Argonaut (of North London no less) straddled marketing and technical departments equally.
In my opinion Creature Shock hangs together reasonably well. The storyline is solid, at least they managed to steer away from too many clichés, and the feel is very polished.
There is no denying a lot of effort had gone into making this game. Perhaps they recognised the failings of other games in the field and did try really hard not to fall into the same traps.
I only managed to get to Level 2 and so-far (I intend to carry on later) there has been a level 1. This in all fairness was a not-so-great deep space shooting section. I can see why it was put into the game - basically to provide continuity. But overall this flying section was distinctly average.
The next level (reassuringly called Level 2) is a Doom style romp around the inside of a living asteroid. This I'm lead to believe is the main course of Creature Shock.
Well, it's not actually anything like Doom. For starters the caverns are all pre-rendered and you, as the player, simply make decisions as to move forwards, left or right or turn around. Once you have made your decision, a brief pre-rendered sequence follows. More like Myst really in that respect.
1 in 4 moves, there is a 'Creature' and sometimes something of a 'Shock' and then, as always, some shooting.
The monsters are wonderfully rendered. They are really well realised and fit their environment perfectly and that's the first shock. As the game is described, it is easy to be very sceptical. However, this is probably the best implemetation of pre-rendered graphics being utilised in a game. Better than Microcosm. Better than Novastorm. And certainly better than Megarace or Burning Soldier.
Once you have found a Creature, you have to kill the Creature. This is achieved by hitting a particular point on the Creature with your laser gun.
Typically you are aiming for either the eyes or a glowing green bit or just any part of the creature dependant on the size of the thing. Sounds rubbish, is, adjusting my rose tinted specs, actually OK.
The only other point of note is that I like the music. It's not, again, too clichéd and it's not heavy rock music or techno. So that can't be bad.
That is pretty much all you or for that matter I can say.
Rarity, I think and I have checked frequently over the past couple of years, even internationally, and Creature Shock has perhaps appeared once or twice in that time on eBay. So yeah, rare.
Try and get a copy. It is, I promise, just about worth it.
3DO Kid.
I'm surprised that you were so kind in your review. I thought the 'Doom' style sections were awful. The control was so s-l-u-g-g-i-s-h (kinda a pun since the first enemy I encountered looked like a slug) Good looking title though.