Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: August 1, 2000

Since NASA’s 1996 identification of Martian microfossils in a meteorite, there has been an absolute explosion of interest in the question of whether life exists on Mars or, indeed, on other planets within our solar system. It was clear from the moment of the discovery that such a window of broad public attentiveness would be too appealing for game designers to pass up. Sure enough, Creative Reality Software has developed a release for Talonsoft, Martian Gothic: Unification, which deals head-on with the issue. Awkwardly called by its creators a “science fiction/supernatural horror action adventure,” this third-person title is similar to both Infogrames’ Alone in the Dark and Virgin Interactive’s Resident Evil.

Martian Gothic has a story and mood that makes it feel very much like being in a haunted house, but on a distant planet instead of within our familiar world. After receiving in 2018 a garbled message transmitted to Earth, a three-member investigative team lands on Mars and enters the derelict Vita base, prepared at worst to confront the aftermath of a bacterial outbreak. What they find inside the base, in addition to the presence of infection, is that it has become haunted by an alien spirit. The large crew of the research station appears to be dead, but yet its members begin to move and attack the three visitors. Soon the exploration of the base transforms into a battle to stay alive, as the team struggles to figure out what is really happening. Finally, the three confront a mysterious secret hidden deep underground. With the script written by acclaimed science fiction writer Stephen Marley, the dialog is eloquent even if the basic plot — highly similar to the original movie Alien — is more than a bit trite and familiar.

The most original new feature in Martian Gothic is the full control of three separate characters. The three are Martin Karne, a government security specialist; Diane Matlock, a microbiologist; and Kenzo Uji an artificial intelligence expert. You guide all of them around, with the freedom to switch among them at any time, and you must keep each of them alive. Because any one of them is subject to alien attack while you are focusing on another, this really keeps you on your toes. Each possesses specific offensive and defensive skills, and in several cases you must use teamwork among them, including where one executes an action in one spot to help another, located somewhere else, achieve a certain goal. This multi-character control becomes more complex due to the “stay-alone” rule, requiring that after they emerged from their originally sealed bulkheads each must stay apart from the others; contact would cause instant death from a airborne virus they have contracted. Thus unlike your guidance of the team members in Computer Artworks’ Evolva, you are never looking at all of the characters at once or leading them around in packs.

You get to explore a range of locations, including the Vita base, the Martian surface, and the Necropolis deep underground. Although there are over a hundred distinct spots to investigate, there are only a few different broad areas, and many rooms look quite similar, giving you a feeling of repetitiveness as you go from place to place. On a more positive note, intense claustrophobia pervades these environments, as you rarely encounter one with any sense of airy openness, and this adds to the feeling of suspense. Thus like the movie Alien you are tense whenever you peek around a corner; but unlike Alien you never have your jaw drop because you just entered a totally unexpected spectacular environment.