A Review: Abuse, DOS 1996

This game is a run-n'-gun platformer from the mid-90's with a futuristic vibe and a fairly simple plot that is easy to get into. I found this game on an abandonware site in the early part of 2022, and after reading about it, I thought that it would be fun to give it a shot, and I'm glad I did. Originally released for the MS-DOS platform, Abuse eventually ended up being ported to Mac, IBM, and Amiga, with a port to Linux released in 2009. A shareware version was released by Crack do Com in the late 1990's, and the game's source code has been in the public domain since around the same time. Despite the amount of polish and the solid gameplay, this title only had a development team of three people and a total budget of $150,000.
 

I liked this game and enjoyed my playthrough for the most part, though I found the enemy's swarming the player towards the late game a point of frustration. The puzzles were well implemented and provided a nice break in pace. The enemies' were varied and gave the player a solid challenge, with some of the boss fights being pretty tough. I liked the level design and found that it funnelled the player well, with about the right amount of freedom given to allow for exploring and finding hidden loot. The variety of weapons was really nice for such an old game, and I loved the world environments and various settings. The number of save points in this game was great; they were just about perfectly spaced, in my opinion, and gave the player a sense of needing to stay alive but not panic about having lost too much progress.
 

The graphics were pretty good for a game from 1996, with some really good lighting effects and actual use of in-game shaders and shadowing effects, something that was a first for me in retro gaming. The weapons, explosions, and ammo types looked cool, and each had their own individual sprites. Enemy's and bosses, along with interactive world objects, looked really good, and their animations were on point. I loved the fire and explosion details and thought that they looked really good too, in my opinion.
 

Honestly, I really liked this game, but I found that the lack of a strong, solid plot hurt the finished product and didn't reward the player for pushing through the various stages. A little splash text or something would have really tied things together for me and pushed the score up just that little bit more.

 

7/10 – Nearly There! 

Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ

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