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Have you played… BioForge?

Good muscles, cyber pal

BioForge was a work of experimental fusion, the unfathomable prowess of the human brain fused with the constant vigilance of a mid-1990s desktop computer. Adventure game meets hand-to-hand combat, a feverish exploration of a cybernetic figure of unknown origin and capabilities. Your character (the cyborg) wakes up in a cell, and finds himself the newly-formed avatar of Promethean strength, nervously wearing all the muscles of his demi-human body on the outside of his skin. This is an important game. A noteworthy game. A game worth playing all the way through.

I never got out of the holding cell.

This was very frustrating. It’s a good-looking sci-fi adventure game, as crisp and polished as 1995 could manage. It had polygons. It had voice acting. I wanted to explore this alien world and its futuristic outpost filled with mystery. But a fence of lasers locked me into a single room. And as I struggled to look around for a button to deactivate said lasers, I lost patience. Eventually, I gave up. In hindsight, this was a child's failure to comprehend the fundamental culture of the prison cell. The evil doctors of the future do not put “unlock” buttons inside the cages of their unhappy subjects. I should have known this. I should have known I was supposed to headbutt the nurse robot until it pings around the room like a snooker ball and zaps the laser barriers so that they malfunction. Child Brendan, you fool.

You can get BioForge on GOG.

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