Alien Carnage / Halloween Harry

Overall Rating ★★★★☆ A classic. If you're old enough to remember “Shareware” you're old enough to appreciate this game. Back to the days of DOS. This game still holds all the original charm as the first time I played it. Even the music is still great, nothing feels dated or bad. If you're looking for a retro game to try, definitely pick this one up. It has enough level, enemy, and weapon variety to keep you interested. Pretty diverse for it's time. Back when Apogee was great!

Ein Plattform-Shooter Klassiker von Apogee Software/3DRealms von 1993. Wir sind der Agent Halloween Harry und retten die Welt (natürlich) vor bösen Aliens die Menschen zu Zombies machen (natürlich). Wirklich empfehlen kann das aber nur alten Zockern die hier nostalgische Gefühle haben. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oEoNNLSn1U

Alien Carnage / Halloween Harry is a game that has definitely not aged well, and I say this as someone who tends to have a lot of nostalgia for these shareware era games. Then again, since I'd never played it before, I guess the nostalgia goggles were off for this one, which made its flaws all the more noticeable. To start, it's a pretty basic 2D platformer, from an era when games couldn't be extremely complex, although that doesn't mean they couldn't be fun, and in this case, I feel it doesn't deliver. You play as Halloween Harry, who gets tasked with saving Earth from invading aliens who're turning people into zombies. Don't expect a deep story nor anything like that, and I gotta say, I found Harry to be a bit of a doofus. Innocently harmless in its humour, but I feel it doesn't quite stick the landing, or at the very least, it feels dated nowadays. Now, back onto the game. There's four zones you have to go through: the sewers, an industrial zone, an office building, and finally, the alien ship. Each zone has four levels, and a final boss level. To progress through the levels, you need to rescue all the hostages the aliens have captured; some of the hostages are trapped in place, while others wander around. There's also dispenser machines you can buy weapons and ammo from with the coins you get from enemies you kill. Rather simple gameplay, and honestly I wouldn't complain, if it weren't for the overreliance on hidden paths and levers that you need to hunt down in order to progress. Another issue with the level design, and related to the game's weird title, is that Zone 3, the office building, feels like it should've been the starting zone. You get a bunch of early game hints in that area, like how to use levers and vending machines, while the sewers have nothing of the sort. While this stuff is also in the instructions menu, it feels really out of place. So, regarding the title, apparently the game had two releases, as Alien Carnage, and as Halloween Harry; these releases had the sewers and the office building swapped. The graphics... Well, it's a DOS-era game, so they aren't nothing to write home about. I guess they get the job done, as the game isn't necessarily ugly to look that, and the soundtrack; same, honestly. It does what it has to do. All things considered, I personally can't recommend this game.

Old classic puzzle platformer thing! With jetpacks and flamethrowers. Surprisingly smooth animation but it feels... weird. I am not used to it. Works perfectly with my pad from the getgo, so there's that. Hooray for good preconfigured dosbox things.

i never played this when i was younger and now it was kinda of annoying. i didn't like how the jetpack managed and the game just felt lacking for me. while i did give it a decent time to try it out i just didn't get into it. so personally i don't recommend it. I'm sure it had its fans and i know for a fact i was always happy to see old games i use to play come to steam so maybe for those people who enjoyed it they should pick it up. just for anyone new don't hate on it just because its old. i at least gave it a chance.

It's an average DOS-era platformer: Dated level design, non-fluid controls, and the camera is super zoomed-in and claustrophobic. From my 10 mins or so with it, I did not see how it could do anything to save itself.

Not enjoyable any more. The controls, level design and basically everything else is super dated. It just feels annoying to play.

Old-school, simple, and enjoyable platformer find-em-up.