Body Harvest Preview

Publisher - Midway
Developer - DMA Design
Platform - N64
Release Date - September 1998
Type - 3D Shooting/RGP

Imagine this... Hunger stricken aliens from a distant galaxy have discovered Earth as the perfect place to grow their favorite food, humans. The aliens travel to this planet Earth and leave a few "seeds" hoping that they will grow into a large population. After a couple of milleniums these grotesque aliens return to their "garden" and harvest some of these beings to satisfy their appetite. Now it's the year 2023 and there aren't very many people left in existance and the aliens are returning a final time...

This is the storyline behind DMA's Bodyharvest, a long-time in development, genre barrier breaking game. You play the Drake a futuristic scientist that travels through time to try and stop the aliens from "harvesting". On your time travelling mission you can go by foot, or hop into any vehicle that you see laying around to battle the aliens. Either way you do it Bodyharvest looks to offer exciting and immersive action with some RPG elements thrown in. This is the type of game you really can't classify into one typical genre. The look and play control of the game is a lot like Blast Corps, but then the action element is like a 3-d shooting game, and then there's the RPG element.

From what I've seen and heard, you roam around as Drake trying to complete certain missions before the aliens beam down from the sky, if they beam down (which it seems like they do often) you must kill them before they eat you using whatever weapon you have available for your disposal at that time. Also when you're exploring caves and houses you can interact with almost everything, you can put out lights to dim the room, or relight torches to lighten your way.

From watching these three movies, the music within the game adds a ton of mood which will add to the suspenseful atmosphere. The piano melody that gradually speeds up before the aliens arrive is very reminiscent of an older Sci-fi/horror film. You have to check out at least one of the movies to see exactly what I mean, it's really well done.

Now that Midway has taken over publication of Bodyharvest, maybe there will be a more expedient release so taht we all can get our greedy little hands on the action.