BioForge
"Return the fork, or I'll command it to destroy you!"
A 1995 Action Adventure game by Origin Systems.
He wakes up in a cell. He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't remember where he is. He is within the depths of an abandoned sprawling base on a lonely moon; apparently, he is the victim of cruel experiments by an insane radical group, which have turned him into a Cyborg, a grotesque killing machine.
It is up to him to escape the base, discover the secret of his true identity and the moon, and hopefully get revenge on the Mad Scientist responsible for his ordeal, Dr. Mastaba.
The game was technologically innovative for its usage of fully-textured 3D models (imagine the first Alone in the Dark, only with PlayStation quality models), but didn't have great sales, owing perhaps to its very high system requirements and it being advertised as an "Interactive Movie" just as the genre was losing its popularity.
- Advanced Ancient Acropolis: The Phyxx base, the last relic of this civilization.
- Anti-Air: The protagonist must shoot down a dropship at close quarters using a large turret gun in the complex's tower.
- Arm Cannon: One of Dr. Mastaba's "enhancements" for you.
- Apocalyptic Log: Caynan's logbook shows his descend into insanity. According to Dr. Mastaba's notes, the cyborgization victims after a certain point obsessively write down everything happening to them until they entirely succumb to insanity.
- Ax Crazy: The victims of the cyborgization process kept becoming this until Mastaba found out how to stop this. The player also has the option of acting Ax Crazy themselves, as there are points where you can kill someone even though they pose no threat to you.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: There are firearms in the game (and the severed arm), but for the most part you can complete it beating up all enemies with your hands and feet.
- BFG: Originally carried by Tumolt.
- Blessed with Suck: Yes, you're a cyborg, but you're also a deformed freak. Also, the super Arm Cannon that you unlock late in the game is powered by the same batteries that the escape ship needs.
- Chicken Walker: The security bots in the corridors.
- Cloudcuckoolander: The Prime Paragon's logs spend time in this territory when he's not being The Fundamentalist.
- Cyborg: The protagonist. And, well, all of Dr. Mastaba's victims.
- Deadly Euphemism: Where did Dr. Mastaba put his failed past experiments? "In the lake."
- Dressing as the Enemy: When wearing the enviro suit, the station personnel will leave you alone unless you attack them.
- Eleventh-Hour Superpower: Near the end of the game your character acquires the ability to fire a destructive beam out of his wrist.
- Elaborate Underground Base: complete with hangar bay, cryogenics lab, prison, defense tower, medical experimentation lab. Associated problems include earthquakes and Mole Men tunnelling.
- Electronic Speech Impediment: The nurse robot at the beginning of the game experiences this problem when it receives damage.
- Enemy Civil War: One reason for the decline of the Phyxx civilization.
- Enter Solution Here: The various security codes (randomized with every game).
- The Fundamentalist: The Prime Paragon, insane leader of the Mondites.
- Going Critical: Stopping a reactor from meltdown is one of the things you've got to do.
- Gravity Screw: There is a room deep in the alien ruins where you're stuck in orbit around an object in the middle.
- Grenade Hot Potato: At one point, a marine chucks a grenade into the room you're in. (A grenade with a ridiculously long fuse.) Return to sender.
- Heel Face Turn: Caynan, one of the Mondite guards. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out well for him and he was made into a test subject himself.
- Higher-Tech Species: The Phyxx.
- Human Popsicle: Well, an "alien popsicle". The few surviving Phyxx are crygenically frozen.
- Identity Amnesia: Bioforge is but one of many stories to kick off with this trope.
- Improbable Weapon User / Grievous Harm with a Body: The fight right at the beginning of the game, where you beat up an Ax Crazy psychopath with his own severed limb. All while shouting that you have no wish to harm him.
- Machine Worship: The Mondite movement. A quite powerful terrorist organization who believes firmly in transhumanism, and won't stop at anything to "evolve" humanity.
- Mad Scientist: Doctor Mastaba.
- Mana Meter: Your battery meter, used to regenerate health and to power your built-in gun.
- Phlebotinum Rebel: You, and (somewhat) Dane, at least.
- Playing with Syringes
- Protagonist Without a Past: There are several possible identities, from common bandits to noble captains -- depending on your behavior throughout the game, one of them turns out to be your own.
- Puzzle Boss: There are two or three of these. Though you must engage in actual combat with the cyber-raptor, you can't beat it until you knock it onto the Dilating Door on the floor and open door, dropping it into a cryo tank where it will fight with another unbeatable monster serving as a Beef Gate. Later on there is another acid-dwelling monster that you must blow up with a missile from a crashed dropship.
- Quest for Identity: One of the points of the game.
- Recoil Boost: The aforementioned Gravity Screw room forces you to use this.
- Serendipity Writes the Plot: The programmers couldn't make fluid lifelike animations, so you're a half-machine rather than a human. The game couldn't handle too many characters on-screen at once, so the base you're in is almost completely abandoned due to a disaster, and all of the fights are one on one.
- Shaggy Dog Story: The hero learns his past identity, but concludes that it doesn't matter, as - by this point - he can never be that person again.
- Shout-Out: The two dropships are named Roenick and Chelios. Jeremy Roenick and Chris Chelios were both players with the Chicago Blackhawks in 1995 when the game was made.
- Sprite Polygon Mix: Flat backgrounds, 3D objects, like in Alone in the Dark.
- Strapped to An Operating Table: Happens to Dane, the hero in the opening cutscene, and presumably all of Dr. Mastaba's other victims.
- Transhuman Treachery: Dr. Mastaba was hoping this trope would result with his victims.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: All the victims of Dr. Mastaba.