Abuse (video game): Difference between revisions

A little known gem from the days when platformers were still big on the PC, '''''Abuse''''' is a dark (both literally and figuratively) platform shooter created by Crack Dot Com and published by Origin Systems, by then a division of [[Electronic Arts]], in 1996.

''Abuse'' puts players in the shoes of Nick Vrenna, a man unjustly incarcerated in a maximum-security prison that is being used for [[Playing Withwith Syringes|ethically-questionable experiments.]] Predictably, all hell breaks loose when inmates and staff get transformed into monsters by a biological agent called [[Title Drop|Abuse]]. Only Nick is [[The Immune|immune]], so he decides to take advantage of the chaos by stealing a suit of [[Powered Armor]] and making good his escape.

The player must guide Nick through a series of increasingly difficult, sometimes maze-like levels while shooting [[Mutants]], [[Mecha -Mooks|robots]] and [[Sentry Gun|turrets]] with eight distinct weapons. The game was known for its convincing atmosphere and silky-smooth controls which included a unique mouse-aiming system, an unprecedented feature that earned it the moniker of "''[[Doom]]'' in 2D." The game shipped in a very mod-friendly state, with a fully functional map editor and a rudimentary sprite/texture editing program. The source code has been freely available since the late 90s.

It was also distributed to the [[Mac OS|Macintosh]] via [[Bungie|Bungie Studios]] ([[Marathon (Video Game)Trilogy|yes,]] ''[[Myth (Video Game)|that]] ''[[Halo|Bungie]]) and was a game in the Mac Action Sack. Much more recently, it received an [[Amiga OS]] 4 port in 2009, and an iOS port titled ''Abuse Classic.''