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| | Locus Online: Lucius Cook on Games |
 | | Science fiction in electronic games is nothing new; many of the arcade games of the medium's "Golden Age" (1977-84), such as Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender, and Missile Command, utilize familiar scenarios such as alien invasions or global thermonuclear war as a backdrop. |
 | | The storyline, such as it was, involved a Marine fighting zombies and demons in a base on Mars; by the end of the game, the battle shifted to Hell itself, visualized as Giger-ish pulsating fleshscapes and lava flows. |
 | | Computer games had arrived at last, but in the process had lost their genre roots; Doom's forebears weren't Smith or Tolkien, but Aliens and Evil Dead, and the games that followed in its wake, like Duke Nukem, Quake, and Unreal, were less concerned with storytelling than arresting visuals. |
| www.locusmag.com /2004/Reviews/12_Cook_On_Gaming.html (2438 words) |
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