Xenophage: Alien BloodSport

Xenophage: Alien BloodSport is a video game in the action genre developed by Argo Games and published by Apogee Software, Ltd. originally released in 1996. It is currently playable on DOS.

Xenophage is a pretty bad one-on-one fighting game in the same style as Mortal Kombat, though it's not half as good despite having scrolling arenas and some nifty aliens.

Games Domain's review says it all about why this game is so bad: 'Xenophage, despite the trend of 3D fighting games, is a 2D fighting game, with some fantasy touches. First of all, the characters are not hand-drawn, nor digitized, but graphically rendered. Also, the game uses a technique first seen in Samurai Showdown, where the view zooms in and out to give the player the best possible view of the action. If the fighters are together, the camera zooms in, and if they are separated, it zooms out. But it takes more than gimmicks to make a game successful.

Xenophage] is mediocre at best. The moves are stilted, the sound effects are uninspiring, and the characters are unresponsive. It's hard to say exactly why Xenophage doesn't work, but it just doesn't feel right. It's the difference between Rise of the Robots and MK3 (Mortal Kombat 3). I tried playing it again, hoping I had missed something, or that the game would suddenly 'click', but alas, nothing. Even the two-player mode failed to deliver anything. It's slow and lacks quality, despite all the graphical gimmicks'.

The main problem with Xenophage is fundamental: the control scheme is horrible. I mean it's almost impossible to perform any of the special moves, and sometimes the game just doesn't register key presses despite how many times I hit them. If you like playing fighting games just to laugh at their incompetence, then Xenophage is what you need. Otherwise, stay away from this dog that comes very close to deserving our real dog label.

Xenophage: Alien BloodSport is available at a reduced price on the following websites and is no longer abandonware.