Project Firestart

A cute little thing from 1989 which you might call one of the first action-adventure games.

Ye plot:
You are some sort of hot-shot alien shooter send to some space research station conducting genetic experiments. Their radio went dead, you're there to find out why then blow the thing up.

Ye graphics:
As you can see below - an average example of Commodore 64 quality. Still some images look pretty decent, like the monster in the middle picture, or the outro sequence, which I didn't want to spoil, just in case you care.

Ye sound:
The beeps are few and far between, except for the monster tune, which is aggravating.

Ye gameplay:
Even though the game is side-scrolled the locations are 3D (like the city outskirts in onEscapee), which means there are intersections where you may choose which way you want to go, plus riding elevators. This can be a little confusing, since all the linking corridors, leading to different rooms look exactly the same (this smells of Penumbra), fortunately they are labelled with letters, so if you happen to have a printed map...
Monster encounters are not very pleasant, because the energy tends to fall and so does the ammo. There are a few weapons to be collected in the station, but before you are allowed to take one, you have to deplete the ammo of the one you already have. This seems weird today, but what wasn't in 1989?
There are a couple of nice touches like some plot-turns (even in spite of the simplicity of the plot itself), occasional surprises like the power-downs, images zooming on some interesting objects (mostly eviscerated corpses). There's also a quick intro, and an early-Hollywood-sci-fi-production-resembling outro.

Ye bottom line:
The C64 equivalent of Dead Space. ;-)