What is it?
The story of Vivisector is relieved through the eyes of Kurt Robinson, the main character of the game. He is a strong man. He is 28. He is a fur seal. From the childhood he dreamt to follow his father's steps and to serve within the elite detachment. Luck smiled at him. His platoon inspires his cherished ideas and within this platoon he feels himself in complete security. His best friend is always nearby. His beloved woman is also there.
The detachment receives the task to land on the Soreo island. The primary task is to smash the campsite of armed insurgents. But in reality it turns out that the plane is crammed with those who are destined to die, and these ones will be tested for a new generation of Perfect Creatures.
It is difficult to find a word to explain the state of a person who lost everything. Everything by which he had lived, he had felt and secured. To see everything by one's own eyes and be unable to help. To feel how ferocity is sparkling within you and keeps you in its pangs and governs your whole body. This ferocity is increasingly suppresses your conscience and subjugates your will. Your eyes wildly splash the images of those you can not imagine your existence without. Your throat is gagged with a painful shriek, which panged at your soul by senseless, but the only possible reason of your new existence, and that reason has the name—revenge.
Action Forms started out with Chasm: The Rift, a first-person shooter that was released too late. It would not have compared so badly with Duke Nukem 3D and the other Build Engine games, but could not stand against Quake. Then they made a couple of dinosaur hunting simulations that felt a lot like first-person shooters, most notably Carnivores 2. They were especially remarkable for the as yet unseen quality of the outdoor scenes, and as hunting simulations tend to do, they took place outdoors completely. With Vivisector, Action Forms returned to their roots. They developed a shooter and released it too late.
What happened? It is a bit mysterious. By 2002, it looked as if release was imminent. The website was up, it showed lots of screenshots, and they already looked a lot liked the finished game would, so what took them another three years? Maybe it was that old phenomenon that the first 95% of a project take up 95% of the resources, and the remaining 5% of the project take up the other 95% of the resources. It does seem that the energy ran out somehow; the website was never updated, the domain eventually expired, and Vivisector is now the only Action Forms game without a website by the developer (even the one for Chasm: The Rift is still up).
It is difficult to judge how Vivisector would have fared in 2002 or 2003, but when it was finally released in 2005 with very little fanfare, it was once again too late. Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 had set new standards, reviews were mostly lukewarm.
It should be noted that Vivisector is not a typical FPS, where the main goal is to stay alive and reach the next level. It is heavier on puzzles, sometimes you have to kill all the critters in one location to reach the next, and performance is rewarded with bonusses.
