Vigilance on Talos V

Year 1997, late afternoon, it's raining outside, and I'm trying something a friend loaded onto floppies with a note saying "like Metroid, but on PC". That was enough back then. Vigilance on Talos V from PolyEx Software is exactly that kind of game — humble, ambitious, and somewhat forgotten.

You play as a mercenary named Killian Jaradd, whose daughter has been abducted by an alien corporation called Xenosa. The rescue mission takes you through several military bases on planet Talos V, ruled by a nasty villain heading the entire organization. The story is standard for its time — purposeful, functional, nothing more. Nobody bought this title for the dialogue.

The game openly builds on the genre popularized by Metroid on NES and Super NES — exploring interconnected areas, collecting upgrades, gradually unlocking previously inaccessible passages. On the DOS platform, this was quite an unusual approach back then. The controls work, character movement responds decently, and shooting has a satisfying directness. The map isn't just window dressing — you actually have to remember it or draw it on paper, which sounds archaic today, but back then it was part of the ritual. Enemies are varied enough to keep you entertained, though the AI won't surprise anyone.

What keeps Vigilance on Talos V afloat even today is precisely that nonlinearity. In a world where DOS action typically meant going right and shooting, here the game says "hey, check out what you'll find in the left wing". Graphically it's humble — the sprite work matches a smaller indie studio from the mid-nineties, not Blizzard. The Sound Blaster music does its job, you won't remember it, but it doesn't annoy. What's aged worst is navigation without any hints — the game simply doesn't explain anything and relies on patience most modern players don't have.

Today it's worth playing mainly if you dig the Metroidvania genre at its roots and want to see how a small team interpreted it on PC in a year when most of the market was wondering whether to invest in a 3D accelerator. It's an honest piece — not a masterpiece, but no disaster either. Fire it up in a browser through DOSBox emulation without any fuss, and the first hour will tell you enough.