Peak Television Hit the PlayStation With the 1999 'X-Files' Game
A car parks, and one of television’s most iconic duo exits. As FBI agents Mulder and Scully investigate an empty warehouse, three men burst in shooting guns before a blinding white light suddenly emerges. The shooting stops, and we’re left with a bewildered Mulder processing what he just saw. So begins The X-Files video game, which features many performers from the show, a story by creator Chris Carter, and is not all the way terrible!
Much has been written about the 21st century’s “Golden Age of Television,” but I wouldn’t trade the era of TV I grew up watching with any other. Most of my cornerstones are comedies — Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Dr. Katz, The Larry Sanders Show, MST3k, and Mr. Show — but the seventh show on my fucked-up Mount Rushmore is certainly The X-Files.
While quite often hilarious, the show is rightfully more associated with both its fixation on the supernatural, and the irresistible leads at its core — two things crucial to making it wildly popular throughout the ‘90s. I wasn’t surprised to learn that an X-Files game had been released during this time, but I was shocked that it had escaped me entirely. After learning of the game, I rectified this immediately.
1999’s The X-Files combined two gaming trends from earlier in the decade: the point-and-click adventure games that were possibly losing steam by 1997, and the full motion video (FMV) games that were absolutely losing steam in 1997.
The battle royal or rhythm game of its time, FMV titles were made up of a bunch of different prerecorded video clips instead of conventional graphics. In lieu of getting a high score, players were often rewarded with additional footage that advanced the story. The video quality isn’t great by today’s standards, and you wouldn’t be wrong to dismiss this whole genre as a bit of a gimmick, but it’s not hard to see the appeal of seeing such realistic visuals at the time. The ability to showcase a recognizable actor hit very hard in the ‘90s.
As far as the adventure element, there are probably better comparisons to be made, but I think the game plays a lot like 1993’s Myst. You navigate a world composed of still photographs, pointing your cursor at elements in the pictures until you do the right thing, while occasionally pulling an item out of your inventory to use on something. Due to its long development time, the 1999 X-Files release plays like popular games that were a half-decade old and already becoming outdated.
1999 was the year of Super Smash Bros, Silent Hill, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Sonic Adventure, and Unreal Tournament. Things were happening. It might not have been very fresh in 1999, but in 2024 who cares? They’re all just retro games now, baby.
And as weird as it may feel today, there is something intuitive about the controls in a game like this. All of your inventory is just selectable in the menu. You’ll never forget which button shoots and which one jumps — you just click on what you need to click. If you need to prove you’re with the Bureau, just drag your ID over to whoever’s hassling you. If a beautiful, seductive, pouty set of lips appears, then that means you have a dialogue option!
You play as Agent Milky Willmore. He probably has a different first name, but I can’t recall it at the moment. As far as generic video game characters go, he is one and sadly doesn’t exactly feel like someone you’d meet in an episode of The X-Files.
Do you know what, though? You do meet him in an episode of The X-Files because this game is canonical! (nooo, not The Canonical, the new project from Kyle Duggan that you really ought to check out, especially if you’re already over here on Substack.)
The game’s story (conceived by Carter, and written by Richard Dowdy and longtime X-Files scribe Frank Spotnitz), is set during the third season, between the episodes “Avatar,” and "Wetwired," during the spring of 1996. The context doesn’t add much to the plot, but it shows great attention to detail, ensuring that even if the game isn’t a total banger, it isn’t going to jump the shark.
The game begins as Agent Skinner (!) arrives at your precinct and asks you to help him find Mulder and Scully, a couple agents of his that have gone missing in the area. Mitch Pileggi is great as always, and since David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were busy with the show and the movie that was about to start production, he’s the familiar face you see the most. His immediate presence is a wise decision that cements the authenticity of this adaptation right from the jump.
The Willmore character is fleshed out in standard environmental storytelling ways. Boxes around his apartment indicate he likes the Civil War. His journal reveals he’s going through a divorce, and not seeing his daughter very often. A Ramones poster on the wall reveals he likes the greatest band of all time. Say, didn’t one of the guys in The Lone Gunmen always wear a Ramones shirt? I wondered if there was a connection there.
Willmore and Skinner go investigate Mulder and Scully’s hotel rooms, and subsequent discoveries there spring the plot into action, including a makeshift female partner whose fondness for you depends on your choices throughout the game.
You could get through this game in three or four hours, but they reportedly captured about six hours of footage. I believe it, since each character had to film a bunch of very specific responses to you suddenly producing random objects, from a gun to a camera. I like that if you get bored, you can just try to arrest your boss and see what happens.
Not for nothing, it’s also a way to trigger a definitive ending whenever you feel like it. Who cares what happens to this guy? If this game was due back to Blockbuster and the clock was ticking, you could’ve just done something stupid and been treated to a bad resolution (in poor resolution) in the form of Willmore being arrested, fired, or identified as a corpse. One time I got him killed so bad, it cut to a couple of coworkers looking at his BONES and being like, “Yup that’s him, damn man.”
The season three placement basically means this is a standalone episode that also features some allusions to the bigger picture stuff, namely extraterrestrials and that black goo. Why didn’t Mulder and Scully ever talk about the time they got kidnapped in Seattle for the subsequent 10 years of their partnership? I don’t know. They saw so much crazy stuff, they probably forgot about half of it. At some point in that line of work, you probably lose track of what was a dream and what was an X-File you worked on four years ago.
It’s an interesting narrative tool to control a character that has no knowledge of Mulder and Scully, even though the player does. The information that some of Scully’s blood was found at a crime scene barely gets a reaction out of Willmore. You, the player, however, will be screaming at the television, “What have you done to Dana, you sons of bitches?” It creates a very nice bit of tension.
Scully’s okay, by the way. Remember, this all happened in the middle of season three, so I don’t think I need to use a spoiler warning when I tell you that Mulder and Scully do not die in this video game.
Maybe it’s less of an issue for people who played a ton of games like this, but I found every moment of navigation to be a waking nightmare. The locations made of photographs stitched together didn’t always click for me. Truth be told, I have a bad directional sense no matter what — in 3D games, in real life, just everywhere. So this one’s on me a little, but wandering around places in this game is tough. Sometimes I’d get lost in a particular space and have to spin around repeatedly just to find the person I was actively interrogating. I wasn’t a very good cop.
Still, that navigation is too hard, even if we disregard the particular set of skills I don’t have. Honestly, the hardest part of the entire game was when someone told me to go pick up a gun off the ground that they saw two floors below and bring it right back. The guy tells you exactly where it’s located and yet the task is nearly impossible. There are entirely too many doorways and shit to navigate. I swear the turn button rotated me 90 degrees sometimes and 180 degrees other times. It was maddening.
Picture controlling an old Resident Evil game with tank-style controls, except you only receive a photograph of your location every 30 to 60 seconds. It’s like that. And there’s also some shooting thrown in that is so stiff it makes Lethal Enforcers feel like Time Crisis.
Also, why must every location in this game be so complex, complete with staircases and similar-looking hallways? I’m getting lost in my apartment every night and they want me to do police work in a warehouse or freighter ship. Don’t hold your breath, Skinner.
Because of these control issues, I found the game infinitely more fun to play with the assistance of a guide. Without it, I never would’ve known when to leave the crime scene and head back to my place for the night.
Another example: at one point, a character very blatantly tells you to go check on a lead at a local hospital. I open my PDA — an authentic product placed Apple Newton that I use to travel the Seattle locale and check my emails. The hospital is not an option. Weird. Did I misunderstand the assignment? Did I accidentally miss some important thing, and now I have to go back?
Alas, I should’ve put down the Newton and turned around, triggering a little movie, and thus, opening up the hospital on my PDA. It’s a lot of stuff like that I would’ve never figured out on my own. It’s esoteric and hard to parse, but perhaps that’s thematically appropriate for an X-Files game.
The plot itself really does feel like true X-Files territory, especially by the end. It might be a plutonium smuggling ring, it might have something to do with extraterrestrials, it might be both, and it might, in fact, be neither. I suspect that The Ramones are also mixed up in all this, somehow.
The game is spooky and atmospheric at times, with the sound design and minimal score going a long way towards bringing the jpegs you’re wandering around to life. I’ve also discovered an X-Files game on the PlayStation 2 that I sort of want to play — but I’m skittish, because it looks more like a scary-ass Silent Hill thing. I don’t know, dude. I think I prefer the moodiness of this one over the one that’s gonna try to get me to shit my pants, but we'll see.
The tone truly does land between an X-Files episode and a late ‘90s FMV game — which basically means you play as an agent investigating a potentially paranormal case, while also fully shooting people on-sight if they give you the willies.
Besides your female partner feeling different possible ways about you by the end based on your choices, there are a few other variables that aren’t set in stone. If you play in a way the game deems the “paranoid” track, bodies on the floor will occasionally make little movements and stuff. A great, unnerving detail.
Also, one of the recognizable characters that filmed footage for the game hadn’t appeared by the time I finished it. I’m not sure how to make that happen! I wish someone with a lot of free time, bad taste, and a video game website would dive in, and plot out and explain all of the different paths and outcomes. That would be a cool thing for someone like that to do.
It wouldn’t be me, however, as I repeatedly got lost no matter where the hell they put me. Someone else should do it. That would be great. I got lost in a motel lobby at one point.
Ultimately, I don’t have a definitive conclusion on The X-Files game. If you think you might like it, you should play it, but have a guide handy, for the love of god. If you’re an X-Files fan who’s curious about the story and footage, maybe just watch a YouTube video. Pause it and click random spots on the page with your mouse cursor if you want to simulate playing the game.
P.S. Hilariously, as I was finishing up my research on the game and getting ready to write about it, I saw a few different mentions of a “Artificial Intuition” mechanic I could switch on — basically a hint system. Much like the truth, the help I needed was out there, you just have to know where to look for it.
Hi, if you mean the cigarette smoking man with "recognizable character", he only appears in a small optional scene (if you die in that warehouse explosion). There are 3 different scenes (afair) that can trigger if you die there and i heard it depends on which "mood path" you have chosen the most but it could also be just random. 1 is just the explosion, 2 is the explosion plus the alien-possessed Rauch guy watching it, 3 is the CSM lighting a cigarette in front of the burning warehouse.
I agree with your review, i love this game because it captures the 90s X Files atmosphere perfectly (i'm a huge fan of the series), it's very creepy at times thanks to the dark locations, moody light, sound design and ambient soundtrack straight out of the TV show. The unexpected deaths/ game over screens can even add to the omnipresent tension in some of the locations.
But from a sheer gameplay perspective, there is just too much trial and error with all the unpreventable and unforeseen game over and death events, navigation is very hard, lots of pixel hunting, the mood and dialogue options have barely any real consequences besides small details and there are some bad plot decisions and dead ends (e.g. you can't properly finish the game if you use common sense and kill Cook at your encounter in the secret base laboratory). Those can only be corrected by having multiple save games. Still, i come back to this every 5 years or so, great childhood memories.