Alien Breed 2: Assault - Early Impressions

[VoltySquirrel]

Thanks to the kindness of Team 17 Studios and Valve's Summer Giveaway contest, I got my hands on this game for free. Now, I will admit, I haven't spent too much time with the game to fully judge it, but early impressions never hurt. So, here goes.

Gameplay
The gameplay is fairly standard for top-down "shoot aliens in the face with a shotgun" games. Alien Breed is not unlike Shadowgrounds and Alien Swarm. All three are from a top down perspective and feature you in common sci-fi horror setting such as mining colonies and derelict ships drifting in space. All these game give you variety of weapons, including Pulse Rifles, Shotguns, Flamethrowers, Rocket Launchers, Grenades, Pistols, and Sentry Guns. There is also a level up system in all three as well as a big focus on co-op. All fairly standard. As far as Alien Breed is concerned, it works fine. The game does have a habit of making you back track however, which can get tedious, especially in a game where all the environments look largely the same. The game is also too easy. I played on the normal difficulty and didn't even experience a challenge.

Graphics, Aesthetics, and Animations
I was actually surprised at how well this game ran on my POS comp, but that can be attributed to the Unreal Engines fantastic stability. However, graphics-wise, this game is ugly. There isn't much customization in the display options, so you're pretty much stuck with what they give you, which isn't much. Another problem is the samey environments that are rather boring and dull to look at. Even Alien Swarm had some sort of color other than black, brown, and grey. The game also like to reuse animations. The reload, firing, and idle animations are the same no matter which item or weapon you're using. For instance, the guy you control holds his handgun like his assault rifle, which basically makes it so that his left hand is grasping jack shit. Overall, pretty disappointing on that front.

Sound
Sound is alright. All the ambient noises are pretty standard. Metal clanking, claws of aliens skittering around air vents, nothing special. Music is almost nonexistent, and the guns sound weak and intimidating. The voice acting isn't much better, with every character's voice actor phoning it in. The dialogue is cliched as hell and to top it off, almost none of it is even spoken during gameplay. This both makes the game too quiet as well and frustrating, as you need to read the dialogue to get vital objective details. While you're doing this you're not paying attention to your motion tracker and pretty soon, you getting the shit kicked out of you by a creature that looks suspiciously like an overgrown hydralisk.

Control
Easily the games weakest point. It's just too damn sluggish. Rotating around is too clunky and that is a huge negative when you have 10 monsters coming to destroy you. This is one PC title that actual controls better with a gamepad. The game integrates the Xbox 360 gamepad nicely, which few games do nowadays, which is a big plus in my mind. Even then, however, it's not perfect. Rotating around (starting to notice a theme here) is controlled by hitting a button to turn it in increments. This is just not a viable solution. Another problem is swapping items and weapons, which is handled with a D-pad. This isn't so much a problem with 2-3 weapons/items, but eventually you get much more and it becomes a chore to find your damn shotgun. I've died twice because of this. Overall, controls suck.

Overall Thoughts
I've seen this game done better before. I know it's not cool to bitch about a game I got for free, but this game has too many glaring flaws. If you really want a game where you can relive the movie Aliens, go play Alien Swarm or Shadowgrounds. You'll get much fuller experiences with those. However, I still give this game a tentative recommendation. You could do a lot worse than Alien Breed 2. Is this game worth the 10 price tag? No, but who cares?

[mrProtagonist]

I plan to play this, I'll let you know my opinion. Eventually.