Review: Alien Breed: Impact (PSN)
It’s been nineteen years since Team 17’s first Alien Breed game made its debut on the PC. The franchise was recently brought back from the dead in the form of Alien Breed Evolution for the Xbox Live Arcade. Alien Breed: Impact (PSN) is essentially the same game with a few added features: a prologue and three levels specifically created for co-op play. Team 17’s Alien Breed franchise has all the makings of a awesome alien shootin’ game, including some nods to bygone action game staples, such as the inclusion of a “shot cannon” and a laser weapon that shoots beams that bounce off walls. On paper, Alien Breed: Impact sounds like a game tailor made for any avid fan of James Cameron’s 1986 action flick Aliens. In reality, the game is made tedious through repetitive objectives and hampered character movement.
After colliding with a derelict space ship, the Leopold’s life support systems are on the verge of total shutdown. To make matters worse, and more interesting, the collision has allowed an untold number of aliens to creep into the crippled ship. In order to save the few survivors still aboard the Leopold, Conrad, with the navigational help of the android MIA, must trek across five alien-infested floors in order to re-activate the failing electrical systems. Set in an isometric third-person view, Alien Breed: Impact is a dual-stick bug hunt that takes place through the course of 5 levels. In addition to the main campaign there is also a free-play mode and an online and local co-op mode.
The audio in Alien Breed: Impact is very atmospheric and pulls the player in with creepy ambient music and strategically used sound effects. As you explore the levels, the sounds of creaking metal as the ship threatens to implode is enough to make players anxious. And even though the levels in Alien Breed: Impact suffer from being a bit too bland in their design (more on this later), environmental objects, textures, and lightning contribute to a pretty intense atmosphere that gives the game a polished look. With an appropriately creepy visual and aural design, Alien Breed: Impact creates an almost perfect environment for decimating hordes of aliens. Unfortunately, the experience is marred by restrictive controls and repetitive mission objectives.
The game’s combat is a pretty straight-forward, yet flawed affair: one analog stick controls Conrad’s movement and the other controls his aim. Turning Conrad around is a sluggish process. I often found myself being attacked from behind and taking damage as I rotated Conrad to face the enemy. The inclusion of a quick-turn button would have been ideal. As it stands, turning around and blastin’ some bugs is not the quick-paced action that it should be, and the game suffers for it. This oversight in the controls is unfortunate since Alien Breed: Impact excels at ambushing the player with small groups of alien creatures.
Overall, the action sequences feel a bit restrained and never really deliver the frantic action that being overrun by aliens promises. I was continually hoping for more intense encounters that would channel the intense action scenes from Aliens. I wanted to run down one of the ship’s corridors, shooting wildly as aliens attacked from all sides, but, sadly, the game only offered such a scenario once, and even then, the restricted character movements hampered the realization of my Aliens-inspired fantasy.
Alien Breed presents itself as an arcade-shooter, but in reality the enemy encounters are somewhat brief, making the real emphasis of the game finding your way around blocked passageways, malfunctioning doors, and other obstacles. Gamers might find themselves a bit frustrated at the constant need to re-tread a particular level in order to activate or shut down certain ship components in order to progress. The objectives that you’ll come across aren’t that interesting and require little more that holding down the circle button to access computers, turn on generators, activate lifts, and other mundane tasks. Particularly repetitive is the objective that has Conrad shutting down (or sometimes re-starting) the halon fire suppressant systems that seem to plague every other room. These objectives seemingly only serve to artificially lengthen the game.The game definitely places way too much focus on completing these mundane errands, but even worse is the fact that the map system (remember, you’ll be re-tracing your steps a lot) seems to work against the player.
The provided HUD map is very dim and only highlights the location of the objective–it’s more radar, than map, really. A detailed map can be found by pressing the select button, but I found it to be rather useless as it does not keep track of any blocked corridors or malfunctioning doors you’ve come across. In any other game, this lack of detail wouldn’t be a big deal, but Alien Breed: Impact often requires players to return to previous locations, making the need for a self-updating map vital. Sure, there’s enough variety to differentiate between the different floors in the game, but within each level, I found myself losing track of where I was supposed to go. Add the ability to rotate the level in 45 degree increments and you’ve got the makings of navigation system that does little to guide players to the next task.
Also disappointing is the weapon upgrade system. Throughout the game, players find credits that can be used at Intek terminals to buy ammo, health kits, and weapon upgrades. Weapons can be upgraded to improve their damage, reload time, or to add rapid-fire, but only one of these upgrades can be active at a time. Making the player choose a single upgrade seems pointless, and I’m not sure why exactly the upgrade system works this way, but I’m guessing it’s because to do otherwise would make the player too powerful and the game less challenging.
It’s a shame that the game never reaches it’s full potential, especially since the game features outstandingly atmospheric sound and graphics and an overall interesting concept. Make no mistake, Alien Breed: Impact has some truly intense moments (it’s particularly good setting up ambushes), but these moments only hint at a game that could have been bigger. As it is, the game never really commits to being either an all-out arcade-shooter or a atmospheric survival game. Fans of the series might enjoy this iteration of Alien Breed, but players that are new to the franchise might find the game play dated and repetitive despite the game’s numerous strengths.
Alien Breed: Impact receives a 3 out 5 rating.
Alien Breed: Impact (Playstation Network) was provided for review by Team 17’s PR. The single player campaign was completed in about seven hours and 12 out of 20 trophies were earned.
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