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Alien Breed: Assault reviewed

Alien Breed: Assault reviewed

Alien Breed Assault feature image banner

Alien Breed 2: Assault is the seventh game in Team17’s Alien Breed series, which dates back to the early 90’s during the time of shooter games such as Doom. Currently available for PC via Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, Assault is a 3rd-person action-shooter, which picks up right where its predecessor Alien Breed Evolution (Alien Breed: Impact on PS3 and Steam) leaves off. It features a variety of solo and multiplayer modes, where players are pitted against an interstellar ghost ship infested with hideous and violent alien creatures.

What you get

Assault gives you a fair deal for your ten bucks. The meat of the game is comprised of the five-stage Story campaign. Each of the levels can be re-played in the Free Play mode, and each can fill around an hour of alien-blasting goodness. Players can also challenge themselves to see how long they last against endless waves of aliens in three different Survival arenas.

There are also a few multiplayer modes. While the main story isn’t available for co-op play, there are three separate levels that are built specifically for co-op play. There’s also a co-op Survival mode which is similar to the solo version. Both are available as either a local game on the same screen, or as an online game.

Controls

I’ll start by saying that I reviewed the Xbox Live Arcade version of this game. For the most part, the controls in Assault are fine. It behaves like any of the other typical Xbox two-stick shooters: run around with the left stick, aim the direction you want to shoot with the right which is made clear by a red laser sight. The various action buttons do things like reload or activate computer terminals, shoot and use items with the triggers, and rotate the camera with the left and right bumpers.

Running and shooting is this game's core

While the control layout is generally solid, there’s no way to remap buttons, nor are there any alternative control schemes. While I got used to it after a while, at first I really wanted to remap the melee command to clicking the right analog stick like in Modern Warfare and Borderlands, as removing my thumb from the right stick to hit the melee button was clunky, as for a moment I lost my ability to aim, among other issues.

Another point of finickiness is the camera. 3rd-person games seem to always have some camera-related issue. While the camera is generally fine and nothing ever really “gets in the way”, there are times where enemies can surprise you from a blind spot. The camera can be positioned in one of eight directions (N, NE, E, etc) by clicking either of the bumpers, which seems fine at first.

Unfortunately, almost all of the aliens appear in the game by bursting out of the ground or walls, and often times behind you—and there’s no quick way to turn around. An easy solution would have been to rotate the camera 180° if both the bumpers are clicked at the same time, but no such dice in this game. At least there’s a radar screen that clearly shows enemy positions, but I still often found myself blindly shooting off-camera towards whatever the red dot on the radar is.

Gameplay

As far as the gameplay itself goes, it’s generally fast-paced and enjoyable. You are Conrad, an engineer that falls somewhere between the nerdy Gordon Freeman and the hard-assed Sam Fisher. As such, you have no problem operating computer terminals, nor dishing out the high-caliber pain. As you run about a giant spacecraft that is over-run with aliens all intent with ripping off your face, you can also search around to loot dead bodies and grab weapons and ammo littered about. There are also terminals scattered in every mission that act as save points, and also allow you to purchase ammo, items, and upgrades.

You operate a turret near the game's end

Each mission is generally objective-based, and the maze-like levels almost lend Assault a Metroid-like charm. Unlike Metroid, however, there isn’t a large amount of open-ended exploring to be done. Instead, the game tends to hold your hand, giving you a waypoint to make your way, even pointing out where keys and switches are located. While it cut down on the frustration of hunting for trivial things, it felt like it made the game a little too tedious and streamlined. It’s not all bad, though, as Team17 has pretty much taken the core gameplay mechanics of an early 90’s sci-fi game and transposed it perfectly to the modern high-def era.  While the lattice of doors that require key-cards may seem archaic by today’s standards, I still enjoyed it in a way only nostalgia allows.

Moving on, there is also a Survival mode. There are three different stages to choose from, each of which is effectively an arena. There are various weapons and pick-ups scattered about, which you have a few moments to loot before the first wave begins. After that, you basically do the best you can to stay alive, as waves just keep coming until you eventually fall. While I am personally not very keen on any “unwinnable” scenarios in games, I have to admit that I got a good rush of adrenaline during my last few moments alive.

Multiplayer co-op missions are a blast

The multiplayer aspects of the game work fairly well. In the Story campaign, you each control two other characters in the story, who are working from another part of the ship. Co-op Survival works pretty much the same way. To distinguish who’s aiming where, the characters are given differently colored laser sights: red for player one, blue for player two—a feature that I found to be rather well-designed. Everything else plays the way you would expect it to, and fortunately there doesn’t seem to be any friendly fire (though explosions may not play quite so nicely).

Graphics & Art

Quite frankly, the game looks good. The setting is a grisly look at what a spaceship would look like if inhabited by nothing but alien lifeforms for decades. Everything is grungy and dilapidated, which really carries a nice eerie feeling. It never gets overly frightening or gruesome like Doom 3 or Dead Space got, but it’s just enough to set the mood. And while the human characters look a little on the blocky side, the aliens look fantastic.

The environments are often nice and grungy, creating an eerie mood

The special effects in the game are also generally pleasing. Explosions are generally impressive, and electrical arcs sizzle and spark. There’s even a slight motion blur effect when you rotate the camera, which makes for a nice touch. The dynamic lighting is also used very well, with some areas cast into total darkness, causing your flashlight to cast accurate shadows on the walls and floor.

There are a few oddities, however; nothing big, but enough that caused me a moment’s distraction. For one, Conrad holds each weapon in exactly the same way: like an assault rifle. While this may make sense for the rifle and the flamethrower, it looks flat-out goofy when he holds the pistol. In fact, his left hand is placed right in front of the barrel, where he grips nothing but air and shoots himself through the hand with each shot. Also, the effect used for a melee isn’t a motion blur effect, but instead more of a “heat wave” that distorts light and looked very odd.

Audio

Assault is more or less spot-on in the audio department. There isn’t a lot of music to be heard, as mostly it’s ambient sounds like water trickling and fires burning. To pump up the excitement, energetic music plays whenever a group of aliens attack at once, or during intensive plot points—all of which were perfectly appropriate.

Sound effects were also very pleasing. Explosions and gunfire sounded great, as did the sounds of electricity, mechanical devices operating, and alien screams. The user interface tones and chimes were also nice; nothing was intrusive, and remained functional as one tone indicated an enemy was spotted; another for when you reached a waypoint. Even the voice acting was decently good. While it was nothing award-winning, it certainly fit the bill and matched the characters well.

Characters

Assault is an action-shooter type of game. As such, its characters aren’t exactly deep or fully developed. There are fully four different humanoid characters in the game. Conrad takes the helm as the main protagonist in the Story mode, aided by the “synthetic” human Mia. The relationship between Conrad and Mia is very reminiscent of the one between Halo’s Master Chief and Cortana. Conrad is a badass that mows down anything in his way, and Mia’s role is to help guide him through the levels and hack through security systems.

The other two characters are Barnes and Vance. They are seen briefly in the single-player Story mode; however, their true purpose lies in the multiplayer co-op mode. Neither are anything more remarkable than a couple of unfortunate blokes who happen to know how to use a gun, but then again what else do you need?

There are also more details that can be read through various data logs that are scattered around the Story campaign. These can be accessed in the PDA, and tells more about the various character’s backgrounds.

Story

Like the characters, the story in Assault isn’t deep, but it gets the job done and kept me interested in progressing through the game. You’re on a spaceship called the Leopold, which crashes into an unknown ghost ship that is drifting in the orbit of an unnamed ice planet in the middle of intergalactic nowhere. Shortly after impact, aliens from the ghost ship begin pouring into the Leopold, killing much of its crew.

The first game, Alien Breed Evolution focused on Conrad making his way from the Leopold to the ghost ship. Assault takes over entirely on the ghost ship, where he explores the origins of the alien species and what the ghost ship’s actual purpose was. And, of course, how to get out of the entire mess and live to see the next day, before both ships crash-land onto the ice planet.

Use your PDA to read collected data logs for story details, weapons info, & maps

What’s not given to the player through cut-scenes is sprinkled on top through the data logs, mentioned above. Just a little bit of light reading helped flesh-out the world, telling more about the various alien species, the weapons used, and other interesting bits of information.

Summary

Overall, I found Assault to be a very fun game, and certainly worth $10. To those of the younger generation that aren’t used to 90’s-style gameplay that involves hunting for key cards, things may seem a little tedious. But for anyone else who wants a light-hearted romp through a futuristic ship filled with walking targets, Assault certainly delivers. The co-op and survival modes are only icing on the cake. It looks good, sounds good, and for the most it plays good too.

Pros

  • A solid shooter with a (mostly) intuitive interface
  • Art direction lends a great, eerie alien-infested environment
  • Good variety of weapons, items, and upgrades
  • Suspenseful music and ambiance; good sound effects and voice acting
  • Multiplayer expands the game to allow a shared experience

Cons

  • Gameplay can become tedious and repetitive
  • Some control issues that could have been easily addressed
  • Slow camera control causes blind spots during ambushes
  • A few odd and distracting animation effects

Comments

  1. Tom B Cons: Not free like Alien Swarm.

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