You need more than 9 lives to be this hero….

by Allegionary

©2010 Alex Hilton

Heroes are meant to live forever aren’t they? In this game I (playing the hero protagonist) seemed to die more than in any other game that I have ever played. Alien Breed: Evolution is a game where you are not an invincible hero but an ordinary soldier who has the amazingly convenient ability to revive- a lot.

Alien Breed is a series that has stood the test of time. It has not been seen since the late 1990′s but now it makes a comeback into the digital age of high-definition and huge flat screens. The first Alien Breed game was released in 1991 and it was for the Amiga, which is an old version of the PC. It is a gaming legend that has been reborn on the Xbox 360 through the downloadable Xbox Live Arcade medium.

The latest game is called Alien Breed: Evolution but it has been split into an epic trilogy. I am reviewing the first episode which has a very innovative name. That name is Alien Breed Evolution Episode 1.

• Alien Breed Gameplay Trailer

The game was developed and published by Team 17 which is the company that developed the famous Worms game and its sequels. They also developed and published Superfrog, another game for the Amiga before it was converted into a PC game later on because of its popularity.

Great Top-Down-Shooter of Old

Alien Breed is a top-down shooter that takes you through the Leopold, which is the ship you are based on throughout the first three quarters of the game. Your mission is to reactivate the ship’s systems to survive an incoming disaster. Straight off the bat the Leopold collides with a huge, ancient alien ship that appears to be deserted according to the ship’s sensor systems.

You find out pretty quickly that the ship’s sensors aren’t working properly and that there is actually a huge alien horde on the ancient ship and  that many of them have made it onto the Leopold. That is where you start madly shooting at the alien horde while trying to save the rest of the dwindling crew.

You play as Conrad, who is a soldier that just wants to get the mission done. He is helped by Mia, who is a technician for the Leopold that guides Conrad through the maze of corridors and rooms that make up the Leopold.

You go through the game activating systems, killing off waves of four-legged aliens that charge you and you also are trying to find information logs that tell you about the different types of aliens that appear throughout the game.

Logs – Guns & Modes

For example one log that I found was written by a soldier that was getting attacked by some of the aliens. He decided to name the aliens ‘Maulers’ after the way they attacked him with their legs. The logs added to the story of how the Leopold was taken over by the aliens.

There is also a mode called Free Play which is where you can replay the story missions that you have completed so you can explore them again to find some more logs or to find other secret collectibles that are hidden throughout the Leopold.

You have an arsenal of six guns, each with their own unique abilities. From the blaster with unlimited ammo to the ammunition of the laser rifle that rebounds around the room’s walls, the guns have great visual effects.

The laser rifle’s ammo for example dances around the room in a spectacle of blue light. It is like watching blue firecrackers go off.

Episodic adventure…?

Team 17 says the three episodes of Alien Breed: Evolution are linked by their story and each one ends in a cliffhanger. The cliffhangers serve to draw you in and keep you wanting more. I am not sure how much more you’d want though and whether or not you will want to pay as much for the next episode, since the gameplay can get a bit repetitive.

Alien Breed does have its moments where it is pure fun to walk around killing aliens but then you hit a frustrating bit and you lose that feeling of enjoyment.

If Alien Breed wasn’t a shooting game but rather a simple hack’n’slash where you could take more hits before death and you were just slaughtering aliens it would probably be more enjoyable to play.  Frantically shooting and dying over and over just isn’t my thing.

Alien Breed uses a system of rooms where you can save your progress. It doesn’t just autosave, which means if you get to a certain point and you forget that there was a save point back a few meters and you die you will probably have to continue from a much earlier point.

That happened to me a few times which made the game a bit frustrating and tedious.

Are we in control…?

The control scheme did get a bit annoying at some times because to switch your weapons you need to press left or right on the control pad and to switch items you press up or down but I was constantly switching the wrong thing which really got on my nerves. The aiming system overall was good as you used the left thumbstick to aim around and the game helped you by showing a red beam the way you were aiming.

The environment that you explore doesn’t change much at all. Even though you start off in the ship the Leopold and it is expected that it will look mostly the same, and even though you do go over to the alien ship, the overall look doesn’t change that much. There is a bit of organic material around the place which makes the ship a bit different but it wasn’t changed enough to impress me.

The environments, even though they were repetitive, did look amazing in HD. The graphical detail was very good as you could see the individual plates in the wall and the effects were realistic. Alien Breed: Evolution has improved a lot since the 16 Bit graphic originals.

The guns look realistic and the way your torch (flashlight to North Americans) reacts when you reload is very realistic also. When you reload the light beam goes short and when you are finished the beam goes back to normal.

Also the use of the torch in the rooms is realistic because the light source’s light would only go so far until it faded and you could no longer see what was in the distance.

Fire looks very realistic- so good it looks a bit like your screen is on fire.

Let’s hear the music..

The soundtrack of Alien Breed: Evolution is excellent. The music often changes very suddenly into a dramatic track which makes you feel like you are about to get hammered by millions of aliens (which you probably are).

Also the sounds the guns make are fantastic and very effective as well. For example the assault rifle sounds much like a modern day machine gun that is used in any Call of Duty game.

There is not much voice dialogue in the game except for the cut-scenes between missions. During the missions the talking is shown at the bottom of the screen in blue text that is sometimes hard to read. I would have preferred hearing voices than reading text, but this is an XBLA game after all.

You can play multiplayer online or local. You also get to play through three levels that are not seen in the single player story. The multiplayer is not as difficult as the single player story because two guns are definitely better than one. Also if one player dies you don’t have to start the mission all over again.

It is good to see that this game does have local multiplayer because not many games these days have local multiplayer at all. Most games do it online-only.

Alien Breed: Evolution is aimed for the gamers that enjoy retro challenging games that require more than one try. I am not one of those people as I tend to play more for entertainment, so I didn’t enjoy the game as much as others no doubt will.

Worth it?

Overall the game was an upgrade of the previous Alien Breeds and didn’t really show me a new unique take. The graphics and sound were fantastic which did make it more effective, but there were many frustrating parts and if the game was a bit more forgiving I probably would have enjoyed it more.

Is this game worth the 800 Microsoft Points?

I don’t know. I feel disappointed in the basic gameplay but the graphics and sound added to the experience, so I am not sure about the value for price. It’s is a good addition to your XBLA library if you like the old top-down shooting gameplay, are a fan of the originals, or like playing a game together with a mate.

If all three episodes were combined into one game then it would be worth buying, but as three separate episodes I am not convinced I’d want to get them all.

Pros

• Alien Breed Evolution has great graphics and sound effects.
• It has local co-op multiplayer which is rarely seen in a game these days.
• It’s great for retro game lovers.

Cons

• The game is challenging and takes many tries to get past a level.
• There could have been more save points in the game to make it easier.
• A bit repetitive and not best value for points.

©2010 Alex Hilton

“6.5/10

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