At a glance...

Alien Breed: Impact review

Do you like to shoot aliens in a style reminiscent of the movies 'Alien' and 'Aliens'? Then this game is for you! Team17 have released their latest title in the Alien Breed franchise: Alien Breed: Impact.

Impact follows chief mechanical engineer Conrad on a colossal space ship in the future. Everything is going just fine and dandy out in space until the ship crashes into something, and all hell breaks loose. It turns out that their ship, the Leopold, crashed into another spaceship that was cloaked, and now computers and machines are starting to fail. Conrad needs to fix the systems and engine to allow the Leopold to pull away from the alien ship and escape. The thing is, life is made harder as the ugly, giant crab-like inhabitants of the alien ship have invaded the Leopold and are attacking and killing everyone. Conrad needs to shoot his way through aliens and navigate the dark maze of rooms and corridors to repair his ship.

The game runs over five levels, which coincide with five distinct sections of the ship, separated by elevators. At first, Conrad is trying to fix parts of the ship before the alien ship drags it back down to the surface of a nearby planet at a speed that will surely destroy everything on impact.

Based on the ever-flexible Unreal engine, Impact is a top-down shooter. You view Conrad and the ship from above, seeing some parts of the surrounding rooms too. The camera can rotate around Conrad in an isometric style to see different sides of rooms and corridors by pressing the R1 and L1 buttons. In reality I barely used this feature; I preferred the camera to remain facing in one direction to keep navigation consistent (even though the map and mini-map will helpfully rotate for you too). Talking of maps, I also rarely used then, as they contain nothing useful but the current position, known save-points and the checkpoint, which is set by the game. The minimap is just as useless as it refrains from showing any structure of the ship. It does, however, show the locations of approaching aliens.

Impact could easily have been a first-person shooter but being top down is much more controller friendly; use the left analogue stick to move Conrad around in the appropriate direction, the right analogue stick to aim Conrad's weapon maintaining the same height, with R1 to fire said weapon. There are only five weapons in the game, ranging from the simple pistol with infinite ammo, all the way to the IronSpike. I personally liked that there's only five guns; it keeps the game simple and to the point instead of choosing between three different types of gun that do the same thing, but in only a slightly different way. As the game progresses through the single player campaign these weapons are gradually introduced. My favourite weapon was found about halfway through the game called the laser rifle. It's a gun that shoots lasers, and if you happen to miss your target they simply bounce off walls and objects until they kill your foe. Massive fun, especially if you hide in a corner and simply aim the laser rifle at a wall, bouncing your attack off the wall into the impending alien swarming upon you.

The game starts off with a quite unique simple comic book style introduction video (the same style is used in the video sequences between levels), and the player is immediately in Conrad's shoes away on his quest to save the ship. There is minimal dialogue in the game, and it’s all text-based, which is quite easy to miss. The gameplay is far too simple; follow the checkpoints. Many times while Conrad is navigating the complex ship he will happen across a room which is on fire, blocking his path. This often, and usually predictably, means heading back in the reverse direction to find a computer terminal that can activate the halogen fire extinguishers in the room. I would normally be content with such tasks, if it wasn't for the way the game immediately sets a checkpoint at the terminal for you, removing any kind of discovery quest for you. I needn't put any thought into much of the game; just follow the checkpoints and disregard the story narrative, which is incredibly minimal too. It seemed that Team17 are using this back-and-forth motion to extend the game's duration. It's a bit of a cheap tactic taken from previous generation video games, and thus feels out of place in the modern generation of gaming. During the tiresome travels between room and terminal back to room and then back to terminal and yet again back to room (you get what I mean now), the aliens are thrown at you too.

The aliens that Conrad encounters during his plight on the Leopold range from the small, almost crab-like creatures reminiscent of Alien's face-huggers, to the gigantic charging bull-like monstrosity that Conrad must flee from down long corridors. All of which appear suddenly from newly created holes in walls or the floor nearby. As the game progresses, instead of the alien enemies getting more difficult and stronger, they simply attack in greater numbers, turning the game into more of a spree than a fight. This isn't too bad as it fits with the atmosphere and gameplay, but it doesn't make the game challenging enough. The charging bull alien was an interesting encounter; Conrad must flee, or perish on contact with the creature. The camera angle changed for this particular feature, and meant the path Conrad must follow to escape is hard to see until the last moment. That isn't great if it takes a couple of deaths to notice a particular door for Conrad to go through to escape, especially when, upon death, the game restarts a significant distance away. The other aliens seem to have other differing abilities, such as rendering another nearby alien invincible, shooting acid at Conrad, or even stunning Conrad and temporarily slowing down time.

The save points are quite frequent, but seem pointless when the game automatically saves at even more frequent times. Sometimes the automatic save points are inconvenient, having once loaded a game right in the middle of a bunch of aliens chewing my face off. Progress is saved at Intex Terminals dotted around the ship, which also serve the purpose of a shop where ammunition and upgrades can be purchased. I would advise always buying ammunition as my greatest challenge was a lack of bullets. The upgrade system, however, seemed quite pointless. Each weapon can have only one of 3 upgrades which would break the Trading Standards Act as they were not as useful as they were described. I purchased the expensive damage upgrade for my semi-automatic rifle and had buyers' remorse. Ever-sparse ammo is the best purchase with your precious credits, which are frequently found by searching lockers and dead bodies, or found on the floor amongst other ammo and items.

Items come in the flavour of large and small health kits along with stun and frag grenades. The GUI shows the current weapon and the current item side-by-side, and the vertical D-pad buttons control rotating through one, and the horizontal D-pad buttons the other. I can't tell you which because I kept forgetting, and often rotated the wrong one, switching weapons when I meant to switch to a frag grenade. A small indication of which is which would have helped a lot. You use the currently selected item with L2, but this was frustratingly inconsistent. To use a health kit, you have to hold L2 for a second or two, so as not to do it by accident. This is not the same for grenades, and often they were thrown by mistake at a simple accidental small tap of the trigger. The final item is the expensive turret gun. It can only be placed in certain power points located sporadically around the game at key locations to assist Conrad in his misadventure. They are also, in some places, already laid down as the ships defences, ready to attack the non-human lifeforms.

The entire game takes about 4 hours to get through the five levels on the regular difficulty. There is only one alien boss, close to the end. It was a disappointing ending, feeling rather abrupt and shamelessly marketing the next game in the series. Despair not, Alien lovers, as there is a free-play mode, allowing you to improve your time and score on each level. If that doesn’t satisfy you enough there is co-op, both local and online, across the first three levels. However, the co-op wasn’t as satisfying, feeling very unbalanced and overly difficult.

When playing the game, it is easy to enjoy running and gunning aliens and being blissfully unaware of the plot or even the direction of the game. In this mindset the game is really enjoyable. But if one was to actually analyse the game, even at a minor detail, then the cracks show in the gameplay. Should you look closer at the details, you will see poor detail and textures in the objects and creatures, an inconsistent save system and a forceful checkpoint and navigation system all wrapped up in a bland storyline, accented by a lacklustre narrative. Maybe fans of the franchise will disagree, but perhaps Team17 should stick to Worms.

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