Alien Breed Evolution is back in the first of three episodes. Choose to go it alone or buddy up with a friend offline or online and take the fight to the enemy in this fast-paced action horror set in a foreboding world of dread and terror.
|
GamesRelay Score
Good
|
Name: Alien Breed Evolution: Episode 1 Team 17 have looked into their archives and plucked out one of the most favoured franchises from yesteryear and seen fit to resurrect it; Alien Breed was a game first seen in 1991 on the Commodore Amiga and took the form of a top down shooting game, it unashamedly took it's cue from the Alien movie franchise, although totally unofficially of course. Team 17 released a Special Edition of the game a year later which would be one of the most popular games on the Amiga, lasting more than a year in the UK games charts, following on from that success two sequels where spawned, Alien Breed 2 – The Horror Continues and Alien Breed – Tower Assault in 1993 and 1994 respectively. A PC port of the game was made but was criticised for not being as good as the original with key elements of the games charm missing. Fifteen years later and the game has been given a new lease of life and remade in 3D (of sorts) using the Unreal 3 engine, can Team 17 repeat their success for a new generation of machines and gamers?
Sticking close to the original premise of the game, Alien Breed Evolution introduces you to the game with a short comic book like story which tells you that another ship has collided with your own, the Leopold, while on a deep space machine, you're ship is damaged and people need to be rescued. You take control of the Chief Engineer of the ship, Conrad, who is assisted by Mia an officer on board the ship. Mia guides you via a series of waypoints to different areas of the ship that need attention for one reason or another, some need to be repaired and others need to be shut down. Of course it was never going to be that easy and your damaged ship constantly works against you to thwart your efforts, add to that the ship that has crashed into you has some not so nice aliens on board who have invaded your ship and your going to have to pull off some heroic feats to compete your mission.
Mostly the game involves following waypoints to a specific location; finding out that you can't continue along that path until you've found a key card, put out a fire or released some toxic gas from within a particular room. Mia instructs you where to find the appropriate item that will allow you to continue along your journey. This can become a bit frustrating as you've got to do this in order, so, if you have played the game already then you can't hurry it along, you'll have to run to a specific point before you can activate something you need, a computer or a switch, and you'll end up running back for it. There's very little room for exploration aboard your ship, most paths are laid out in front of you quite easily, you can get a little sidetracked exploring some of the rooms for little bits and pieces such as extra ammo or a medical kit but you're never going to be lost. As well as just being strewn along the floor you can search lockers and human corpses for extra items, this involves holding down a button while a timer bar counts down to indicate how long you must hold the button down for. This search can be interrupted by aliens attacking you so you've to make sure the area is clear before looting for goodies. This same system of holding down a button is also used when using card access terminals for doors or computer terminals, some require you to activate them for longer depending on how complicated the procedure must be.
The aliens that have boarded your ship may look a little familiar if you've seen any of the major science fiction films in the past couple of years, the first ones you'll come across look remarkably like the face huggers from the Alien films, the second most common variety will look like their bigger brothers, all black with teeth and bleeding acid, later on in the game you'll come across some that will look suspiciously like the giant aliens from the Starship Troopers series of films. Even later in the game you'll come across a room with what looks like cocoons in it that the aliens are born from, suffice to say that this game borrows heavily from various sources. There isn't a great deal of variety in them either, there are a couple of different types thrown in there but as you get towards the back end of the game then you start to encounter some that are just the same as the other aliens except a different colour, nothing to distracting but it might have been good to see a few more types of aliens, especially when you reach their ship.
Control of Conrad is pretty simple, it's a run and gun shooting game, the left stick controls the direction of the character and you can use the right stick to decide which direction he should be shooting, the right trigger button shoots your weapon and the left trigger lets you use items in your arsenal, be it a grenade or a health kit. As you might expect you've got access to a variety of weapons that you can scavenge along the way, you've got your faithful blaster that has unlimited ammunition but you can also find an Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Flamethrower, Laser Rifle and other more powerful weapons as your progress.
The graphics in Evolution are pretty well done, as previously mentioned there is a lack of variety in the aliens themselves and the ship pretty much follows a standard design. As you wander the corridors there will be plenty of pretty explosions to give your eyes some candy to feast on, there's also some nice lighting effects in play as well which manages to give the game a dark and moody feel. One of the first objects you must find in the game is a torch which will come in handy as you wander the decks of the ship and provide much needed illumination down some dark corridors, it can actually get a little spooky when an alien comes just in range of the light and you see a shadow flick across the beam. The game sticks close to it's roots again by being a primarily top down shooting experience, the game is rendered in 3D however and the camera can be used to spin the action around to make your path a little easier to navigate, each press of the top shoulder button will spin the camera around 15 degrees, it sometimes comes in handy to spin the camera around yourself to see what's going on, but mostly the game will give you a good angle to play the game with on it's own.
The sounds of the game are also of a high standard, the sound effects are spot on and the music swells as alien's attack Conrad, disappearing again as the battle dies off. The story of the game is introduced and progressed with a comic book effect, small animations play out in storyboard format and the speech bubbles are narrated to you, however, this isn't the best voice acting in the world and feels a little hammy. There is no real urgency or emotion conveyed in Mia's or Conrad's voice as they go through their lines, it's not a massive part of the game but it doesn't help you to care for the characters in any way. The ships on board computer however is superbly voiced as it tells you once again that there is a system failure and that you're going to have to do something else before you can continue.
There is an online co-op mode which borrows its levels from the main campaign, it's fair to say this is a little tricky though as the action remains firmly routed to one screen meaning that your partner can't just wander off and do his own thing, you can only move the screen when both of you are moving in the same direction, likewise, the camera won't spin round manually anymore so you're stuck with the same camera angle constantly. Another niggle of the online mode is that should you die (and you will) then you're going to have to rely on your partner not to die or it will be game over for both of you, there is a short delay in the other person respawning so it's usually best to retreat as far as the screen will allow. As it's normally under a vicious alien attack when one of you will die then it's quite easy for you both to die and therefore invalidating your progress through the level, all quite frustrating, but with a little team work then you can manage to make your way through. There is also an online leaderboard where you can check your single player scores against your friends or other people who own the game; this adds some replay value should you try to best this. For those looking for old school fun and to play the game like it was in the 90's then you can still play the co-op game through local play as well.
It's also worth noting that taking the option of playing the game on the hardest setting, Elite, the game becomes a slightly different animal. Health and Ammo are more sparse on these levels and you have to adjust your tactics to compensate, choosing to melee some of the smaller aliens instead of shooting at them with abandon. You'll find more use from your smaller blaster gun as well with it having unlimited ammo, you may even take on larger hordes of aliens with it in an effort to save your ammo as well.
All in all, Alien Breed Evolution is a good game for the most part, being a fan of the original series will no doubt help with your decision to purchase this game, but for anyone on the outside you might want to play the demo before making your mind up, it's an enjoyable game but it doesn't come without its annoyances. It's certainly not a ground breaking game and, rightly or wrongly, doesn't bring anything new to the game, it's action is taken straight from its 1990's counterpart and given a HD polish and clean. No doubt if Team 17 had messed with the formula of the game too much then fans of the original would have been in an uproar anyways and would have sought there blood, made of acid or not.
This is promised to be the first in a trilogy of games, hence the Episode 1 suffix to the games title, hopefully the future additions to the series won't be at the same price point as this, it does seem a little expensive but we'll have to wait and see what form the other episodes take. Hopefully they will just be add-ons for this title and not stand alone games which should negate the cost but early indications point to this not being the case, still, we can live in hope.
Comments (3)
...
-
- +1
-
-
