Alien Shooter: Vengeance

"Fast-paced blood and gore!"

Graphics 8/10
Don't get me wrong, the graphics are good. But the bulk of my time spent looking at an isometric angle has been in Diablo 2, and there's one small thing that makes a large difference: perspective. There is no perspective in this game, which means things don't change size depending on how far they are from the "camera". It just doesn't look right, but if you aren't used to it either way, it shouldn't bother you much. The main problem of the fixed isometric view is that you can't see what's on the wall facing away from you. There are "secret areas" that are filled with money, ammo, and a variety of other goodies that are hidden. On the wall that you can see, they manifest as holes and cracks that you can blow up and crawl through, but there's just no way to see them when they're facing away from you. I guess that just makes them more secret, but it just sort of bothers me because I don't want to check every wall for holes.

Apart from the perspective issue, the graphics are relatively well-done. It's the atmosphere that gives it the most credibility. The desolate base with dead soldier bodies strewn about and just general abandonment of the area lends credibility to the idea that something horrific is happening. The only thing that looks a bit out of character are the last few levels inside of MAGMA research labs which are all clean and futuristic. Didn't really hold up to my suspension of disbelief.

The game runs well, too. I get extremely fluid frames, and I'm on a single-core Intel processor + Radeon 9-series. That's over five year old technology; this game will run on pretty much any computer made in the last decade.


Sound 6/10
A bit derivative. Nothing really sounds fantastic. The guns make different sounds, like the AK has the classic sound that you can tell apart from other guns. Some guns sound nothing at all like what they should, like the MP5. It also has a questionable rate of fire, and the damage for all of the guns don't really make sense, so if you want your guns to be true to how they are in real life, you're better off sticking to Call of Duty or something else that emulates it with higher fidelity.

The music is guitar-type, and it only comes up during heavy action. If there is other music, I couldn't hear it, and I apologize. It's pretty typical fare, nothing noteworthy.


Gameplay 7/10
The game boils down to moving around and shooting things. Standard WASD + mouse controls, but in 3rd person with a fixed camera. You're one guy who goes around, mostly without any help, and destroys stuff. Sometimes you have allied NPCs, but they tend to die quickly if they're not in groups. They can't move very well.

You get to use vehicles/turrets as well. They're hard to drive because the control scheme is like Resident Evil's. Left and Right turn your vehicle while Up makes it go forward. You would think that you could adapt to that quickly, but it was actually really hard for me and I've been playing a pretty wide variety of PC games for most of my life.

The game incorporates RPG elements, like leveling up, upgrading stats, and getting money to buy equipment. The main failure in this is that it's extremely imbalanced. You can choose from around eight characters in the beginning, all with different stats, but the are some that are pretty much strictly better than others. You can also choose a perk for your character, but once again there are some that are almost entirely useless. The economy is rather robust. Money is a limiting factor, so you'll have to get as much as you can to buy some decent gear, especially early in the game.

Apart from the unbalanced characters, the weapons are unbalanced. You pretty much have to use a shotgun to survive later in the game. The assault rifles are useless against heavier armor, like those giant robot things that launch missiles. I was on level 8 or 9 with an appropriately leveled assault rifle, but I just couldn't take out heavier enemies. I had to start the game from the beginning again and re-spec a character for shotgun. Shotguns make the game extremely easy (except for the double barrel shotgun, that one sucks) and you'll end up clearing out the last half of the game with one. Assault rifles and pistols are both rather useless, and explosive and special weapons have typical drawbacks like long reload times or chewing through all your ammo in a few seconds.

But even with the balance issues, the game still offers fast, adrenaline-inducing moments, and that's the core of the seven points that I award.


Storyline 6/10
You're some sort of ex-military figure who is hired by MAGMA Corporation to investigate some strange events at one of its facilities. There are monsters. And robots. And weird combinations of robots/dinosaurs that fire lasers at you. You act as the trigger man, and go into heavily contaminated places to clear them out. There is a bit of a twist at the end, but it still wasn't too exciting.


Replay?
Not much. The campaign is a few hours long. There's a survival mode, but that doesn't last too long either. There's a multiplayer, but I'm not sure how fun that'd be.


Conclusion 7/10
It's a reasonably good game, worth the time you spent playing it. It goes for $5 on Steam, but it disappeared off of Steam a few days ago (April 2009). I'm told that it's much more expensive if you buy it straight from the developer. I wouldn't be quite as supportive of this game if it were at the $20 or maybe even the $10 price point.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/15/09

Game Release: Alien Shooter: Vengeance (US, 02/16/07)