Anarchy Online: Alien Invasion

"A nice small expansion. Nothing compared to the originals No."

Alien Invasion is a seemingly miniscule yet overly-expensive expansion to Anarchy Online. The expansion consists of the ability to go on "Alien Raids" by turning off the cloaking device on organisation cities, the new "alien levels" which give you alien perks, and a fairly small collection of new items.

Lets start with the Alien raids. These are based within the organisation cities on rubi-ka and may be activated by the city's owning organisation using specific items. These raids are very much a team-based fight and will probably take you about 30-60 minutes. The raids are fun and it has its own bosses that will challenge the team for survival but there isn't that much of a change from normal rubi-ka fights. The new items available normally have perk requirements like 'alien technology expertise' that will require you to take some part in alien invasions in order to use the items. Though in comparison to some of the earlier expansions, the number of new items is very limited. Probably the most useful function of all is the shop search terminals for Alien Invasion exclusively. The shop search terminal means you will no longer have to endlessly paste your re-editted prices for your items into shop channels as the items can now be looked up.

Alien levels are probably the most useful addition that will give an advantage to players who have alien invasion. They can be gained by gaining levels and are pretty much a separate experience bar devoted to how many aliens you've killed. The amount of aliens you killed will be tallied up as well as how many times you've been slaughtered by them as well as an Alien Invasion rank. Each alien level you will get an alien perk. These are useful since they will give you evne more proffesion-specific perks that can give you some very useful stat bonuses and perk skills that way out-weigh some of the shadowlands perks.

So, in a summary:

Graphics: 5/10
The space ship looks archaic and is full of graphic glitches on the inside. Not to mention unless you have a top-notch computer you will easily spend half your time on alien raids pulling your hair out over the 3 frames per second frame rate you're getting. There are about 4-8 different aliens models (excluding bosses) when you're fighting aliens on and off their space ship.

Sound: 4/10
Behold! There is 1 new music battle track! This will be looped over and over again every time a new 'wave' of aliens comes in on alien raids. Although it is a good music track re-looping 1 short music track every single time there is a raid will get annoying after a while. Also, there are absolutely no new sound effects. The aliens sound like rubi-ka beasts. The space ship uses the door sound effect when it beams you up.

Gameplay: 5/10
There are new specific functions to expansion-specific players like alien perks to widen the gap even more between non-expansion players and expansion players. There is pretty much 1 new area, the alien space ship, which says something about the amount of variety in this expansion. There is nothing that new or refreshing about aliens in comparison to normal monsterse on rubi-ka.

Overall: 5/10
It felt like a lazy add-on to Anarchy Online when comparing the expansion to Notum Wars or Shadowlands. The only reason you'll want to get this expansion is because it will give you an advantage against other players who do not have it.

Overall, get Notum Wars and Shadowlands but do not bother with Alien Invasion unless you're getting it in a deal pack or you really want an advantage in comparison to other players.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/29/06