Alien Storm

"Cross Time Crisis and Golden Axe and What do you get??? Alien Storm, ofcourse."

Introduction:
I played Alien Storm back in 93 as part of Sega Mega Games 3 ( a very rare cartridge, should have kept it!). It is about aliens invading earth. You must protect it ofcourse.. This is an adaption of an arcade game which was meant to be better and featured more characters.

Story:
''Vicious predators from the far ends of the universe are invading our planet! They're mean and wicked, creating havoc everywhere they go! No one is able to end this turmoil, until a group of courageous citizens known as the ''Alien Busters'' takes charge!''
Wow what an original story, that must have taken them years and years to think up! What also is strange that a group of citizens have joined together to take charge but there is a robot which fights, strange?

5/10

Graphics:
The graphics are an improvement on Golden Axe. The sprites are very nice for 91, Gordon and the rest look very cool. The aliens look ace, very scary, disgusting and indimidating most of the time. Except the fly dudes, they are a joke. The backgrounds are very well done and add the Golden Axe feeling.

9/10

Presentation:
There are two different modes like golden axe available, Arcade and Duel. This is OK as it gives a different challenge. An annoying aspect is that one player duel cannot be accessed if two controllers are plugged in.

7/10

Gameplay:
The gameplay is an excellent aspect of this game, there are many different modes. One is the usual beat em up like golden axe, the only difference being that the chars use guns and roll instead of jump. There is a shooting mode in which the player must kill the aliens in a location w/out human casualites. There is also a stage where the characters are chasing the mothership and must destroy it, what puzzles me is how they can run that fast. This game is on the difficult side, as players only have three lives to complete the game and no continues. powerups are also scarce so this game is quite challenging. On the last stage the players must go through a maze and it takes some time to finish it. This can be frustrating.

8/10

Sound:
Nothing special at all but there are some good adrenaline pumping tracks. The soundtrack cant even scratch the ones on SOR (yuzo is the man) and Golden Axe. The sound affects are Ok much like Golden Axes.

6/10

Summary:
This Game is OK, big fans of the side scrolling beatemup genre should give it a try.

The End

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/30/02, Updated 03/30/02