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dkirschner's Alien Breed: Impact (PC)

[December 5, 2014 06:02:59 PM]

I got this out of a Team17 Humble Bundle so I could get all the Worms games. Worms is/are awesome. Alien Breed is not awesome. Apparently it's a remake of an old Amiga game. You play as Conrad, a marine guy on a ship into which another ship crashed. I guess the other ship was full of ALIEN BREEDS. Because there are aliens now on Conrad's ship.

The game begins with a neat comic book style narrative scene showing the crash and Conrad lamenting over his dead wife. A cyborg saves Conrad and I think she is the one giving him mission objectives. Conrad is armed with standard guns and some other items (grenades, health packs, sentry guns). He goes around the space ship as new objectives constantly flash on the screen. Nothing goes right for Conrad.

Disable the reactor! [walk to the reactor] The panel is broken! Find a new panel! [go to the door behind which is the new panel] Keycard required! [go to the door behind which is the keycard. the room is on fire] Doors cannot open due to fire! Activate fire control mechanism! [find and activate control mechanism] Fire extinguished! Find the keycard! [find the keycard] Find the reactor panel! [find the reactor panel] Activate the reactor! [go to reactor and replace the panel. attempt to activate it] Reactor core too hot! Find the cooling bay! [ETC...]

Oh yes, there are aliens. After an hour or so, I saw a few different types. A small one that rushed at me. Another small one that rushed at me and exploded sometimes. A bigger one that rushed at me. Another bigger one that rushed at me and sometimes healed the other ones. I read that there isn't much variety. Seems accurate.

The game feels claustrophobic, which fits the setting. I enjoy the sound design with its nice ambient tracks with "horror movie" noises thrown in everywhere, such as skittering aliens, bursting pipes, and creaking doors. I read that the environment never changes though, so apparently this hour is what the game will look like to the end (and in the next two sequels).

The loot system detracts from the experience. You don't really see items or searchable bodies and lockers and things until you're close by. This means you have to wander through each room and make complete passes looking for useful stuff. Since you can only sprint for a brief time, it's a lot of slow walking. The map doesn't help either. There's no map hotkey. To get to the map, you have to hit Enter to open the PDA, then click on Map, then click the minus button a bunch to zoom out so you can adequately see your surroundings.

That's about it. I may give this a whirl on consoles for the hell of it. On consoles, it must be a twin stick shooter, which would have better controls. Oh yeah, the camera is horrible. You use Q or E to shift the camera in 45-degree increments. Very disorienting, especially while trying to kill aliens coming from three sides and run Conrad around the screen from the top-down perspective. If the shoulder buttons on console controllers shifted the camera, I think that would feel more natural. Anyway, we shall see. Alien Breed 2 and 3 going in the dumpster. Neeext Humble Bundle game!