Alien Shooter: Vengeance
One tough hoard after another (after another after another)
Tags: Alien Shooter: Vengeance Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Feb 22nd, 2007
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Alien Shooter: Vengeance (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
Oh the blood. Buckets and buckets of the liquid pooling around the floor, covering it as if there to be a swimming pool. Hundreds of gallons of blood. A never ending stream. And that’s just the first couple of levels.
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Alien Shooter: Vengeance is an arcade shooter that draws a bit of RPG elements into the mix. Players are given a generic futuristic soldier (one of several to choose from) then a little customization and then it’s on to the depths of… well, it’s not Hell, but damn close.
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Now, there are some RPG elements, but that shouldn’t stop you from picking up the game if you’re adverse to the genre. The emphasis isn’t on leveling up or grinding to get to the next level to increase one stat in order to … whatever. The emphasis in Alien Shooter: Vengeance is clearly on getting as much action on screen as possible and not letting up. There are not a whole lot of non-player characters to interact with, no silly side-quests, and no wandering around killing a few more monsters just to get that extra experience point push to the next level before moving on.
Instead, we have a fairly straight forward action game, where the player gets an arsenal, tackles one mission after another, and as play progresses, obtain better skills, equipment, and then right back into the mission. Alien Shooter: Vengeance is a linear game, no “picking and choosing” which missions to go on, nothing to play in between them, and were it not for the leveling up, this would be a fairly straight forward action title.
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Right off the bat you know this is going to be one of those game that will play out a little different. During the character selection screen, players are able to choose one of eight different abilities to enhance the character. One is being a Vampire, and sucking the health of an enemy and adding it to the player. Another is Observer, which allows the character to see things that might be hidden (such as ammo or secret areas). Yet another is the ability to self heal.
It would have been easy to give the game a heavy emphasis on the RPG elements, but then it may not have been as fun. There are many elements which give the appearance of an “old-school” RPG, such as the ¾ turned perspective and dropped items from enemies. Again, I can’t stress this enough, these are only in to add some spice to what the game is all about – keeping that left mouse button pressed down for a constant rate of fire.
Even on “normal” difficulty the game can be challenging. The “hard” is going to kick your ass, and I couldn’t get past level 3 on “impossible” even after spending a couple of days at it.
A difficult game, yes, but it isn’t going to overly tax your rig either. Any halfway decent modern PC will run this – the stickler being a Pentium 4 processor. I have well over the recommended specs and haven’t run into any technical problems.
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There are, however, a few issues that detract from the game. The first is the sound, where there just isn’t enough variety or “oomph” to some of the weapons. While blasting away with the machine gun, that’s all fine and dandy, and the shells rain down to the floor with a tinkling sound – even if the floor is covered in blood and alien monster body parts. The rocket launchers and shotguns just don’t have that booming audio kick they should though. The voice acting is decent, though there are way too many pauses in the dialogue, and that detracts more than the voice acting.
Another irritant is getting kicked out to the main menu when death occurs. An option to restart the level or go to the menu would be nice. It would also be nice to be able to save the game at some point before a mission starts. See, after a mission, players are able to go and get more weapons, ammo, and other helpful items. Then when the mission starts, the player is fully equipped. If that mission winds up killing the player, the main menu pops up, and all that wonderful newly purchased equipment is needed to be repurchased before the start of the mission – again.
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Loading times are a bit long too. When faced with having to restart a mission several times a night, this is rather irritating. First there is the waiting for the game to load, then having to go back and repurchase everything, then going through the mission (after it loads) then getting kicked out to the main menu, waiting for the game to load, repurchasing the equipment… well, you get the idea.
The complaints I have about Alien Shooter: Vengeance, however detrimental they may be, are balanced out by how fun the game is to play. The arcade style of frenetic gameplay really gets the blood pumping.
Multiplayer is available, with LAN or direct IP – frankly, it would have been nicer to find some sort of lobby system, but the game just doesn’t have it. There is co-op and a couple of competitive methods of play, but this really isn’t the type of game, except for co-op LAN, that you’ll want to be playing against or with somebody anyway.
Alien Shooter: Vengeance is a flawed, but enjoyable game. Hopefully there will be a patch soon to fix some of the loading issues, but most importantly the problem with regards to getting kicked out to the main menu and losing all the newly acquired equipment. As it is, for the asking price you’ll get plenty of fun.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Satisfies that need for massive mayhem + Great balance between arcade action and RPG elements |
7.4 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Getting kicked out to the main menu upon death - Losing all the newly purchased equipment - Loading times - Voice.... acting.... pauses |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Technical issues mar what could be a great game. Even though it's not what it should be, I still recommend it for those of you that like your violence in large graphic doses. | |
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Tags: Alien Shooter: Vengeance
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Feb 22nd, 2007 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
