Alien Shooter: Vengeance – PC – Review

It’s always interesting to me to
get these types of games; let me see if I can verbalize the mish mash of
thoughts I have about this particular game. You see Alien Shooter Vengeance (ASV)
is a throw-back game that has an awful lot of thanking to do to some other
classic PC games. From Crusader to Fallout to Warcraft, ASV tries to take some
of PC’s most popular ideas from 8-10 years ago and make a non-stop action
extravaganza. What ends up is a surprisingly enjoyable actioner that small
children should never, ever watch.

OK, so the setup in ASV is a
little thin. In a war-torn future America, mercenaries regularly fill in to
assist the military, the police, or whatever. As the game ramps up you select
from a cadre of mercenaries pre-built all with various strengths and
weaknesses. What’s cool though is that you can pick from a selection of innate
abilities that will help in future portions of the game. Now normally these
abilities are what you would typically expect, but in this go round, you can
choose to be a professional boxer, exceptional learner or other traits, my
favorite being "vampire." These abilities can begin helping you out from the
get go, or may take a little time to be really useful, depending on which one
you choose. From there you get several other skill points in which to
distribute over the more regular list of abilities, strength, intelligence,
heavy weaponry and more. Once your character is created/selected, you are
dumped off at a research facility that has been experiencing some serious
"bug" problems.  The military is stretched thin and there have been outbreaks
of attacks all throughout the base. But first things first, you have got to
get into the base and since the front gate has been damaged, well…

"We can rebuild him, stronger, faster."

This is where I realized that I
may be playing a diamond in the rough. You see, each level has tons of things
to find and a whole bunch of secret locations, and I personally love this
style of setup. The game often has more then one solution to the random
problems that pop up. That whole scenario in the beginning, well after
realizing I had not found a single secret when the level was over, I went back
and replayed it. Doing so, I found two of the three secrets and more
importantly, managed to get into the base without using the dynamite I had
found to blow the front gate. You see? The game wants, no wait, begs you to
get out there and look for little things out of the ordinary. While running
down a corridor, you may choose to shoot that crack in the wall, doing so
opens up a secret. Strange looking electrical panel? Go press it, what do you
know? Another secret. 500 aliens bum rushing you? Shoot that barrel of rocket
fuel someone carelessly left out. It was what the Dr. ordered for me since I
haven’t played a game where you run-and-gun adventure like this in a long
time.

By the way, the game is seen from
a fixed 3/4-view perspective to give the whole retro look its full compliment.
Now the initial default controls were a little different in the beginning. You
move your character around using the arrow keys and you point him/her in the
direction you want with the mouse thanks to a targeting reticule that you
replaces the cursor mark. The wheel on the mouse rotates through your weapons
and other then the need to go to your character bio screen for upgrades when
you level up or to examine your inventory, that’s pretty much it. The game
automatically opens doors if you have the ability to do so (picked up a
keycard) or activates elevators, PCs, generators or whatever. The developers
clearly wanted you to stay focused on the games two main goals, finding stuff
and shooting stuff, sometime in tandem. Now we have spoken about the finding,
let’s talk about the shooting.

"Next on FOX, ‘When Blind Dates Go
Bad.’"

Thankfully in this game, you will
find buckets and buckets of bullets. And if you can’t find em, then you can
buy em if you are at the right place. Good thing too, I have killed thousands
(no fooling, there is a gauge that keeps count) of critters in this game. But
just so you know, it was totally self defense, there was no doubt that these
monsters intended to do me harm, so I felt completely justified filling them
full of hot lead. ASV makes sure you get your fill of bloodlust as wave after
wave of these nasty things come storming after you. Sometimes you will have
other military members gunning them down right beside you, but most of the
time it’s just you and your firearms. I say fire ARMS because you can carry
all sorts of death-dealing firepower. One handgun, one shotgun, one
machinegun, one rocket launcher and one heavy weapon (flamethrower, plasma
cannon). Now the folks at Sigma and CDV must really like their weapons because
there is an awful lot of them. And while you can only have one of each type of
weapon equipped, it doesn’t mean you can’t trade up or find something new. In
fact, one of the reasons you are a mercenary is because you want to get paid.
Completing assignments will get you cash, as will looking every where possible
when you are out and about. Once you complete missions, you can purchase new
equipment and weapons at the armory. So it pays to be a little loose with you
cash, because that Tec-9 is not going to cut it when it comes to giant
aliens;,no, you are going to want to start looking to purchase the kind of
firepower that hasn’t been invented yet. What’s more, when you are in the
midst of a seriously long battle, the time it takes to reload a machinegun is
incredibly fast. So fast in fact, I wondered why they even bothered making a
clip gauge at the bottom left of the screen.

Now there are a couple of
different ways to play the game, first being the campaign mode, you know, the
story-arc where you play out each of the game’s scenes. Then there’s survival
mode, this is just an exercise in killing. You keep shooting your unlimited
supply of ammo as aliens come charging at you from all directions. The idea
here is just to see how long you can run the marathon. Sooner or later they
are gonna get you; the idea is to post a good time for survival and then try
and beat that time. Lastly the multiplayer mode. Unfortunately I only received
one copy of the game and could not find another to purchase yet, but my
understanding is that you will be able to play the game co-op.

"OK, now once this has dried we’re gonna
want to put a second coat down to make it reeeaaalllly red."

The game’s minimum requirements
are pretty low, so that anyone with a computer even a few years old can play
it. That being said the graphics are a bit dated and even with everything
tuned up to it’s highest settings, the game does lack that final spit and
polish other new games seem to have. However, that does not mean the game
looks bad. In fact, the game looks pretty good what with all the carcasses and
blood being blown all over the walls. Machinery looks well used and depending
on where you are in the game, you can see what the developers were trying to
do. With aliens glooping up their parts of the base and the humans trying to
make makeshift blockades out of barrels and wood piles in order to keep them
back. The explosions are probably the least impressive, usually only a flash
of light then some fire which quickly disappears. The aliens themselves
though, now that’s where the development team got to get a little crazy. There
are several different styles of aliens and they seem to have a hierarchy.
Smaller aliens usually rush first and they are taken out quite easily, then
the medium-sized ones followed by the full-grown adult models. There are
several styles of aliens including some weird slug things, spider like, lizard
like, centipede like and others. Well whatever they are and wherever they come
from, they must have been designed by people who don’t like bugs considering
what you do to them.

The music, too, seems to be done
with joyful abandon. There is a heavy metal kind of rock guitar thing that
pumps along to the frenetic pace. The aliens themselves don’t make as much
noise as I would have expected considering they are being torn apart. The
voicework is pretty spotty as well, sometimes the voice seems to match the
character whose face appears at the bottom of the screen when you are engaged
in a conversation. Other times, no so much. Also, since I believe this game
was developed in Germany the voice that speaks doesn’t always say the same
thing that’s being written on the bottom of the screen. Nothing grossly out of
sync mind you, but strange that they couldn’t get a proofreader to make sure
everything lined up. Lastly the sound effects and gunfire seemed a bit too
tame for what literally explodes on screen. I would have thought that this
would have been a ear deafening accompaniment of gunfire and explosions, but
it really kind of wimps out.

ASV is still a heck of a good
time. The creative team even managed to throw in some pretty cool
science-fiction elements what with automatic robots following you around
providing additional firepower. And nano augmentations to help you enhance
your kill ability. Now some of you hardcore gamers out there may think this
title is like another I reviewed last year Shadowgrounds

http://pc.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r26049.htm and you would be right, it is
a top-down run-and-gun action title with you blowing the bejeepers out of
anything with more then two legs, but here Shadowgrounds tried to be a bit
more serious, where ASV is definitely camp, with a decidedly arcade feel to it

Gameplay: 7.8
It takes a little getting used to, but you realize quickly why the
developers set the controls up the way they did. And made literally every
action (except shooting) automatic so you can keep you finger on the trigger.
I like the occasional team ups with NPCs and secondary missions for other
people.

Graphics: 7.0
They are done pretty good, but are
still clearly dated. This is a good thing because like I said, gamers with
older systems should be able to play it, and if they are fans of non-stop
carnage, then this one is for you.

Sound: 6.8
Some pretty thin sounds coming out
of that massive grenade launcher, and who would have thought an armored tank
sounded so wussy. There isn’t enough good voice work to buoy the score any
higher.

Difficulty: Medium
What stinks is when you die, the
game starts you over at the beginning of the same level, and you don’t have
any of your newly acquired weapons and items. Lots and lots of shooting occurs
in this game.

Concept: 7.0
Ha, concept, well, I guess you
could give it some props for bringing back some retro action gaming. And
there’s no denying that the game is fun, loads of fun really. I love looking
for secrets, this game has a ton of them.

Multiplayer: Unavailable
at this time
I can only imagine how much fun
this one could be with a friend. As soon as I can get another copy I am buying
it.

Overall: 7.7
This game is for a very particular
type of gamer. One who liked the movies Starship Troopers and Aliens and
someone who likes shooting holes into giant beasties, there is blood, there is
foul language, there is an awful lot of killing, and I for one couldn’t be
happier. In all honesty, I needed to play this game in order to put some much
needed fun into my game time.