Alien Breed 2: Assault Review

Cpt Sugar makes his way through an alien ship whilst surfing the Event Horizon of a black hole to discover whether this is a worthy purchase. Is it going to be game over man? Read on to find out.

Alien Breed 2: Assault is the continuation of the 2009 remake of the 1991 Amiga classic released over Xbox Live. The game starts off with a flashback sequence to recap over the events in the first game (Alien Breed: Evolution) before letting you control the hero of the series Theodore J. Conrad, a man whose name sounds like he should be designing clothes rather than shooting aliens. The main objective of the game is to fight through thousands of aliens to get to the engine room and restart the engines before the Leopold (the ship you're on) is destroyed. Along the way the stresses on the ships hull take their toll destroying sections of the ship and making the task a bit more difficult due to the ship hitting another unidentified ship as it exits hyperspace. According to the ships sensors there are no life signs on board. How many times have we heard that before?

Alien Breed is an isometric shooter (early GTA games) which is becoming an increasingly rare style of shooter that evokes fond memories. It uses the Unreal 3 engine and Team 17 has done a sublime job of creating the atmosphere of the game. The actual levels are dark and have bright pools of light so enemies can attack from any direction, this works perfectly with the ambient sounds which give the game a very alienesque feel with the sounds of scurrying in the darkness and alarms being set off. The camera for the most part is good but in a few areas it's very shaky and that does get annoying.

The controls are very simple with both analogue sticks being used one for movement the other for aiming meaning you can run and gun in multiple directions. The camera can be rotated with the LB and RB buttons which is useful for scouting out the upcoming area or for noticing secret areas.

The game is action packed and has you trying to conserve ammunition as you never know what's just around the corner, as well as searching every nook and cranny for secrets and Intex terminals which allow you to upgrade your arsenal as well as buy more ammunition and first aid kits. They will also allow you to make a manual save. The game does autosave but this is infrequent and will have you retracing your steps. Various items can be found by looting corpses or lying on the floor these include grenades, guns ammunition and health packs. The most useful item I found was the gun turret which helped hold back the hordes of aliens whilst I scavenged the area for everything I could grab.

The ships computer Mia helps keep you up to date on the task at hand. The missions aren't as varied as I would have liked and involves activating power terminals to open up new areas and escorting survivors to safe areas of the ship.

There are two multiplayer modes Coop and Survival. Coop has you running from 1 area to the next killing aliens. Survival is where it gets interesting, you are placed in a level the starting room is filled with weapons, ammunition and other items and you have to survive an onslaught of aliens until the time runs out but the better weaponry is scattered around the level so hiding in one place is not the greatest move. This is best played tactically including not reloading together and using the weapons available, whilst it is easy to jump into survival straight away earning upgrades in the main game makes this mode easier.