Alien Breed: Evolution Review

8.0

Review Score:

It has been a long fourteen years since the last alien breed game hit the market, and you will be happy to know that Team 17 has done a great job with this title and bringing the series back into the public eye.  The game is ready to go with a new engine, beautiful HD graphics and decent gameplay that will be keeping you on your toes.

The game is an action-shooter where you are a human on a ship, which has just crashed into a huge hulk in space that is infested with a variety of different alien species. The game uses an interesting way of telling its story that is done through a comic book style of static pictures with voice acting in the background, which I really enjoyed. The game is short with five large levels and takes about five hours to beat on normal difficulty which is decent for the cheap price that the game is; as compared to many AAA titles recently which have only had story’s that last about eight to ten hours. The story itself is simple and mostly revolves around repairing the ship so that it can escape the clutches of this hulk ship.

The gameplay revolves around repairing parts of the ship and fighting aliens on the way to these objectives. The gameplay is rather fast as you try to shoot the enemies coming at you from all sides with your arsenal of weapons and items. The guns sound and feel powerful as you shoot them and each is different from the standard machine gun to the flamethrower. Certain guns are good against different kinds of aliens, which will make you switch every so often to try to get the advantage in combat.

The objectives in the game are simple go there and fix that missions which can become repetitive as you near the end of the game as it feels like you are doing the same sort of objective over and over. Although as the game is short if there had been too much story it would not have been able to get fleshed out enough to matter and be fulfilling. Another thing I found slightly annoying was the amount of time it took for some of the bars to fill up when trying to complete an objective, as it is annoying to wait ten seconds for a bar to fill up when there are no enemies to be seen that would make that moment more suspenseful; there were a lot of times though when it was justified to cause suspense, but was annoying at times when it wasn’t required.

Another neat aspect of the game was the slight horror aspect that was strewn in to make you jump at times or to try and just freak you out. At first, I was jumpy when I would enter a dark room, see an alien climb out of the floor, and run at me. It was also cool to see other people getting attacked by the aliens which was horrific in itself as they would be dragged into holes or walls which is quite stunning the first few times you see it. This aspect adds just a little bit of extra flair to the game, which definitely made the experience more enjoyable.

The graphics and sound in the game are phenomenal as they create a convincing atmosphere that makes the game very enjoyable. The environments are very detailed and make a very convincing inner ship with consoles to storage rooms, which are all nicely detailed. There are always explosions going off and there are even some destructible objects in the game such as glass and explosive canisters, which can help you to discover new areas. The sound is also amazing as you hear all of the explosions, the pattering of alien limbs on steel, the panting as you run, and many other effects and music which help to make the game more immersive and intense. There is one section of the game where you are in the vacuum of space, which is just amazing, but I will not explain it so you can experience it for yourself.

One of the grievances I had with the game was the way that grenades work. They use a fill up bar which if you accidentally tap the item button will land a grenade at your feet and take away a quarter of your health which is annoying as you now have to waste a health pack. Also at first I found it took me a while to get used to the controls of using the mouse to spin around fast when enemies would be coming from different directions. The most annoying is when you get to the end of the game and there is a full screen advertisement telling you to finish the story you will have to wait for the next game that is coming soon.

Over the game is very nicely done by Team17, which shows that after all of the iterations of Worms that they have been making lately, they can still pull out a good game in a different genre with skill. The game is a good run, which will keep you occupied for a night or two, or even more if you want to try to get a higher level score to increase your rank on the leaderboard. The game is priced nicely and I think is a must get if there is a sale on steam in the future.

NXT Score: 8/10

Pros

• Fun, fast-paced, horror-filled gameplay
• Beautiful environments and sound
• Unique story telling

Cons

• Repetitive objectives that become predictable
• Annoying grenade mechanics