Gameplay:
Alien Breed: Impact is your typical run and gun shooter. If you did nothing else but run through the game picking up key cards and activating consoles, this becomes a very short and simple game. The game throws you through about six (sometimes too long) levels, but can ultimately be completed in about a five hour span. There really is no difficulty to it either. The game is very linear and after a short amount of time becomes very predictable. For players that enjoy story and atmosphere, this game could take longer, and may be more entertaining, if you're willing to read the logs and really throw yourself into the game.
Alien Breed: Impact is full of Aliens jumping from every corner, while maneuvering with your keyboard and aiming with your mouse to blow the bits out of everything trying to eat your face. Aliens pop up, you blast aliens, flip a switch, head back to door, rinse and repeat. The other major problem here is the camera, while it can be rotated; it is not very friendly on the UI, and causes loads of confusion as to where you are or where you were going.
Visuals/sound:
This game is marvelous when it comes to the visual effects. The explosions, the heat coming from the walls and electricity pumping through generators are all rendered beautifully for a downloaded game. Regarding the sound, mostly you hear the creaks and noises brought on by a ship falling apart in silence that only space could bring, but music comes into play when the aliens begin popping up from every hole/nook/cranny. This gives the game a very creepy and lonely feel, while adding excitement to the point-and-shoot master blaster firefights. The aliens have new skins from Alien Breed: Evolution and try to add some variety to your enemies coming at you in droves, but here too the game suffers from constant repetition.
Multiplayer:
This is where the game could really pull ahead of other downloadable content, but falls short due to stability issues. Arcade shooters have always been fun with friends and Alien Breed: Impact is no exception, although trying to stay online while playing with a friend, you will suffer dropped connections, game crashes and restarts. This is really a point that Alien Breed: Impact needs to refine if it wants to stand out from the rest. Right now multiplayer is a headache, and hopefully stability will increase with future patches.
Conclusion:
When Team17 contacted us and gave us a copy of the game to review, I was really excited. I had just finished Torchlight for the second time and was in need of another Steam classic arcade style game to fill my free time with. Unfortunately with its short comings, this was not that game. This game had a lot of potential, and I feel that it could have waited a little longer; adding more gameplay features to the plot and making this a Steam must have title. I really wanted to enjoy the multiplayer, but sadly that wasn't going to happen. If you're into the run-and-gun style game play, this game can be fun, although in short amounts of play time. It's only $14.99, so if you have a couple hours to kill and want to blast through a quick title, pick it up, or wait for it to go on sale. If you're looking for a shooter that's really engrossing and will get you hooked with good replay value, you may want to steer clear of this title.
Alien Breed: Impact was developed and published by Team17 Software© for Steam on June 17th. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.
