Alien Breed 2: Assault review

I haven’t played the previous Alien Breed: Evolution, but from what I hear, Alien Breed 2: Assault plays in a very similar way to its predecessor. Alien Breed 2: Assault is pretty much a hybrid of a standard top down arcade shooter and a survival horror game and is extremely reminiscent to the recent free game Alien Swarm. Alien Breed 2: Assault runs off the Unreal 3 Engine and the engine is used to great effect to fit with the desperate tone and mood of the game. The player controls Conrad, a standard engineer/badass that is half Duke Nukem and half Isaac from Dead Space. After a really original cut scene that is done in a comic book style complete with still images and text boxes where Conrad arrogantly declares that “this ghost ship just picked the wrong son of a bitch to mess with,” the player begins reactivating the ship and fighting off hordes of bug aliens.

The player starts with a standard assault rifle and pistol, but later unlocks upgradable weapons such as a rocket launcher, shotgun, and minigun, all with laser sights and flashlights that only allow you to see a few feet ahead. There are also many save points throughout the game that are also used to upgrade weapons and health and buy health kits. Although the aliens are similar to generic sci-fi aliens, their rate of spawning from multiple locations is often overwhelming, and forces you to utilize your entire arsenal to great effect.

The game can be played on one of three difficulty levels, Rookie, Veteran, and Elite, which are pretty much Easy, Normal and Hard. The game gets a bit rough on Elite, so if you’re not an arcade shooter fanatic, I’d suggest playing the game on Veteran.

My biggest problem with Alien Breed 2: Assault is that it’s extremely formulaic, even for an arcade shooter. It pretty much consists of you watching the mini-map and completing objectives, repairing the ship and destroying the hordes of bug aliens inside. There is some enemy variation, but not enough to keep things entertaining. The only times you aren’t completing objectives are during the two bosses battles. These boss fights are really great but don’t do enough to break up the monotony of the game.

Probably the best features are in the online play that features a Survivor Mode and co-op mode. The Survivor Mode is pretty much Firefight from Halo: ODST/Halo: Reach and the co-op mode allows you and a friend to play the five missions cooperatively while increasing the number of enemies. There is also a free-play mode that allows the player to replay any mission and try to beat their score in single player.

The control scheme is fairly simple to use: WASD for movement, Left Control for melee, hold Left Shift to run, hold Spacebar to interact with objects and loot, Right Click on the mouse to use an item, Left Click to shoot, T to talk, Mouse Scroll to change weapons, and X or Y to toggle items, and Q and E to shift the camera. The controls are very easy, but the camera is often a bit difficult to get exactly what you want it to do.

The systems requirements are also fairly low to run Alien Breed 2: Assault.  These system requirements include a 2.0 GHZ Processor, 1GB of RAM, 1.5 GB of Hard Drive space Windows XP, an NVIDIA 6800+ or ATI Radeon X700+ Video Card, Direct X 9.0 and a Windows Supported Sound Card.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend Alien Breed 2 for the $10 price tag. If you choose to buy it, just know that you’re getting what you pay for. It’s not a bad game by any means, but I wouldn’t be willing to lay down the money for it.