Just another top-down alien space shooter. It's been done plenty of times and this game doesn't stand out much.
+ It seems that games like these are all the same. You top-down perspective, you must go into an overrun space station, and you must kill the swarm of aliens that infected it. If you've played one you've played them all, and this game falls prey to that claim.
The game involves you running around and shooting aliens. The only thing that changes is that some times you have to press and hold the action button to interact with an object for a second or two and then the next part of the level will unlock. And it's really just a rat race where you are told to go here, then go here, then go here, and you just keep walking all around the level to the designated destinations. There really isn't a lot of freedom.
The guns are basic, too. You have a pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, flamethrower, minigun, and rocket launcher. The assault rifle and shotgun can pretty much get you through the entire game, and the only reason I switched was when I ran out of ammo every now and then. You also have some grenades but most of the time whenever I tried to throw them they wouldn't go where I wanted to, so I stopped using them. Other items include health packs and body armor, and a turret that you can only place at certain parts of the level.
The aliens all tend to feel the same There are different kinds and they do have a slight variety of behavior, but they all can be killed by just spamming the shoot button.
There are a few situations that stray from the normal, but not many. There are two boss battles and one huge swarm you have to fight off. Additionally at the end of the game you mount a machine gun turret to hold off an invasion. I would have liked to have seen more of these interactions so that the game could have stretches its potential a little further, but unfortunately they were over too soon when they happened.
One thing that really was awkward in the game was the camera rotation. By default if you move your mouse to the edge of the screen then the camera would rotate 45 degrees. As a top-down shooter this can get very distracting especially if you move your mouse cursor around the edges of the screen trying to fire at distant enemies. There is a feature to disable this automatic rotation, which I immediately did. Still, you are kind of forced to rotate the camera every now and then. And it feels a little disorienting at times but I guess I can understand how it gives you an extra opportunity to play around with the environment.
Story/Presentation: 2.5/5
+ If you just play this game alone the story can be kind of confusing. This is the only game I own of the Alien Breed trilogy, so when I started it felt like I was jumping into something that already happened, and when I finished it felt like there was still plenty left in the story. Which is unfortunate if you build your game in this episodic fashion. But the dialogue is kind of annoying because most of it is just text and not voice acting. So you have to do a lot of on-screen reading, which grows distracting. The story itself isn't that deep or moving. It does stay somewhat interesting, but again it's all very generic and feels like it's been done before. And the worst part is that the game ends without really concluding and it's just a big loss.
Graphics: 3/5
+ The graphics look decent for what the game intends. Possibly because the game is constantly in the dark and from far away. If you get closer you can see that the fidelity of the graphics goes down and the textures are very primitive. Still, it's decent enough to get by and it's not distractingly bad.
Value: 2.5/5
+ The game lasted me about 5 hours. For $10 and for the feeling that this was just one part of a larger game it was kind of disappointing. There is a multiplayer mode and a survival mode but I really didn't see any reason to try those. If you do decide you'd like to play this game because you really like arcade top-down alien shooters then I'd make sure to buy all three games because if you just play this game by itself then you really don't ever reach a point of satisfaction.