Alien Breed: Impact is the PC port of Alien Breed: Evolution which was released several months ago on Xbox Live Arcade.
If you have seen the classic sci-fi horror movie "Aliens", then you basically know the storyline of this game. You play as Conrad, a lucky survivor of the starship Leopold which has collided with some massive, ancient vessel floating in space. Besides lots of damage to the ship, there are also tons of insect-like aliens running around eating everyone, and if you aren't careful, they will eat you too! The cliche story and setting aside, this game is actually a remake/sequel to the old Alien Breed games that came out in the early 90's. Like those games of old, you play from a top-down isometric view and spend most of your time running around some giant levels, searching for a way to the elevator that takes you further into the bowels of the ship while fending off hordes of aliens intent on eating you alive! Unlike the older Alien Breed games, this game actually spends some time attempting to develop a plot, which ultimately results in somewhat less action than the classic Alien Breed games. In fact, you actually spend more times looking for ways to open doors and obtain key-cards than you do shooting aliens, which is both a blessing and a curse because the constant shooting gets old pretty quick, but unfortunately, the constant running around empty hallways gets old even quicker.
At least you have a formidable arsenal of weapons and helpful items with which to vanquish the innumerable hordes of aliens. Your arsenal of weapons include typical assault rifles and shotguns, as well as more high-tech toys like laser guns. The items you can employ range from offensive items like frag grenades to support items, such as health packs. Beyond these weapons and items, you can also seek out computer terminals and spend hard-sought credits either purchasing much-needed ammo and items, or upgrading your weapons in one of several ways. Unfortunately, the upgrades are expensive and offer only a slight advantage, but by the end of the game you will almost certainly end up with a plethora of extra currency to spend.
All of the key-card hunting and endless shooting may harken back to the older days of gaming, when such activities were in style, but this old-school charm comes at a bit of a price: This game can get really repetitive. Although doing nothing but shooting and finding ways to open doors was fun in '91, now it seems antiquated to the point of absurdity. This game is so faithful to the days of yore, you can't even save wherever you like. You must find a terminal that lets you save your game, and these terminals are often very far apart, resulting in potential tedium if you die and have to replay 10 minutes or more in order to get back to where you were when you died. This tediousness is exacerbated by the need to constantly scrounge through the hundreds of random dead bodies and lockers dotting the levels in order to obtain precious ammo, items, and credits. Especially at the beginning of the game, the survival/horror aspects are highlighted by the fact that most everything but aliens are in short supply. This tedious aspect is even further emphasized by the amount of time it takes to search anything or activate a switch, prompting a bar to display on the screen showing how long it will take you to perform the activity. Considering it takes around 3 seconds to search something and even longer to activate most switches or computer terminals and you will do this hundreds of times in the game, I will let you figure out how boring this can get later in the game when you have already spent tens of minutes watching Conrad slowly search dead bodies and enter codes on a computer. This might almost be excusable if the basic gameplay was more satisfying. But its not. You spend far too much time walking around aimlessly, trying to find a way through a door or into a room that contains an objective. When you do finally get to shoot something, it tends to die very fast and it isn't until the very end of the game that you really get to take on numerous opponents at the same time. These are exciting moments that actually made me wish the previous several hours were as thrilling. Too bad they save the best for last. This includes the one real boss fight in the game, which occurs right at the end of the game and is truly anticlimactic due to the easiness of the fight. Of course, this game ends on a complete cliffhanger, leaving open the certainty of a sequel.
Whether the inevitable sequel to this game can improve on the mediocre aspects of this one remains to be seen. Although not a bad game by any means, there is ample room for improvement in many areas, especially the tiring nature of wandering around, engaging in only occasional fights with no more than a couple of enemies at a time. Perhaps the sequel will ramp up the intensity to the level of the last areas of this game and feature more boss fights. At least it would be a start to making something worthy of the honorable title of Alien Breed.