destroy everything, then leave.
alien soldier is pure linear force; a compact, concentrated laser from start to finish.
it's a 'run and gun' shooter, consisting entirely of boss fights. there are 25 stages with around 30 bosses to smash through. and all this, a decade before shadow of the colossus.
you play as epsilon eagle, a robotically-enhanced 'eagle'. the backstory is explained in one, extended cut-scene with scrolling text that you will forget as soon as the game starts!
you choose your weapons (lasers? flames? pure force?) and the game begins at once. you're thrown into the thick of the action and confusion arises as you fumble to learn the controls and continue to die until you do.
you have your standard jump, and run, along with a speedy ninja 'zip line' that eagle can do; this damages any enemies and gives you a boost of speed. eagle can also stop in mid-air, allowing him to spew fire or laser beams in 8 directions; this move comes in handy for lining up shots with bosses, or getting hard to reach items.
the controls are excellent, and as good as any first-party nintendo game. the trick is learning how to dance as epsilon eagle. once you're moving and grooving, the fun really begins. if you die it is completely your own fault.
bosses are intimidating affairs. you'll come across many varities of mutant animals, insects, and robots. as the music pumps, the bosses in all their crazily-detailed, fully-animated forms, begin their battle routines, causing you to react and begin formulating your own kinetic flow.
each dance of death is different from the last. alien soldier forces you to adapt to each new encounter. it doesn't matter if you've mastered the controls; that's only the begining. you have to learn the patterns of the bosses attacks until you can get that crucial opening to attack. once you get that opening, you've won the battle. it takes patience and resilience.
between each boss fight, there are some random mutant small fry littered about. these help you get back some health, and there are also power-ups to your weapons. part of adapting in alien soldier is about switching, on the fly, to the best weapon for a boss. i won't give any hints here, but needless to say, some weapons work a lot better than others.
if you're really 'hardcore', try beating the game in one play-through on 'very hard' mode. if you manage to survive, you get to keep all your weapon upgrades. you only have one life on very hard. if like me, you're not god, you'll switch to 'very easy' mode, which is still quite hard, but then once you've learned the routines, you can go back and do it on hard. the problem with the harder difficulty is not the actual bosses, but the fact that you're forced to start from the begining again, every time!
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if you can get past the difficulty, you will find that the health bar doesn't even matter. you'll be so focused on your skills of evasion and weapon upgrading that health ceases to be that big of a deal.
the draw of the game is in its relentlessness. 30 bosses in a row; dancing with death to a pumping techno soundtrack. the prospect of the challenge and the high risk is enough for you to want to attempt it, especially as it is so very well made.