Windows PC
Alien Shooter: Vengeance
By Ryan Newman
Feb 21, 2007, 8 :03 am

Ever since Starcraft, I have had an undying hatred for the Zerg and their hive-minded ways. Every now and then I get the chance to kill some similar creatures in a game, but it’s rarely enough to satisfy my bloodlust for those damn bugs. Enter Alien Shooter: Vengeance, CDV’s quest offered for my call to glory.

There’s a story here, told through a shoddy translation and inconsistent subtitles, but the only thing that you need to gleam from it is that the world is under assault by creatures from another dimension. Bug creatures. Zerg-like creatures. Hallelujah - it’s go time.

An RPG-lite, you play the role of a rolled male or female soldier that begins with the inherent ability to quickly regenerate, become more proficient with items faster and more prone to finding treasure, earning more cash from corpses and money stacks, see at night, siphoning an enemy’s health to add to your own, control other creatures, find hidden items easier, or to start as a stronger close quarters combatant. You start off with a set amount of cash, weapons, and points to allocate to your character (health, strength, speed, aiming, intelligence, and special abilities) and their proficiency with their items (armor, pistols, flamethrowers, rifles, etc.). None of this is too extensive, but it isn’t meant to be; this is just to add a little flair to the over-the-top action that’s about to commence.

From a central hub, your commander gives you a variety of orders that generally involve blowing stuff up and splattering alien guts all over the floors. The game invites you to do the latter with gusto. Through a universal store and a world torn asunder by humanity’s fight for survival, weapons and the cash to buy weapons are laying about, waiting to be picked up. Shotguns, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, pistols, and machine guns vie for your attention as shells and battery packs dominate your inventory. The game’s approach is simple enough: Point and shoot. Your right mouse button can be used to tell your character where to go, but using the WASD approach is more appropriate as you’ll want to keep your character moving while using your mouse to rotate their torso and keep them firing at approaching enemies. Your targeting reticule does dictate where your shot is head – accuracy plays a role, so you won’t always hit on the exact spot you aim at – but your best approach is to leave it a few inches from you and keep your character spraying from left to right. There is little room for elegance.

There are the confining corridors that you would expect, but there are also several levels that are set outside as well. These will often involve a vehicle, the more enjoyable being a tank whose cannon rips apart hordes at a time with explosions the encompass nearly a quarter of the screen, which can sometimes be finicky to pilot but are used in small enough amounts as to not become too much of a problem. I would’ve enjoyed more dilapidated inner cities though, instead of just the junkyards and outskirts that are traversed.

The game can be beaten in about 3 hours, which is honestly about as long as it should be. There’s a graduated survival mode that’s fun, and scores for all can be posted and viewed online. The RPG elements keep leveling up entertaining, but they don’t take such a prominent position that it steers away from being more about the action than it does the grinding. But what really sells the game is the sheer carnage of it all. From the advanced shotgun that splatters ten creatures at once to the armored vehicle that smashes into them while peppering the area with projectiles from its Vulcan cannon and leaves tire tracks through the blood and entrails, the game hits a high tempo and doesn’t let up. If you enjoy the feeling of your back being against the wall and every man for himself, you will be happy know that Vengeance captures that feeling like few other titles out there.