Alien Breed: 35th Anniversary Review

First Impressions

Ah Alien Breed, first released on the Amiga back in 1991 and developed by the legends at the British video game studio Team 17 (who is still making games to this day). This collected anthology not only includes the original game that started it all, but also five others in the series, some of which I was pleasantly surprised to realise I’d never actually heard of or even played personally.

The original games that form the backbone of this definitive collection are genre defining top-down shoot-‘em-ups heavily influenced by the ‘Aliens’ franchise. These games coined the term ‘run-‘n-gun’ as you move your marine through tight enclosed corridors, intense firefights with the endless alien hordes to just try to survive to fight another day, or at least the next room. With boss battles to test your resolve scattered throughout.

It’s been 35 years since the original sci-fi top-down horror began and now a whole new generation can experience it. In space, no one can hear you scream.

Plot

Heavily influenced by the Aliens films, especially the second movie ‘Aliens’, the plot of most of these games is simply ‘survive and progress’. Each game has a basic story, that usually sets up why there’s only one marine (or two in co-op) versus the alien menace. The simple premise of most of these games is usually to infiltrate a base, restore power and systems all the while surviving the horror to rescue the colony or clear out the infestation. These games weren’t big on plot to be totally honest, letting the action fill in the blanks. But back in the 90s that was ok, the games sold themselves on the action.

Gameplay Overview

From the initial loading screen that screams ‘Commodore’ at you, to the new intro created specifically for this collection that overlays gameplay with a rock-esk soundtrack that not only sets the tone, but showcases the love and dedication that went into bring these classics back from the depths. Hats off to both Team 17 and Antstream for adding so much character and personality from the moment you boot up the collection.

The main menu has a suitably retro 90s cartoony vibe, with eight options for you to peruse. Firstly, there’s the ‘Archives’ whose logs are cleverly locked to in game actions such as accessing terminals with blue flashing lights, which then automatically adds data about the games to the archive. Most games have archive footage, interviews, storyboards, etc unlocked from the get-go but in Alien Breed 35^th Anniversary, you must play a special section of the game to hunt out the information. This is a unique concept not many games use but adds to the atmosphere and introduces the player to all the top-down pixeled goodness it has to offer. Serving as a ‘warm up’ shall we say to the main event of the six collected titles.

Next is the first game you can choose to play, the original that started it all, Alien Breed. This is then followed by Alien Breed: Special Edition ’92 which was an updated version of the original, Alien Breed II: The Horror Continues (my personal favourite of the series), then Alien Breed: Tower Assault, Alien Breed 3D and finally Alien Breed 3D: The Killing Grounds. The last two on this list break from the traditional feel and gameplay of the series, for a more classic ‘Doom-style’ FPS approach. Personally, I hadn’t played the last two before and certainly didn’t know anything about the last Killing Grounds game til I got the chance to review this collection.

Selecting each game from the list brings up a summary of the game, video clip with a description of the options available within it, such as the type of game, original computer platform, local co-op, genre, release year and available languages among others. Moving up and down the options on the left allows you to view the control scheme for each game, along with the original instruction manual which is a nice touch. There’s also an option to ‘Host’ and ‘Join’ a game via a generated friend code. These showcase how the original online component for the series was designed with no save option and a limited lives pool for both players. Bringing up the rear, there’s the ‘Save Data’ slots, of which there are three and are fairly self-explanatory.

Lastly, there’s the ‘Global Settings’ options that allow the player to adjust settings across the compilation such as ‘Game Volume’, ‘Music Volume’, ‘Vibration’ and ‘Screen Filter’ to give the gameplay that classic CRT look. There’s also ‘Bezels’ you can put round the edge of the gameplay as you play each title to make it look even more like you’re playing on a chunky CRT TV in you parent’s living room. And last but not least there are ‘Menu Language’ options for five languages. Strangely, I was expecting more options for languages than this, but I’m guessing these were the core languages of the countries these games were originally released in and where this collection will be sold.

Each game’s menu also has the same heavy rock soundtrack accompanying it, along with the menus themselves occasionally shaking and alien growling to be heard. Adding even more to the atmosphere even before you actually start playing a game.

Games from the 90s like these were generally straightforward, and designed for maximum challenge, but very little depth and the games in this collection are no exception. You get six games are part of the overall experience, but they all play very similar. Run, gun and collect. With even the last two, which flips the genre to first person, playing in a very similar way just from a different perspective.

The map layouts do inspire memories of the dungeons found in classic games such as the ‘Gauntlet’ series. Heck, even the basic aliens you first encounter attack and then disappear just like the Ghosts did from Gauntlet. The level of detail in the, well, levels that make up each game is still as blocky and by today’s standards very basic, but there’s enough detail to tell what each character, creature, etc is meant to be. And enemy variety is actually really good especially in the later games too.

The basic premise of the first four games is simple. You work through the levels, collecting colour coded keys to unlock doors to progress deeper. All the while shooting alien scum, avoiding gun turret fire, scavenging for health, ammunition and credits to use at the stores to advance to the next area. You generally start with a set number of lives and once they’re all gone its game over man, game over!

Ammo is always in scarce supply to never let the player feel overpowered and trying to kill every alien in the corridors will often lead you to running dry especially since they almost continuously respawn providing the player with little respite. As I’ve mentioned, lives are limited and health an ammo management is key to survival in these games, especially as it’s very easy to get to a ‘Boss’ area only to run out of bullets for your guns and having to reload from a previous save (if you remembered to save of course). Ammo and credits often litter the floor of the levels, but there’s never enough to make you feel totally safe. And in co-op the credits are pooled between players, so you better hope your buddy likes to share.

This sort of punishing gameplay loop made the originals challenging and gave you just enough push to keep trying through a hard segment just to see what was next. But I feel that a lot of newer gamers will not persevere with some of the more unforgiving sections of the games on offer here.

Presentation

Updating these games for the current generation of consoles but keeping the core gameplay and feel for us nostalgia loving old school gamers was always going to be a challenge. However, these classic games look and feel just like they did when they were released on their original Amiga hardware, with faithfully pixellated recreations of the games just how you might remember them. You can see how the series evolved as you play each game, in graphics, sound and gameplay. The first Alien Breed looks so basic compared to Alien Breed II and especially Tower Assault showing how the titles were improved and refined over the years. Team 17 certainly knew, and continues to know, exactly how to take a formula and make it the very best it can be. Just see their ‘Worms’ series for that.

The sound effects are top notch, perfectly complimenting the tense atmosphere with lots of 90s synth music. Machine gunfire sound authentic, aliens squelch as they patrol and screech as they taste leaden death. Items collected make satisfying ‘bing’ and ‘blip’ sounds when you run over them to collect them, depending on the item. Very little music actually plays as you move through the levels, however the rock backtrack plays once you enter a menu screen.

The last two games released, Alien Breed 3D and The Killing Ground are so similar to other first person shooter games from that era, such as Doom and Duke Nukem that they almost don’t seem like part of the overall Alien Breed story. You can see that the developers wanted to try something new with the series, but in doing so ironically just made the Alien Breed games into just another Doom clone, right down to the double-barrelled shotgun and sway as your character moves. Losing, in my humble opinion, a lot of what made their originals such classics in atmosphere ahead of their time.

The Bottom Line

This collection of some of the best games from Team 17’s library sets out to bring them back, updated for the modern era and modern Gamers and for the most part, it succeeds in this endeavour. But these titles haven’t aged very well and, although they can be entertaining and very tense and atmospheric at times, the developers have gone down the route of having them run on current systems with updated controls, rather than a full remaster with updated graphics, sound and so forth.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m hoping for more anthologies such as this from studios and classic games from the 90s. Personally, I’d love to see even more Team 17 games from their backlog such as the Body Blows, Superfrog, Super Stardust and Project-X series brought back with such care and attention to the originals for a whole new generation to enjoy. But the fact remains the audience for these collections will always be very small and niche.

My only slight niggle with this compilation myself is just how hard as nails and unforgiving the games will be to a casual gamer. I remember them being challenging ‘back in the day’ and maybe my reflexes aren’t as sharp as they were, but some of the gameplay is downright brutal at times. This could put off many newer gamers who might show some initial interest and takes the sheen of the rose-tinted filter of nostalgia for me.

For the low price of only £20.99, you do get a lot of content in terms of bang for your buck. But as far as I’m aware there’s no physical edition for Alien Breed 35^th Anniversary planned, so collectors might find this fact a disappointment when choosing whether to pick this up or not.

Fans of the original games are sure to get a blast out of this anthology, however if you’re under the age of 20 and have no real interest in classic gaming from the 90s, then this gathering of shooty goodness from a simpler time may not be to your taste. But for this price, it’s definitely worth the some of your time if you’re up to the challenge.