Team 17's first non worms game in a while and a reboot of an old favourite.
I should point out that even though I mention the original games later on, I'm not comparing them, nor do I have my rose tinted specs on.
The good bits
First up, it's prettyish, but then it's an Unreal 3 powered game so no surprises there. It also sounds rather good.
It is in the same style as Shadowgrounds, ie, an isometric 3D shooter, so you know what to expect. Movement keys and aiming with the mouse is now the defacto standard for this type of game, and the controls are responsive and work fine.
GUI wise the game is alright, could have done with which ever button you set to bring up your PDA to also close it when it's open, but that's a minor annoyance.
It's got a really nice way of transitioning between levels, using a comic book/Max Payne style of storyboarding. In blue. With decent voice overs.
The flamethrower and explosions are very very pretty and feel chunky enough.
The alright bits
Weapons are your usual fare:
Back up pistol with unlimited ammo (boring, and away from the spirit of Alien Breed imo), a standard assault rifle type weapon, a shotgun, a flamethrower (ok, this is nicely done), a laser rifle which fires bouncing beams of light, and your usual heavy damage slow firing "long range" rail gun in form of the Ion Spike.
Items are the standard fare as well: Stun and frag grenades, armour pickups, small and large health kits and single use sentry turrets.
An attempt to expand the weapons was added by allowing you to choose one upgrade out of a choice of 3 for each weapon. The choices are A) Rate of Fire B) Reload Speed or C) Damage upgrade.
If they'd have been different for each weapon it would have been better, such as the flamethrower having the option to extend its range or the assault rifle having a bigger clip size, secondary effects on shots etc.
As it stands C) is the only realistic choice as it makes your ammo usage more efficient as well as killing the aliens faster and easier.
Apart from the upgrades, there's nothing really wrong with the weapons, but nothing interesting either.
Level design is ok, it's quite pretty and the frequent windows keep reminding you that you're in space. Some nice touches are added by seeing occasional dead crewmen floating around outside amongst the wreckage.
The bad bits
The gameplay isn't very good at all. Each level is incredibly linear due to the scripting, and it's really really tired at that.
I don't mind too much that I have to seemingly trek to the otherside of the level to access a sub system because the main controls are broken/damaged occasionally, but for every single objective it takes the piss.
Go to X, fend off aliens, press button, get told of problem, go to A, fend off another set of aliens, press a button at A, possibly fend of another set. Same again for B. Same again for C. Go back to start, press button, fend off aliens again. Press button again. Rinse and repeat a couple of times then move to next level.
I should point out that each level is roughly an hour of that exact same thing. Not good. They're about half an hour too long.
By the time I'd got to level 4, I was hoping that the console I'd have to access would just work first time and I wouldn't be met with a wave of aliens and sub objectives, just to be bloody different.
Even the first Boss you encounter is painfully formulatic. It simply involves you running away with a couple of brief lapses where the boss vanishes for a bit and you have to deal with a small wave of normal aliens before the boss returns, prompting your continued running until the boss runs through a wall and electrocutes itself.
Which is another point, the aliens are hardly interesting either. Nor do they really look dangerous or menacing either, just jumped up spiders with missing legs.
Also you'll find the Leopold is exploding all the fucking time. It ruins the atmosphere of creeping around a damaged partially working ship, and it also ruins the "escape within the time limit" levels that Alien Breed had (and Impact copies once or twice) by nullifying you to the explosions. Yes that's right, Team 17 have succeeded in making explosions boring!
Conclusions
The problem the game really has is that Team 17 by trying to reboot the IP and make it something different rather than a straight-ish update of the original have missed out on what made the first games great, which was the core gameplay of exploration in a hostile environment.
The original games gave you limited resources (ammo, keys and heath) and sent you on your way to complete an objective on that level and then return to the turbolift. This left the user to figure out the routes through the rather open levels and having to manage resources (ie, do I have enough keys/health to spare for that room with credits/ammo in it or not?) correctly in order to do so. It was also possible fuck up and run out of keys and credits on some levels meaning you'd have to restart, so there was incentive to be frugal and be careful with what you'd got.
It's that freedom that Impact is lacking.
By stepping away from the exploration and even though having a coherent story is the way to go, they have made it become nothing more than an extremely linear corridor shooter that does nothing special at all, and what it does do isn't very good either.
Essentially, if you want a decent 3D isometric shooter where you're shooting aliens, go play Shadowgrounds and SG:Survivor, they're much better games.
A shame really, because if done right, this could have been epic.
:starfull::starfull::starempty::starempty::starempty::starempty::starempty::starempty::starempty: 3/10(However, as I'm deeply unsatisfied by the game, I'm writing down ideas on how to do it better, it'll also be a great way for me to learn Direct X programming and also start my portfolio off).
