If you could picture a cross between Halo/Gears of War/Aliens: Colonial Marines (if it were good) then you get the theme and idea behind Alien Rage. While I can’t find a synopsis for the storyline, I can tell you what I know.
Unofficial synopsis
Aliens have invaded a base somewhere in space and they’ve violated some space laws. Our main brute is sent in to take talk to them (yeah right) and take them out, if need be. Well, the latter happens and hell breaks loose.
Alien Rage is a first-person shooter that does a decent job with providing a little bit of enemy variety and a lot of interesting weapons to a genre that needs a bit of ‘new’ added to it. For the demo I played, the setting was inside of some moon base (again, I could be wrong, but work with me), where dozens upon dozens of alien-speaking baddies were all trying to kill me. The actual enemies in the game are large brutish types that were outlined in a white, eery glow. You could hear them coming from hundreds of feet away and would yell alien lingo as they tried to take out our hero.
Intense fighting? Check.
While the demo pretty much displayed what we all know as typical ‘duck/cover/fire’ technique with almost every first-person shooter, the level design was creative enough to add some flavor to the usual meal FPS gamers get served. Alien Rage featured a lot of tier-based maps that certainly created the illusion of a broken and dissolute space station that was under siege. As you fight through the bad guys, there were definitely preset areas around you for hiding behind, but they weren’t nearly as obvious as other FPS games of its type. As with most FPS games, there was a linear path given to the player, though the destructible environments (shatter windows, plenty of fuel cells ready to get blown up) added a bit of personality to the entire setup. At times during the demo, the amount of fuel cells to blow up seemed a bit excessive in some areas. Blowing up enemies really doesn’t get tiring, but it does bring the challenge down a bit.
Anyway, the real difference maker for a game like Alien Rage comes in two forms: Weapons and enemies. There are 10 weapons in the game, though I couldn’t give you an accurate list of which was which when I was playing, so I’ll do my best to describe them. One of the weapons I used was a typical automatic rifle that seemed like something you would find in Call of Duty. instead of bullets it shot some sort of energy out of it, which made for easy kills, but not at a distance.
Another weapon I found and used was a red plasma-based machine gun. It was by far the coolest, as it dealt death to the alien race, even when they were behind cover. It actually burned through steel girders in the game that some enemies were hiding behind. It was visually appealing to watch, and it was easy on the ears when fired (old people like me have to be weary of our ears).
One of the last weapons I found, and I still don’t quite understand what it did, was some particle gun that charged up, held the charge and distributed a huge burst of glowing white energy. Sadly, it didn’t seem to affect any of the enemies I faced. I can’t quite say what it did, but it was neat charging the damn thing… for no reason. Maybe it was dealing damage, but I honestly didn’t feel like I killed anyone using it.
Outside of weapons, the game actually featured some pretty darn cool enemies. I ran into three types while I was playing (nope, don’t know their names — just descriptions). The first was the regular, tall brutish enemies I previously described above, who seemed to be the defaults. Their AI wasn’t the brightest star in the enemy galaxy (click for details – 10:35 mark), but they served their firing range purpose. Big budgeted games not called Crysis have these types of enemies always, so no reason to knock Alien Rage for it. Plus, it’s a demo, so we have no idea what the finished product is going to look like right now. Maybe the AI will improve over time.
The next set of enemies really brought the goods, though. Stealthy (they would literally disappear — think the forest aliens from Resistance 2), smaller and faster (they were willing to run at you like some freaking zombie out of Dawn of the Dead); they upped the intensity of battle tenfold. Not to mention, they were a lot scarier than the first set of aliens. You never know how terrifying it can be in a first-person shooter when something is running at you full speed while you’re trying to reload. Well, maybe Left for Dead fans probably do. Anyway, they really changed the speed of the game, as well as made me think twice about staying in one area for too long. It also made me reload my gun when I could.
The last bit of enemies were huge aliens that were launching explosives. I only got a small taste of them as I was playing the demo, but they tended to not find cover regardless of the situation. Easy to kill, though powerful when they did hit you. I expected a bit more from them, and I hope the good folks developing it can adjust them a bit. They were large and dangerous targets, nothing more.
The entire experience with Alien Rage proved to be intriguing at the demo’s end. It certainly didn’t climb to the quality of a Call of Duty in terms of epic storytelling and gameplay, but it didn’t go as low as a Blacklight Tango Down, where everything seemed a bit bland. Somewhere between those two games lies Alien Rage. If they can adjust things here and there, up the ante a bit on weapons and enemy AI, then the sky is the limit.
I have hope for the game, and I’ll leave you with that.
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