4 key words:
Pacing
Art style
Movement complexity
Difficulty
This game is incredible epsilon is such a cool character to control and a perfect match for the challenges that you will face on this unfinished masterpiece

My least favorite Treasure game, including all of the licensed ones. I prefer games that either take 300 hours to achieve unsteady competence at, or Wattam. Alien Soldier sits smack in that awful middle point, where you can probably see the ending in about 20 hours of practice, but it's going to be grueling getting to that point. The precision it asks for is way too demanding for how clunky and at times unpolished it comes off as, at least in terms of level design.

I've never met an Alien Soldier fan but you gotta imagine they don't wash their asshole.

I'll be honest and say that I simply don't "get" this game after trying it out for about 45 minutes, and this is coming from somebody who adores Dynamite Headdy to no end and had a lot of fun with Gunstar Heroes despite feeling it was a tad overrated.

Yeah, the graphics are absolutely amazing and show what a farce the (at the time) six year old Genesis hardware could be as it neared retirement. I'd never argue against that for a second.

There are also some mechanical improvements over Treasure's last run and gun that I want to point out. Dashing, parrying and hovering around felt pretty intuitive and I liked the idea of parrying bullets to regain health in the heat of battle. Being able to swap between fixed and free shot is also an improvement.

The decision to have you swap weapons in real time when the game is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you, however, just seemed super idiotic. This was not a problem in Gunstar Heroes, which came out two years prior. You were able to pause and switch weapons no problem. If we want to go back even further, Thunder Force III also let you do this five years prior. (Granted, that's a shmup and not a run and gun) This was the number one thing that made me shelve the game after getting through a handful of the game's bosses tbh.

Also not a fan of how the only difficulties available are "supereasy" and "superhard". It just seemed a little pretentious not to have a middle ground.

For now, I think I'll just stick with Headdy/Gunstar/Treasure Land Adventure as those are games from this company that I have always enjoyed immensely.

JOGUE NO SUPEREASY! (não muda nada)

Eu já havia iniciado uma jogatina de Alien Soldier antes mesmo dele ser escolhido aqui, o problema é que minha preferência naquele mês não era Mega Drive. Sempre jogava isso nos emuladores quando era menor e SEMPRE morria no primeiro chefe como uma criança qualquer faria, ainda bem que não insisti muito porque nunca consegui apertar save state e load state da maneira correta... e, hoje... 2024, quase 31 nas costas, voltei a jogar isso num Mega Drive.

Depois de anos da minha vida, eu comecei a jogar com mais gana de vencer o jogo e este é um daqueles que havia me frustado no passado. Não tinha entendido que a proposta de um jogo tão foda como este... e, nem entendia a proposta da Treasure. Sempre jogava como se não houvesse o amanhã, porém este jogo me apresentou o que era realmente o amanhã. Ele é difícil, vai te marcar e vai rir da sua cara.

Assim como toda criança burra, não entendi o que era pra fazer e sempre via aqueles gráficos com muito amor. Todo jogo com sprite grande me chamava atenção. Tudo é tão lindo e encaixa perfeitamente com o jogo mesmo sem entender NADA e apenas jogando. Aquele pombo... quem é ele na fila do pão ein? Só acho que eles deveriam ter colocado um chefão mais memorável no início e não aquele piolho de cobra.

Esse jogo todo é lindo, cara. Não há muito o que discorrer dele. Som foda, gráfico foda, pombo foda.

Só acho que precisamos conversar sobre uma coisa: superhard. Sabemos que o Mega Drive é conhecido pelos seus jogos difícies , mas precisava judiar? Sinceramente não entendi qual foi a escolha da Treasure em querer colocar isso no difícil e ainda forçar o jogador a terminar o jogo com praticamente 1CC, sendo que o modo "supereasy" do jogo já é uma dificuldade que só e mesmo assim usei um total de 31 continues para zerar um jogo de menos de 1 hora. Obrigado, Treasure... tantos jogos bons e fodas que não precisavam desta dificuldade exagerada.

Talvez se a Treasure tivesse aberto as pernas igual a Rare fez. Hoje ela seria uma empresa falida igual a outra que abriu. kkkkkkkkkkk

I've tried 3 separate times to get into Alien Soldier. I feel I should love it, everyone else seems to love it. Yet every time within 30 minutes I've bounced off of it like a bodybuilder throwing a ball at a wall.

I suspect this is a me problem rather than a game problem. Alien Soldier does not ease you in and throws you straight in so that in less than 3 minutes you are fighting a boss where you can run along the ceiling. This game goes to 11 immediately and never slows down so you can get comfortable with the clunky and unintuitive controls. Whilst it does have an interactive tutorial menu it doesn't help when you're thrown into the front lines trying to remember what controls allow you to block, dash, change stance or bring up the weapon reel. Honestly this game feels ahead of it's time that it's trying to give so many options on a controller with so few buttons.

The whole game feels clunky in a way I don't have the patience to learn and adapt to. The weapon reel doesn't pause the game which would be fine if your weapons didn't (needlessly) run out of energy forcing you to swap at the worst time. This means you are guaranteed to receive a cheap hit like a trout to the face as bringing it up is slow and cumbersome, when you remember which button and direction do it. The levels have super tight timers for no reason, and resource managing your weapon energy on top is just a chore.

Despite my lack of enjoyment of actually playing this there is a great deal of charm here. The ludicrous story reel fed in a scrolling feed like Star Wars fan fiction, the huge chunky character model, the extreme fast pace, and colourful visuals are all great. I can see how people would like, nay, love this game when they learn the controls and mechanics so they are second nature rather than having to think then get an energy bullet to the face as I did.

+ Great visual and art design.
+ Fast paced non stop action.

- Does not give you time to acclimatise.
- Control system feels clunky and unintuitive.

Alien Soldier is a bizarre game. It starts with a 4-minute text crawl describing all of its extremely over the top and confusing lore (which is detailed even further in depth in the japanese manual), but the actual game doesn't have a single word of dialogue in it. The character is basically half the screen's height, controls are clunky and a bit unintuitive and despite allegedly having "levels", they're basically 30-second bits of holding right while tapping the shoot button at your leisure, with bosses being the real meat of the game.

There's a method to the madness, though. The game isn't amazing at communicating this to you (Alien Soldier is definitely the sort of game where you'd really need to read the manual, or just look up a guide today), but it's one of the most nuanced and rewarding action games of the era. Every system feeds into another one. At full health, your invincible dash turns into a powerful charge that consumes some health. Double tapping the attack button lets you do a short range attack that turns bullets into health, which means that if you play perfectly you can chain the above charge and shred through most bosses. All the weapons serve a purpose, both firing modes have their own uses (you can shoot while moving or standing still, but the former wastes a lot of ammo and isn't always viable, though sometimes necessary), and everything about the gameplay is very carefully considered. I don't know how Treasure did it, but even today Alien Soldier is such a tight and well-realized action game that few can match it.

... At its best, anyways. It is unfortunately marred by a couple of pretty annoying sections, around the mid-late game. There's a couple of stages (read: boss fights) where the environment is completely dark, and you need to fire to briefly light it up. This is hard on the eyes and generally very annoying, but not a big deal. There's a boss battle a bit later on, against a transforming mech, that has five phases, with no checkpoint. No other boss has more than one phase, which makes this by far the hardest fight in the game, even compared to the overall simple final boss. A difficulty spike isn't in itself a horrible thing, but two of the phases use a really annoying, clunky "flying" system where you're constantly wrestling against currents, which takes a lot to learn and shouldn't be something you have to figure out how to wrestle with well into a hard fight. It's way more frustrating than any other part of the game, which overall flows pretty well, and while it doesn't ruin it is is a sore spot. Also, switching weapons, which you'll have to do a lot, is very clunky and often gets you hit, but that might just be a skill issue.

One last thing I'd like to note is that this game is surprisingly extremely friendly to newcomers. There's two difficulties, "SUPEREASY" and "SUPERHARD", which sound like they're miles apart but in reality they're the same in gameplay, SUPEREASY just gives you infinite lives. It also allows you to change the speed of the game, which is absolutely not something I'd expect from a 1995 game but extremely welcome, though I didn't really use it.

Imagine you've mastered Shattered Soldier (or some equivalent) and you can now 1cc it regularly. Confident, you decide to show it off at some kind of event-- but upon beginning, your dexterity is seriously f u n k y and anxious confusion starts to gnaw away, followed by embarrassment.

Then you wake up.

Initially learning Alien Soldier was like running in a dream for me. Although I managed to complete it, the skill ceiling still looks awfully high.. and I love that.

Using Mischief Makers as a personal, relative example-- I've been playing that game for like 25 years (on and off). It's an exciting prospect to imagine that I could keep getting something out of Alien Soldier for decades to come. This one feels like a forever game for me. It might be my favorite aesthetic on the Mega Drive.

Este juego no tiene piedad con nadie, jodidamente difícil y casi no hay momentos de descanso.

Y POR ESO ME ENCANTO, una banda sonora estupenda, gráficos excelentes, una jugabilidad frenética, muy divertida donde sera necesario elegir 4 tipos de disparos con sus ventajas y desventajas, además de ir aumentando la capacidad de las mismas, y por ultimo, jefes que pondrán a prueba tus reflejos. A lo mucho la única cosa negativa es cierto bajón de FPS en uno de los últimos niveles, pero realmente no afecta en casi nada y de hecho el juego se mantiene corriendo.

Sin duda, lo mejor que ha hecho Treasure en la Sega Genesis y también, mi juego favorito de dicha consola.

Cleared on June 17th, 2023 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 12/160)

This game is a very strong contender for my favorite Sega Genesis game. I won't say that it is until I've cleared my challenge, but I would be surprised if anything else could even top it.

You play as Epsilion and as you'd expect from a game like this, you run, you gun, you jump, and you maneuver against enemies. This game is brought to you by the same developers of Gunstar Heroes which is considered their own take on Contra. You might think they should've just made a Gunstar Heroes sequel, but Alien Soldier is a lot more different than just another Contra competitor, and dare I say, I don't think I've run into another game quite like it.

On top of the traditional abilities that you have, you can also dash across the screen which will give you a brief window of invincibility while letting you reposition against the enemies, and you will need it. The game was built with this mechanic in mind.
You can hover in the air which lets you get better precision against the enemies although you can't move unless you dash which then cancels the hover. Pressing the hover button again will let you double jump. You can move on ceilings, and when your health is full, you can dash to unleash a devastating Phoenix Force except it takes a small chunk of your health. It's really negligible and only applied so you can't use it repeatedly.
On top of that, you can use a "Counter" which lets you convert most projectiles into health orbs. While they also drop from enemies, they won't usually be present in bosses and thus learning this mechanic is crucial to survive.

And guess what? The Treasure developers actually corrected the issue Gunstar had that didn't let you switch between Free or Fixed mode on a whim, and here, they have a combination that lets you switch although it's more complicated than what Contra Hard Corps would simply have you do. In fact, the controls in this game are actually very complex for a Sega Genesis game.

Some things are simple enough to understand like Jump, Shoot, Run, Hover, and Weapon Switch. However, to switch between Free and Fixed mode, you need to press the Weapon Switch button + Down. To dash, you need to press Down + Jump at the same time. To counter, you need to tap the Shoot button twice.

Keep in mind that you need to factor all of this in, master the mechanics, all while managing the four weapons you have active at a time because they aren't unlimited, so switching between the weapons you got is mandatory, but what are the weapons?

Buster Force is the standard straight line shot that fires repeatedly. It's not a bad weapon to end up with although you may have trouble getting it to connect with some of the bosses in the game.
Ranger Force is the spread shot weapon that's damage is so lacking that you should definitely avoid using above all else, especially in the mid and late game.
Flame Force is the close ranged high damage dealing shot and pretty useful if you can afford to get up close.
Homing Force is a weapon that, as the name suggests, homes projectiles at nearby enemies making it quite possibly the most versatile weapon in the game and it's not bad at dealing with bosses as long as you aren't playing Superhard Difficulty.
Sword Force is a thin beam of light that is similar to the Flamethrower that getting up close deals more damage, but the difference is that it deals more damage up close while being weaker the farther you are. I never realized it in my playthrough.
Lancer Force is my favorite weapon as it just a beam of light that deals immense damage and a must have to be able to clear out bosses much easier although it has very low ammunition count, so it's more high risk high reward.

So there is a lot you need to understand and it's not just your character you need to understand, but the bosses as well because there are 25 stages and each of them has a boss at the end. Yes, there are 25 bosses in this game and that's what the game's primary focus is on since it doesn't usually take long for you to get from one boss to the next and during these intermission periods, you're just shooting up lesser enemies to collect health orbs and countering their projectiles for that same reason, all while finding these weapon capsules which can either let you swap weapons or, by shooting it, you can force rotate it to the weapon you shot with and upgrade the ammo count.

The bosses can range from fairly easy once you get it down, notably the earlier fights, to being really tough and in general, this game is just really hard. However, there is a mercy aspect to the game called "Supereasy mode". If you are put off with being forced back to the beginning after 3 game overs, I feel you. It can be quite tedious, but given this is developed by Treasure, they took a page from Gunstar Heroes unlimited continues and incorporate it here although they don't do so by default. In order to access Supereasy mode, you need to go into the settings. On top of that, they slightly nerfed the health of the bosses which is considered a boon given how bosses all have a time limit, yeah, I did not mention that part. Plus, you can even slow down the game to give you time to react to the boss mechanics or otherwise give some extra time to switch between weapons because it's not like Ratchet and Clank where the whole game pauses to let you switch weapons.

Backed up with amazing gameplay is the space anthropomorphic aesthetic that reminds me a lot of Star Fox, and many of the bosses have impressive and creative designs. There is one I really want to gush over, but it comes too late in the game, and I don't want to spoil it even though the game came out in 1995. But let's just say you'll want to look out for Level 23.

The music itself is also pretty good and really fits the badass feel of the overall game. Charging through the enemy lines and barraging aliens in your wake. There is also a Gunstar Heroes track that was used in this game which I thought was kinda cool.

And the thing that surprised me is that the majority of the game was done by one person. He eventually had to get help to meet the deadlines and they originally planned to have 100 bosses (if it did, then this would've really been the Dark Souls of the 90s), but for what they were able to get in the game, it's impressive. I'd say I'd recommend this game to anyone looking for something really exciting, but even with the unlimited continues, I understand that the complicated controls may be too much if you aren't familiar with the Contra style of games. My advice, in this case, is to play Gunstar Heroes first and then go into this game. Even if it seems too much still, just know that the game will let you get accustom to the controls as long as it takes before you even get to the first level.