Not great but nice game. Has the energy of a newgrounds or cereal box game from the basic gameplay and budget graphics that I find really endearing. A bunch of the steam reviews mention they played this when they were a child and that just feels kind of sweet, like this is such a "played on my Dad's 2005 Windows XP computer, where the only other games were Lego Island and The Sims" type game and I like that.

It also doesn't feel like its wasted too much of my time. Other similar games like Vampire Survivors will advertise itself with "Over 50 hours of content!" but I think this kind of mindless, number go up gameplay just gets depressing after a few hours and I reached the end of this game's campaign just before that feeling was setting in.

i got it for 39p on steam and it's called 'Alien Shooter' that kind of sums it up honestly

It's one of those weird cases where they've removed a bunch of the little annoyances that there were in the previous games and its made it worse?

Like you don't have to worry about spending too much money because the currency has been simplified to one token that can buy you everything you'd need and is easily restockable. You don't have to worry about swapping out your primary weapon for an explosive one because there's a third slot just for explosive weapons. You don't even have to worry about running out of C4 because you now just get an unlimited number of them.

As a result everything's way more streamlined and sounds more appealing but makes everything into busy work as you just kind of glide over outposts shooting rockets, I barely tried anything else because that works every time and there's no reason not to. Getting the fastest car in the game or the fastest jet isn't as fun as Just Cause 2 because I have an endless amount of them and can just fly about whenever I want. Its more explosive and action filled than Just Cause 2 but because everything's so streamlined for me I don't feel like I'm engaging with a world and so don't feel like experimenting with its systems.

It's the game equivalent of drinking sugar as a child, exciting at first then you just vomit EVERYWHERE

Nice presentation and fairly minimalist gameplay, pretty pleasant but I feel like it could've done more.

It lacks a kind of emotional connection like the strangers in Journey, it really wants the eagle to replace that but it feels a bit weak with the eagle being a bit personality-less. Also it makes a point of how no-one's experience in life is the same but doesn't really reflect this in the gameplay. It's open world but is just linear enough and has just basic enough gameplay that it didn't really feel like I was on my own unique journey.

It looks really nice though, has nice music, just a nice experience overall but I didn't get much more from it than that honestly.

This is fine? It feels generally pretty good and the Helghast design is still cool along with some other aesthetic stuff but that's all given a ton more personality in its sequel. The checkpoints are fairly far apart as well which adds some fun intensity but apart from that there's not much in particular I can point to and say "I like this", it's just an ok enough fps game. Maybe that's all it needed to be since the PS2 didn't have a lot of fps games but this it does have that "it'll do" feeling.

Feels weird to call this game “safe” while it relies on you liking a specific game engine from 1995, but it kind of is. The weapons are all useful but fairly standard, not having any of the wackier focus other Build Engine games put on this and the enemies are similar with you fighting a lot of the same "grunt with gun" types through most of the game. The levels too don't try to suprise you outside of a couple exceptions and this leads to a campaign that doesn't feel like it goes anywhere.

It is fun though! It's really cool to see something use old tech in this way where it takes advantage of modern hardware while still feeling like the older games this is inspired by. It's not "DOOM HD TEXTURE PACK 4K" it feels like an older game just on a much bigger scale and that ends up giving the whole thing a really cool vibe. And the combat is genuinely fun with all the weapons having that similar, old but smooth feeling.

It's just a shame that it ends up feeling a bit like a tech demo? They had a cool idea of what to do with the game technically but not creatively and the way it gives you its few ideas feels a bit badly paced. For example, it tries to give you a full, uninterrupted campaign like Half-Life or most modern shooters, as opposed to Doom and the other Build Engine games which were split into episodes and reset your weapons and items between them. This leads to the game dumping most of its weapons onto you in its equivalent of Episode 1, and then you just keep them for the rest of the game. A few enemy types are introduced later but it feels similarly quick to throw all its ideas at you and as I said levels don't change too much, with it feeling like a lot of the game is spent in a Cyberpunk city, Sewers or Labs.

Cool game but not a great one. Good core gameplay and cool aesthetic but misses a few beats elsewhere.


Also had a very funny controversy where the devs removed a joke no one was offended by, got review bombed and then added it back in saying "they wont stand for the censorship of art 😤", all over a bottle that said "Ogay".