In the last year, Team 17 has released a total of three Alien Breed games, and it has finally come to an end with the release of Alien Breed: Descent. Alien Breed: Descent was released on 17 November, 2010 for Xbox Live and Steam. Alien Breed is a different breed of game than the rest, a sci-fi top-down shooter.
Story
To be quite honest, it was hard to really understand what was going on, especially if you have not played the previous two games released in the last year. What I did understand was that Conrad is trying to stop this evil Artificial intelligence named Klien. The story starts off with Conrad trying to save Mia, another A.I trying to help him destroy the evil system. What I didn’t like about how they portrayed the story was that everything was very brief and did not go into much detail. For example, the only thing we know about Conrad, the main character, is that he is a chief engineer. I did enjoy the cut-scenes; they were like a comic strip and had voice actors taking care of the reading.
Gameplay
From the beginning you will have weapons to choose from like the shotgun, assault rifle, flamethrower, and pistol. The game as a whole is not too difficult and could be a bit repetitive; it is a lot of running around, turning on switches, and killing the aliens coming up from underneath. The boss fights are cool and, once you get into the swing of things, they’ll be no trouble. They also had other weapons to use like grenades and flash bangs, but, to be honest, I would tend to forget they were there. Word of advice: pick up every health packet and make sure you use the pistol when you are walking from place to place. Another word of advice: do NOT die after a cut scene; if you do, you will watch the cut scene again and again. I had some difficulty with the first boss, and, every single time I died, I had to watch these voiceless and annoying cut scenes.
Sound
Going into an alien fighting game, I expected to have this creepy music; we unfortunately didn’t get much of that. The music didn’t seem to change much and wasn’t very memorable. I did think the voice actors were on key and kept my attention even with the cut scenes only being comic strips.
Overall
Overall the game is simply all right and can, at times, can get very repetitive and aggravating. Alien Breed: Descent is available for Steam and Xbox Live, and it is priced at $9.99 or 800 Microsoft Points.