Alien Breed (Amiga)

Once again The Game Hoard takes its first step into a new U.K. computer console scene, but the Amiga has something over microcomputers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. The Amiga is essentially the Commodore 64’s successor, meaning it’s a more powerful machine that came after the idea of what people expected out of video games had more time to cement itself, and when compared to other game systems, it is more similar to something like the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. Diving in with a critically acclaimed game as the introduction to the system seemed less risky here, and so Alien Breed, a rather beloved and prolific top-down shooter series on the Amiga, was chosen as my entry point.

 

Alien Breed comes on a set of three disks, the main two containing the actual gameplay experience but in order to avoid lengthy load times, the actual story introduction exists as a series of illustrated stills on the Story Disk. In the year 2191 mankind has managed to colonize outside of its own solar system but it seems the further people strayed from Earth, the harder it became to enforce any semblance of law and order. The Interplanetary Corps is established to maintain peace, but members Johnson and Stone end up encountering something never before seen in this universe: aliens. Their investigation of space station ISRC-4 after communications went quiet leads to them learning that there is extraterrestrial life out there and it seems mostly interested in killing any human it spots, the two having to work together to blast their way through the various alien breeds they encounter aboard the space station so they can rig the place up to explode and wipe out this threat to humanity.

 

Playable solo or with a second player, Alien Breed’s top-down shooting takes place across six stages which sounds like a tiny number but each level of the space station is a bit labyrinthine in terms of how its rooms are laid out, which doors can be opened or barriers crossed, and what dangers can be found. You need to complete Alien Breed by clearing each floor of the station without losing all of your lives, a game over necessitating a full restart and thus it becomes important to both proceed cautiously and grow a better understanding of what each floor offers. Littered around the area are health packs, extra lives, cash, ammo packs, and keys, all of them important to ensuring your continued survival and success, but naturally the space station is packed to the brim with aliens who are eager to kill you and complicate the acquisition of such vital items.

There are a few different species of alien you need to worry about in Alien Breed, but not many of them behave in particularly different ways. There are essentially two archetypes for the type of creature you’ll encounter: the running bipedal monsters and the tiny squirming creatures. The bipedal aliens are definitely the most common but they aren’t particularly intelligent. Their only means of hurting you is to charge right up towards you, arms outstretched. Still, in the cramped halls of ISRC-4, this is a pretty valid tactic, especially when they come in small packs or appear from various angles. There are a few different designs for this alien variant as you dive deeper into the space station, but they’ll remain the most common pest you’ll need to blast apart if you want to avoid taking some rather severe damage. Life isn’t handled the best in Alien Breed, your Energy bar meant to tell you how close you are to death but updating in an odd manner. It doesn’t immediately deplete after you take damage making it not always clear how much health you’re working with and the inverse is also true as using a health pack or reviving after a death will lead to the Energy bar slowly filling back up. You’ll of course always want to be avoiding damage, but sometimes the alien swarm comes in such large numbers you might have to ask yourself how much damage you’re willing to take to slip through to a safer spot to shoot from, a question needlessly complicated by this Energy meter’s quirks.

 

Perhaps a bit more of a pressing issue is exactly how new aliens will appear. Sometimes they will have a clear spawn point like a hole in the ground you can know to be wary of, but just as often anywhere off-screen is fair game to produce an alien, including a room you just emptied, left only for a second, and then turned around to find it packed to the brim with monsters. There is some effort to not make it too egregious at least and the simplicity of how aliens try to hurt you also means you can start to consider doors and junctions as areas you need to treat with proper caution. There even seems to be some limit on how many aliens the game is willing to throw at you at one time to help manage the difficulty, but since where enemies appear isn’t set and their numbers are variable, this isn’t something you can come to learn like you can the ship’s layout and the placement of important items. This does mean the game isn’t purely about memorization though and it can lead to some tense moments where you suddenly stumble onto a horde of aliens you’re quickly trying to gun down as you watch your ammo dwindle. The alien presence is definitely meant to be the main threat to your work and it feels appropriately challenging and you never become complacent when exploring even as you become more capable and educated.

 

One little quirk of the shooting in Alien Breed though is that it is tied to the direction you’re walking. This is no twin-stick shooter; Alien Breed requires you to at least move in the direction of your target a tiny bit to point your gun towards them, and this does mean some potentially useful strategies are unavailable like backing away while you’re opening fire or trying to target aliens in a space where there are dangers like an acid pit that drains your life slowly or an instant death electrical barrier. Perhaps the most common issue that can come from this is trying to mow down a line of aliens walking towards you and the one behind the one you just killed can slip in and hit you fairly easily afterwards, but Alien Breed is again a game about accounting for what you’re facing and approaching it properly so you can gradually learn how better to handle groups or at least know ways to offset the damage. The tiny aliens, both the ones inspired by chestbursters from the Alien films and some worm-like ones, rub up against this a little worse though, their bodies not as easy to target and some can even climb through walls so there are periods where you can’t shoot them before they’re too close. They do die more easily though, so understanding is still one of your best weapons and planning around these problems can help weaken their impact without requiring too much work.

One important part of increasing your chances of clearing out aliens with less trouble is acquiring new weaponry. The cash you collect around the space station can be spent at specific Intex terminals to buy various things, but the weapons are certainly the main attraction. Your default weapon fires quickly but its shots are small and a bit puny, but you can eventually get things like a laser shotgun or missile launcher. The weapons aren’t all strict upgrades of each other, the flamethrower fires a straight burst of flame but the shotgun seems to hit harder at the cost of shots sometimes not flying straight on. Still, they do increase your killing power and help handle the hordes much better and earning the cash for them ends up adding to the interesting task of figuring out the lay of the station. Card keys are required to open any closed door and while they can be purchased, weapons are expensive and health is a valuable buy as well. Instead, figuring out where to get things and where to use them becomes part of figuring out a good route forward, but there is a legitimate chance of getting trapped at parts. This is more likely to arise from the emergency fire doors where a careless gunshot can trigger them and lock off a hallway, a mechanic that perhaps tries to discourage spray-and-pray tactics but ammo already did a good enough job of doing that.

 

Once you have spent some time on a floor though, their size makes it not too difficult to figure out the best paths and where useful items might lie. If you do get a Game Over, it’s not too difficult to dive back in and make a more productive run as you grab what you need and better handle the dangers along the way, bringing more tools to the next attempt without it feeling like the memorization was absolutely necessary or that you were doomed to die until you understood things better. Each floor has a different objective, the first a quick one where you just need to find the elevator, but later ones often involve finding a specific device or facing off with a boss alien before then needing to escape the floor in a hurry as it begins to self-destruct. The self-destruct sequence is a good example of when the odd health system might hurt your choices as you need to move quickly to survive, but the size of a floor again comes in handy as you can usually figure out how to get out safely either by learning the path while exploring or just knowing the general direction you need to head and finding the exit routes usually accommodating enough. Bosses are a bit of an oddity though, a bit of a let-down since they mostly just rely on moving into you to do damage but the space you fight them in usually has some safe places you can stand where they can’t hit you. The fact you can’t aim without facing something does mean you have to figure out how to bait the boss into moving or pick your moments to get some damage in at least. Alien Breed will also feature things like sloped floors and different elevations that perhaps aren’t represented the best but can change how you move even in seemingly flat areas, this sometimes impacting a boss fight or how you can corral aliens in ways less disruptive than a pit of acid.

THE VERDICT: Alien Breed’s handling of alien spawns and your aiming being tied to the last direction you moved in limit some of its potential, but this Amiga shooter also has a design that lets these limits not completely wreck the experience. Certain moments like the boss battles are less demanding and the aliens themselves behave fairly simply, the threat they pose often their numbers or unexpected appearances that you grow a knack for accounting for. Figuring out each new floor’s layout so you can get all the goodies you need without spending too many both gives the game a fun sense of exploration and makes retries after a game over go more quickly as it’s a game you can start to master without feeling like memorization is required to take out the alien menace. Brisk when it needs to be and tense because the danger remains present despite new weapons making individual monsters easier to handle, Alien Breed isn’t always a clean experience but it’s one that still settles into an appealing enough process of developing strategies for making progress.

 

And so, I give Alien Breed for the Amiga…

An OKAY rating. Alien Breed certainly has a few little tricks that could have gone awry if the design didn’t account for them. It will just make aliens appear from places you had just emptied of all life with no clear justification, but there’s a limit to how often it does this and the number of creatures it will try to pack into a level at one time. The aliens aren’t always the smartest and their attack methods are basic, so even facing them suddenly is manageable enough quite often despite your aim not being as free as you might want. There are enough pick-ups scattered around the level to either start buying what you need like more ammo or health or just offset the material cost of progress on its own. It is unfortunate a few areas exist where a mistake can doom you (especially since a death makes you reappear exactly where you died so that’s not even a valid escape method) but at the same time there is some satisfaction in learning the space station better and knowing where you can run off to find some health if you need it, and the number of extra lives laying around is surprisingly generous but also doesn’t invalidate the danger you find yourself in. It’s an imprecise balancing act and one that can tip either way depending on how individual aspects alter your personal experience, but it’s not lacking in moments that do come together well to make up for the small slip-ups caused by limitations found elsewhere.

 

Alien Breed has room to grow and improve but its weaker design choices and restrictions don’t doom the experience to being frustrating. It still won’t feel nice if you get a good deal in and start losing health or lives to some of the stated issues, but there is a decent enough appeal to developing a strategy for survival that doesn’t need to be complex or perfect to better clear out floors and get to new areas. Alien Breed seems to have understood there’s a limit on how hard to push, and while some of its tricks to maintain difficulty even as you understand the game more aren’t the best way to approach design, it still comes out a game with a clear appeal while having some obvious areas of improvement for the sequels that followed.