Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded (Sigma Team) Review for the Iconochromatic podcast.

Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded is a third-person shoot 'em up with mid-90s style isometric sprites. The plot is simple you go into a futuristic base and shoot aliens. The sprite work is detailed, and despite the retro look, it works much better than later 3D games such as Space Siege in which I couldn't get a good impression of the aliens. And although looking a bit like Diablo, or Fallout 2, it does some neat things with alpha blending to do things like dynamic lighting and smoke, and it plays around with it well. You have a shoulder-mounted torch, and the environmental objects such as trees and crates cast appropriate shadows. Indoors, the main lights sometimes fail and either emergency red lights flicker on, or you are plunged into darkness with only your torch and muzzle-flash to guide you. Your character turns smoothly, with seperate sprites for head, upper and lower body. Because the control scheme has movement on the keyboard, and aiming with a mouse cursor, the character swivels naturally at the waist. However she looks a bit silly when running as there's not many animation frames. For it. Although weapons have different ammo capacities, this isn't apparent as there's no reloading animation and reloading is done automatically. On starting the game you can select from several characters, include female soldiers, which is good. Each has a background story, and here we see an attempt at injecting some humour, and low-key self-mocking of the genre runs throughout. A bit like Jagged Alliance 2. I could've done without this. Since the whole affair is clearly trying to invoke the grim stylings of the film Aliens, I would've preferred a deadpan tone. The meat of the game is the shooting of alien critters. This it does better than any game that I've played in this genre. I've already mentioned Space Siege, which was feeble. We have similarities with Alien Breed: Tower Assault, which also regonized the importance of being able to move backwards whilst shooting oncoming hoards with only torchlight to see by. Alien Shooter ticks several other boxes: Most critters react to being shot by temporarily halting their advance this gives the player important feedback and provides connection between their avatar and the enemy. It's amazing how many shooters do not provide this kind of impact. There is clear post-combat evidence of the action that occured; blood splatters over the floor and walls, sometimes painting entire rooms red with alien limbs scattered everywhere. The aliens themselves are varied, with blade-armed skitters, smaller minions, slug things, and larger tough-to-kill Tyranid clones. It's not afraid to throw hundreds of critters at you at a time, sometimes having them burst out of floor it balances your mobility and firepower just at the edge of being able to control the battle. There are scenes in Starship Troopers in which the troopers advance towards the bugs close enough to hit effectively with their guns, but not so close that they get diced, and much of Alien Shooter is about achieving that sweet spot. Some scripted encounters force you to vary your tactics. An early mission has you escorting an engineer out of the building, accompanied by several soldiers. You have to hold off an alien advance whilst the engineer opens a locked door. You have to defend a crossroads from overwhelming numbers, entrusting your flanks to your fellow soldiers, the screen ablaze with muzzle flash and impact points.

Criticisms: One thing that is poorly handled is the old trope of a "weapons kiosk". I spent my money on some decent weapons, only to find the same weapons lying about in the level later on. Some of the "special abilities" you pick at the start are dubious. I chose "boxer" which was supposed to make my character better in melee, but I found that to use my fists, I had to go to the inventory screen and unequip all my guns. There's a survival mode. It's set in a big open field. As far as I can tell, there's no way to gain ammunition, so I spent most of it having to punch at the aliens until I got bored. It doesn't run in a window and doesn't support widescreen. The.. voice.. acting.. is... too... slow. The music is horrible, as all in-game music is. It's the most "Aliens" game since Alien, Aliens, Aliens: US, and the Aliens arcade game. And Space Gun. -Duncan Timiney.