Aliens: Infestation Review
Developer WayForward Technologies has made a name for themselves based on their brilliant design of 2D side-scroller games, and Aliens: Infestation is their latest effort. Based upon the concepts of the Aliens movies, the game puts you in a desperate bid for survival against monstrous creatures while exploring dangerous levels. WayForward has a great game concept here, but it’s so bare-boned that it hardly leaves any impression on the player.
The story draws upon the mythos of the movies, but you don’t need to have strict knowledge of the series to understand what’s going on. It would help, sure, but for the most part the story is self contained. It helps that the plot is quite simple, though. Brief dialogue sequences fill in the details on why you’re exploring a ship of alien monsters, but it really all boils down to gunning down one Xenomorph after another. A simple story isn’t inherently bad, but it can make the dialogue a little dull. The one variable in the plot is in which Marines you pick up along your journey. Each character has a slightly different personality and so provide slightly different dialogue; it’s not a significant change and it doesn’t actually affect the story whatsoever, but the unique responses can be amusing in their own way.
Keep your distance when shooting Xenomorphs lest you get splashed with acid blood.
Aliens: Infestation takes heavy influence from the Metroid series; this 2D platformer is primarily focused on exploration, isolation, and fighting your way through one massive stage as upgrades and new items allow you to explore more and more. In many ways this is game is also about survival, though. Weapons require ammo refills, and more often than not you’ll need a health refill as well. This adds a significant degree of tension to the game and segues into one of the more unique features here: characters can die permanently. You can have up to four Marines in your squad, but you are only using one character at any given moment. Should you die, you can select another Marine to step in immediately and carry on the fight–this can be quite important during boss battles. In a way this replaces the lives system of normal platformers, but gives you stricter parameters and requires a careful approach. It’s a clever way of adding a bit of difficulty to the game, and if you’re truly persnickety about keeping the original Marine squad alive, it adds a significant challenge.
The gameplay isn’t without its share of faults, of course. The Metroid gameplay inspiration brings with it plenty of backtracking which, as it almost always does in any game, grows increasingly tiresome as you play. Additionally, despite providing a handful of different weapons and explosives, the enemies can be just plain annoying with their excessive speed and evasion. Having a Xenomorph dash through your hail of gunfire–taking damage the whole time–only to run up to you and prevent you from landing a proper shot is frustrating to say the least. This doesn’t happen so often that it ruins the experience in any way, don’t get that impression, but it still shows a certain lack of polish to core combat mechanics.
Infestation isn't without its share of homages to the Aliens series.
The real problem with Aliens: Infestation is that it is too short. The game takes a while to get off the ground, but then it’s over almost as quickly. Even when exploring virtually all of the nooks and crannies that the game provides, it isn’t difficult to finish in around six hours. This is an even bigger problem since there is very little replay value here. As already said using different marines can provide slightly different dialogue, but the basic gameplay all remains the same. There isn’t any draw to pick up the game again after quickly beating it, making it much more likely to end up as a rental than a full purchase investment.
Control-wise, Aliens: Infestation makes it easy with a pretty straight-forward D-pad and button set-up. The most convenient aspect is the touch screen which gives you quick access to reloading weapons, switching between explosives, and using items. Unfortunately you have to toggle between these options and the map–you can’t see everything at once–but tapping the screen twice rather than once is hardly a problem. More important is the slightly clunky way in which you move and aim. You can stand still and aim or you can move and aim, but this latter option, while more useful in general, is also a little awkward to do smoothly and can lead to plenty of missed shots.
Use the touch screen for quick access to all your weapons.
Though the game overly relies upon repeated visuals–repetitive corridor scenes, only a handful of enemy designs, and even the marines are generally just color palate swaps of each other–it can’t be denied that WayForward has a way with animation. The movements of both marines and Xenomorphs are quite natural and fluid, even in a 2D platformer setting where backgrounds are repeated constantly. Granted, most of the game takes place on a single ship, but a little more variety in the graphic department would have been nice. The music, meanwhile, sets a fantastic eerie atmosphere which sets your nerves on edge as you keep your eyes peeled for Xenomorphs. Like the visuals the audio gets repetitive pretty quickly, but it certainly sets the tone for the entire game.
Aliens: Infestation boasts good game fundamentals but could really use some fleshing out to make it a deeper, more engaging adventure. The Metroid-like gameplay is fun and having characters that can permanently die puts a neat twist on the action, but the game is just begging for more content and a longer play time. Still, it’s not a bad game while it lasts, bare-boned though the game may be.
Rating: 
