“Aliens Strike” is like if The Room was a shmup. I don’t say that flippantly. 5 out of 5 if that’s the criteria, but we’re(Switch version)
“Aliens Strike” is like if The Room was a shmup. I don’t say that flippantly. 5 out of 5 if that’s the criteria, but we’re reviewing a video game here.
See the official description/summary? Total lies. The game has no bosses let alone “terrifying” ones, no explosions, no lasers, etc. No, it’s just an awful, broken game, and someone is lying to you to so that you’ll buy this broken trash.
Broken trash? Oh yeah, it’s broken. Like, really, really broken. Health pickups don’t do anything for your health, weapon pickups give you health, the score appears to be completely random, and it glitches out often. For instance, respawning. Sometimes you respawn and die again immediately, creating the most annoying loop ever. Bullet collision detection is awful at times, with no rhyme or reason as to why the collision detection suddenly drops.
The visual elements are where the comparison to The Room fits the best. They seem to be completely random, to such a degree that it’s actually surreal in an “outsider art” sort of way. It was clearly unintentional, making it all the weirder. The space background has “seams”, so you can see where the pattern ends and begins again - not totally unusual, but there isn’t anything remotely subtle about it. It’s like those seams stick out at you, mocking you for your awful decision-making skills. There’s one reoccurring background feature, a planet which looks almost like a clay model of the Deathstar. It pops up about every other level and stands out like a sore thumb. But then something special happens in the second or third level. The earth appears and… it’s literally clipart from a Google image search? Am I having a stroke? Your ship model is pretty cool, and a couple enemy ships are decent. Some enemies are a fly, which is weird and makes no sense, but the models are good enough. The thing is, these are such a marked difference from the rest of this garbage game that I sincerely question if they were taken from a different source. I don’t want to say that for sure of course, but it’s a stark contrast between the passable ship sprites and the fact that every other aspect of this game is pure vomit. We were lied to from square one, so that’s where my head’s at with it.
Audio- one song plays the entire time. It’s very chill and not what you would expect from a shmup, but you won’t play this long enough to get bored of the music. The sound of the bullets is easily the worst part of the game (think about that for a minute). They’re way too loud, and sound like someone is smacking some old timey milk bottles together. I turned the volume off entirely a few minutes in, turning it on again occasionally to see if the song changed. Like I said at the start, Alien(s) Strike is broken. The game gets a zero rating based off of the fact that it’s totally unplayable, to such a degree that any sort of update for the game would have to be the developer just sending you a new game. And reviewing the actual gameplay in a functional version probably wouldn’t raise that score by much.
All in all- avoid. It would almost be worth throwing down a dollar just to see how broken a game can be and still get released onto multiple major systems , but then you’d be supporting bad quality control and a dishonest developer.
Oh, and there’s no pause button or menu of any sort. Surprise!…Full Review »