WE’RE IN SOME REAL PRETTY SH!T NOW, MAN!
Antstream’s first foray into the retro game collection market is great; this is a nicely wrapped collection that clearly had a lot of care into the presentation, options, etc. I will get to the extras after, but I need to start this review off with the controls. Alien Breed started as a Gauntlet like twin-stick shooter and modern controllers work extremely well as they do with the FPS titles in this collection as well, which is big because the Amiga was a computer system with a keyboard not a dual analog video game controller. I bring this up first because it’s so smooth that it will be overlooked when it’s really well implemented to the point where it feels like the right way to play these games.
As someone in North America my connection to the Commodore (the 64 and more so the Amiga) is very little and the European audience always likes to make sure us people in the ol’ NA know that they never had the video game crash. Cool. Well, I’m glad Antstream saw what Digital Eclipse did with their collections and followed suit. Unlike the timeline method DE does with their collections, Antstream built a new area that plays like the original Alien Breed where you can look through documents and videos talking about the games as well as plans for cancelled series and the like. The main menu is actually the character from this vault area looking at a monitor in this space. It’s a really cool way to engage the audience and the interviews and promotional materials and write ups are really neat. The visuals in this area make me wish there was a brand-new Alien Breed game in this modern pixel art style, but the games we got (and the new online modes) are still pretty great. So, let’s talk about those games.
MSRP: $24.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), XBOX, PlayStation, Switch
Price I’d Pay: $24.99
Alien Breed and Alien Breed Special Edition (and expanded version of the original) are fun but basic games. Make your way to the elevator, shoot aliens, don’t lock yourself in a room by accident… I did that one. Keeping track of keys is extremely important apparently (just like real life). The enemies are very much legally distinct but scarily close to xenomorphs/facehuggers from Alien which slowly grows more distinct over the series. It’s a fun, horror sci-fi arcade experience if not a bit too similar throughout.
Alien Breed 2 completely fixes that feel of similarity with more environments, better graphics, and more of a survival horror feel likely due to the more “realistic” design (I realize how that sounds describing a 2D pixel art top-down shooter) but at times it does move into the realm of abstraction still. Alien Breed: Tower Assault however feels like a real survival horror game. Really detailed pixel art, logs from the people whose corpses litter the hallways, very little abstraction in the environment, flashlights in the darker areas where visibility is lowered, I didn’t lock myself in a room. It’s really well done. However, the CD version of Tower Assault has a cutscene you can’t skip with the keyboard but can with the controller but then the game wouldn’t start so… it’s fine. Tower Assault was made in 1994, two years after Alone In The Dark and two before Resident Evil and yet feels very modern in the way the story is told through memos rather than direct cutscenes. I was very impressed.
Okay now the two FPS games I didn’t know existed. Alien Breed 3D is impressive that it runs on the Amiga… otherwise it is a glaucoma nightmare, and nothing looks like anything. Shoot things that move. Even in full screen there’s not much I could do to make this game more enjoyable to look at. It hurts my eyes. However, The Killing Grounds, the sequel to 3D, is great. A real horror FPS on the Amiga where it was doing things like having the gun (which is a sprite of a 3D render I believe) reflect light as I move and the text at the bottom narrating the character’s thoughts, it’s really good. I assumed The Killing Grounds had to have been running on a DOS computer but no, it’s running on the same console that was home to the rest of these games. If this collection is nothing else, it is a great showing of how strong the Amiga was on a processing level.
I’m thoroughly impressed with this collection. Most of my complaints come from what this isn’t instead of what this is, and what this is is a very good collection of some really great games. It’s hard to not recommend this to anyone looking to play something old that’s new to them as I’m sure fans of Alien Breed have already snatched this up. I only knew of Alien Breed due to the 2000s era reboot trilogy, so it was fun to see where this series came from and how well it held up. There’s also multiplayer but I’m so bad at these I’m not putting anyone through that. I can’t wait to see what collection Antstream does next.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.