PC Gaming

Just a reminder, fuck Bobby Kotick and the rest of these AAA publisher CEO's

Feel the thrill of clearing connected grains all at once!

Kick doors, shoot lightning, and parry bullets in this blazing fast first-person shoot'n slash inspired by Hotline Miami

SNØ is a minimalistic freeriding game. Push your limits for the high score, or simply explore the endless wilderness.

Are you ready to become a legendary martial arts master? Build your own school, train your students, and battle rival schools to become the strongest. Join tournaments, raise your grasshoppers, and most importantly, collect tuition from your students!

Today, I finished Alien Breed 2: Assault, the second game in the second Alien Breed trilogy. But before I get into that, I want to take a moment to talk about the pedigree of the entire Alien Breed series.

Now, if you’re American, you might have no idea what I’m talking about. But if you owned an Amiga—something far more common in Europe—you probably have fond memories of Alien Breed. It was one of the best games on the Amiga, and for a long time, the Amiga was the best computer gaming platform out there. It was miles ahead of DOS, Mac, and even the Atari ST in terms of pure graphics and sound. You have to understand: the Amiga was delivering 16-bit gaming all the way back in 1986—years before the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. At a time when most DOS users were stuck with CGA graphics, the Amiga had a full color palette.

The original Alien Breed was released in 1991, around the same time as the Super Nintendo, also during the height of the Amiga’s popularity. The main trilogy consisted of Alien Breed, Alien Breed 2: The Horror Continues, and Alien Breed: Tower Assault—all classic top-down shooters. The game was heavily inspired by the movie Alien (1979), and it wasn’t alone in that. Metroid took influence from Aliens, and so did Alien Syndrome, another top-down shooter from Sega that was an arcade hit before making its way to the Master System, Commodore 64, DOS, NES, and even the Amiga.

All these games—Alien Syndrome, Alien Breed—were inspired by Alien the movie, but they also owed a huge debt to Gauntlet, Atari’s arcade classic. Gauntlet was really the ancestor of this style of game. But while Alien Syndrome was good, Alien Breed was in a class of its own. It was so influential that it spawned clones, especially on the Amiga’s main rival, the Atari ST. Since the two systems were so similar, there were a lot of unofficial Alien Breed knockoffs for the ST, like Alien Thing, Alien Blast, and Storm 94. None of these would have existed without Alien Breed.

But then the Amiga died. And the reason? Doom.

In one fell swoop, DOS leapfrogged over the Amiga and became the go-to gaming platform, thanks first to Wolfenstein 3D, then Doom. The Amiga simply couldn’t compete with what DOS was doing in 3D, specifically with VGA graphics. Sure, the Amiga still had better 2D sprite graphics, but by 1993, that’s not what people wanted to play anymore.

That didn’t mean Amiga developers didn’t try. Team17, the company behind Alien Breed, made an FPS version called Alien Breed 3D. And for an Amiga FPS in 1995, it was pretty good—arguably the best Amiga FPS up to that point. Since then, people have found ways to push the Amiga further, but back then, Alien Breed 3D was about as good as it got.

But there were huge compromises. You didn’t get full-screen FPS gameplay. Then again, the Amiga wasn’t alone in this—Marathon on Mac also ran in a window, but Bungie made it work. Marathon is still one of my favorite FPS games of all time. Team17 did an okay job with Alien Breed 3D, but graphically, it couldn’t hold a candle to Doom, and that was the writing on the wall for the Amiga.

After Alien Breed 3D, Team17 mostly focused on Worms, which became a massive hit. For 15 years, that was pretty much all they did. And as fun as Worms is, making the same game over and over for that long takes a toll. Even Team17’s management got tired of it, which is why, in 2010, they decided to reboot Alien Breed with a new trilogy: Alien Breed Evolution, Alien Breed Assault, and Alien Breed Descent.

These games were originally Xbox Live Arcade titles. A lot of newer players don’t fully understand why this second Alien Breed trilogy was made, but the short version is that Team17 finally wanted to move beyond Worms. This was their first attempt at doing something different in 15 years. It was a cheap, digital-only game for a long time, selling for $10.

At the time, Xbox was known as the shooter console, but it was also known for indies—smaller games that publishers weren’t willing to put on physical discs. And top-down shooters weren’t exactly in high demand; people wanted first-person shooters. So, the Alien Breed trilogy was released piecemeal over a year. Despite being marketed as a trilogy, it was really one game in three parts, much like how Doom and Commander Keen were structured.

What made these games stand out was their use of Unreal Engine 3. At a time when many XBLA titles looked rough, seeing a top-down shooter flex with the same engine that ran Gears of War was impressive. The trilogy proved to be a hit for Team17—so much so that it eventually got a physical release, which was rare for XBLA games. Even today, the disc version of the Alien Breed trilogy sometimes sells for $100 on eBay. But if you want to play it, the PC version is the way to go—especially on GOG, where you can often get all the Alien Breed games for just a few dollars during sales.

Some reviewers have criticized the second trilogy for being repetitive—fetch quests, keycard hunting, opening doors. But that is Alien Breed. That’s always been Alien Breed. If you don’t like that, you don’t like Alien Breed, period. That said, compared to the originals, the second trilogy is a huge gameplay improvement. The original games had aliens that just ran at you. In the reboot, different aliens behave differently—some rush you, others spit venom, some burst out of the floor or walls. I love that element of surprise, though I get why some players find it frustrating.

The story is also a slow burn. If you only play for an hour, you might think it’s repetitive, but stick with it. The plot unfolds gradually, and by the third game, things really pick up—which is why many consider Alien Breed 3: Descent the best of the trilogy.

So how does this hold up today? Compared to other top-down shooters, the genre has only improved, especially after Hotline Miami, which set the gold standard. Alien Breed isn’t as good as Hotline Miami, but very few games are. It still holds its own as a solid, enjoyable shooter that honors its legacy.

And in the bigger picture, this trilogy marked a turning point for Team17. It broke them out of their Worms rut and led to even better games—like Yoku’s Island Express, one of the greatest pinball games I’ve ever played. Or Sheltered, or The Escapists. If Team17 had never made Alien Breed, they wouldn’t exist today. And if they hadn’t made the second trilogy, they’d probably still be making Worms.

And as much as I like Worms, there’s only so much Worms a person can take. So for that, I’m thankful.

A quick comparison of graphics presets in Avowed, the new fantasy RPG from Obsidian. All footage is with DLSS quality at 4K resolution.

Race, outplay, destroy! Outrunner: Neon Nights blends high-speed arcade racing with tactical light trails. Challenge your friends and compete online with up to 8 players in gravity-defying arenas. Master power-ups and diverse game modes to take the lead.

The long-awaited "Director's Cut" version of Montezuma's Revenge, envisioned and programmed by the original developer. It's the super-charged conclusion of the classic puzzle solving action-adventure platformer you loved in your youth! Finally, you will fight King Montezuma!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/39264127

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