Alien Breed Evolution sounds like a perfectly bland game even by gamer standards. It’s a top-down, Aliens-like shooter, starring a gruff bald white guy and a ton of disgusting, swarming aliens. It’s set on a damaged human ship, post-collision with a monstrous alien vessel. The bugs are everywhere, and only you and your various weapons and items stand in their way. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your engine-affiliation), the Unreal Engine powers the whole affair. This isn’t Shadowgrounds or Alien Swarm, it’s a carefully executed and orchestrated throwback to the less pretentious, less complicated days of the original Alien Breed.
Evolution makes me think of Dead Space, despite the fact that Evolution is devoid of even the glimmerings of narrative creativity that shone through the tired darkness of Dead Space’s story. I wonder, why did Team 17 spend so much time on fleshing out a boring, has-been story? They’re already the undisputed kings of an old-school franchise: the decidedly non-cinematic, lacking-in-narrative Worms games. If a game with amazing gameplay and solid atmosphere can sell itself to an audience, why throw this tired, dead story into an obvious arcade title like Alien Breed Evolution.
Thus, instead of a fun, fast action title, your time with Evolution will be punctuated by hardly-there, oddly arresting (for their complete lack of content and desperate need to be “meaningful,” mostly) story bits. These are mostly communicated by voice over and storyboard cutscenes. Here, we’re introduced to our hero, who is, I kid you not, a bald space engineer who sounds like he chews glass for breakfast. His sometime companion and full-time voice over guide is a robot, a synthetic, in true Aliens tradition.
Instead of following the interesting (the engineer hates synthetics, of course) synthetic character, we’re saddled with the bald guy, again. Worse, the game doesn’t even come with Dead Space’s scares and tension. Instead, enemies announce their arrival with funny noises and exploding ducts. After that, it’s like playing any other top-down shooter: kill them ‘til you die, or until they all die.
Killing everything in sight actually sounds like it could be fun. Except here, it’s anything but fun. Other games (that look decidedly less pretty) have done this so much better. Shadowgrounds is a miracle of design. It does so much with its little engine, from awesome, varied enemy design, lots of upgradable weapons, and interesting tactical situations. And that was all with the worst voice acting committed to disc.
Evolution can’t manage to do any of that. The shooting is bland and boring. Excepting more exciting, powerful weapons, all of your guns feel the same. The shotgun doesn’t look that much different from the pistol. The spread is different, but in a game like this, I want to see the ludicrous differences in my guns. I love games like Worms and Metal Slug because every weapon looks so outrageously different, and every damage effect is so wonderfully crude and effective. Here, I couldn’t care less what gun I’m using. I just use one until I run out of ammo. Then I switch to the next gun. If an action-arcade game survives on its guns and aliens, Evolution has already lost half of the battle.
Some of this annoyance can be mitigated by the game’s co-op. It’s well-implemented, throwing more (than normal) and more enemies up against you and your teammate. In fact, it feels like this is what the rest of the game should be like. There shouldn’t be a single player game. It’s much more fun with a friend to keep you company, a friend who can help you see the lighter side of awful fetch quests.
I could honestly stomach boring weapons and aliens, and worse dialogue, if it weren’t for the fact that Bald Engineer Guy is an even worse gopher than Isaac ever was. For the first 45 minutes of the game, I spent most of my time turning off things. First, I had to turn off the generator. Then I realized I couldn’t do that until I’d turned off two separate fire suppression systems. Then I realized I had to unlike the drive hydraulics, which, of course, I could only do after hunting down and claiming two key cards. That’s just the first mission.
In between, I killed a staggeringly small number of xenomorphs. This game feels like the next level in sewage treatment training materials. This is the kind of thing they’ll issue to people who have Sam Rockwell’s clone’s mining job in 100 years. It’s as if everything that makes this kind of game fun (tension, atmosphere, cool guns, scary aliens, and a catchy yet safe and familiar story) was minimized, hampered, or thrown right out of the window. This is a joyless, carefully made game. I’m amazed that a game about killing aliens with guns (and nothing else!) turned into a top-down jaunt through the worst of Dead Space’s fetch quests.
Where are the “bugs Mr. Rico, zillions of em!” or “they’re coming outta the God-damned walls” moments of this universe? Come to think of it, where are any of the moments from the original games. Were those game as boring as this one (a confession: I’ve never played any other games in this series, though I’ve played games like them)? Evolution wants to win you over with its graphics, frantic shooting, and dark, alien dangers. It barely gets one of those right, and even then it can’t quite use the Unreal Engine to full effect.
There are more installments of Team 17’s Breed on the way. Maybe they can implement a fun upgrade system (which this game needs to stave off the boredom), whip up new enemies, and erase every single fetch quest and janitorial mission.
Playthrough: I beat the game, and then played through about half of it with a friend. A digital copy was provided for the purposes of this review.
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