[h1]This game is a mess. Frankly, it should probably be Early Access, not a released game.[/h1]
At its face-value, [i]ALIENS INVADED OUR PLANET[/i] is a survival-horror shooter with a western theme but with aliens. There's a Story mode with the regular waves like the sub-genre usually has, and an Endless mode with just constantly spawning mobs all around.
In the Endless mode I encountered the usual facehuggers and greys, while I also fought some cacodemons / beholders in the Story mode, right before the crash.
[h1]Gameplay loop and the fatal error[/h1]
I reached day 15 (of 49 I think) before I experienced a fatal error that ultimately crashed the game. The game saves progress, so I could continue from this point, but I've seen enough. The crash was far from the only issue with the game.
Every wave (or day in Story mode) starts in the Sheriff's office, where you can pick up weapons you've unlocked by playing missions in the Story mode. So far so good, right?
My first day went alright: I had to run to avoid the aliens and shoot them frantically, and if this worked perfectly, it could be a decent game. I killed all the greys in the vicinity of the town. [i]But I couldn't find one of them.[/i]
Finally, I found them stuck in the desert, doing nothing but jumping (ridiculously high bounces) at regular intervals.
During the next waves, I noticed that if I went outside the town, the enemy AI would totally break. They would stop at the edge of the town, or run straight and finally stop at the desert, only attacking if I went right next to them. Then I could simply pick them up one by one from the distance.
Afterwards, I would still have to go looking for the few who got stuck brooding in the desert.
[h1]Other features and issues[/h1]
One positive thing: special power-ups are a nice touch for an arcade shooter like this - I especially liked the (slightly overpowered) explosive bullets.
There's multiplayer for up to 6 players. I don't see much reason to play it because of the AI bugs but well, I tried hosting my server. As it's an unmarketed game that just launched, not surprisingly no one joined for the 45 minutes that I played. I wonder how the AI would react to multiple players when even a single one can break it.
Menus would also need some polish. E.g. changing difficulty setting has the arrow button change place with the length of the name of the setting. Visually the game looks and runs fine though: I experienced only some minor stutters once when a lot of ragdolls accumulated.
For now, fixing/improving the AI would do heaps to the game's quality and render it less exploitable.
[h1]Conclusions[/h1]
Unlike usual, I haven't got all the achievements in the game, so I can't tell about the end game content. However, this time I felt it wasn't worth the effort.
Frankly, I don't think the game was ready for release. I posted the bug reports to the Steam forums, which I hope the developer will address soon.
However, I won't be following up on the game - I'm sorry to say that I'll get a refund instead.
[url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9997062/]~Twistorian Curator~[/url]
* Aftermath: I now have the game again as a result of a pre-order of Groupees Build a Bundle 46 as of '18 Nov 11. If a patch comes to address some of the more critical issues, I might check it out again.
