You've just gone and blown 'is bloody 'ead 'orf (Alien Storm (Amiga))

Member Name: iamasadlittleboy

Product:	Alien Storm (Amiga)
Date:	09/07/09 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You can blow the robot up

Disadvantages: uninspiring, monotone and not even up there with it's contemporaries of its day

After replaying Streets of Rage I/II recently I decided to have a go on this "classic" that was from my childhood again. This game was on a the MegaGames 3 in 1 - Vol 3 cartridge which also includes Super Thunder Blade and Super Monaco GP, and like the Streets of Rage games and Golden Axe games this was a side scrolling beat em up (with added shooting mini-levels).
Originally released in 1990 in the Arcade before being ported to the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and the Master System, the game, like many older games, has seen a bit of a revival in budget form on things like the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection disk and the Wii Virtual console. No longer are retro gamers struggling to find the games of yesteryear when their available in the mainstream through things like Wii's virtual console, though sadly for every Streets of Rage or Mario Bothers theres an Alien Storm.
So why did I say that?
Well Alien Storm, doesn't seem all that good to be honest, the appeals of SoR and Golden Axe (GA) were all about fantastic gaming experiences were the player was the key to the game and fun just happened. Here however the game often feels like a chore and the game play just feels a little bit dodgy and lacks the appeal of the other side scrollers.
The game see's you selected one of three players (well you and a buddy if you can coller one to play it with you), odd isn't it, how all the games seemed to have you picking one of 3 characters. The playable characters are A woman, a man and robot, they have names but unlike the SoR games where the characters had some appeal and their own identity only the robot seems to have any here.

The controls are simple, as they are in the other games of the genere, the played can move left or right, up or down. Though theres no "jump" button (to jump involves some random button pressing that I never understood...and still dont), theres a "roll" button instead that see's your choosen character erm...roll...across the screen. Sadly the animation of the robot rolling is laughable and looks like the robot drops his head and charges across the screen. Theres also button that corresponds to the players attack, that changes depending on distance from the enemy, and a special button.
The characters each have there own specials that wipes out all the "normal" enemies on the screen. This is where the games only break to humour strikes, the Robot's special move is pretty much a "self destruction" that see's the character take it's head off and it's body explodes, before a new body runs on the screen and picks the head up. All rather good humoured but a little pointless barrign cheap giggles.
The game spans over 8 stages, each split into a few parts, with a side scrolling fighting part and a "shooting" section, where you're character is controlled in a first person view trying to shoot down the baddies. It's a nice break from the side scrolling fighting, but it feels like a side scrolling beat em up mereged with a shooting game that manages to do niether particularly well. In fact the fighting seems like a poor mans Golden Axe (who it's self is merely a cheap mans version of Streets of Rage), as opposed to a capable game.

The graphics are often boring and uninspiring, with the enemy's hiding in things like garbage cans not making the game any more appealing. The vast amount of enemies that can be on screen is quite good but they are often just coloured blobs or little green face huggers. They just seem like they were designed by a 3 year old who wet themselves seeing the robot's special move, as opposed to true game designers.
Ok fair enough the game was made in the early part of the 1990's, but thats not an excuse for enemies that are "blobs", Sonic didn't need to, so why did alien Storm?
Players are given two bars a health metre and an "energy" metre, the health is obvious so I won't explain that. However the energy bar is a rather unwelcome addition to the game, it's a bar thats used for when your players fire guns and use their specials which limits over use of either. This often leaves you hitting things up close with an almost powerless move, a rather poor option for the designers. I do admit they needed something to stop abuse of the specials, but why not copy the way that either SoR did it (1 time per level per life, with items to earn a second) or Golden Axe (collect items to use the special). Rather than punish the player by leaving them with an effectively useless character?

Over all the game was fun back then whe we didn't know better, but pales when put alongside the competition of SoR2 and 3 and GA2. The game doesn't even match the original GA and sadly cannot fairly be compared to SoR, on the Virtual console I'd give it a miss, the game is pretty much a perfect port of a game that was far from being perfect.

Summary: A poor mans Golden Axe...