Alien Breed: Impact

Got this during a GOG giveaway. For a free isometric top down shooter, it's fine. Likes + has Dead Space 1 vibes + once you are used to the controls, it was fun gunning down aliens + not too hard (finished it in Veteran mode and only cycled through 3 weapons mostly) + short Dislikes - too much camera shake (no setting to turn this off) - hated the "move mouse to edge of screen to locate" setting which was On by default. At least there's a way to turn it off - controls took a while to get used to - camera feels too zoomed in (maybe intentional so you don't see too far around)

I'm using Windows10 Pro. 15.6 inch Dell laptop. This particular game was part of an Alien Breed Trilogy giveaway. I installed using GOG Galaxy client. Press Play, button grays for a few seconds, then comes back as purple Play again. Restart laptop. Try again. Same thing. This is the craps! Ok, lets try Offline installers instead. Installation seems OK, but just after it finishes, Windows Defender comes up with a notification saying Controlled Folder Access blocked for "icacls.exe". Although I go and allow access, still nothing happens. I get absolutely no change in screen graphics whether launching through GOG Galaxy client or the Start Menu offline launcher. No lockups, no crashes, no error messages, just plain can't play it. CRAP! I have 32GB of DDR4 RAM. Will definitely be uninstalling this title and I won't even bother trying the installation of the other two successive titles. Older games and newer hardware are often at impassible odds with one another.

It's got atmosphere, it's simple, it's very old schooley. I like the artwork it definitely gives off the Alien movies vibes. I think the original was inspired by Alien franchise in the first place, anyway. The game's alright, nothing special, it's not shovel ware, it's just a budget twin-stick shooter. The only drawback is that's it's barebones, it's also fairly easy. It definitely makes me want to check out the original games. I played the originals decades ago for a little while.

I think the generic execution is good. But controls are rreally cr*p, the critics were now exaggerating this time. The constant chaking is really ruining the experience, while the blurry menu/terminal screens are just truly idiotic and annoying. I have tried to apply the fixes available on the internet. 1) controls were successfully applied, which transfromed the game "from unplayable mess" to "something actually fun", so that's good, first problem sorted (I even could actually play a bit) 2) Then I have tried to apply the fix for the unstoppable shaking and blurring effect, but no banana. After a few tries it managed to crash even the Windows kernel (!). Removed the files I have edited, but then something somewhere was already overwritten, it didn't even start anymore. 3) As for the third gripe (blurry menus/terminal screens), I couldn't find any resolution, but those are less annyoing as it is not in your face constantly. I really can't be bothered any more. I wanted to love this game, as I have loved the original on Amiga, but this is just messed up. And when I spend more time of trying to get a game work than playing it, then I know something is wrong (and I have spent just over 3 hours playing, according to GoG). This is a missed opportunity, ruined by the stubborness of the developers, sticking to their "vision", while ruining the experience for a large portion of the players. The trully insulting bit is that it could have been so easily rectified (make their "visionary features" optional in the menu - problems solved)

Gameplay is incredible repetitive where it is the standard travel from point A to point B, along the way loot stuff from corpses, lockers, shoot some aliens, use a computer, watch some more annoying explosions, then repeat for every single level. It does not help that the camera is jacked, mouse rotation is more harmful than helpful since it messes up your aiming, this is where cheap tricks come in where the game spawns in enemies exactly behind you where you have to either fire your weapons exactly vertically downwards with limited visibility since camera is pitched 45 degrees leaving huge blind spots or you rotate 45 degrees at a time with Q or E key, by the time you finished rotating the alien has already eaten your ass along with a quarter of your health, like I said cheap tricks.