Chaz:
Revenge of the Evil Aliens is a side/vertical scrolling twin stick shooter borrowing heavily from games like R-Type and blending them with titles such as Geometry Wars. Developed by Harald Maassen (one of the developers on the fantastic Rocket Riot), featuring 3 Singleplayer Levels, 4 player local coop, multiple difficulties, challenge levels and awardments. The game will set you back at 200msp (£1.70).
As stated above Revenge of the Evil Aliens tries it's hand at blending two forms of 'old-school shooters' together, and for the most part succeeds. Putting the player in the hands of a ship which looks oddly looks like a crosshair, you must avoid incoming enemies whilst trying to despatch them. The game offers various enhancements such as faster fire, longer shot range, bombs and shields. An interesting addition to this is the ability to 'power up' these enhancements, based upon the last one picked up, by building up a higher combo meter. This gives you the potential to get even more abilities such as ricocheting bullets, explosive bullets and a faster shield.
A nice addition to the title is an interactive tutorial. The game is relatively simple enough so its not essential however for those new to the genre, or wanting to polish up on their skills before entering the main game this is a fantastic option. When you jump into the main campaign you will have to fight through 3 reasonably lengthy levels - clocking in at around 15-25 minutes per level depending on the difficulty and player skill. However a mechanic which appeared to artificially lengthen the game was the difficulty. Levels 2 and 3 quickly ramp up in toughness thanks to how the game handles death. From what I could see in Singleplayer there are no lives, instead upon dying all of your enhancements gained are reset, you start with your basic ship, and get moved back to the start of the wave. Considering that without a shield you die within one hit, this soon starts to become extremely frustrating.
Graphically Revenge of the Evil Aliens is passable. The enemies look very B-Movie'esque and the menus are all rather simple. With only 3 backgrounds in the game, one per level, they get dull relatively fast. As expected on a performance front the game runs perfectly smooth even when there are a huge amount of enemies on the screen. However what was extremely disappointing to see is that the game seems to run natively in a non-widescreen resolution which is then offset by thick black bars down each side of the screen, yet offers the ability to 'stretch' it to fit. I'm assuming this is because the original game was developed for the PC and has then been refined for the Indie Games service on the 360, nevertheless there's no real excuse for it. The sound in the game is just as you would expect and sadly never really tries to raise the bar - featuring rocky background tunes, basic laser sounds and generic explosions.
The Local Multiplayer allows 4 players to fight off the alien hordes together in a cooperative fashion. It feels like the game has been designed to be played in multiplayer, offering an enhancement which lets the player's ships join together. Coop also helps offset the frustration found in the Singleplayer component. However sadly there is no Online Multiplayer.
Overall Revenge of the Evil Aliens is an enjoyable experience. There are many times where some bad gameplay decisions seem to cause large amounts of frustration in the Singleplayer, however this is remedied by a solid 4 player cooperative mode. It would have been nice to see some more variation in the ship's weapons, rather than just simple improvements such as faster shots, and an online multiplayer mode. Despite that, for 200msp you are getting a solid old-school twin stick shooter which clocks in at about 1 hour for the main singleplayer, but then offers various difficulties along with the 'true ending' for completing the game on the hardest difficulty, local coop, and various challenge levels. The game has been reasonably priced and comes recommended for fans of the genre.
Chaz gives Revenge of the Evil Aliens 3.6/5
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Strite:
Vertical & Horizontal scrolling shooters is a genre that’s been done so many times. Revenge of the Evil Aliens certainly doesn't try and change this winning formula, but it does what it does well.
Graphically the game is pretty average, with your ship being a simple cube shape and pretty sub-par looking enemies. A couple of nice graphical touches however prevent the game from looking outright terrible. Your ‘ship’ for example changes colour depending on the power ups you have, and the background environments are quite well designed (Especially on the Mars level).
The game isn’t going to wow you with it’s graphics, but at the same time you’re not going to think ‘That looks terrible’ either. As Chaz has already covered most of the gameplay elements I’ll simply add my two cents.
Personally I didn’t find the game too frustrating, on the contrary when I died I knew it was because of a mistake on my part, rather than poor game mechanics, thus it doesn’t feel like the game is being ‘cheap’ and cheating you.
Although the game doesn’t run natively in a widescreen resolution there is an option to ‘stretch’ the screen, which looked fine to me. Also the 3 backgrounds didn’t get dull in the slightest for me and are all quite well designed, the Mars one especially which has ‘dust’ effects blowing in the background, the fact that the game switches from vertical scrolling to horizontal scrolling depending on the level is also a nice touch.
The sound is passable, not great but not too bad either, it does it’s job.
As you progress through the single player story, you will unlock challenge levels which can be accessed from the main menu. Some of these challenges use the same gameplay mechanics found in the rest of the game, however one of the challenge modes called Paratrooper, really mixes things up by putting your ship at the bottom of the screen and not allowing you to move, you can only fire at certain angles also rather than full 360 degrees. Enemy ships will then fly over and drop enemies which you must stop from reaching the bottom of the screen.
The challenges do a good job of keeping the gameplay fresh, throw the co-op into the mix and you have a bag full of potential laughs.
Revenge of the Evil Aliens isn’t going to reinvent the vertical/horizontal scrolling genre, but it does a good job of blending multiple gameplay elements that make up a great package, when you take the price into consideration you have a winner.
Strite gives Revenge of the Evil Aliens a 4/5
Due to differing opinions we decided to provide individual ratings
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