Not
Tedious Bosses
While most of the enemies are entertaining to fight even if they aren’t all that clever with their tendency to madly run directly towards you firing wildly, the boss enemies I found less impressive – they are basically just large bullet sponges with some special attacks you have to avoid. While that’s pretty much the definition of classic boss battles it’s a pretty tired mechanic which doesn’t really fit the speed of the rest of the game. The bosses do at least feel like a decent challenge and I had to make multiple times to take them down, but that just broke up the general flow of the game more than anything.
Bugs
The core gameplay itself seems to be pretty sound, with no discernible problems with hitboxes or clipping issues. The triggering of mission events was less consistent for me however, with doors frequently failing to open (and other similar issues), forcing me to restart missions. Due to the short format of said missions this wasn’t all too crippling but was certainly an irritation that I hope will be fixed shortly.
Multiplayer
I’m honestly not sure what’s going on with the multiplayer as it currently stands – it has to be launched separately and as of now I can’t find a way to adjust any video settings for it. Not only that but once in-game (at the fairly low resolution the game defaulted to) we find that the gunplay is infinitely worse than the singleplayer portion – despite the weapons looking the same all of the weight and feel is gone, with shooting providing little feedback.
This is confusing and I hope that the multiplayer gets fixed – a deathmatch which plays like the singleplayer could well be great fun, but currently Alien Rage’s multiplayer certainly is not that – Unreal Tournmanet 3 (2007) is a much better choice.
Verdict
Alien Rage is a decent example of a classic corridor shooter, providing a few hours entertainment without bringing anything new to the table. It isn’t a particularly long game, but then again it isn’t a particularly expensive one either with its £15/$20 price point on Steam so that’s not so much of a problem, even considering that the multiplayer component can basically be written off. All in all, Alien Rage is a good buy if you like classic shooters and want a nice, if not particularly inspired, campaign to blast through. If however you’re after some multiplayer action then, at least for now, you should avoid Alien Rage.
[Editor’s Note: Alien Rage was reviewed on the PC platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]
