Alien Breed



Alien Breed is a series of top-down Shoot'Em Ups by Team17, perhaps better known as the creators of the Worms series. The original Alien Breed was released in 1991 for the Commodore Amiga and later in 1993 by Micro League for MS-DOS. The game was based heavily - and unofficially - on the Alien films, specifically Aliens, and also on the 8-bit-era games Laser Squad and Paradroid and was compared to Gauntlet (1985 video game) and Alien Syndrome. The formula was simple enough. The player(s) controlled a Space Marine on an alien-infested Space Station, attempting to locate elevators leading to lower levels while battling aliens, gathering ammo and money and buying things from store terminals. The style of gameplay, i.e. rampaging from point A to B, was considered a direct precursor to the First-Person Shooter, namely Doom. It was followed by Alien Breed II: The Horror Continues in 1993, Alien Breed: Tower Assault in 1994 (the last 2D entry), Alien Breed 3D in 1995 (in conjuction with Ocean), Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds later that same year. All were highly praised. A PC/Dreamcast First-Person Shooter sequel called Alien Breed: Conflict was planned, but was eventually canceled.

Fast forward to December of 2009, with the release of the Unreal 3 engine-driven Alien Breed: Evolution on Xbox Live Arcade, later released as Alien Breed: Impact on Steam and the Playstation Network in June of 2010. This Continuity Reboot of the series stars Joseph Conrad, chief engineer aboard a diplomatic ship called the Leopold. After suddenly dropping out of Hyperspace, the Leopold impacts a far larger derelict spacecraft in a decaying orbit around an uninhabited ice world. With most of the crew dead, it's up to Conrad to find out what went wrong and attempt to rectify the situation. Reviewers praised the game's look but complained It's the Same, Now It Sucks, stating it was no different then it's Amiga predecessors. A sequel, Alien Breed 2: Assault, was released in September, followed two months later by the final part of the trilogy, Descent.

The original series provides examples of:

 * Announcer Chatter
 * A Space Marine Is You: Unless you are one of these Dinosaur-like beings in The Horror Continues
 * A Winner Is You: Hung a lampshade on Special Edition 1992
 * Bus Crash: Happens to Nash in Tower Assault, unless you start a co-op game.
 * Critical Existence Failure: From The Horror Continues and onwards, player characters would explode upon death, just like with everything else.
 * Collision Damage: In the 2D games. Oddly enough it also applies to the Aliens as well.
 * Continuity Reboot: Can be said about the FPS installments.
 * Fan Remake: In form of Obliteration
 * First-Person Shooter: Alien Breed 3D and The Killing Grounds
 * Friendly Fireproof: Averted. Though it was optional in Tower Assault.
 * Game Breaking Bug: Special Edition 92 apparently had one.
 * Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Aliens in the dark levels.
 * Killer App: The first three games were this for the Amiga.
 * Late to the Party: Especially Tower Assault.
 * Made of Explodium: The Aliens explode upon death. So does you.
 * Mook Maker: In the form of the holes in Tower Assault. Though there were no shortage of Aliens in the earlier entries either.
 * Nintendo Hard
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: If the character select screen in The Horror Continues is to believed, Stone - one of the human characters - looks suspiciously like Scott Bakula.
 * Recycled in Space: The earlier games are basically Gauntlet (1985 video game) in SPACE!
 * Ryu and Ken: Stone and Johnson in The Horror Continues
 * Schrödinger's Player Character: Especially notable in The Horror Continues, the only entry in the series to have multiple selectable characters.
 * Tower Assault has a way around this though, see Bus Crash above.
 * Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Nobody's sure if Tower Assault's Jordan and Nash are the same Stone and Jonshon from the earlier entries, just renamed.
 * Timed Mission: Every time you activate the self-destruct sequence in the earlier games.
 * Updated Rerelease: In the form of Alien Breed:Special Edition 1992
 * Unwinnable by Design: In the '92 special edition, the third level's layout makes it possible to seal yourself on the western part of the map, with no route to the exit. The mission briefing warns this is possible, and recommands passing through a fire door your about to close to avoid that situation.
 * Weak Turret Gun: Subverted, these could withstand quite a lot of punishment.

The new series provides examples of:

 * A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Conrad's log mentions an android uprising, in which he lost his second wife and daughter.
 * Alien Blood: Green, natch.
 * Apocalyptic Log: The logs found in Impact are just descriptions of the different types of aliens, but several logs found aboard the derelict in Assault play this straight. Descent has a mixture of both.
 * Badass: Conrad.
 * Badass Boast: Conrad gives one in Assault's intro.
 * Bald of Awesome: Conrad has nary a hair on his head.
 * BFG The Ion Spike, essentially a Lightning Gun, found in Impact. It's actually not all that large, but it packs a hell of a punch. More to the spirit of the trope, the Hyper Blaster and Rocket Launcher in Assault are both fairly sizable.
 * Decent adds "Project X", which pretty much shoots a huge burst of lighting forward that kills anything in it's path.
 * Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Breed, of course. The logs often describe how their physical features and abilities are not likely to have developed naturally.
 * Body Armor as Hit Points: The "Hardened Armor" item is this.
 * Boring but Practical: The Assault Rifle is rapid fire, has two-hundred round magazines, ammo for it is easy to find and cheap to purchase, and it has inexpensive upgrades. You begin the game with it, and it is useful throughout all three episodes, barring some hairier segments in Assault better addressed with the Flame Thrower or Hyper Blaster.
 * Bug War: The implied result were the Breed to escape their confinement aboard the derelict.
 * Camera Screw: Unlike, say, Alien Swarm, the maps in this game are designed in such a way that you can't always see what you're doing, requiring you to manually rotate the camera view to maintain perspective on the action.
 * Cartwright Curse: Conrad has been widowed twice. The second time, he lost a daughter, too.
 * Co-Op Multiplayer: Two players can control Vance and Barnes, other survivors of the Leopold's crew, in a side-story to the single-player campaign. They meet up with Conrad on occasion.
 * Dark and Troubled Past: For some reason, Descent decides to give every single character a dark and ambiguous past.
 * Conrad
 * Mia
 * Vance
 * Barnes
 * Klein
 * Disaster Dominoes: As if crashing into the derelict wasn't bad enough, things get worse and worse as Conrad goes along, and nothing seems to work right.
 * Dying as Yourself:
 * Emergency Weapon: You have a semi-automatic pistol for backup, with unlimited reloads. It packs a surprising punch.
 * The Engineer: Conrad. This is shown in game by his ability to effortlessly manipulate critical systems of both ships.
 * Everybody's Dead, Dave: Virtually everyone besides Conrad, Mia, and the Co-op characters Vance and Barnes is dead. In Impact Conrad meets some medics and wounded soldiers, but beyond that the few NPCs encountered get munched by aliens before Conrad can even see them. And Mia isn't even alive, per se.
 * Exploding Barrels: All over the place. Some are conveniently placed to blow open new pathways.
 * Explosive Instrumentation: If you think the Leopold has this bad, wait 'till you see the derelict.
 * Foreshadowing: In a rather dull example of the trope, you will always find a log detailing a boss creature before you fight it, thus averting Giant Space Flea From Nowhere.
 * Frickin' Laser Beams: Courtesy of Impact's Laser Rifle. It's essentially the series' Sniper Rifle, though it does not reappear in later episodes- justifiable, given their more intense, close-range fights.
 * Gatling Good: Assault introduces the Hyper Blaster, a man-portable gatling gun that fires acid-tipped rounds.
 * Giant Squid: Assault's first boss is this. It uses it's Combat Tentacles to shake the girders and make scrap metal fall on Conrad, and to chuck Exploding Barrels at him. And it happens to live in the derelict's reactor coolant.
 * Ghost Ship: The derelict, later identified as the UCS Aguire.
 * Goggles Do Nothing: Conrad has these, presumably due to being an engineer. He's never seen actually wearing them over his eyes, of course.
 * Heal Thyself: Conrad can pick up both small and large health kits. An upgrade can be purchased that increases their effect and halves the time needed to use them.
 * Horde of Alien Locusts: Given the series' origins as an Expy of Aliens, this shouldn't come as a surprise.
 * Jerkass: Conrad, Vance and  Conrad shows himself to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold in Assault, though.
 * Lock and Key Puzzle: Conrad often has to find certain objects to proceed, be it an actual key card or a missing valve or replacement circuit board or what have you. However, opening one door or fixing a piece of equipment often causes something else to break, resulting in a chain of Lock And Key Puzzles.
 * Locomotive Level: Level four, "Primed", of Assault culminates in a ride aboard the derelict's internal monorail system. The catch is, it's a Boss Fight against a Giant Spider with friends that keeps ripping pieces of the train off behind Conrad. It ends when he kicks an Exploding Barrel at it, followed by a grenade.
 * Decent has a level where you must fight an Alien Queen while going up an elevator, plus another level where you're riding on a monorail and sometimes get shot at by turrets.
 * Made of Explodium: Both ships. The Breed run into as many hazards as you do.
 * Multi Mook Melee: Assault becomes this as you near the end,
 * Notice This: Pickups have a visible sheen.
 * Old Soldier: Conrad served a record seven tours of duty in the earth military prior to his career as an engineer.
 * Plant Aliens: The log describing Impacts Final Boss mentions that it is part plant, and apparently can transmute and reassemble itself anywhere that the bio-sludge present in the hydroponics sector crops up.
 * Robot Girl: Lieutenant Mia, Conrad's Voice with an Internet Connection. He briefly escorts her in Assault.
 * Save Point: Unusually for a game nowadays, you must find specific terminals at which to save, which also happen to be the stores. The game also auto saves at specific checkpoints.
 * Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: In Impact, the given dimensions of the derelict are in dozens of kilometres. The mass is given as a little over 100,000 tons. This would actually mean the derelict is millions of times less dense than a soap bubble.
 * Sentry Gun: Found as an inventory item, and must be installed on specific "power points"... conveniently located in areas that get a lot of Breed traffic.
 * In the last level of Impact, along with Assault and Descent sentry guns become enemies. The security system (Which has probably been hacked by Klein) really doesn't want you on that ship
 * Shotguns Are Just Better: The Shot Cannon is powerful enough that one need not buy the damage upgrade for it, its devastating throughout all three episodes. Don't expect to hit anything beyond point-blank range, however.
 * Shut UP, Hannibal: In Assault's ending.
 * Standard Status Effects: Conrad can toss stun grenades.
 * Take Up My Sword:
 * Take Your Time: There are specific sequences where you have limited time to escape an area, but you have all the time in the world before the derelict impacts the ice planet's surface.
 * The Stoic: Conrad. Especially in Impact's ending.
 * Stuff Blowing Up: Of all shapes and sizes, from the Leopold's computer mainframe down to individual consoles.
 * Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Ammunition and supplies are plentiful enough, but the game throws a whole pile of items at you before Assault's finale.
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Impact's final level takes place on the derelict, which, being over two hundred years old, is rusted, decayed, angular and not at all inviting in appearance, in stark contrast to the Leopold's curves and bloom effects.
 * Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: mostly averted. This game's flamethrower is damaging, handles crowds better then any gun save the Hyper Blaster and is surprisingly ammo-efficient. It is however, painfully short-ranged.
 * Worm Sign: Impact's Final Boss announces its appearance in this manner.
 * Stuff Blowing Up: Of all shapes and sizes, from the Leopold's computer mainframe down to individual consoles.
 * Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Ammunition and supplies are plentiful enough, but the game throws a whole pile of items at you before Assault's finale.
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Impact's final level takes place on the derelict, which, being over two hundred years old, is rusted, decayed, angular and not at all inviting in appearance, in stark contrast to the Leopold's curves and bloom effects.
 * Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: mostly averted. This game's flamethrower is damaging, handles crowds better then any gun save the Hyper Blaster and is surprisingly ammo-efficient. It is however, painfully short-ranged.
 * Worm Sign: Impact's Final Boss announces its appearance in this manner.