Far from an oldschool FPS.

[GOPO™]

As an ex professional Quake II player I was hoping to get that oldschool feel when I preordered the game but unfortunately that is not the case here. Alien Rage is not a bad game but it isn't for me and I feel cheated into buying something close to a Sci-Fi Call of Duty. Let me elaborate:

Health System - This is probably the biggest let·down for me. I can't think of one oldschool shooter with this kind of regenerating health mechanic except for maybe Halo 2 which I refused to play precisely because of this reason. Even the guys at Microsoft realised the regenerating health is a poorly designed concept and reverted back to the original mechanic (which isn't that good either but it's better). I will explain why this is a bad concept per game mode. Single Player The player is not fighting against a horde of enemies but rather one enemy at a time. You can just kill an enemy, retreat to cover until your health regenerates and then go for the next one. This leads to an extremely dissapointing gameplay experience from my point of view and I can only regard this game as a poorly ported console shooter. Multiplayer There is no tactical aspect to multiplayer games. In a classic oldschool shooter you know exactly that Weapon X does Y damage per projectile, in Alien Rage you just point, click and hope for the best. A typical showdown between two experienced players will consist in a lot of taking cover and that is a concept that's not even remotely connected with classic PC shooters such as Quake or Unreal. It's a matter of who get's lucky first as opposed to who is the better player.

Camera Sway - Quake didn't have it and in Unreal you could turn it off. Implementing camera sway in a game that tries to bring oldschool shooters back to life is a terrible idea. Not only you can barely shoot while running but it also discourages sidestepping or dodging of any kind except for when you have to run for cover to... regenerate your health... How is this supposed to be a "fast paced" shooter when most players will have to stand still to ever get a headshot with a single-shot weapon?

Iron Sight - I don't even know where to start here so I am going to keep this one short. This is the first and only "oldschool" PC Sci-Fi shooter that I have ever seen in which weapons have iron sight. Not even Counter Strike has iron sight. Whoever decided this was a good idea should be fired as soon as possible just for thinking that something that covers almost half of my screen is usefull. Unfortunately iron sight or any kind of zooming is mandatory for playing this game because...

...crosshairs are not precise enough - There isn't much to say here except for the fact that in order to get a long range headshot you have to use the iron sight. I would have loved to see something resembling the classic Quake III crosshair with a dot in the center of the screen with a circle around it (or anything else along those lines). From my point of view the crosshairs are extremely poorly designed.

Accuracy - Accuracy is heavily influenced by certain factors, some of which I have already talked about, these factors are: camera sway (or weapon bob), bullet spread, recoil and the fact that taking any kind of damage throws off the crosshair. Quake didn't have accuracy issues and Unreal didn't have accuracy issues, which is ironic in a mind boggling way since Alien Rage was built on Unreal Engine 3. The most basic oldschool shooter concept is that where you point, that's where the projectile goes (slower or faster depending on the projectile, it could be a bullet or it could be a rocket). Also, in oldschool shooters, your crosshair will not oscillate when you run, shoot or take damage (aside from some exceptional cases). Alien Rage is extremely subpar regarding this aspect of the game, which is one of the most important for oldschool players such as myself. Regarding all of this, the fact that they implemented a statistic that tracks accuracy makes my mind melt.

Hidden Collectibles - This kind of gameplay mechanic has no place in a game advertised as an "oldschool shooter". Doom III had something similar but if you found them, you found them, if not, you weren't shown a screen at the end of the level saying "you got X out of Y" and you need to grind more. The other annoying aspect of hidden collectibles in Alien Rage is that the audio logs tell the main storyline, so if you don't find them, you have no idea of what you're doing in space and why you're shooting at your mining buddies. In regard to this, the player is very much comparable with the "I Have No Idea What I'm Doing" dog.

Weapon Limit - I don't know who thought this would be a good idea but I know for a fact that this kind of decisions aren't taken by an individual but by a group of people so I find it really disturbing that the majority of that group decided it would be better this way rather than having access to all of your weapons.

Jumping - In Alien Rage jumping is pretty much a cosmetic thing as you can barely lift your feet off the ground. This kind of redundant movement mechanic is a cheap way of fooling the player into thinking they have some sort of choice regarding level pregression but unfortunately this is not the case, the player is just a train on a railroad track. Jumping is as useless as trying to kill the GX-7 Destroyer Prototype with melee attacks. The only thing the jump key does in Alien Rage is mess up your aim, I guess that, as Westley Snipes once said, white men can't, indeed, jump.

Weapon Progression System - Campaign mode for oldschool shooters revolves around the idea that finding a new weapon is a major event, you don't just find new weapons on the ground. When I say Campaign mode I mean something resembling a Story mode which the Single Player mode of Alien Rage wants to be as opposed to the Single Player modes in Unreal Tournament or Quake III which were basically Multiplayer games with bots. This poorly designed gameplay mechanic leads to no satisfaction when finding a new weapon.

Infinite Enemy Spawn - Close to the end of the game there is an area where enemies just keep spawning ang spawning. I pretty much have no problem with this except for the fact that it makes the Leaderboards completely useless. I spent four hours grinding aliens in that area just to prove that anybody who has the determination can be in the top of the Leaderboards. This area alone makes the scoring system throughout the game redundant, the score you got on previous levels doesn't matter anymore because you've hit the pipe that spews an infinite amount of alien enemies towards their death.

In conclusion, Alien Rage feels like a poorly designed console port and most if not all of it's problems arise from the fact that this was targeted towards console players. A console first person shooter can be nothing more than a casual game aimed towards people that don't like to pick up ammo, health or armor and that can't aim.

TL;DR: I had more fun writing this than playing the game. If you like tactical modern shooters then you will probably love Alien Rage because it's what you like and it's in space. If you like oldschool FP shooters, then "these are not the droids you are looking for".

[Alation]

that's good

[Imba™]

When you guys talk about 'oldschool' FPS, you make me howl with laughter when you talk about Quake2 or Unreal Tourny being 'Oldschool' as they were based on Wolf 3d and years before that we had games like Starglider and YEARS before that we had Battlezone-Starwars Vector FPS, they are the 'old school shooters'. So moaning about what's new and what isn't when saying 1990 shooters are 'old school' is a riot!

You also seem to have forgotten that mods for many of those games added or removed gameplay ideas we see today in most shooters from the late 1980's . Action Quake, Golden Eye 64, Counter strike etc. So most of the old 1990 shooters we 'love' the best ideas was in the mods (or god forbid on a console!)....

Now fair enough AR:U seems to be COD, BF3 friendly in most of it's concepts. But instead of have a cry about how 2010's gameplay it is and not 1990's why not either ask for a MOD gameplay mod that is Quake Arena style.

No iron sights, no HP regen, accurate hip fire to a center pixel is correct to Quake Areana etc, but I'm sure that could be modded in no issue.

Cause your basically sitting there having a whine that Skyrim isn't Zork...

[Vahnkiljoy]

Originally posted by KINGSHREE:

Originally posted by Pan:

Thanks, TC. Was hoping for a new Serious Sam. This obviously is not it.

Serious Sam 4 is in development :).

Let's hope that they at least don't ♥♥♥♥ it up like the did with 3, ugh that game was a disappointment.

[Shooter]

Originally posted by FUS-RO-DAH Pro™:

...Cause your basically sitting there having a whine that Skyrim isn't Zork...

omg...Zork!!!

im having a very special flashback.

[Xara]

If you really watched the gameplay trailers on the store, you would have realized that none of the gameplay shown there is in any way relateable to how the game actually plays in SP. When you look at the trailer it's 90% cut from cutscenes and in-between there is some shooting which looked very much old school like, but has nothing to do with the 'hide in cover and reg health' gameplay it actually has. Probably recorded with God Mode to hide BLOODY SCREEN SO REAL. So much for that "argument."

If anything this is despicable marketing, not the fault of the people who buy it based on what is shown.

[GOPO™]

Originally posted by iC Xaragoth:

If you really watched the gameplay trailers on the store, you would have realized that none of the gameplay shown there is in any way relateable to how the game actually plays in SP. When you look at the trailer it's 90% cut from cutscenes and in-between there is some shooting which looked very much old school like, but has nothing to do with the 'hide in cover and reg health' gameplay it actually has. Probably recorded with God Mode to hide BLOODY SCREEN SO REAL. So much for that "argument."

If anything this is despicable marketing, not the fault of the people who buy it based on what is shown.

Thank you for posting. I agree, I would take a demo any day over gameplay footage.

[evilmrfrank]

Originally posted by Sefyra:

Apart from all this the game is quite cheap. I don't feel robbed or anything. It could just have been a really good old school shooter - a game I would love to play. And since it's using the Unreal Engine 3 I was hoping for them to release the editor so I could make some maps for it. I did that for UT2004 so it would have been a blast to be able to do it again for a game that people play.

I was really hoping for this too. Not nearly enough UE3 games that have the editor released with them :(

[RATATAT407]

man... ignore these angry commentors telling you you miss juged the previews. Quake 4 was one of my favorite games and I got excited when I saw the videos. Dark atmoshpere, some corridor elements, variety of weapons. I saw the caption of your review but I didn't read it before I started playing because I was sure you were overreacting. But sadly you weren't wrong. I guess it was just wishful thinking on my part. Quake 5 2016. no I'm lying.

[GOPO™]

Originally posted by karmabadboy:

man... ignore these angry commentors telling you you miss juged the previews. Quake 4 was one of my favorite games and I got excited when I saw the videos. Dark atmoshpere, some corridor elements, variety of weapons. I saw the caption of your review but I didn't read it before I started playing because I was sure you were overreacting. But sadly you weren't wrong. I guess it was just wishful thinking on my part. Quake 5 2016. no I'm lying.

Thank you for posting and for seeing the game as I do. I have just updated my review. I added Jumping, Infinite Enemy Spawn and added more content to Hidden Collectibles.

Hidden Collectibles - [...] The other annoying aspect of hidden collectibles in Alien Rage is that the audio logs tell the main storyline, so if you don't find them, you have no idea of what you're doing in space and why you're shooting at your mining buddies. In regard to this, the player is very much comparable with the "I Have No Idea What I'm Doing" dog.

Jumping - In Alien Rage jumping is pretty much a cosmetic thing as you can barely lift your feet off the ground. This kind of redundant movement mechanic is a cheap way of fooling the player into thinking they have some sort of choice regarding level pregression but unfortunately this is not the case, the player is just a train on a railroad track. Jumping is as useless as trying to kill the GX-7 Destroyer Prototype with melee attacks. The only thing the jump key does in Alien Rage is mess up your aim, I guess that, as Westley Snipes once said, white men can't, indeed, jump.

Infinite Enemy Spawn - Close to the end of the game there is an area where enemies just keep spawning ang spawning. I pretty much have no problem with this except for the fact that it makes the Leaderboards completely useless. I spent four hours grinding aliens in that area just to prove that anybody who has the determination can be in the top of the Leaderboards. This area alone makes the scoring system throughout the game redundant, the score you got on previous levels doesn't matter anymore because you've hit the pipe that spews an infinite amount of alien enemies towards their death.

[76561198071877867]

herp,

but fully agree

[TLoЯdZ]

Originally posted by Gopo:

@Reksel Reignsun
Can you stop posting here please, I'm looking to have a discussion with rational people, not VAC banned trolls.

@the_Crimson_King
I didn't say anything about the controls in my post because the default controls are somewhat close to the controls I would normaly use. I think most oldschool players are comfortable with the default control set, people stopped using the arrow keys and started using WASD sometime around the '97-'98 period.

I havend stop playing with the arrow keys and i play from 98' beginning with Unreal, and still do, for me its pratical but thats a opinion, i know a lot of people that playing still with the arrow keys :)

[GOPO™]

When I started playing Quake II I was using the arrow keys but I switched to WASD because from my point of view there are more bindable keys around. Everybody has his own control set with which they are comfortable, for instance in every MOBA I play I use the Space key to attack instead of the default A key because I can do it with my left thumb.

[Game Warden Isz]

Originally posted by Gopo:

Originally posted by karmabadboy:

Hidden Collectibles - This kind of gameplay mechanic has no place in a game advertised as an "oldschool shooter". Doom III had something similar but if you found them, you found them, if not, you weren't shown a screen at the end of the level saying "you got X out of Y" and you need to grind more.

Uhh...

http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=File:Wolfenstein_3D_-_DOS_-_6.png

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q186/Soaprman/imagefests/doom2-03/DOOM0103.png

http://www.moddb.com/members/itsdev/images/in-the-shadows-level-complete

[GOPO™]

Painkiller also had hidden collectibles but they weren't mandatory in order to follow the main storyline. Also, I already said that when I use the term oldschool shooter I am referring to the first shooters in which you can aim with a mouse (you have a crosshair you can move with the mouse as opposed to the mouse aiming in the first Quake and Doom in which you could move left or right with the mouse).