You may/may not remember our Alien Breed 3: Descent review for the Xbox 360 at the back-end of last year. It’s taken a while, but finally PlayStation 3 owners can get in on the alien butt (well, sack) kicking action as the game has finally hit the PlayStation Store. Having done a play-test of the PS3 version we are now providing a brief recap for those who missed the review first time around.
The game is from the bods at Team17, and is an isometric shooter in a similar vein to Housemarque’s Dead Nation. You fill the rather sizable boots of Theodore J. Conrad who is the Chief Engineer on the spaceship ‘Leopold’. “Engineer?” I hear you cry, “We aren’t going to be traipsing back and forth fixing stuff are we?” – well, yes but we’ll get back to that later.
Unfortunately for our dear Theodore, things aboard the Leopold aren’t particularly positive and aliens are spawning left, right, and centre. Guess whose job it is to sort everything out? We guess Batman was busy…
In all honesty the story isn’t the game’s strongest feature, so it’s down to the gameplay mechanics to shine through. For the most part they are solid, and do their job well. The left stick is used to control Theodore, whilst the right is used to aim whatever weapon you are holding. R2 is to fire, and L2 is to use whatever item you have equipped.
Weapons and items can be hot swapped using the D-pad, and Theodore feels surprisingly weighty as he clomps about the place. Unfortunately the camera can prove somewhat recalcitrant as it can only be rotated 45 degrees at a time, meaning that there are occasions where you just can’t find the sweet spot. It’s also slow to react, which isn’t brilliant when aliens are prone to popping up from the ground behind you. Is it a gamebreaker? In my opinion, no, but it certainly can be an inconvenience.
You have a decent selection of weapons, all upgradeable, but I found myself sticking with the trusty Assault Rifle and using my Shotgun as a back-up. The aliens go down really easily, and are certainly no match for a fully upgraded weapon. Items such as health packs and ammo can also be purchased at save stations.
Visually it is all very similar, as one might expect, but it’s certainly not awful and can be rather atmospheric. Heavy use of shadow combined with the pulled back camera hides a lot of inadequacies, and it’s only really in the cutscenes where you notice a lack of textures and animation.
The game is, for the most part, an enjoyable romp, but it does suffer quite badly from repetition. Objectives never seem to deviate from the ‘go there, fix that, OMG aliens!’ template, which is fine in very short bursts but starts to grate after sessions longer than half an hour.
Overall Alien Breed 3: Descent is by no means a bad game at all, and if you like your shooters then it is worth a look.
For an in-depth look at Alien Breed 3: Descent, check out our review
Forrest_01
So basically the same as the first & second ones then??
Not necessarily a bad thing, as i am playing through the first & it’s really good & i have the second one waiting for when i finish the first, but i guess the moral of the story is don’t play all three back to back! :)
Might pick this up if it goes into special offers then. Thanks Dan.
Yersal
The first is quite an appealing little number, I’ve not got the second so probably won’t get this for a while.
If you wanna party up to try and achieve some online trophies one day Mr Forrest then just give me a shout when I’m online one day. Mind you as I can see from your PSN profile you don’t look like a trophy hunting sorta guy ;)
Forrest_01
I hope you pinned this post Yersal! :)
I have actually agreed to do co-op on the first one with yogh_wayne (although we have yet to arrange a date/time due to my hectic schedule of late), but i do still need to do the second one on co-op as well. Can’t wholly recommend it yet as i haven’t actually played it, but it isn’t exceptionally expensive & i am told it is very similar to the first. If you end up getting it, give me a shout & we’ll rock it out!
& no, you are right, i don’t like trophies & don’t get a little ‘thrill’ every time i hear that ‘ding’! :/
Yersal
Pinned :)
TSBonyman
Nice recap, i picked up the first game on special offer last week so that’ll do me for the moment.
tactical20
I loved 1 & 2 and am enjoying 3.
Foxhound_Solid
Looks good, could be interested :-)
Delriach
I liked the first one kinda. I’m a bit saddened that they never really addressed the repetition issues.
gaffers101
Looks a bit too much like the other ones for me.