Alien Breed Trilogy

Alien Breed: Impact, Alien Breed 2: Assault, and Alien Breed 3: Descent were part of the Team 17 Jumbo Humble Bundle, one I picked up for a few bucks because it included other games I wanted, however it also got me the complete Alien Breed series. Steam terms this one an 'Action game' but it falls firmly in the '3rd Person Top Down Shooter' category. I initially tried the first one and wrote a review, however I have since played the other 2 and found one review for the group would suffice.

The game tells a bit of a story and I appreciate the form it takes, giving a comic book panel style display:

and, to be fair, the entire game feels like reading a comic book, gameplay and all, which CAN be a very good thing if done right. This one, however, isn't. At it's heart this is a standard space shooter, albeit a 3rd person shooter, not too far removed from the Alien series (no big surprise there). You roam through a space ship finding pieces to unlock progress (a key to open a door, etc.) encountering aliens you need to shoot as you go. That should all work, but, you ever notice how questing in a game is all good and fine until you come into a quest that sends you to Point A, then tells you you need to go to Point B, before sending you to Point C, then back to Point A to continue, turns out to be the most painful ones? Yeah, that sums up this whole game. It's an endless series of run and fetch quests:

OMG, there's a fire! Quick run back half way across the ship to activate fire suppression (shoot 3 aliens)! OH NO, the panel isn't powered, find the generator and fire it up (shoot 5 aliens, 2 of them really big)! Fire out? Good, lets go back to Point B to activate the console, then all the way back to that first door and find out why we need to backtrack again (Shoot 8 aliens, assorted sizes). Rinse and repeat until your eyes and ears bleed.

I want to play this game, I'm very curious about the story, I'm pretty sure I know how it'll end, but it's about the journey of getting there, and it is one of the better visually crafted games I've played in quite sometime:

Check out that kick ass fire!

If there was more craft in the progress I'd bump this up a lot higher and I do intend to try these again in the future, but, as of now, I think I'll have to give this one a 4/10 rating. Regular price each game is 9.99, however you can save some coin by buying the Trilogy at 22.99, if, and only if, you enjoy fetch quests.

Bottom line, I'd recommend giving this bad boy a pass.