In this day in age, games are constantly being refined to bring new spins on existing genres or bring something totally original to the table. While this is met with varied degrees of success, innovation is never a bad idea. Once in a while, a game comes a long that harkens back to the old days of simplicity with classic gameplay and half the time it's actually really good, and further enhanced by waiving learning curves in favor of addicting twitch gaming. Unfortunately, Alien Blast is not one of these games. Alien Blast takes place in the future where humanity enhabits a number of planets. You are a turret gunner protecting these bases from an invading alien force. Perhaps the story leaves a bit to be desired, but is suiting for a game as simple as this. Gameplay puts you in the turret of a base on one of the similar looking planets. Aiming is done with the mouse. Left-button shoots and right-button zooms. You can switch between the game's seven weapons with the 1-7 keys. You spend any of the the game's 45 levels blasting away the invading aliens until they stop showing up. Wash rinse repeat. Needless to say, by the tenth level the tedium sets in. Weapons are pretty basic fare. You have an assortment of laser cannons and slow firing balls of energy to a flame thrower and a gun that produces a giant explosion that kills everything around it for a few seconds. None of the weapons are really impressive and most of the higher powered weapons have such limited amounts of ammo, limited range, or horrible firing rates that you'll see yourself using the same two or three weapons throughout the game. The visuals of Alien Blast are substandard to say the least. Environments all look similar and barren. The only differentiating trait are different colors and far off environmental perks like cliffs, mountains, or floating land masses. Enemy models don't look any better either. You find some ugly and downright laughable designs here like flying bugs and floating eyeballs with what look to be boxing gloves for hands. Another blow to the visuals are really bad clipping issues that cause any alien that gets close to your turret to disappear until you start spraying fire in circles until they run away. Aside from the barren environments, monsters, the inside of your turret, and the score screen in between levels; Alien Blast is nothing great to look at. The biggest downfall of the game has to be the sound. You'll have 45 levels with the same music and the same weaponry sound effects. Monsters barely make a sound when killed. The game features no speech, aside from the very poorly sampled advice from a nameless guy (maybe a superior) in between levels who sounds like his voice was recorded on a twenty-year old tape, then playing said tape in a bad tape player and recording it through an answering machine. Even with the volume up, you're struggling to hear this guy's emotionless quotes. Alien Blast serves as another reminder that PC gaming is somewhat of a double-edged sword. For every Unreal Tournament 2004, you'll have ten Alien Blasts. Those who are looking for some old school twitch gaming will not find much substance here aside from a lesson in tedium.
