Alienation
Alienation is a shooter and role-playing video game developed by Housemarque and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was released in April 2016 for PlayStation 4. The game is an isometric twin-stick shooter in which one to four players defend themselves against an alien invasion on Earth through increasingly-difficult levels. Players can choose one of three character classes, each with its own abilities. Players can upgrade their weapons with collectables, known as upgrade cores.
Alienation is an isometric twin-stick shooter game set in a future in which aliens are invading Earth. After a large portion of the population has been murdered or mutated, humanity’s fate rests with a group of four soldiers from UNX (a military group assembled to help prevent alien attacks). The game features a single-player mode, a local co-op mode, and a multiplayer mode that allows four people to play at once, with each player controlling a heavily-modified soldier from one of three character classes: Bio-Specialist, Saboteur, and Tank. Each class has its own weapons, movement mechanics, and abilities, and can be “leveled up” to level thirty. The Bio-Specialist can heal other team members and create poisonous trails. The Tank is able to create a shield behind which players can stand and can “blow everything away”, allowing players to maneuver more easily. The Saboteur has the ability to become invisible, and can call in airstrikes when needed. Players defend themselves against hordes of aliens through increasingly-difficult levels. In multiplayer mode, players can revive each other and use checkpoints in the levels to respawn if they die.
Alienation Review
Alienation’s controls are sharp, and enemies are plentiful and varied enough to keep a squad of up to four co-op players busy. Many are more nuanced than simple bullet sponges: shielded sentry turrets have nearby generators you can take out to make damaging them dramatically easier; snipers can threaten you from a couple of screens away but always telegraph their shots in a fair, visible way; and the monolithic Sentinels need to be bursted down quickly before their deadly beam attacks lock on and melt your lifebar away. Aside from providing a diverse set of threats, they also tend to die spectacularly for your viewing pleasure.
In contrast, random weapon drops are the biggest, most meaningful addition to the formula. Each comes fitted with banks of interconnected slots for you to fill in with various upgrade cores that affect things like damage, rate of fire, clip size, and more. The number, formation, and color of these slots is important, since they dictate the upper limits you can push a weapon to, and which of its attributes have the highest ceiling. You can ignore the colored slots and just stack one stat, or match the colors of the slots to the nodes for bonuses. Add in the ability to re-roll any stat, or the sockets themselves, and there’s a lot of potential to stretch the life of a gun while tailoring it to your needs.
Housemarque’s previous games have always kept me coming back through the strength of their gameplay alone. Alienation adds a straightforward, but enjoyable power chase on top, making its finely tuned arcade action all the more alluring. Its action-RPG elements won’t make it a replacement for something like Diablo 3 or Grim Dawn, but they successfully provide a structure for unending, enjoyable alien slaughter.
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