Get Your Aliens On With Space Beast Terror Fright
If there were a contest to see who could come up with simultaneously the silliest but most aptly descriptive title, Space Beast Terror Fright would be on the winners’ podium alongside Sharknado and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ever since Aliens and Starship Troopers gave us the space-bug squashing itch, gamers have longed for a proper backscratcher.
Back in 1999, Rebellion delivered the excellent Alien vs. Predator video game for the PC, which was followed up by the equally excellent Alien vs. Predator 2 in 2001. The recent track record has been a letdown, with the 2010 Alien vs. Predator failing to deliver. I’m sure it would have been better received if we knew what awaited us with Aliens: Colonial Marines in 2013. Alien: Isolation was a great game but featured too little alien squashing to be considered for this category.
Thankfully, the good folks at Nornware have noticed this discrepancy and are here to fix it with Space Beast Terror Fright. Taking place on a derelict ship in space, the players must navigate a series of corridors and collect datacores while holding off terror beasts: what a fright! At this point, spaceship means a series of randomly generated corridors, which makes it feel more like one of those old school maze games for Windows 95. That isn’t to say it looks bad, as the integrated UI does a great job of making you feel like a space marine, but it can be a bit jarring at first.
To assist the player, datacores each give an upgrade and provide ammo and battery restock. Upgrades include scaling levels of auto-aim, ammo capacity, thermal vision, ammo types, and more. Players always die in one hit, so tension is high, but can be temporarily alleviated with turrets that will hold a choke point until their ammo runs out. Be careful, since standing in the way of these turrets can be just as deadly to you as to the aliens.
As of now, the game is still in early alpha, so features are light. As of writing this review, they have just added easy mode. The gameplay is so far solid, without a lot of the bugs that one would expect so early into a project. There is a long way to go in fleshing out the menus, gameplay, and world generation, but there is a lot of promise here. I don’t really dig how the camera starts to strobe when aliens get nearby, as it feels like a cheap way to cause tension, and there is no way to disable this feature. The game also features a relatively pointless split-screen multiplayer option, which is universally silly for a PC title.
At the asking price of $15, it is only going to net you maybe a couple of hours of entertainment at this point, but fits into a satisfying niche. What you are buying at this point is a chance to see the potential, and experience the development process. It is rare that a game is actually presented in such a raw state, and even rarer that it functions as intended. You might want to wait for it to go on sale, but if you are jonesing for a fast paced alien shooter, you can do a lot worse than Space Beast Terror Fright.
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
