Alien Shooter 1 Demo - GrandmasterJ

 


    Alien Shooter is a top down run and gun game where players shoot large amounts of aliens. This recreation in Sven does a fairly good job copying the original game in both gameplay and presentation.

SCMapDB page

Author: Dr.Abc

Date of final release: 2018

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Alien Shooter 1 Demo

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | March 12, 2022 | 3986 characters

    I've played a bit of Alien Shooter back in the day, so I sort of knew what to expect going into this map. That game has a ton of running backwards down corridors shooting a massive swarm of enemies, and that is exactly what this map has.

    Right off the bat the game forces players into third person mode. This is probably my least favorite part of the map, but I get why the author did it. Gunning down aliens in third person really felt like a 3D Alien Shooter. The enemies are pit drones with the projectile attack removed and recolored to green and brown to serve as the game's main enemies. They come in large swarms but have low health, so they go down easy. Their eyes glow in the dark which is a real nice touch, especially later in the level when the lights go out and the swarms move in. All the weapons and aliens have the Alien Shooter sounds, there is even a kick-ass music track form the original game playing in the background the entire time. This map sets the mood for shooting aliens.

    One problem early on was that sometimes during an alien swarm we would be able to see the enemies spawn in front of us. In the first half of the map this happened frequently, I felt like we were both in a sort of race to slaughter this poor newborn as fast as possible. It really killed the mood.

    The weapons have some interesting scripting. None of the weapons reload and the pistol has unlimited ammo, switching to any new weapons (shotgun and minigun, which is the SAW) would mean players can't switch back to the pistols. Not having to reload any gun is fun and arcadey, but not being able to switch to pistols, especially to break objects, felt constraining. There was some large floating ammo around for the shotgun and minigun but also grenades and some rockets, this map is supposedly unfinished so maybe they weren't put in or we missed them.

    My teammate somehow figured out his way around the map, but most of the level design was concrete hallways and rooms with the same handful of prefabs scattered around. The same was true for the original alien shooter, but it had a different perspective. There were plenty of times I was going to go one direction but instead followed my teammate who knew the correct direction, I would probably have gotten lost on my own.

    To finish the map players have to turn the power on (after it goes out in the area you pick up the minigun), find a bundle of explosives (a big blocky red thing), and stick it in the alien cave (hole in the wall). Then it explodes and the map ends on a timer.

    One thing I didn't mention is that there are a bunch of options for this map. In the beginning there is an option to do survival mode, and after beating the level a vote comes up to enable horde mode. Neither my teammate nor I tried out any of this, so I can't say how it was, but it is nice to see baked in challenges like that.

    Overall, I'm sad this map is unfinished. What is here is great. The Alien Shooter aesthetic comes together incredibly well, from the soundtrack to the green aliens and even the concrete bland hallways, and forms a fantastic alien shooter experience in third person. I wish it wasn't third person but oh well. By the way, you will have to manually change your view back with 'firstperson' in console to get your view back, it will persist across other maps. I highly recommend this map.

Pros:

  • near perfect capture of Alien Shooter's mood and atmosphere in Sven Co-op
  • fun weapon scripting, models, sounds
  • fast paced combat, tons of enemies
  • the music

Cons:

  • the third person mode is annoying
  • map looks bland and samey all the way through, to the point it was a little hard to navigate
  • can't switch to pistol
  • enemies can spawn in one at a time in certain areas in the beginning

Score: 9 / 10

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