Aliens Infestation Review

Posted by Corporal Hicks on October 3, 2011 (Updated: 06-Oct-2023)

We first learnt of Aliens – Infestation’s existence in May 2009 when gameplay footage was leaked online. Back then it was simply titled Aliens – Colonial Marines DS. Fast-forward to September 2011 and the now-titled Aliens – Infestation is released. Developed by WayForward and published by Sega, Infestation is the last “Aliens” only title to be released for a home console since Aliens – Thanatos Encounter for the Nintendo GameBoy Colour in 2001.

As always, I approach these games as a casual gamer but as an Aliens fan. So when others looked at Infestation and saw Contra or Metroid, I saw the old Mega Drive or SNES Alien 3. So when reading this review please remember it from the point of view of someone who only picks up these consoles to play the few games that interest him, not as a hardcore gamer.

 Aliens Infestation Review

Aliens- Infestation is set just after Aliens and Alien 3 and is intended as a companion game to Colonial Marines. Sega and Gearbox approached WayForward for the project and according to our interview with WayForward, Gearbox did play a close role in ensuring that continuity matched between this and Colonial Marines. However, until Colonial Marines is released we won’t be able to see just how well these two games work as companion pieces.

From loading the game up I was excited to see another new Aliens game. The introduction menu was simple and looked very Alien and the music was good.

Throughout the game, we play as one squad of marines of many from the Sephora that is investigating the Sulaco. A lot of the game’s story revolves around the Sulaco which is easily the largest location in the game. We open on the ship where we proceed to unlock around 30 percent of the warship until we’re whisked away to the surface of LV-426 and thrown into a corporate conspiracy.

Infestation doesn’t break in the mold as far as Aliens stories are concerned. It revolves around Weyland-Yutani’s desire to keep the Aliens for their own bio-weapons division which is, as most Aliens fans will know, pretty standard fare. Infestation does introduce the gaming community to the Union of Progress Peoples.

The UPP were a communist rival to the Company first introduced in the very first unused script for Alien 3 written by William Gibson. They added a human element to the game to help vary the enemies you encounter. I was really happy with their inclusion as it really went to show that WayForward had looked deeper into the Aliens universe than just the movies.

 Aliens Infestation Review

We also play through a UPP facility on the surface of LV-426 as well as a very brief boss section aboard the derelict ship and the Phobos Station, a research station on one of the moons of Mars. Otherwise, the majority of the gameplay takes place aboard the Sulaco.

It is disappointing that there are so few locations in the game (the section aboard the derelict is literally only just the boss fight) but thankfully the Sulaco is fully mapped out. You explore from stem to stern, through the Alien infected airducts, to the very exterior of the ship. It makes me wonder if WayForward also worked with Syd Mead to flesh out the design of the ship.

I loved the EVA section and everything leading up to it. You were walking along the very interior of those antena at the front of the ship, as you approach the airlock an Alien drops down from the ceiling and takes out a nearby NPC marine. Infestation is chockablock full of cool little moments like this. You don your suit, which looks just like a sprite version of the suits from Alien, and off you go on the outside.

Infestation is a side scrolling action game, very similar in appearance to the old Alien 3 tie-ins on the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. It gave Infestation a very nice retro feeling. The environments and sprites are very nicely detailed and everything looked as if it’d fit well within the Aliens universe, just in portable form. The animations are all pretty smooth as well. It was a very nice game to look at.

 Aliens Infestation Review

The gameplay is split between the two screens, the main action taking place on the top and the bottom touch-screen playing a supporting role. You view your map, control your inventory and etc through the touch screen. I was very thankful that it wasn’t used too much as I liked the simplistic nature of it. I lost my stencil enough times without having to use the touch screen for do or die controls.

That said, for you DS fans the touch-screen isn’t abandoned all together. There is a segment where you drive an APC which requires you to use the bottom screen to control the turrets and destroy the hordes of Aliens. And a nice surprise was that you could unlock a mini game called “Knife Trick”. As the name implies, it’s based on Bishop’s trick where you have to use your stencil to stab around the graphic of a hand on the touch screen. You hit the hand and the game is over. It’s a fun little game that brought a big grin to my face when I loaded it up the first time.

 Aliens Infestation Review

The bottom screen also houses the map and motion tracker displays which I found to have both its advantages and disadvantages. The map can be an absolute charm when you’re playing through the huge Sulaco. It is a very helpful tool for navigating and is helped further along by the flare feature. If you come to a point of interest you want to return to, you drop a flare and it is marked on the map which I found to be another good nod to the franchise.

On the down side, once you pick up the motion tracker to go along with the map the game soon loses some of its tension. Early on in the game when I was without either, I found out the hard way that you don’t go charging through the rooms because you’ll find yourself surprised by the Aliens.

Once you’ve got the tracker and the map it shows you exactly in the room where the enemy is so you can simply pull your trigger and start walking forward, that Alien will be dead almost as soon as it appears.

And the spawn points always stay the same which made the later sections of returning back to the Sulaco very mundane, especially when playing through areas you already had. It would have worked better if the Aliens had some sort of randomized spawning to keep you on your toes.

Or perhaps another suggestion would have been if the tracker had been inaccurate as it was in the older games. It would have kept the tension going. That said, there were a couple of “oh snap” moments where you thought you’d be fighting a bad guy but a cat jumps out at you but thankfully it isn’t over-used.

 Aliens Infestation Review

The Aliens tend to appear from the floor or from the ceiling but there were several moments in the game where they appeared out of piping in the wall or from the hived-up walls. I’d just like to comment again on the graphics and how detailed the sprites look. Those moments really impressed me.

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