Where has this been hiding all these years?
I just finished the game and I have to say, thank you WayForward. Now, it isn't perfect but I'm willing to give the game some leeway in that it was developed alongside Colonial Marines after all. So, We all know what it is, side scrolling Metroid-vania.
Infestation's final boss is a headache, sponge, aside from that I loved it.
Where to begin? Ah yes, concerning Marines.By far the game's greatest asset is it's characters, right from the (text) go (because there's no voiced dialogue in this) each character has their own wonderful little personality, informed both by illustrations by Chris Bachalo and the writing. Although the characters are more often than not true to the archetype their portrait impresses upon the player, they're not without a semblance of nuance present in the character speech and idle animations conveying their mindset.
There's a bit of true choice and consequence going on, should you want to continue seeing your favourite character you'll have to place them in harm's way. Gameplay lives acting as character deaths, permanent deaths. (I loaded back myself.)
Whilst the permadeath system is the game's greatest asset, the implementation is the game's greatest weakness; your squad selection's locked.
This is a major problem, because with nearly 20 Marine characters to choose from the only way to choose is to allow a party member or more, of the original four to die. Luckily this happened to me naturally on the first playthrough I lost both Whistler and Homewrecker, then replaced them with Amber Fischer and Zoe Kennedy (Fav).
This way works fantastically for a first playthrough- But it's a shame there's no New Game+ as not only would I have to recollect everyone on the roster, but if say- I wanted to find out what the deal is with Colonial Marines; Jeff "Lucky" Palms, Angel Sinise, Jasper "Ironsights" Watson, Frank Heston and Fredric "Rook" Marcus (Funny how this character was obviously intended to be an Android, "Rook" like Bishop
chess, "Marcus" like Marcus TCF.) I'd have to kill at least a couple of the original four on purpose.
The aesthetics? The visuals and acoustics, perfect. Alien aesthetic through and through.
The Alien designs, excellent- you managed to get me onboard with the Primate Alien (TCF again),
Not too different, mostly just in movement and size and it's cool to see the stocky monster Alien design from Alien Resurrection alongside the H.R Giger's Alien, lanky and tall.
The UPP's a cool natural addition and the plot feels like a natural conclusion to the fate of the USCM ship. No contrived nonsense here, good game.
Alien's companion piece: ALIEN Isolation.
Aliens' companion piece: Aliens Infestation.
IMO.
M.I.A <3
Hope to see some of these beautiful bastards again someday, otherwise I might start writing fanfiction.
