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This is a Fairly good conversion of the third game in Team 17's popular Alien
Breed series for the Amiga. Tower Assault is the only other game after the first one
that made it from the Amiga to the PC. The plot is very mundane, but adequate: a
scientific outpost on a far off planet has been attacked. Nothing is known about the
attackers, since all communications have been destroyed. A team of marines is dispatched
to investigate and destroy the unknown invaders. As their dropships enter the atmosphere
and approach the base, the defence lasers, damaged in the onslaught, move into action.
They launch wild bursts of laser fire at the approaching marines who, completely
unexpecting such an attack, are unprepared. From the ensuing chaos one ship, flown by
rookies Nash and Jordan, manages to make a crash landing. From the wreckage steps a
soldier, and the mission begins. Tower Assault retains the great action of the first
game while multiplying the suspense tenfold, via great sound effects and level design.
While the game is fun in single player mode, it's the multiplayer mode that is the
real star of the show. The first player co-operates with the second player taking the
role of Nash, the rookie who is killed at landing in the single player game. You both
share a single screen unable to move far enough apart as two be on different screens,
but the scale of the game means this is not a problem. It might initially seem that
this option would make the game easier, but there is still only the same amount of
ammo, and it must be divided between two players. This can stretch the co-operative
feeling in the game, as players can often find themselves fighting for the pick-ups
rather than dividing them fairly. It was probably with this in mind that the designers
made it so that your bullets couldn't hurt the other player. If you are tired of
kill-them-all deathmatch games, this improves upon its predecessor in every respect -
gameplay, graphics, and level design. It's also much more difficult this time around,
so anyone new to the genre should be prepared to meet a frustratingly endless horde
of aliens. The floppy version is widely considered to be the worst version of the
game. It does not include a large number of the levels, and does not feature the
non-linear gameplay of the original. The CD-ROM version however retained the non-linear
level structure of the original, as well as the FMV intro and outro sequences from
the AmigaCD32 version. |
