Backlog Beatdown: Assaulting Aliens with Super Mutant Alien Assault

I can’t quite remember when or why I made the decision to buy Super Mutant Alien Assault; most likely from the release sections of one of the Co-Optional Podcasts. I do remember the art style having a 2D “SNES” feel to it, and that would have engaged me as much as anything else. However, it was a long time between buying the game and playing it…

Super Mutant Alien Assault is an arena / roguelike game released in 2015.The premise is that aliens have taken over some space ships in three different galaxies, and you play as a security robot tasked with eliminating the aliens and saving the human race, or something along those lines. Let’s be honest, you don’t usually play games like this for the plot!

One of the boss battles...

The game is a fast and frantic platform shooter, with the roguelike elements linked mainly to progression – extra starting items unlock the more you play through the game. There are three galaxies and four levels per galaxy; each galaxy ends with a random boss battle and the other three levels are randomly generated as well. You must take on hordes of irradiated aliens, killing them quickly before they mutate into their upgraded forms, whilst completing the level objectives to move on, beating the boss on each level, until you clear the game on one run. No easy task!

A lot of frantic action is sometimes
hard to keep track of!

You start off without weapons, but can pick up a primary weapon on most levels – these start off with the fairly standard shotgun, uzi and rocket launcher, but later go on to include laser guns, plasma cannons, a handheld weapon of concentrated light that is definitely not a lightsaber, and even a chakram that holds exploding bombs. You also have secondary weapons – pistols, chackrams and a burst assault rifle. There are explosive weapons as well, ranging from grenades to trip mines to entire bomb packs. And finally, you have some special abilities as well – higher jumps, faster movement, plasma blasts. Play the game for long enough and you’ll find a combination of weapons and upgrade items that you like, but the game randomises the equipment drops so there’s no guarantee you’ll get the one you’re looking for – you get what you’re given, and it’s up to you to make it work.

Super Mutant Alien Assault works very well; the game has tight and responsive controls, challenges you at the right level and the levels are quick enough for an engaging experience that don’t require too much of a time investment. Killing aliens is always fun, but additional objectives in the missions, plus the game not always giving you access to certain kinds of weapons, and only allowing you to heal once per galaxy, lend a strategic element to the game that requires strategic thinking and forward planning. The graphics are nothing special, but they don’t need to be; they’re top end of 5^th generation 2D graphics and will still look as good in 20 years. The sound is good as well; the sound effects are marvellous, and the backing music is made up of dubstep tracks which are just old enough in 2021 to provoke a feeling of nostalgia.

In these levels, you must get the green capsules
up to the receptical at the top...

If there is a criticism to be made it is in the difficulty: It’s a little too easy to beat. I defeated the three galaxies and bosses quite easily and found most of the challenge in trying to get through the entire game – the advanced difficulty levels don’t unlock until you’ve done this. With Roguelikes, most of the progression is found in unlocking extra items and upgrades, but you really don’t need to be playing for very long at all to have found all of these. It’s not necessarily a problem for me as I wasn’t looking for a long experience, but people who like a tough route to progress through the game might expect a little more.

All in all, Super Mutant Alien Assault is a great game that I’d happily recommend. It’s a great introduction to this sort of game, plays very well and a lot of fun. Roguelikes aren’t everybody’s preferred style of game, and this game lacks exposition, but most people will have a good time with Super Mutant Alien Assault.

Final Score: 4/5: Great game.

Last Week's Games: FTL

Well that week didn’t go quite as planned! The Pathfinder game I said I was going to run at the end of last week was cancelled, since one of the players – sadly the one who hosts the game – was taken ill and couldn’t host it. I wish him a speedy recovery and hopefully we’ll get back on it at some point next month, but it looks like I won’t be playing any more roleplaying games until then.

I didn’t have a huge amount of time for playing games either. I progressed a little further into the campaign in Spider Man, beating a double-pronged boss battle (I won’t spoil it if you haven’t played the game; if you have, you’ll know who I mean!) and as I mentioned last week, getting ever closer to the endgame.

Your starting ship...

No, the game I spent the largest amount of time playing this week was FTL: Faster Than Light on my laptop. This is among the first games I bought for the PC, way back in 2012 when I was using a Windows 7 laptop. I saw a review for it by Angry Joe and decided to check it out! The hardware on my laptop was by no means designed for playing games so my games were somewhat limited, but FTL will run on just about anything so for once it was an option for me.

And what a delight it was! If you don’t know, it’s a space game in which you have to transport vital information about the Rebel Fleet to The Federation. It’s interesting to see the Rebels being the enemy for a change, though the line between good and bad is somewhat blurred – the Federation purports to be a coalition of effort to colonize space between the various races of the galaxy, and the Rebels are made up almost entirely of humans trying to wipe out Federation control. Xenophobic and oppressive, one would think, but since the alien races that are meant to be a part of the Federation are every bit as likely to attack you, one might reasonably wonder if the Rebels have a point. It’s Firefly meets Star Trek in theme, and a joy to play.

You control the power allocation, action and various crew of a star ship, and have to play through several short tasks in order to traverse the galaxy and deliver your info. The layout and interface suggests a strategy game, but I have found it works as a Roleplaying game as well. Here’s your ship, here’s your crew, here’s what it can do, here’s the situation the game has put in front of you; what are you going to do about it?

Well that could have gone better!

But as I was playing through the game, I found myself wondering who it is for. I enjoy the game enough to recommend it to anybody with a pulse, but it’s not new; it was released in 2012 and games have, by their very nature, evolved since then. But seven years later, I’m still playing it, still discovering new things, still enjoying it. It was acclaimed at the time for it’s excellence in design, and it still holds up today. The graphics were nowhere near on par with what was available even at release, but the almost minimalist art style looks as good now as it did back then. The soundtrack is gorgeous, and the effects are lovely as well. The Rogue-like gameplay is designed for many runs, and while it takes a little too long to get to the endgame (I only ever managed it a couple of times before the major content update in 2014, and never since,) the sheer scale of things to do in between is staggering. No two runs are ever the same; there’s a lot of value in it.

So I would suggest that, if your principle experience of playing games is on console and mobile devices, and you’re wondering what PC games do so differently to make it a worthwhile investment, you could do a lot worse than try this game out. It will challenge you on the right level, and will keep on giving long after you’ve replaced the machine you play it on!

 

My Unfinished Games of 2016

Well we’ve come to the end of another year and once again I’ve bought more games than I’ve got a hope of playing through. I’ve not beaten anywhere near as many games as I was expecting, although I would attribute a change in my personal circumstances and an almost compulsive need to keep myself busy to at least some of that.

Of course, there are games out there that I have played and, for whatever reason, I haven’t beaten them. Maybe they’re too long, maybe they’re too hard, maybe they’re not supposed to be ‘beaten’ in the usual sense. Maybe in some cases they weren’t very good. As I write this I’m still trying to get through a couple of games in time for the New Year but I’m not going to force it, since that sucks a lot of the fun out of playing video games for me. Nonetheless, there are a few games that I’ve had a lot of fun with, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to tell you about some of them:

Mordheim: City of the Damned

A battle in full swing...
 

I love this game. Mordheim was always my favourite of Games Workshop’s intellectual properties, and when I heard a video game was in production I really hoped it would be good (as Games Workshop have taken a somewhat cavalier approach to licensing their property for video game development, this isn’t a guarantee!) What we got was a game that grew on me as I was going along, to the point where I can look at my Steam screens and see that I’ve sunk 140 hours into the game. Not since XCOM: Enemy Unknown have I played a game so obsessively, and it certainly filled a strategy game-shaped hole left when XCOM 2 failed to engage me in the same way.

There’s plenty that I like about Mordheim. Firstly, the tutorial is kept separate from the main game. Far too many games these days introduce the mechanics as they’re going along; useful in itself but makes replaying the game far from a joy as you’re basically following a scripted sequence for anything up to the first hour. Mordheim shows you the game mechanics in the tutorial, but after that, you’re on your own. It’s up to you to learn your warband’s various strengths and weaknesses, what strategies work best with each faction, and what loots and rewards you need to be aiming for.

Developing your warband into a fighting force that can take on the game is a fulfilling experience when you know what you’re doing in terms of customisation. The skills and stats they build up along the way are always fun to apply, and even the injuries they pick up contribute to the organic story that you’re telling. Character development, when done well, can be a game’s greatest asset and this one is pretty good.

Finally, the game lets you go at your own pace. You have to collect enough Wyrdstone in a certain amount of time, and the game is over on the 4^th time you fail to do this (I’ve never had this happen to me, yet!) Other than that, it’s up to you. If a large percentage of your best fighters are injured, you can make the decision not to go on a mission while they recover – there’s no penalty other than wasted time. There are campaign missions which you have to do at some point, but if you want to raise the value of your warband so that you can beat it more easily – but risk more injuries in the process – that’s up to you.

Unfortunately the game is let down by two major flaws: Game breaking bugs and the Ironman saving system. There have been times when I’ve reached a certain point in the game – and put a significant number of hours into the relevant save file – to find that I’m unable to complete a mission because the game will not end it. Either the AI won’t take their turn, or one of your objectives doesn’t register. You have an option to abandon a mission if this happens but this comes with penalties that could potentially cripple your warband. And while the idea behind an Ironman save system – the game is constantly saving on one file so you can’t go back and load a previous save – is great for a game that relies on the consequences of the choices you make, it also means you can’t reload a save file if it is effected by a bug. Things came to a head when playing the 4^th campaign mission with the Sisters of Sigmar warband I’d spent weeks building up, and I couldn’t complete the objective without abandoning the mission. I quit out of the game and haven’t played it since. I probably will again at some point – but I have other games I could be playing for now.

Rogue Legacy

Dodge this, squire...

Since watching some TotalBiscuit videos I’ve been hearing the term ‘Rogue-like’ bandied around a lot, with Rogue Legacy being the crowning achievement in the genre. Now that I’ve played the thing, I’m starting to see why it’s so popular! The gameplay is excellent – tight controls, a charming art style and competent procedural level generation. Even better is the upgrade system, where you upgrade your skills and equipment after every run.

Because of course, that’s the whole point of Rogue-likes: You’ll never beat them all in one go but nor are you supposed to. Instead of that, you’re supposed to carry on until you die and then use what you picked up along the way to improve your chances of getting further next time. I have actually played a few games with so-called ‘Rogue-like’ elements and this one has been by far the best, for this reason: You’re always clear on how well you need to do for your next upgrade. You buy the upgrades for a certain amount of gold, and provided you know where to take your next upgrade, you always know how much you need to aim for. This might seem like a minor detail, but in actual fact it does a really good job of gauging the success of your run, rather than champing at the bit all the time.

It will be a long time, if ever, before I beat this game. And even if I do, I understand there’s quite a bit of post-game content to enjoy as well. But I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with it so far, so it made my honorary mentions list.

Super Mario Maker

Spiny's can go upside down? What devilry is this?

Well how do you beat a game that has ongoing and almost entirely user-developed content? The answer is that you don’t; you just have some fun with it. And fun I have had! It’s good to fight your way through different levels made by other people, it’s good to have a go at some dev-designed levels that don’t appear in the Super Mario games that these are based on, and designing your own levels and seeing how they challenge people is a rewarding experience.

You make your own fun with Super Mario Maker, and when I’m building levels I try to make a gimmick for each one; a puzzle or a challenge to overcome. Whether that’s building a set of pipes in the shape of a hill, sending several Bomber Bills flying at you, or creating levels that look like a chandelier, I want to make a level that challenges low-mid level players on the right level. I may never reach the giddy heights of designing a level where you don’t have to move; just let the platforms carry you. And I may never build a super-difficult level that only the most precise platforming can overcome. But I like to build what I would consider to be challenging levels.

I come back to this game sparingly as I tend to prefer games that have an ending that I can aim for, but for a bit of creative fun every now and then, you could do far worse than this.

 

Hand of Fate

I'll beat you in the end, dealer. Oh yes.

Not going to say too much about this one as I am expecting to beat it at some point; a very difficult game but enjoyable to play and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all works out in the end. It will be one of the few PC games I’ve seen through to the end!