Alien Breed is back to celebrate its 35th Anniversary, and it does so in style. This collection was developed by the folks over at Antstream and published by Commodore itself, featuring six classic Alien Breed games from the original 1991 Alien Breed all the way to the 1996 release of Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds.
Every title in the collection has been given a few upgrades, such as modern twin-stick controls, CRT filters, scanlines, bezels and even new game modes such as Rush and Horde modes, which task you with surviving waves of enemies with no saves or continues, either in solo play ot together with a friend in local co-op.
The full game list included is as follows: –
Alien Breed (1991)
Alien Breed Special Edition (1992)
Alien Breed II: The Horror Continues (1993)
Alien Breed: Tower Assault (1994)
Alien Breed 3D (1995)
Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds (1996)
The first four games are classic top-down shooters with almost a puzzle-like element to them. The first few games have you collecting keys to open doors while fending off the Breed and trying to find the lift to escape to the next floor and eventually off the research centre.
Along the way, you’ll collect cash, which can be spent at vending machine-style shops to increase your arsenal and gain additional firepower, which should hopefully help against the onslaught of enemies.
The series clearly and proudly shows its inspiration from the Alien series in the enemy designs and, to a lesser extent, in the locations, with some of the later levels, like the hatchery, looking very H.R. Giger-inspired and very biomechanical in style. The Breed themself are clearly just Xenomorphs, and facehuggers even make an appearance in most levels.
Alien Breed: Tower Assault feels like a bit of a step-up from the original games, featuring a little bit more in terms of story and often having more objectives than just simply getting keys to find a lift to the next floor, and it feels a little less arcade-like and almost borders on a survival horror lite type experience at times. Tower Assault also lets you choose between the original Amiga version and the CD32 version, which has much better sound design.
The last two games on the collection are Alien Breed 3D & Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds, which take the series into the first-person perspective for the first time and something I personally remember being very impressive at the time, especially on the Amiga.
By the time Alien Breed 3D arrived in 1995, the PlayStation was already released, and the PS1 version of DOOM would release mere weeks after Alien Breed 3D launched, which I think unfairly stole the spotlight somewhat away from this great game. To make the game function at all on the Amiga, the screen size had to be shrunk, as the system sadly just didn’t have enough raw compute to push that type of graphics and gameplay and often would chug with some horrendous frame drops, especially true if you were playing on the stock machine without fast RAM. Thankfully, this collection has smoothed out the framerate and the game looks and plays great.
Alien Breed 3D II is the game that truly impressed me; being released only a year later in 1996, it feels like a big improvement on the original Alien Breed 3D, with a larger screen image and, in this collection, a fantastically smooth framerate. While Alien Breed 3D feels like playing a clone of DOOM, I’d argue that 3D II feels a lot more like Quake, with the 3D rendering looking a lot better.
It’s a robust collection, and you can tell a lot of love went into this celebratory package, with there even being a very comprehensive and interactive virtual museum with developer interviews and other goodies in the style of the sort of thing you could expect from a Digital Eclipse collection like their recent Tetris Forever collection.
Sadly, missing are the Xbox 360-era remakes of the series, which would have been a nice inclusion for completeness sake, but I can totally understand why they weren’t included, as they were pretty mediocre at best and when I think back on the series as a whole, I only really think of the games included here.
Conclusion
All in all, this compilation is a must-buy for retro enthusiasts, and it’s nice to see a somewhat forgotten series get a modern release. Getting to experience those tense, top-down moments from the first few entries and the ambitious early 3D era entries proves that the gameplay of each title holds up well, especially with the modern control schemes and improved framerates. Antstream have delivered a fantastic package that is a love letter to the series and the perfect way to celebrate Alien Breed’s 35th anniversary.
8
A PS5 review code kindly provided by the publisher.