Alienation also includes some sweet character progression, both from a leveling perspective and a resource perspective. As you play, you earn XP and gain levels. Those will net you skill points that you can spend on both active skills as well as passive ones. Then there are two different kinds of resources: Cores and Materials. Cores are used to upgrade your weapons in various ways through four different kinds of Cores; Damage, clip size, rate of fire and crit chance. These Cores also come in various levels. Collecting three of any type will allow you to convert them to a level beyond, all the way up to six. Materials on the other hand allow you to reroll your gun's initial stats. For each stat you want to reroll, you'll need 10 of a certain kind of material.
The above mechanic should excite those that are always in search for better gear, as the game always encourages you to replay missions, as well on higher difficulties, which yield better rewards. What's even better about this is that the game outright tells you the percent chance you'll encounter better drops.
Multiplayer works rather seemlessly, as you can simply join anyone's game if they have it set to Public. I have encountered a few sessions that were horribly laggy, and playing through the level was near impossible. I'm not sure whether to blame that on the game, my internet, or the host's. There are also Dark Souls style invasions, which can have other players invade your game. Wish I could speak more on that but so far, after almost a week of playing it, it still hasn't happened to me, and I constantly have it enabled.
There's undeniably a lot of content in Alienation, the 20 story missions across eight locations have tons of replay value due to multiple difficulties and the constant hunt for better loot. Not to mention, once you beat them, the game truly begins, as you're expected to do everything again for even better loot. Then there's the UFO keys and Ark keys, which much like portals in Diablo 3, let you access areas for loot runs, or fight others in PvP.
The downside, which is rather odd for Housemarque, is that the game doesn't run in 60fps. Sure, there's a hell of a lot going on with particle effects, explosions and swarms of aliens, but it's still rather disappointing. Guess there's another reason to get the PS4 Neo (hey-oh!).
I had a blast with Alienation, and if you have friends willing to invest to play it with, you'll have a ton more on top of that. The loot system is appreciated as well as the various ways to progress your character and your gear. Yet another top notch game from Housemarque under their belt. Now we just wait to see whether Matterfall ever see the light of day, whatever that game is.
It's become established that a space mercenary's biggest enemy are giant alien bugs. Starship Troopers, Helldivers and Earth Defense Force among many other have established this as fact. So when you combine the twin stick pedigree of a company like Housemarque with a sci-fi alien shooter, you're bound to get really great results.
A little over a year ago, PS4 players were treated to the absolutely fantastic, strategic and often chaotic Helldivers. But the chaos that ensued wasn't always a result of being overrun by a pack of aliens. Rather, Helldivers chaos was more systematic. It could have come from a rogue Stratagem drop from the sky, or an unfortunate shotgun blast to the back from a fellow Helldiver. Alienation focuses more on the uncontrolled nature of chaos due to unleashing swarms of aliens from nearly every side, and it's just as glorious.
Alienation of course has a little more in common with Dead Nation, especially when you consider the name. Dead Nation from Housemarque was very much a twin stick shooter in the same vein, which had players try to survive hordes of zombies. It was the first more untraditional twin-stick shooter from the company, but it paid off. It showed that Housemarque can deliver a more strategic twin stick shooter outside of their brilliant Super Stardust games.
Alienation will have you play as one of three classes, the Bio-Specialist that focuses on healing and using nanomachines, the Tank whose name is somewhat self-explanatory and then the light-weight Saboteur who can turn invisible and call in some deadly artillery strikes. I found that each class had just enough variety to justify having three separate characters.
The beauty of the game, both on a literal level and in reference to its mechanics, come from the absolute chaos that ensues once you get a few missions in. Aliens, both big and small will swarm you from every side, meaning that you'll have to utilize your characters artillery, Rush skill to escape hairy situations as well as their respective skills to make it out alive. I will say that I've played mostly solo to see if it's possible and will say that the game is certainly built for co-op play.
Like Dead Nation, you have a trigger to shoot your guns, meaning just holding a direction with the right stick won't shoot your guns. Ammo management also comes into play as no gun has infinite ammo, meaning you'll have to frequently switch weapons to ensure you're never left defenseless.
The game also sports an active reload system, which has you pressing the reload button again when the reload meter lands in the green zone. It's yet another layer on top of the chaos you'll have to manage, but it's always satisfying pulling off the perfect active reload just in time to shotgun a horde heading straight for your face.
What I really liked about Alienation is the implementation of a loot system. It's not as overbearing and deep like you'd find in Diablo, Destiny or Division, but rather just focused on increased stats, with occasional special perks thrown in. What this means is you never won't be hunting for a specific named weapon that's "better than all the rest" but instead you'll constantly find guns that raise your base damage stats. Weapon classes all have the same base model more or less, which is slightly unfortunate, but in the end it never really bothered me.
