Alien Breed Special Edition 1992
for Amiga (OCS/ECS)
Also available for: PC (DOS) (Alien Breed)

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Mr Creosote:Popular Vote:
4/6
Company: Team 17
Year: 1992
Genre: Action
Theme: Horror / Multiplayer / Science Fiction
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
Views: 10361
Review by Mr Creosote (2017-06-23)
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One year later: our heroes are back at another space station infested by aliens again. This time, it's a bit larger, spanning ten fairly large (all new) levels. Though it isn't Alien Breed II – it's “just” the Special Edition of the first part.

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Which pretty much sums it all up. It's the same old game all over again. Same old graphics (they didn't even exchange the player sprite), same old gameplay. Well, almost. They did some minor tweaks. Let me list them for you. First, you can shoot doors open. This is a welcome addition, because it could avoid being totally stuck when running out of keys. It costs a lot of ammunition, but it is at least a last resort. Second, the computer terminals now boot up faster. Believe me when I say this is almost even a major improvement, given how often you accidentally trigger them trying to shoot enemies when close to one.

Talking about terminals, weapons and tools have become much more expensive (inflation hits the future as well), but this is balanced out by much more money lying around. So effectively no change.

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Given that everything said in the original's review remains equally valid, the only other thing really worth talking about is the new levels. The level goals are a bit more varied; where it was always destroying one reactor or one boss previously, you now sometimes have more than one target to destroy, sending you all across the map. Which could be a good thing, if the levels hadn't become even more mazey. Which implies even more key management and an even higher risk to take one wrong turn running for the lift while the self-destruction countdown is on (meaning certain death). When, by the way, your portable map will not work anymore.

So, yes, it is more of the same. Though it could even be argued that this Special Edition is somewhat inferior, as the original design weaknesses become more severe in the new levels. Because they made no attempt to actually improve. It operates on the assumption that bigger is always better. Which isn't always true.

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