izigame.me

Every tactical turn-based strategy game wants to be compared to XCOM. I've played them all (with their dubious claims) and none ever came close... until now. This game actually does feel like XCOM all the way down to the straight-up copied troop selection screen, the base interface, and the impending doom clock. If you love XCOM and the Alien universe, don't pass this one up. I overlooked it at release, but after seeing so many good reviews and 50% off sale, I jumped on it. And it was worth ever penny.
Never have I played a TBS game that actually made me feel trepidation, but they managed to do it with the beautiful scenery of fucked-up Alien-infested space ships from the movies. People complain about the quality of the cutscenes, but I argue that all the models in the cutscenes are the same in-game models (which look good) and that's been modus operandi since the dawn of time for turn based strategy games so... play moar TBS n00bs? They really captured the lighting, music and atmosphere of the Alien universe. What an unexpected gem!
The Alien ai is pretty good and showcases the intelligence of the aliens when they go around the one little section of your flames that didn't cover a hallway, or barely sneak past the view range of a turret. My only complaints are you can't look at the minimap while paused and it will unpause you if you look at it; I can't lay waste to every single xeno I see because of the stress meters; and the fact that the aliens never climb the walls to get to you, but the game mechanics wouldn't work so well if that were the case; and that you can't individually control your squad mates to make a tight sniper shot around a corner. But the simplicity of controlling the whole squad works for this game. You need all 4 marines to stay together to take down a xeno before they melee you and acid your whole squad on death.
Campaign went from "Take your time. Extract your squad and come back later bro ;)" to "14 days left to endgame" and I'm rushing to finish the main campaign with 4 days left... Wasn't a fan of the doomsday clock in xcom and not a fan on this one either. Let me complete everything and pick up EVERY single resource and level up my lowbies and dick around okay? Why you pushing me bro?
No quicksave scumming allowed in this one! Auto-saves on main quest checkpoints, elevators, rests, and returns to base. Protip: take elevators or rest to force an auto-save. I wasted many-a good tools just to be able to save my progress.
Took me almost 70 hours to complete the campaign, but I think half that time was spent waiting for patrols to pass. Still a great amount of hours for a campaign and much more than I expected. Too many TBS games end too quickly, just when your dudes are lvled up and you're cooking with gas. The game+ option is good for replayability since you can keep all your uber marines and start over.
10/10
Things I wish I knew sooner:
- Tools are gold. Be frugal with them and choose safe-house rooms with only 1 weld to make. I usually only bring 2 on a mission and find the rest. No tools -> no rest -> missions over when stress gets high. And sometimes you just need to rest to save your game.
- Always bring a sniper with silencer perk to take down xenos without being detected.
- Mines are amazing and are your only other stealth kill weapon. I put them everywhere, outside doors where I'm hiding for a minute and as I walk through main hallways. Had trouble getting them tripped until I started putting them close up to doorways or in the middle of patrol routes. Never gets old when an alien walks on your mine you forgot about 20 minutes ago. And mines stay armed throughout playthroughs (as well as motion trackers and turrets).
-Always take max turrets with you for those onslaughts
- When your captain gets lvl 5 use Reprimand constantly during battle to not take stress and you can kill as much as your heart desires. Gotta be on top of it, though, to reset it. There's no warning when the 30 seconds is up.
- Get the flamethrower. It does good dmg and if you're spotted in a shitty location with flanking doors you can flamethrower nearby doors and force them to go down a long hallway and get sprayed. Also essential for that sweet DoT on queens and elites. Get stun grenade and hit them while they're standing in the flames.
- Recruit medics and take them with you by the endgame. I never made but 1 medic with all my marines and came to regret it by the end. If someone gets unconscious or comatose you're screwed and have to WALK them back to the apc. This happens a lot with warriors who pounce and knock out your dudes. Medics fix this problem and also heal 1 health bar on everyone per rest. And 50% faster medkit heals for when you're injured in the middle of battle. You can't stealth kill your way through the endgame, so you'll be glad you brought that medic with you.
- Stun grenade + RPG + flamethrower on queens. 50% dead already.
- In large egg rooms where you cant kill them all with 1 grenade, expect to alert and fight if you want to clear that room. You can snipe each egg individually if you're really hardcore.
Don't trust synthetics...
I noticed a few bugs:
- Got random "kleptomaniac" penalties on my materials at the end of some missions when I never even had a marine with that attribute. This is well reported by others.
- Sometimes my right click or home key would take me out of pause and make that split second you have to react ruined and get seen. This would be fixed sometimes by resting, taking an elevator, reloading the game, or restarting the game.
- Not sure if this is a bug, but trying to extract my squad in the apc and it takes you to a cutscene of your troops getting in and some aliens were attacking me and abducted a guy during this. I was helpless to stop it. Got back to base and he was gone. Had to reload last save and do it again so I didn't lose a good marine for no reason.
- Also not sure if its a bug, but sometimes aliens wouldn't trigger my mines WITH the pheromones perk and just walk right through it. Couldn't tell if they saw it and were careful not to trip it or if its a glitch.
- Sometimes my squads health bars would appear through the loading screen.
- Once I took a ride in the apc and noticed the wheels weren't turning as we moved lol.
No game breaking bugs anyway.

First off, I've really enjoyed the game. It's got some jank to it. It plays like a real time (but you can slow time) X-Com style game. You have a mission and a mission map with objectives. There is a finite about of "days" in the game. Each day you can deploy for a mission or need to handle some event. You need to complete the primary mission to progress. You can leave a mission at any time via the vehicle pick up. There are secondary missions and collectables along the way.
The game lets you choose your difficulty before you start. This has a ton of options and specific items. Unfortunately you can't change it later. I believe you need to really play the first mission or two to understand the game. At that point you likely do not want to restart. Things I wish I knew before I started my game (aliens are endless, ammo is finite, marines miss half the shots they make at base stats, the game gets harder (more aliens) the more in game days you play as infestation grows, the mission gets harder each time the aliens spot you (there are 3 levels and events happen at certain levels. At the highest level there are many more aliens out and about)
The Good:
Great look environments
The flashlight mechanic to highlight intractable items
The map feels in and shows collectibles as you enter a space. Miss a PDA? No worries the map shows a POI
Customize Marines visually
Marine levels - purchase upgrades / add training to make them more unique
Marine classes - Each class has some different abilities you can purchase
The level of strategy required to handle a map
The inability to just rush in and use raw firepower to win a map
Ability to outfit marines with different weapons, secondary weapons, and special weapons
The settings you can tweak before the game starts to really hone in on difficulty
Being swamped feel chaotic as it should
Aliens can drag marines away
Marines can be killed
Facehuggers can kill marines if they latch on and you don't have the right tool
There is a mix of stealth and combat to be effective.
It's got all Alien sounds and marine banter

The Jank:
Aliens are endless
Enemy humanoids are endless (on some maps)
Each time an alien sees you it somehow alerts the hive and they swam you for a period of time
Aliens killed by auto sentry guns do not alert the hive but seeing your marine does......
Marines start with a base of 50% accuracy meaning they are doing like half damage from the start
Aliens feel tanky, even the drones, due to marine accuracy
Encountered a bug on the first mission where one of my marines disappeared. He wasn't dead or taken, just no longer on the map. It didn't notice until I noticed how challenging it had become.
Overall:
I got this for about 20 US on sale. It is definitely worth that to me. I enjoyed the Alien franchise and X-Com style games. This mixes both into something unique. It's not perfect but it's a lot of fun. It's challenging at medium. It slowly becomes easier as you better understand mechanics better.

I would like to start out with I think this game is incredible overall and definitely in my personal top ten video games.
Firstly something that I have to say is to the detriment of this game. In my honest opinion the very end left much to be desired. It felt hollow and frustrating to me. While the story is maybe not the best written ever it was an extremely solid and enjoyable aliens plot. I was quite happy and invested in different characters and where they were going to take this. However it did leave a bitter taste in my mouth. I definitely have a personal bias towards how attached I got to my Marines. Huh, funny that. So I will say my feelings are colored by that statement.
With all of this being said, I personally feel this game is a masterclass in gamers making games for gamers. As well as nerds making games for nerds. Everything sounded right. Everything felt right. The design choices felt intentional, well thought out, and smooth. I definitely had a much better and more accurate feeling of commanding a team of highly motivated, highly trained, actually cohesive individuals. Yes in game there are traits that could make that statement questionable. But they feel like professionals. They feel right. You assign a guy to hack and with no further keystrokes the right guy based on squad composition and stats runs off. The controls to manipulate the order system feels smooth and quick. I also personal love that there's no hard tactical pause but instead a frighteningly quick slow motion. The maintenance of your Marines and everything else feels realistic enough to be engaging without being too real. Everything feels purposeful, thoughtful, and calculated.
I said calculated intentionally because I did not believe a game could give me such a level of anxiety and stress while still having fun. I am not trying to speak less on anyone for anything. To clarify I don't have fun when things are stressful. I don't enjoy horror games. They don't really get me going. I usually just get frustrated. However I understand how and why others do enjoy these things. This game however. How they utilize sound design, map layout, the motion tracker (that is the coolest part of the whole game fight me), and NPC kinetics. The enemies felt intelligent and difficult for the right reasons for each type of enemy. My anxiety and stress were through the roof playing this game and it felt great. I loved every moment of this game overall. It was always fun and engaging and thought provoking. And I just played it on normal. I have played many varying strategy games and can do the whole difficulty thing but man my games list is long. I gotta get through them.
For such a niche idea of a game with all of its varying elements it is excellently executed. It is faithful to the franchise. It is well polished and well crafted. Is everything perfect and jolly good? Of course not. There is always room to improve. But they do not have the resources of a AAA studio. And this is noticeably impressive regardless of this fact.
I'm not a die-hard fan, but I am a deep fan of the franchise and it holds special nostalgia for me. So please take this into consideration for two reasons. I am harsher when things are bad and too lax when things are good. Compared to normal I mean. So I may have missed or overlooked some things. I am also not a writer so sadly I have no recommendations or designs for the ending that would be helpful. I can sadly only bring criticism there.