Alien Outbreak 2: Invasion

In Brief

Alien Outbreak 2: Invasion is an old school Space Shoot Em Up (Shmup) with a top down vertical scrolling viewpoint on the lines of the original space invaders, except you don't get anything to hide behind. This is actually much better than that old game (I spent a fortune putting 10 pence pieces into Space Invaders cabinets back in the late 70's). It was originally given away on the 30th December 2017 HERE where it received a 79% positive rating from 29 votes with 18 comments.

You can find two useful threads over in the forums that link to various free shmups HERE and HERE

Introduction:

Ever since the beginning of history, humanity has never faced danger from an enormous intergalactic army, who aim to destroy mankind and populate our planet. You are the last hope for our species; so, put doubts and fears aside and do your best to protect Earth from these alien invaders!

Increase your survival skills by gaining better weapons and become the best space pilot of all time. You will face hundreds of well-equipped enemy spacecraft who are as merciless as Ming the Merciless (Flash Gordon). Maneuver between mines and bullets shooting them back and destroying detachments of enemy ships one by one. Simple and low-armored enemies are followed by heavy battleships.

Pick up bonuses and power-ups falling from destroyed rivals and shoot your weapons covering the space with enemies' wreckage's. Use heavy missiles that destroy a ship with a single shot or a heavy electric charge which knows no barriers. Set a mine and pick up a power shield making your ship invulnerable. Stealth technology will hide you misleading enemy strikes and a special feature that doubles your fire rate. Improve your primary gun together with the main armor and fly through 10 levels straight to the boss

Edited reference accessed HERE 30th December 2017, re-posted with additional content by Whiterabbit 28th August 2020

The Game:

Alien Outbreak 2: Invasion is a pretty old (dated graphics, but still looks decent) top down Space Shoot Em Up, with a retro feel; reminiscent of Space Invaders, but with a greater variety of aliens and weapons. You shoot through ten waves for each mission; at the end of the 10 level, you meet a boss ship, (which I failed to pass on my first attempt -heed my advice below). There are eight missions each ending with a boss wave, making a total of 80 levels. Power-ups are dropped frequently, as are energy drops, which boost your weapon abilities. You can also stack secondary weapons, which I suggest you save for the boss levels. The dollar signs are not money but points. This gives the game a sense of replayability for those who like to beat their scores. This game is clearly an homage to earlier space shooter titles of which there are now hundreds, this is a decent shooter, well worth downloading.

The ship is controlled by the mouse with the left mouse button controlling your primary weapon and the right mouse button the secondary weapon. Collecting energy boosts the energy level meter located in the top right of the screen when you collect enough energy to fill the meter, you are awarded a weapon upgrade. The highest I managed to upgrade was level 9, but you can raise it to level 10. The higher your weapons upgrade is, the better your chance at beating the boss at the end of each tenth level. If you are hit the energy level indicator goes down. If it goes to zero, you lose the weapons upgrade to the previous upgrade.

If you lose all weapon upgrades your ship is destroyed. The left indicator (top right of the screen indicates the number of secondary weapons you have and the current weapon loaded. Some bonuses double your basic attacks or make your ship invulnerable, others increases the rate of fire, gives you an invisibility shield or slows down time so that enemy movement and weapons become slower; all bonuses expire after 15 seconds. It's a good idea to make yourself familiar with these bonus types so that you can take full advantage of them; for example, knowing when the defense bonus is active so that you have no need to avoid weapons fire. Secondary weapons include rockets which destroy all ships with just one hit, lightning that destroys any enemy ship that crosses it's path and bombs that fragment and destroy any enemy ship that is hit. None of the secondary weapons can destroy the boss with one hit but are a useful aid in destroying it. All enemy ships include an health indicator that for the boss is very useful as it gives you an indication as to how near the end you are. If you like Shmups, this is well worth downloading; though it wouldn't make my top ten favorite shmups list, it's still a decent space shooter. I originally gave this a 7 out of 10 for game play and graphics, but on replaying it i've upgraded it to an 8 out of 10 becasue I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, plus i liked the upgrade system and not losing my best weapons immediately following a hit like most shmups. The music is nondescript; personally, I usually turn it off and play my own music, for this type of game, I usually play something like Tangerine Dream/ Klaus Schulze/Kitaro/Harlequins Enigma/Pete Baumann , or totally opposite, some heavy metal like Mercyful Fate/Black Sabbath/Killswitch Engage/Rob Zombie or even something more classical like one of Ravi Shankar's ragas. :)

Originally posted by Whiterabbit-uk 30th December 2017 and re-posted with amendments 28th August 2020.

Videos of Alien Outbreak 2:

You can see eight in-game videos of game play covering all eight missions of the game HERE (mission 1 - wave 1-10), HERE (mission 2 - wave 11-20), HERE (mission 3 - wave 21-30), HERE (mission 4 - wave 31-40), HERE (mission 5 - wave 41-50), HERE (mission 6 - wave 51-60), HERE (mission 7 - wave 61-70) and HERE (mission 8 - wave 71-80).

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway

Don't forget to check the giveaway game discussion forums HERE; especially Delenn's threads for non Steam and steam freebies. Apart from the latest Epic Game freebies (i.e. the 2016 release of Hitman {excellent stealth FPS game} and the Shadowrun Collection (turn based cyberpunk Sci Fi RPG strategy games) that includes three games - Shadowrun Returns (Base Game), Shadowrun Dragonfall - Director Cut (Base Game) and Shadowrun Hong Kong - Extended Edition (Base Game)). Also available via Epic are the first four episodes of 3 out of 10, and episodic adventure game in ten parts. Each week a new part becomes available. (Win 7 onward required)

There's also a free standing version of Whispering Willows directly from the developers site (Interact with the spirits of the dead, solve the puzzles of the mysterious mansion and help Elena find her missing father in the horror/adventure puzzle game: Whispering Willows.) and Indie Gala are offering an excellent post apocalyptic car racing /shooting game called Death Track: Resurrection which was one of the first games I purchased on Steam back in 2009. The Indie Gala version is free standing. For those interested in the Tom Clancy franchise, you can play Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege from now until September 4th 9:00 PM UTC+1. You can find details of the free week HERE, it does require 82.3GB of free disk space and you need to be logged into your uPlay account to be able to install it.