::War Of The Worlds....On Your Dreamcast::
Written: Jun 16 '02 (Updated Jun 16 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: ::Fun gameplay. Offline mode is a solid game::
Cons: ::Online mode costs $20 a month. Some impossible missions::
The Bottom Line: ::Pick this game up, regardless of your gameplay fancy::
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| SParkfan77's Full Review: Alien Front Online for Dreamcast |
Well, the Dreamcast is home to some great exclusive titles. In the late days of the Dreamcast, SEGA released the last of their popular and exceptional sports titles of the 2K’s, last minute online games, and others by third parties that costs at most $20 to purchase. Alien Front Online was one of these titles. I picked it up a few weeks ago at my beloved Best Buy location for a mere $9.99. Now, for a gamer like me that does not have Sega Net, does this game stand on its own with its offline capability? Or will you have to shell out $19.99 for the service? Is it even good enough to pay that much? All of these questions and more will be answered as we take a look at…..
::Alien Front Online::
Ok, so the story of the game is not its selling point:
“The Triclops have invaded the Earth with a simple plan: the eradication of all human life!”
Oh man, where do they come up with this stuff? Anyway, this game is more than just a cheesy story, it also have some extremely entertaining gameplay on top of everyone’s favorite army-tank-game weapon: the guided missile. Yep, it’s in this game as in the well-known Battle Tanx series. The other obliterating weapon that they seem to fit in this game was the infamous Nuke.
This is not a tank-game clone; it is a tank game with a twist and 60 offline missions to prove this. You have the choice to either fight for Earth, or fight for the Triclops. Man, I hate saying Triclops, it sounds like a low-budget horror movie from the 1970’s. Each race has 3 tanks or creatures to choose from. For each there is a slow moving, but strong vehicle; an all around unit and of course the extremely fast, but extremely ineffective vehicle that does little damage to their opponent. Each will be used in the duration of all 60 missions as each mission relies on a units abilities, speed and strengths.
This game steers away from other conventional games with its branching story-lines in the mission mode. You don’t see this too often, although it has been done before, and better at that. This is, nevertheless a cool idea, I found myself pretty surprised that such an idea would be implemented into a $10 title.
Did I mention that this game has online play? Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I have not played this title online, but I have heard that the voice messaging with the microphone (included with game) is sent over the network with little trouble, but then again, that’s hearsay and probably something that I shouldn’t even say but its better than bad news nonetheless. Also, like I said earlier, is this game even good enough to play online? The answer is an Enthusiastic “Yes!”.
I of course played on the side of the humans first as fear of being known as a traitor to my own planet. I kicked some alien tail, I’ll tell you that much. Although some missions were easy at first, as I got up to the 20th mission and up, the objectives become more and more impossible and inconceivable to accomplish, and this is even after playing them 10 or 20 times in failure. The bad thing about this is that you can’t change the difficulty setting, but what’s great about this is that I still came back to the missions, trying to beat every last one. After a few days, I had a little more than half beaten, I decided to switch over the axis of evil, also known as the Triclops.
Instead of saving my national monuments and civilian lives, I was working to destroy major countries on Earth. And to tell you the truth, it felt good in a perverse sort of way. After playing so long on the side of the “good guys”, it was tough to start killing the same people that I used to call “comrade” and “commander”. But I got the job done, and let me tell you, it ain’t easy being an alien in today’s world. I did however sense the similarities of the missions from the humans campaign; they were similar in their objections if they were total opposites. Wow, oxy-morons suck. (i.e- the human mission would have me destroy an alien mother pod, while the alien mission was to defend it). You get the idea.
And for the downside of this game, if you are playing offline, you will be playing with yourself. This game is online 1 player. Sorry fella's
So was is this game worth the $10 price tag? And just because its cheap, does that mean that gameplay suffered? Lets see how Alien Front Online stacks up. Ratings are from one to five stars.
::Here’s The Breakdown::
::Graphics::
***1/2
Although this game had a few graphical feats here and there, overall, it was nothing more than average. The explosions of a nuclear weapon was a very nice touch, both the explosion and the nuclear winter snow that followed was a nice touch as well as some great lighting effects on most explosions and gunfire. This game did not show off the Dreamcast’s finest graphics, but it sure did try pretty hard. There were some nice elements here and there that show effort was made, but it fails to be named as “great”.
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::Gameplay::
****
Well, think of it this way, being the bad guys isn’t so bad if you’re having fun is it? AFO really puts you on both sides of obliteration in this tank war game that revives all of your favorite weapons including the guided missle(always a crowd pleaser), rapid-fire machine gun, meteor showers(not so common, but still cool) and the ever-popular nuke. Let me just say that when the nuke rolls around, you don’t want to be in its way, and when you pick it up, you know that you will have a good time by using it. There are a bunch of little things in this game that make it all the more playable, this includes the destruction of buildings, mapping of certain stages, and the strategy involved. I just wanted this game to be multi-player offline, but what are you gonna do?
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::Overall::
****
Like I said earlier, I wish I had this game for Sega Net, it would have been fun kicking some alien butt online. At first, I was discouraged from purchasing this game because of its “online” word in the title. Don’t think that this is a game that will solely play online or a game that is meant for online and has a lackluster game offline. This game has the best of both worlds to make both sides happy; and in my opinion, it does such a fine job making sure that there are enough missions and gameplay offline while still leaving a few surprises online as well. Pick this title up for its measly price tag of $10, and with a free microphone peripheral, you can’t go wrong. Fire at will!
::Memory Space:: 8 blocks on VMU
Recommended:
Yes
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SParkfan77
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Member: Dan Schiller
Location: Long Island NY
Reviews written: 376
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