I've tried 3 separate times to get into Alien Soldier. I feel I should love it, everyone else seems to love it. Yet every time within 30 minutes I've bounced off of it like a bodybuilder throwing a ball at a wall.

I suspect this is a me problem rather than a game problem. Alien Soldier does not ease you in and throws you straight in so that in less than 3 minutes you are fighting a boss where you can run along the ceiling. This game goes to 11 immediately and never slows down so you can get comfortable with the clunky and unintuitive controls. Whilst it does have an interactive tutorial menu it doesn't help when you're thrown into the front lines trying to remember what controls allow you to block, dash, change stance or bring up the weapon reel. Honestly this game feels ahead of it's time that it's trying to give so many options on a controller with so few buttons.

The whole game feels clunky in a way I don't have the patience to learn and adapt to. The weapon reel doesn't pause the game which would be fine if your weapons didn't (needlessly) run out of energy forcing you to swap at the worst time. This means you are guaranteed to receive a cheap hit like a trout to the face as bringing it up is slow and cumbersome, when you remember which button and direction do it. The levels have super tight timers for no reason, and resource managing your weapon energy on top is just a chore.

Despite my lack of enjoyment of actually playing this there is a great deal of charm here. The ludicrous story reel fed in a scrolling feed like Star Wars fan fiction, the huge chunky character model, the extreme fast pace, and colourful visuals are all great. I can see how people would like, nay, love this game when they learn the controls and mechanics so they are second nature rather than having to think then get an energy bullet to the face as I did.

+ Great visual and art design.
+ Fast paced non stop action.

- Does not give you time to acclimatise.
- Control system feels clunky and unintuitive.

Imagine you've mastered Shattered Soldier (or some equivalent) and you can now 1cc it regularly. Confident, you decide to show it off at some kind of event-- but upon beginning, your dexterity is seriously f u n k y and anxious confusion starts to gnaw away, followed by embarrassment.

Then you wake up.

Initially learning Alien Soldier was like running in a dream for me. Although I managed to complete it, the skill ceiling still looks awfully high.. and I love that.

Using Mischief Makers as a personal, relative example-- I've been playing that game for like 25 years (on and off). It's an exciting prospect to imagine that I could keep getting something out of Alien Soldier for decades to come. This one feels like a forever game for me. It might be my favorite aesthetic on the Mega Drive.

Alien Soldier is a bizarre game. It starts with a 4-minute text crawl describing all of its extremely over the top and confusing lore (which is detailed even further in depth in the japanese manual), but the actual game doesn't have a single word of dialogue in it. The character is basically half the screen's height, controls are clunky and a bit unintuitive and despite allegedly having "levels", they're basically 30-second bits of holding right while tapping the shoot button at your leisure, with bosses being the real meat of the game.

There's a method to the madness, though. The game isn't amazing at communicating this to you (Alien Soldier is definitely the sort of game where you'd really need to read the manual, or just look up a guide today), but it's one of the most nuanced and rewarding action games of the era. Every system feeds into another one. At full health, your invincible dash turns into a powerful charge that consumes some health. Double tapping the attack button lets you do a short range attack that turns bullets into health, which means that if you play perfectly you can chain the above charge and shred through most bosses. All the weapons serve a purpose, both firing modes have their own uses (you can shoot while moving or standing still, but the former wastes a lot of ammo and isn't always viable, though sometimes necessary), and everything about the gameplay is very carefully considered. I don't know how Treasure did it, but even today Alien Soldier is such a tight and well-realized action game that few can match it.

... At its best, anyways. It is unfortunately marred by a couple of pretty annoying sections, around the mid-late game. There's a couple of stages (read: boss fights) where the environment is completely dark, and you need to fire to briefly light it up. This is hard on the eyes and generally very annoying, but not a big deal. There's a boss battle a bit later on, against a transforming mech, that has five phases, with no checkpoint. No other boss has more than one phase, which makes this by far the hardest fight in the game, even compared to the overall simple final boss. A difficulty spike isn't in itself a horrible thing, but two of the phases use a really annoying, clunky "flying" system where you're constantly wrestling against currents, which takes a lot to learn and shouldn't be something you have to figure out how to wrestle with well into a hard fight. It's way more frustrating than any other part of the game, which overall flows pretty well, and while it doesn't ruin it is is a sore spot. Also, switching weapons, which you'll have to do a lot, is very clunky and often gets you hit, but that might just be a skill issue.

One last thing I'd like to note is that this game is surprisingly extremely friendly to newcomers. There's two difficulties, "SUPEREASY" and "SUPERHARD", which sound like they're miles apart but in reality they're the same in gameplay, SUPEREASY just gives you infinite lives. It also allows you to change the speed of the game, which is absolutely not something I'd expect from a 1995 game but extremely welcome, though I didn't really use it.

JOGUE NO SUPEREASY! (não muda nada)

Eu já havia iniciado uma jogatina de Alien Soldier antes mesmo dele ser escolhido aqui, o problema é que minha preferência naquele mês não era Mega Drive. Sempre jogava isso nos emuladores quando era menor e SEMPRE morria no primeiro chefe como uma criança qualquer faria, ainda bem que não insisti muito porque nunca consegui apertar save state e load state da maneira correta... e, hoje... 2024, quase 31 nas costas, voltei a jogar isso num Mega Drive.

Depois de anos da minha vida, eu comecei a jogar com mais gana de vencer o jogo e este é um daqueles que havia me frustado no passado. Não tinha entendido que a proposta de um jogo tão foda como este... e, nem entendia a proposta da Treasure. Sempre jogava como se não houvesse o amanhã, porém este jogo me apresentou o que era realmente o amanhã. Ele é difícil, vai te marcar e vai rir da sua cara.

Assim como toda criança burra, não entendi o que era pra fazer e sempre via aqueles gráficos com muito amor. Todo jogo com sprite grande me chamava atenção. Tudo é tão lindo e encaixa perfeitamente com o jogo mesmo sem entender NADA e apenas jogando. Aquele pombo... quem é ele na fila do pão ein? Só acho que eles deveriam ter colocado um chefão mais memorável no início e não aquele piolho de cobra.

Esse jogo todo é lindo, cara. Não há muito o que discorrer dele. Som foda, gráfico foda, pombo foda.

Só acho que precisamos conversar sobre uma coisa: superhard. Sabemos que o Mega Drive é conhecido pelos seus jogos difícies , mas precisava judiar? Sinceramente não entendi qual foi a escolha da Treasure em querer colocar isso no difícil e ainda forçar o jogador a terminar o jogo com praticamente 1CC, sendo que o modo "supereasy" do jogo já é uma dificuldade que só e mesmo assim usei um total de 31 continues para zerar um jogo de menos de 1 hora. Obrigado, Treasure... tantos jogos bons e fodas que não precisavam desta dificuldade exagerada.

Talvez se a Treasure tivesse aberto as pernas igual a Rare fez. Hoje ela seria uma empresa falida igual a outra que abriu. kkkkkkkkkkk

I'll be honest and say that I simply don't "get" this game after trying it out for about 45 minutes, and this is coming from somebody who adores Dynamite Headdy to no end and had a lot of fun with Gunstar Heroes despite feeling it was a tad overrated.

Yeah, the graphics are absolutely amazing and show what a farce the (at the time) six year old Genesis hardware could be as it neared retirement. I'd never argue against that for a second.

There are also some mechanical improvements over Treasure's last run and gun that I want to point out. Dashing, parrying and hovering around felt pretty intuitive and I liked the idea of parrying bullets to regain health in the heat of battle. Being able to swap between fixed and free shot is also an improvement.

The decision to have you swap weapons in real time when the game is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you, however, just seemed super idiotic. This was not a problem in Gunstar Heroes, which came out two years prior. You were able to pause and switch weapons no problem. If we want to go back even further, Thunder Force III also let you do this five years prior. (Granted, that's a shmup and not a run and gun) This was the number one thing that made me shelve the game after getting through a handful of the game's bosses tbh.

Also not a fan of how the only difficulties available are "supereasy" and "superhard". It just seemed a little pretentious not to have a middle ground.

For now, I think I'll just stick with Headdy/Gunstar/Treasure Land Adventure as those are games from this company that I have always enjoyed immensely.

4 key words:
Pacing
Art style
Movement complexity
Difficulty
This game is incredible epsilon is such a cool character to control and a perfect match for the challenges that you will face on this unfinished masterpiece

Este juego no tiene piedad con nadie, jodidamente difícil y casi no hay momentos de descanso.

Y POR ESO ME ENCANTO, una banda sonora estupenda, gráficos excelentes, una jugabilidad frenética, muy divertida donde sera necesario elegir 4 tipos de disparos con sus ventajas y desventajas, además de ir aumentando la capacidad de las mismas, y por ultimo, jefes que pondrán a prueba tus reflejos. A lo mucho la única cosa negativa es cierto bajón de FPS en uno de los últimos niveles, pero realmente no afecta en casi nada y de hecho el juego se mantiene corriendo.

Sin duda, lo mejor que ha hecho Treasure en la Sega Genesis y también, mi juego favorito de dicha consola.

My least favorite Treasure game, including all of the licensed ones. I prefer games that either take 300 hours to achieve unsteady competence at, or Wattam. Alien Soldier sits smack in that awful middle point, where you can probably see the ending in about 20 hours of practice, but it's going to be grueling getting to that point. The precision it asks for is way too demanding for how clunky and at times unpolished it comes off as, at least in terms of level design.

I've never met an Alien Soldier fan but you gotta imagine they don't wash their asshole.

Unbelievably hard and manic game, but it has infinite continues and an easy password system so you can surely see every level if you're dedicated enough. The level 20 boss rush was as much as I could handle. I really admire how this game has an absurd amount of moves for a 16-bit action game. If you're a hardcore fan of run and gun games then this is probably a masterpiece. This is also a pretty excellent display of the Genesis's visual prowess, with lots of fast, smooth animation and a lot of stuff onscreen for a game that's virtually lag free.

Run ‘n Gun-a-thon — Part 5

Alien Soldier is probably the best foundation for a run ‘n gun. The boss rush element of Contra: Hard Corps is taken to its logical extreme, meaning the action is nonstop chaos from beginning to end. Treasure made a bold, but brilliant decision to give each weapon an ammo limit that automatically refills when unequipped, which can also be expanded between most levels. This ensures you can’t stick to one gun unless you devote more weapon slots to it. Such a strategy isn’t very viable on SUPERHARD, as you only get three continues. Speaking of which, play on SUPEREASY for your first run. It’s almost identical to SUPERHARD, but with unlimited continues.

A staple of run ‘n guns is allowing the player to feel like a badass and Alien Soldier is no exception. Epsilon-Eagle has four weapon slots, a parry that can also recover health, an invincibility dash that deals tons of damage at full health, a jetpack because why not, and the ability to switch firing modes at will. Parrying bullets feels euphoric every time and I appreciate the dash rewarding you for taking minimal damage.

All of that’s great, except the weapons themselves are incredibly underwhelming. There are only six of them, and their functions are as generic as it gets. Rapid fire, close-range flamethrower, spreadshot, homing fire, rapid laser, and shotgun laser. Compare that to Gunstar Heroes letting you combine two weapons out of a possible four, allowing for 14 different shot types. Some of these were definitely more useful than others, but you could still beat a boss no matter what weapons you were carrying. In Alien Soldier, certain weapons flat out don’t work on some bosses, or are so ineffective at dealing damage you might as well ignore them. Figuring out the best weapon for bosses boils down to a boring game of Simon Says and then memorizing the solution for future playthroughs. I don’t mind some memorization, but the problem is that the rapid fire and spreadshot are the worst guns in nearly every situation. They suck at dealing constant damage due to most bosses having weak points that are difficult to reliably hit without homing fire, only vulnerable for short bursts (use shotgun laser), or so easy to hit that other weapons can get the job done faster (flamethrower or rapid laser). Do the classic Contra games force you to use the spread gun to beat a boss? No. You can finish them with the basic rifle if you want to. Weapons should have moments were they shine brighter than others, but it should also be possible to emerge victorious even if you are carrying the worst weapon. If Alien Soldier was designed like that, the ammo upgrades between levels would be much more fun to play with.

Even if the gunplay was more flexible, the bosses would still need to be high quality. Those of you who played the game will probably disagree, but Alien Soldier has the most pathetic lineup of bosses I’ve ever seen in a boss rush. Most have a maximum of two attacks that are very easy to dodge. With the right weapon, they will die in about 30 seconds. How did Treasure think this was okay?! Fighting bosses is the whole game! Even the minibosses on the way to bosses in Hard Corps often had several different moves requiring different reactions. It’s no coincidence the best boss is a rematch against Seven Force, and even this falls short of his original Gunstar Heroes incarnation. More moves and/or phases for the other bosses would have made a tremendous difference.

Man, I was looking forward to playing Alien Soldier after hearing about its amazing boss rush design and inspired character abilities. I wanted to love it, but the more I struggled to write this review, the more I realized how much I was ignoring how empty the experience left me despite some promising ideas. As fun as it can be to create fireworks by blasting enemies, I felt little while playing half the games in this marathon beyond some momentary thrills. That is likely just me wanting more out of the games I play. Now that I’ve experienced more run ‘n guns, I’m going to replay Cuphead and give it the review it deserves. If you are still reading this, thank you for listening to my eccentric tastes!