Alien Shooter 2: Conscription and Zombie Shooter 2

In my last review, I wrote how I was itching for more Alien Shooter 2. Well, apparently the gods have answered my prayers, because I've just downloaded and beat Alien Shooter 2: Conscription and Zombie Shooter 2, and I'll be reviewing both of them at the same time in this review post. Considering the similarities among AS2:C and ZS 2, I'm not going to go deep in depth as to the gameplay, but will instead mention some of the similarities and differences among the three. Read my Alien Shooter 2 review for more depth in the games


Premise

In Alien Shooter 2: Conscription, you play as a conscript who is drafted to fight against the alien invasion. The game plays more as an expansion, introducing new varieties of aliens, weapons, maps and story, and offers slight technical upgrades from the original Alien Shooter 2.

Zombie Shooter 2 is more like a total conversion of Alien Shooter 2. The game uses mostly the same weapons, but includes new vehicles, and all the enemies are converted to zombies. In addition, it's longer and has more technical upgrades than what's offered in AS2:C.


But with the same thrilling and blockbuster story telling apparently

Gameplay

Gameplay for Alien Shooter 2: Conscription is very similar to what was offered in Alien Shooter 2. It's a top down isometric shooter in which you kill several thousand aliens. There is the introduction of new guns, aliens, and levels, but overall it's really more of the same. The game is also significantly shorter (not surprising being an expansion), and the levels overall seem less exciting. Story wise, the game's predictable but satisfactory. The game features only one vehicle, but has more weapons available and gear available.




But now with more Fallout Power Armor action

Gameplay for Zombie Shooter 2 not surprisingly is also very similar. Instead of aliens, you'll be killing zombies, which range from slow Romero zombies to rocket launcher carrying zombies, so think Resident Evil x 100 with this one. As always, you'll be mowing down hordes of zombies at once, and although the game feels similar to Alien Shooter 2, it feels slightly slower paced because of the use of zombies rather than aliens. Levels are appropriately large, vehicles are appropriately destructive, and bosses are appropriately big and mean.




And you can do it all wearing bright red hot pants

In terms of new content, Zombie Shooter 2 offers more. Conscription adds in a few extra items, aliens, and levels, but it really feels recycled. Zombie Shooter 2 follows the same formula of Alien Shooter 2, but it does it better. Aliens are changed to zombies, so there is that feeling of being swarmed. The game also offers a much more interesting vehicle than Conscription's. In terms of weapons and gear, both games seem to offer relatively the same amount of new guns and items. It's a definite step forward, but I felt that Zombie Shooter 2 should have added much more.


Robots vs Zombies. You knew this was bound to happen.

Zombie Shooter 2 does, however, does introduce a few new problems to the series. The weapon selection system has been changed. Instead of a slot for pistol, shotgun, assault rifle/machine gun, explosives, and energy, shotgun/assault rifle is combined, and explosives/energy is combined. In addition, pressing button 2 or 3 twice will exchange your current weapon with another from the inventory, leading to clusterfu-king when you need to juggle between 3 or more weapons. Combine that with the random loot system, and you'll find yourself magically replacing your .50 Cal machine gun with a pea shooter accidentally when you were looking for your auto-shotgun. I would have preferred Alien Shooter 2's 1-5 button system but with an alternative slot for each weapon category.


You can still switch off to this lava sword thing, but there's only one flamethrowing weapon in the game, hence why I said the game needs more goodies.

One thing that hasn't changed among the three games is the extras; they're still pretty much the same offering of survival, career, and gun stand.


My character is actually standing right next to a red car. Notice the darker shades of red in this survival level.


Gun stand lets is a defense game in which you can choose upgrades every new level.


Like the rest of the game, it's pretty chaotic and bloody.

Both also offer new technical improvements, with both of them now offering a 16:9 resolution (but not my own resolution), and ZS 2 also features things like film grain effect for that extra horror element.



Both of these screens give an example of the film grain effect

System Performance

OS: Windows 2000 / XP / Vista
Processor: 1.7 GHz
Memory: 512 Mb
Graphics: DirectX compatible video card with 128MB video memory
DirectX®: 9.0
Hard Drive: 1.5 Gb Free Space
Sound: DirectSound compatible sound card

The game should run the same as Alien Shooter 2. Zombie Shooter 2 seems to offer more performance options, but they can be disabled. The games will fun fluently on all modern computers.

Demos are available here:

http://www.sigma-team.net/games/action/ali...nscription.html

http://www.sigma-team.net/games/action/zombie-shooter-2.html

Bugs/Mods/Value/Misc

Both games are reasonably short; I beat the campaign for Conscription in about 2-3 hours. Zombie Shooter 2 felt longer, though the game recorded a campaign as three hours or so. Most levels will take on average about 20-30 minutes, and Zombie Shooter 2 is only a few levels shorter than Alien Shooter 2. In any case, you can beat either game in an afternoon or an international flight. However, both games are newer than Alien Shooter 2, so they're not in the bargain bins yet. Zombie Shooter 2 is $10, which is 5x the cost of what I bought Alien Shooter 2 for, so in terms of value, neither of these games really deliver the same way Alien Shooter 2 did.

There is are a few bugs introduced in Zombie Shooter 2 (which I'm not sure exists in Conscription). The first major bug is this clipping that you'll see if your character has high running speed. You seem to run faster than the map can transition, leading to a sort of annoying sync problem. Think of it as playing a game with overly high frames per second with v-sync disabled. The next major bug in Zombie Shooter 2 is getting stuck in certain holes/areas and not being able to get out. You'll find that you get stuck more often in Zombie Shooter 2, and I had to restart the level maybe once per campaign, so it's no game-breaker but know that it's there.


I was able to fit this huge tank

Into this tiny room. And yes, I had to restart the level.

Overall Score

8/10

Between Alien Shooter 2: Conscription and Zombie Shooter 2, the latter is better. It offers a larger variety of new enemies, a few more items/gear, more visual effects, a large campaign and I feel better levels, though it does suffer from more bugs and that annoying weapon-switch thing. While both games will give you that same Alien Shooter 2 experience, I would say that Zombie Shooter 2 is more on par with Alien Shooter 2, and if you had to choose between the two, I would recommend Zombie Shooter 2. Right now, however, the price of the games are a bit high especially considering that for cheaper than the games' retail prices, you can probably get a big budget game, so the games don't get the same score as Alien Shooter 2, though I can say I'm quite sated with the game franchise now.






Suggestions:

1. Offer more guns, gear, etc. I want more options for attack drones damn it. The three games use the same characters, feats, and extras features. Give more.
2. Let us reuse characters for new campaigns.
3. Implement a weapon-switch system that makes sense. Stick with the Alien Shooter 2 format 1-5 format but offer an alternative weapon slot.
4. Fix the bug issues in Zombie Shooter 2. The clipping issue is especially annoying.
5. Multiplayer and use a new game engine. The Quake 4 engine's going to be open-source soon. Just a suggestion.