Aside from Duke Nukem Forever, there can't be a lot games that have endured as many false starts as Alien Breed Evolution. Initially envisaged as a PC RPG in the late nineties, the game crashed and burned after 18 months in development when publisher Microprose was swallowed up by the acquisitive Hasbro Interactive. Undeterred, Team17 then re-envisioned the game as a Snowblind engine-powered title on PS2, but met with frustrating indifference as a slew of publishers passed on backing it.
Fortunately, times have changed. Boosted by the success of Worms on Xbox Live Arcade, the Wakefield-based studio has decided to self-publish Alien Breed Evolution, presumably waving two fingers in the direction of all the publishers who shot it down the first time around.
GOG.com, the digital distributor of DRM -free PC games, has added PC games from developer Team 17 Software Ltd. to their roster. They now offer a number of games that Team 17 has developed, and GOG.com including the quintessential artillery shooter Worms United, a special edition of the original Worms with the expansion Worms Reinforcements.
Following the launch of four new downloadable content (DLC) packs for Worms Reloaded, Team17 has announced that their promised discounts will extend to other titles also. A spate of sale prices will be applied to many of their titles in celebration of the summer season, both on PC and iOS.
As the first chapter in the new trilogy, it’s up to Alien Breed: Evolution to create compelling enough story to keep the player interested between chapters. It does so with a comic strip style series of panels and some surprisingly laudable voice acting. There’s not much going on here that doesn’t fit easily into the typical science-fiction library, certainly nothing that competes on literary grounds with those attempting to push forward the medium as a story telling device, but regardless it’s an enjoyable tale for the most part; which is really the same as that which can be said about the game itself.
I've still got alien breed on my Amiga 32 one of the best games of its Gen alone with chaos engine will defo pick this up.
