Alien Storm is a scrolling shooting game released in 1990. You play one of three characters; Karen (ginger woman with flame thrower), Garth (muscular meathead with hideously ranged electric gun) and Scooter (camp robot with whip thing). Unlike other games in this era, there is no real advatnage to each character as in all honesty they’re all shit. It also leads you into a false sense of security as all the weapons really have no range which makes this more of a beat ’em up title like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage.

Similar to Golden Axe and Streets of Rage, the ‘A’ button serves as your “special” attack. Whereas in GA it unleashed a powerful magic attack or in SoR where a police car comes running in and devastates the wide area, Alien Storm falls over a bit by having a special attack which will only partially damage your enemies and gives all player epilepsy instead. Plus it drains your “power” meter at the bottom. This can be refilled throughout the game like Golden Axe’s magic bottles, except the energy cells are more rare and fill up fuck all making it almost pointless.

The aliens are staccatoed and inconsistent, most of them will always get the first hit on you regardless on how well you’ve strategically positioned yourself, as well as another game which almost seems to revel in the fact that enemies off the screen will hit you and you can’t retaliate. You also spend the whole game tirelessly mashing the buttons trying to get your unresponsive character to actually do something meaningful.

The game does attempt to digress into some variety, you’ll have almost FPS sequences where you can shoot the aliens rampaging in a shop and collect more fruitless energy cells but these parts just become tiresome and well, painful after a while. And you also get the “Shinobi” sequences where you’re sprinting down the street at a rate of knots and you’re hammering the shoot button but it’s almost impossible to do these sequences without recoiling from lactic acid. In a nutshell, none of these modes work to detract from the Streets of Rage style grind through. Power ups for health are non-existent and you only get 3 continues once you die. You get no extra lives, and in 2-player, the continues are shared, which heavily limits the multiplayer experience.

So in conclusion, Alien Storm is complete thundercack and if you were wondering why I was comparing it to Streets of Rage and Golden Axe the whole time, it’s because both those games were it’s contemporaries, and was MUCH better. Don’t waste your time on Alien Storm, bash your way through Streets of Rage. It’s way more entertaining that playing this piece of shit.

Freqmaster and myself play this piece of shit here for your amusement.