Alien Carnage AKA Halloween Harry is one of those old 2D games that you stumble across and wonder why you haven't heard of before.
Its story is brilliant B-movie fare - the time: 2030, the place: New York, Earth. Aliens have come from outer space and landed on the Big Corp skyscraper - their mission: to capture and turn the populace into mindless zombie slaves! As Harry you're sent in by the powers that are, to rescue the hostages, kick some alien butt and look good doing it!
Of course you’re not going to do this alone, you’re equipped with your trusty flamethrower and jet pack - these both use the same fuel so finding the recharge vending machines is a must, as is finding others that give you extra weapons and in some cases invincibility, in exchange for credits which are gained by killing the mixture of zombies and aliens that roam the games four levels - The Sewers, The Factory, The Office Block and The Alien Ship.
Alien Carnage AKA Halloween Harry is one of those old 2D games that you stumble across and wonder why you haven't heard of before.
Its story is brilliant B-movie fare - the time: 2030, the place: New York, Earth. Aliens have come from outer space and landed on the Big Corp skyscraper - their mission: to capture and turn the populace into mindless zombie slaves! As Harry you're sent in by the powers that are, to rescue the hostages, kick some alien butt and look good doing it!
Of course you’re not going to do this alone, you’re equipped with your trusty flamethrower and jet pack - these both use the same fuel so finding the recharge vending machines is a must, as is finding others that
give you extra weapons and in some cases invincibility, in exchange for credits which are gained by killing the mixture of zombies and aliens that roam the games four levels - The Sewers, The Factory, The Office Block and The Alien Ship. These are broken up into four zones and a boss zone each and you can play the first three levels in any order before tackling the forth and final level and saving the world etc.
The level's zone's themselves are colourful and surprisingly complex, requiring you to make copious use of your simple radar to find the hostages scattered about each zone, flicking switches to open doors to previously inaccessible parts of the zone and in a lot of case's, making you backtrack parts of the zone to progress and finally, once you've rescued all the zone's hostages, you've got to find the elevator that takes you to the next zone, whew!
The game itself is quite tough too, which the bosses being quite a challenge in themselves as well as different types of both aliens and zombies to test your mettle - both of which have a tendency to respawn so you’re constantly kept on your toes.
The music during the cut-scenes is pretty cool - yes, the game has cut-scenes too, which help to set the scene of the game and are coloured in big colourful cartoon-ish graphics and add to the overall B-Movie-ish look of the game which really made me smile! The music and sound effects throughout the game really add to the games polished feel.
I've gone on a bit, but overall this game is a decent platformer with good music, cool graphics, a tongue in check story which spills over into the game itself and provides a decent challenge - you won't be completing this one in a hurry!
