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Alien Shooter is a top-down, Isometric Shoot 'Em Up by indie developer Sigma Team, released in 2003 for the PC and later made availible through Steam in 2009. An Updated Re-release, Alien Shooter: Revisited, was also released in 2009, featuring more levels and an extra game mode.

Here's the lowdown: A top-secret Elaborate Underground Base has been infested with hostile alien creatures. All on-site personnel have been killed. You, a crack government operative and literal One-Man Army (Or Woman, your choice) have been sent in to destroy the aliens. It's that simple.

Easy enough, right? Wrong. Trouble is, there's a lot of these aliens. A Lot. Like, hundreds of them on screen at a time. Luckily, you're not only a badass but you have an impressive arsenal of very large guns at your disposal. You'll need it all.

Sigma Team later released a sequel, Alien Shooter: Vengeance, in 2007. It added eight different characters with distinct stats and abilities, RPG Elements, and Voice Overs. This game also received an Updated Re-release in the form of Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded, released in 2009, which removed the voiceovers to dramatically decrease the size of the game, and also streamlined the leveling system. In 2007, Sigma Team released Zombie Shooter, quite similar to the first Alien Shooter but with zombie enemies. This was followed up by Zombie Shooter 2 in 2009. Eventually they went back to the aliens, releasing Alien Shooter 2: Conscription in 2010.


Alien Shooter provides examples of:

  • Action Girl: The female player character. She is slightly faster and more accurate then her male counterpart, who has more health.
  • Aliens Are Bastards: They pretty much wiped out all the people in a government facility for no reason at all.So shoot them!
  • Arbitrary Weapon Range: Grenade Launcher, Freeze Ray and flamethrowers have a minimum range, and the grenades always detonate at a certain distance.
  • Armor Meter: The armor that is acquired has its durability measured in a gauge next to your HP bar.
  • Armor Points: The Armor Meter for armor's durability implies this trope by being in a digital medium, so the durability is likely measured in numbers, behind the scenes.
  • Attack Drone: An optional equipment for the protagonist in the first game and its expansions. The most powerful aliens also get a more powerful version mounted on their weapons.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: Some of the aliens are vaguely humanoid, but most fall under this, more closely resembling spiders, slugs, Zerglings and who knows what else.
  • BFG: The minigun certainly qualifies, but first prize goes to the Magma Minigun, the game's ultimate weapon. It can clear the entire screen of lesser monsters in three shots (which is under half a second). Its ammo comes in stacks of 400.
  • Bloody Hilarious: This game doesn't seem to think much of the gratuitous violence going on.
  • Body Armor as Hit Points: Averted, armor pickups absorb a percentage of damage. Green flak vests absorb 50%, yellow combat suits absorb about 75%, and red Powered Armor absorbs 90%, in addition to making you look like a human tank and making all your guns freaking huge. The sequels add more different types of armor with various protection levels, which can be repaired for far cheaper then buying new ones.
  • Boss Fight: Though the first game relies on Multi Mook Melees, the sequel and the Zombie Shooter games add big nasty bosses for you to fight at key points. Zombie Shooter's final boss can only be harmed by luring him into an electrical trap. Zombie Shooter 2's final boss has a protective barrier that can only be dropped by destroying the generators scattered about his arena.
  • Crate Expectations: All over the place, often grouped with Exploding Barrels for easy access to the items within.
  • Cyborg: Your character can be upgraded with cybernetic implants, increasing health, strength (which determines how much ammo you can carry) running speed and accuracy (which also provides a small damage boost). The sequel also adds an intelligence stat, which determines how effective said implants are.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: Zombie Shooter games evoke this style, along with comic-book style UI, to differentiate it from Alien Shooter .
  • Doom Doors: Old-school shooter fans may recognize the use of Quake's double-barreled shotgun firing sound for this series' shotguns. In addition, the engine and driving sounds for the vehicles seem to be that of Half-Life 2's dune buggy.
  • Downer Ending: How the second campaign of the first game ends. The government research facility developing the virus designed to kill the aliens en masse is overrun by the monsters, and the only sample is found destroyed in the ruins of said facility. Also counts as a "Shaggy Dog" Story for the protagonist.
  • Emergency Weapon: You begin the game with a pistol, or Uzi in the case of Alien Shooter: Revisited. It's good against the small packs of Zergling-like enemies you encounter early on, but it's outdated by the time you find the shotgun.
  • Energy Weapon: You have the slow-firing, but powerful Plasma gun as well as the Magma Minigun. In later levels, aliens with Arm Cannons show up. The sequels give us a laser Sniper Rifle, the slow firing, but heavy-hitting Ion Cannon, the fast and deadly Laser Chaingun, and so on. Zombie Shooter 2 even adds a Shrink Ray!
  • Engrish: The briefing texts suffer from this. They seem to have gotten a better translator for the Zombie Shooter games.
  • Exploding Barrels: Check. And quite a few of them at that.
  • Faceā€“Heel Turn: In Alien Shooter 2, General Baker wants take control of the alien hordes for his own ends. He doesn't react well if you decide not to help him.
  • Fire-Breathing Weapon: The flamethrower can be obtained in most of the games, allowing you to incinerate large swarms of alien creatures instantly.
  • Firing One-Handed: How your character wields the starting pistol/Uzi, and every pistol save the dual pistols in Zombie Shooter 1. Perhaps if he/she used two hands, or two Uzis, it would be more effective. Every other gun is used two-handed.
  • Freeze Ray: Instantly Turns the aliens into meat popsicles, where upon you can break them into pieces.
  • Friendly Fireproof: It's not Human Shooter, after all... and some of your weapons, especially lategame options like the nuclear rocket launcher, would be nigh-unusable if they could hurt you as well.
  • Gatling Good: Man-portable gatling gun? Check. Man-portable gatling laser? Check. Man-portable gatling plasma melting machine of death? Check.
  • Gorn: You may find yourself forgetting that the walls weren't always red. And sticky.
  • Giant Mook: One of the alien types faced against late in the first game and its expansions.
  • Grenade Launcher: Check.
  • Guns Akimbo: The first Zombie Shooter starts you off with a pair of what appear to be Enforcers. Your character fires them sideways with surprising accuracy and a respectable fire rate.
  • Hammerspace: And how! The first games only let you carry a few hundred rounds of ammo, but the sequels really went overboard - you can carry several thousand rounds of various types, and if you spend some skill points in the strength stat you can carry several tens of thousands.
  • Hand Cannon: some of the late game handguns deal far more damage than a pistol's got any right to.
  • Heal Thyself: Available in instant-use pickups and storable medkits that automatically trigger when your health runs low.
  • Impossible Item Drop: while there are a few gun-packing enemies in the game, even unarmed ones who attack with claws and teeth will occasionally drop ammo pickups.
  • Kill It with Fire: Flamethrower? Check. The sequels also add the short-range "burner" weapon.
  • Large and in Charge: The alien commander in Alien Shooter 2 pilots a Humongous Mecha that dwarfs anything his grunts use. General Baker on your side arguably qualifies, what with his massive combat armor.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Available in red or green! Any alien or zombie hit by a heavy enough attack will gib, sending parts flying everywhere. Expect the halls to be plastered with the stuff when you're through.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: The sequel features a powerful triple-barreled rocket launcher that appears to resemble the one from Unreal Tournament 2004 as one of the endgame weapons, and some of the Elite Mooks you encounter in that game carry twin missile pods on their backs that allow them to relentlessly spam rockets at you while looking like they're cosplaying a Mad Cat.
  • Mook Maker: Aliens can infinitely spawn from certain openings in the walls; in such occasions, you must deal with them with dynamite. Teleporters will also spawn aliens indefinitely, but they'll blow up with sufficient firepower.
  • Money Spider: Enemies occasionally drop wads of cash, but these are more often found in crates.
  • Multi-Mook Melee: Every level.
  • Nuke 'em: The sequel's best rocket launcher uses micro-nuke warheads.
  • One-Man Army: Standard issue for shooters, although high damage weapons don't hurt either.
  • Powered Armor: The suit of the alien leader in the sequel is either this or a mecha, meanwhile the last two armors useable by the player in that game are very much this and can easily make you look like a walking tank, though the "powered" part appears to be only for making the armors carry themselves, as they do not boost your strength.
  • Power-Up: It's very rare, but an invincibility power-up can occasionally be dropped from an enemy.
  • Regenerating Health: Zombie Shooter regenerates up to 30% of max health.
  • RPG Elements: In the sequel. You get to choose a perk, such as regenerating heath, increased experience gain, more money drops or the ability to have secret areas pointed out to you. This perk is upgraded with attribute points like your basic stats.
  • Serial Escalation: Just when you think the game can't possibly throw more aliens at you at once, it does.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: The first game's second campaign, Fight for Life. The vial sample the protagonist was after turns out to have been destroyed when the aliens overran the facility, rendering the journey to said facility pointless.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: Averted, shotguns lose no effectiveness over range. The pellets do scatter more over range, but in practice this means that they're good for both shredding big enemies close in, where the pellets all hit the same target, or for mowing down hordes of smaller enemies at a distance.
  • Sniper Rifle: Zombie Shooter 2 adds sniper rifles, which, while slow firing, do more damage in a single hit then any other gun in the game. This includes the nuclear rocket launcher. You'd think the rocket blast hitting multiple enemies would even it out, but sniper rifle bullets go through anything that isn't solid level, so you end up carving corridors of empty space within the swarms of enemies.
  • Standard FPS Guns: Check out some of the other weapon tropes on this page.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Courtesy of your grenade and rocket launchers, and the dynamite.
  • Third Is 3D: The third Alien Shooter is.
  • Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Averted. This game's flamethrower is the second-to-last weapon you find. It's a great way to warm up a crowd.
  • Walk It Off: Alien Shooter 2 and Zombie Shooter 2 give you the option of having regenerating health, along with other perks.
  • Weaponized Car: Alien and Zombie Shooters 2 have armored cars and trucks that use Gatling Good and Car Fu to get you to the next mission area relatively safely. One of the later levels in Alien Shooter 2 even let you drive a Tank for good measure.
  • Zerg Rush: The aliens' primary means of attacking.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: The Zombie Shooter games.

Alternative Title(s): Zombie Shooter

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