Introduction :

These days just about everything seems to be 3D. Even though I love 3D games, I have always been a fan of good platform games. Having only an old Pentium 100 at home means that I cannot enjoy the very latest games, but this is fine, as I often stumble across old gems - like Alien Rampage ! By good platform games, I mean challenging games like Prince of Persia, Flashback, The Lost Vikings, and similar games that require skill and a bit of thinking to complete. These games are all absolute classics. Abuse was another very good platform game, but it was far too easy to complete - I finished Abuse the day I got it and felt very short changed. I was hooked on all of these games until I finished them - and I found them extremely enjoyable to play and solve.

Opening Screen - End of Level Guardian #1 is lying on the ground in a heap in the background !

Main Menu - The Game is nice and easy to configure and set-up.

I have never been a fan of mindless Sonic the Hedgehog type platform games like that, which I see as having little purpose and virtually requiring no thinking at all. I purchased Alien Rampage of a friend who had brought the game new years ago - in early 1997, shortly after its release in late 1996. I may have seen the game on a magazine demo disk at some time, but I do not remember for sure. As a result, I had no idea what to expect when I first installed Alien Rampage - however, I was very pleasantly suprised indeed.

This is platform gaming par excellence, and it easily knocks all of my old favourites (Prince of Persia, Flashback, Abuse, and The Lost Vikings) into a cocked hat. Alien Rampage is better, more challenging, more rewarding, and has better gameplay and enemy diversity than - dare I say it - virtually all of these other classic games combined. In short, Alien Rampage is the absolute "best of its class".

In Game Screen - getting ready to dodge a hail of rockets from this big pink skeleton .... Nice green shorts love !!

Another In Game Screen - taking on the ED209 with a pink human head - what a wuss !!

Forget the story - it is cliched. You are an alien smugling something, and you take a back route through an uncharted part of the galaxy, and are attacked by other aliens and your ship crash lands on a planet. This is the reason for the platform world you are exploring. The graphics are beautiful, and the parallex scrolling and graphics are the best I have seen in any game on any system. The game is slightly reminiscent of "Shadow of the Beast" - possibly one of the most famous Amiga games - but it is infinitely better in all areas than this game.

The Baddies : There is a *huge* diversity of "baddies" - in their size, shape, speed, weaponry, attack style, movement style, etc, and all require completely different strategies to overcome. Some baddies crawl and breath fire, some run fast and bite, and others stand back and launch rockets and homing missiles. There are snapping fish, biting eels, carnivourous plants, axe wielding skeletons, fire breathing snails, fire spraying larva scorpions, poison mosquitos, psycho insects, giant stinging ants, ED-209 robots with human heads, flaming arrow shooting slug men, giant crawling rocket shooting sheletons, homing missile toting aliens, grotesque upper-torso scarecrows, spiders, rats, small robots, wall hugging sniper robots, and many, many more. You will have to determine each enemy's weakness and strengths, and adapt your attack for each enemy.

The Levels :

Another In Game Screen - Gotta jump these Sharp Swinging Blades - Nasty !! Lucky I didn't shave this morning !

Along with this, there are larva pits, streams, rivers of acid, swinging axes, trip-wire lasers, catapults, elevator platforms, collapsing bridges, moving platforms, falling rocks, rolling rocks, laser beams, energy conduits, rocket propelled vertical launch platforms, giant auomated bulldozers, and many other obstacles for you to use or overcome. The levels are massive and diverse, with a vast array of scenery, statues, textures, and graphics. Levels range from dense forests, to stone cities, to under ground caverns, to electronic future zones, and more.

There are 3 levels of foreground and 3 levels of background, and the player and enemy sprites are in the middle of this. When you walk across the level, the trees / buildings all move with regard to their distance into the screen. The effect is very beautiful indeed.

As I said earlier, the graphics are beautiful, and the parallex scrolling and graphics are the best I have ever seen in any game on any console, video arcade machine, or computer system. The puzzles in the levels require thought - sometimes quite a bit of thought. There is the great Teleporter level in particular where each teleporter can transport you to a selection of other transporters, and each of these can teleport you to a selection of other teleporters, creating a web of "ways" to get to a whole series of locations.

Damn, I need to go to the shop, but boney is guarding the door - and he's got his axe with him this time !!!

End of Level Guardian #1 looks mean with his flames and spikes - but I am gonna kick his ... Hey, what's that burning smell ??? Mmmm, smells like bacon !! ;)

You need to shoot barrels, boxes, crates, etc to reveal any bonuses (money, health, extra amunition, etc), so that you can then collect them. Every now and again on each level there is a shop, where you can spend your money to buy more ammo. And, at the end of every 6 or 7 levels or so, there is a massive ugly end of level guardian. These take a great deal of beating, and you will need to make many attempts before you succeed.

All in all, there are approximately 20 levels, and this will keep you busy for quite a few days. Playing for 5 hours each night, I managed to complete the game on the 5th night, so for me there was 25 hours of very enjoyable and challenging game play. The game does have 4 levels of difficulty. I played on the "Shoot and Run" level, which is the default (and third hardest) level of play. The harder the level, the tougher the enemies are. i.e. the more shots required to kill them.

Just got my arse kicked big time by End of Level Guardian #2 - He's a tough mother !!! When you wear him down a bit he stamps on you with his stilletos !

At the end of each level, you are given the option to SAVE your game progress to disk. In addition to this, every now and again during a level, you will reach a save point, where you can save your progress so that you can restart there if you die later on. This works very well. It is however temporary - if you turn off your PC, you cannot need to start your level over again - as the save point is not stored permanently - unlike the SAVE you do at the end of the level.

The Weaponry :

No need to go to pieces Pal !! Big Guns + Big Explosions = A lot of warm, red, chunky rain ! ;))

The Explosions : The explosions are huge and varied, and at times blood, guts, intestines, and body parts rain down from the skies with all the carnage. This game possibly isn't for sensitive very young children - due to the blood and guts explosions.

Dos Vs Windows :

I was also able to press Alt-Enter to make the full screen DOS screen a Window's window, and use Paint Shop Pro (for Windows) to generate the screen shots which you see in this review. Not many DOS games allow this - normally the screen is a little corrupted when you view it in a small windows in Windows.

Other :

I do not know if you can get any map editors, level creators, weapon editors, etc for the game - but I haven't had a search on the internet yet. These types of things are what makes the iD Software games (Doom, Quake, etc) such good value, as the game is virtually infinitely extendable.

I also do not know if there are any cheats for the game, and I have to admit I was tempted to search the internet on several occasions to try and get some help with the very nasty end of level guadians. (In the end though, I didn't do this, and I completed the game through perseverance).

The Downside :

For instance, the sound effects were very good - but not excellent. This is the one area where I felt the game could have used a little more work. (Then again, one of the stereo channels on my Sound Blaster 16 compatible card is playing up, so this may have degraded the sound effects).

Some nice atmospheric music would have also been nice.

Another area of the game I didn't love is the limited number of save slots. However, to get around this, at the end of every 7 levels I simply Alt-Tabbed back to Windows, copied the "RAMPAGE.CFG" file to a new name (such as "RAMPAGE levels 1-7.cfg") and then Alt-Tabbed back to the game and kept on saving for another 7 levels. So, this isn't too hard to get around. It would just be nice to have infinite save slots to avoid this extra hassle.

One thing that would have been very nice is an element on randomness. Some of the best games, such as Diablo, generate their levels at random each time you play, and this adds to the longevity of the game. Sadly, Alien Rampage doesn't have this randomness, and so has limited longevity and replayability.

Also, there is no multiplayer in Alien Rampage - it is solely a one player experience. Having huge multiplayer levels would have been fun - especially if you could have teams and choose to play as either one of the good guys or one of the bad guys.

Conclusion :

Finished the Game in 5 days !! Number removed so no-one can send my number in to win my prizes ;)

The team who designed this game (Inner Circle) have done an amazing job, and I hate to think how many hours went into the design and development of the game. The development team obviously had a great deal of fun with the game and loved every second of their work - as it sure shows in this great quality, very polished, and extremely enjoyable game. To summarise, I highly recommend Alien Rampage to any person who likes a damn good, challenging and rewarding game. This game is perfect for beginners and serious hard core gamers. Buy it now !

Game Summary :

Game Name :	Alien Rampage
Game Type :	Platform Game with lots of Action / Puzzles.
Developer :	Inner Circle / Softdisk
Price :	$10 (Second Hand)
Screen Resulution :	VGA - 320 x 200 with 32,000 Colours
WEB Page :	Alien Rampage WEB Page
Release Date :	Oct 1996 (Shareware), December 1996 (Full)
Graphics :	99%
Sound :	80%
Music :	n/a
Playability :	99%
Longevity (Re-Playability) :	30%
Operating System(s) :	DOS or DOS shell in Windows 95 / 98.
Expandability / Extendability :	Nil - as fair as I know.
Multi-player :	No.
Harddisk Installable :	Yes - CD is not required when you play !
Any Copy protection :	No
Review PC :	Pentium 100 - but the game apparently runs fine on a 486.
Overall Rating :	94%

Moose's Rating : 9.4 / 10

The above review is Copyright © Moose O'Malley, April 12, 2000.