"Multiplier up." That voice! That perfect Housemarque voice, so calm in the face of chaos, so endlessly assured. In Resogun, she spoke to you through your controller - a wonderful piece of release-window magic that did more to make the PS4 feel exciting and new than almost anything else in the early line-up. In Alienation, she's back, bringing a hint of order to the manic battlefield of this relentless twin-stick shooter, and suggesting that, no matter how bad things seem right now, there is always the chance of a little showboating.
And things seem quite bad right now, to be honest. Earth has been invaded, and huge chunks of the planet are no-go zones, home to shambling, hulking, bubbling aliens. If you wondered what XCOM might feel like as a co-op blaster, this is probably it, the wide top-down-ish angle offering a decent view of a world that seems long past saving, while you and up to three friends (online only for now) pile into Chernobyl, Brazilian jungles, the frozen wastes of Alaska and beyond - how many other video games have room for Nebraska on the itinerary? - in a last ditch mission to save the remains of humanity.
Simple as the story is, the set-up makes a surprising amount of difference to the final game. Alienation is the sci-fi sister to Housemarque's much-loved zombie-athon Dead Nation, and while both play very similarly, they feel rather different. Dead Nation could come off as a bit of a slog, carefully crafted as it was, just because it was you against all those zombies, and you were surviving from one mission to the next, scraping by between horrific set-pieces. Alienation's ETs still feel a lot like the undead - staggering after you, limbs flailing, mutant bodies covered with odd lumps and bumps - but the framework offers players just a little more control. You're dropped in and lifted out of each level by chopper, and as you dart around the world, the growing sense that you're guerillas sticking it to the aliens blends well with the way that your powers evolve and your arsenal expands.
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