Developed by: Team Junkfish
Published by: Junkfish Limited
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC
Reviewed On: PlayStation 4
Galactoil, a comically dysfunctional intergalactic energy corporation has invaded an alien planet. The twist here is instead of controlling a squad of special forces or mutant heroes, players will be controlling the Aliens themselves in this fun turn-based strategy game.
Gameplay
Attack of the Earthlings is a game that is very much similar to X-COM, Mutant Year Zero, or Super Robots Wars whereby the player takes turns to initiate attacks. One key difference is in those games every attack has a hit chance associated with it usually shown as an accuracy percentage but this game decides to forgo it completely ensuring that every hit will connect with the enemy. Maybe the alien technology has just gotten so advanced they can never miss?
The game does encourage players to go the stealth and strategize route but of course, players can go all out on a killing spree if they wanted to. The learning curve for this game is very brief as the tutorial and the tooltips of each skill are very easy to understand and pick up.
Each stage has main and side objectives for the players to carry out. If all the objectives have been fulfilled, players will then gain more rewards in the form of mutagen after the mission. Mutagens are used to upgrade the aliens passive skills or activate buffs. Players can also collect biomass by killing the earthlings with in turn can spawn grunts which can be upgraded into any one of the three available alien types to achieve objectives faster. The three alien types are;
- Goliaths are big brutish aliens with a large health pool and are the hardest hitters.
- Stalkers can set up traps, crawl through vents and perform a backstab attack which ignores armour on unsuspecting enemies.
- Disruptors can distract earthlings and launch a surprise attack together with other units with the range attack ability.
Soldier movements are easy to predict as their patrol route is the same and is easily avoided but beware each action the player makes might trigger nearby enemies. Opening doors, killing, or spawning grunts does alert nearby enemies unless the layout has been generous to shield you from detection.
Graphic/Sound
Each stage and environments are well designed with the animation of both the alien and earthlings really good to look at. The sound effects of an alien consuming a corpse, the footsteps of patrolling soldiers, any machinery noise or laboratory work going on were very well done but I did notice that there is some static music playing whether intentional or not during cinematics that is not the best to hear.
Details of level design
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”239″ gal_title=”Attack of the Earthling”]
Verdict
I would say I enjoyed the gameplay greatly mostly because of the events and injected humour that came from the earthlings and the scenarios they were subjected to. I personally think that each stage has a very good layout for strategizing even against boss characters as you can basically plan ahead to eliminate the target incredibly quickly if you wanted to. Sadly there are only seven stages and replayability can wear out very fast due to the length of the game only going as long as eight hours. I would say that this game is recommended for those looking to try out turn-based strategy games without a punishing learning curve then this game is definitely one to try out.
