I'm guessing I was about 9 years old when I first played Alien Storm. A few months after that I saw the game in an arcade and played it there. Alien Storm is your basic walk down the street and beat up everything game, but there are some other things that make it interesting. First of all you have an energy and a life meter. You can play as a guy a girl or a cyborg. Most of the time you have to use your basic moves to kill aliens, but they always hurt you even if you kill them. It just takes too many shots, and the weapons suck. I mean the cyborg uses and electric whip and after he hits them a few times he whips out a machine gun. Why doesn't he use the gun the whole time? Why doesn't he use his rockets the whole time? Every character also has a special move that uses energy. If you haven't guessed I've only played as the cyborg, so that's all I can talk about. The other players are identical, but have different and weaker moves. Anyway the cyborg's special move is to blow himself up and then a new body runs onto the screen and picks up the head. It kills every guy on the screen, but you can't keep using it. The major problem is the lack of a jump button. The third button instead makes the player burst into a dash across the screen. If you attack while dashing they will dive into any enemy and do them some damage. This is how to kill things without pain, but it gets repetitious and annoying if you try to kill everyone like that. You will also miss sometimes and it takes too long. I only use it on dangerous guys and when I'm about to die.

The real fun part of this game is that you don't do just this the whole game. There are other things to do. The most fun of which is the shoot 'em up. Once in a while there will be a door to a laboratory or electronics store that will open with a flashing help sign above it. Kill every alien on the screen with a special move and dive into this door. If you have rapid fire enabled in the options menu you simply hold down the attack button and hose the place down. You shoot and blow up everything in the place, aliens, merchandise, everything. You will find energy batteries and life powerups inside things and if you shoot those you get them too. Sometimes civilians will show up, and if you shoot them it's not good, but they are rare. It's even more fun when two people are playing and you and your friend are moving about the screen trying to steal the most goodies so you don't die right away in the next level. The problem with these is that they are between every level and they end promptly. Ending promptly is good though, because if it lasted too long it would get old just mowing down everything on the screen as it scrolls.

There is one level where the guys run forwards very rapidly and you can jump and shoot instead of the other stupid attacks. This level is also fun and short, but that's ok because you couldn't have the whole game like that. Anyway Alien Storm is kind of a funny game with aliens in mailboxes and such, but only half of it is worth playing. And on the easiest difficulty setting you can only get to the laboratory level and then you die. It's impossible to get farther because the primary attacks suck. They could have easily made this game perfect with a jump button and some weapons to pick up off the ground.

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