Alien Shooter

File:Alien Shooter Cover 2667.jpg

Alien Shooter is a top-down, Isometric Shoot'Em Up by indie developer Sigma Team, released in 2003 for the PC and later made available through Steam in 2009. An Updated Rerelease, 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 Rerelease 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... well, zombies. This was followed up by Zombie Shooter 2 in 2009.

Tropes used in Alien Shooter include:

• Action Girl: The female player character. She is slightly faster and more accurate then her male counterpart, who has more health.
• Aliens Are Bastards: So shoot them!
• 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.
• Cool Guns: Appearing in the sequels are the MP5, AKM, M14, RPG7 and others.
• Crate Expectations: All over the place, often grouped with Exploding Barrels for easy access to the items within.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Track 2 can really get your blood pumping.
• 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.
• Doom Doors: Old-school shooter fans may recognize the use of Quake II's super 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.
• Dual-Wielding: 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.
• 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.
• Exploding Barrels: Check. And quite a few of them at that.
• Face 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.
• 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.
• Game Breaker: Vengeance has the laser rifles. On paper they sound inferior to the other weapon; sure, they damage a lot, but they are too precise to hit crowds, and the firing rate is fairly low. Then you try one for kicks, shoot it at the empty area near the shop, and... all the lamps in the vicinity break. Laser gun with splash damage? Hell yeah. Buy that, and for a good few levels you need worry about no other weapon.
• Gatling Good: Man-portable Gatling gun? Check.
• Gorn: You may find yourself forgetting that the walls weren't always red. And sticky.
• Grenade Launcher: Check.
• Heal Thyself: Available in instant-use pickups and storable medkits that automatically trigger when your health runs low.
• 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: Triple-barreled rocket launcher? Check.
• Mook Maker: Aliens can infinitely spawn from certain openings in the walls, as well as teleporters, so you must destroy them with dynamite.
• 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: And how.
• Power-Up: It's very rare, but an invincibility power-up can occasionally be dropped from an enemy.
• Rare Guns: The first game's shotgun is a Pancor Jackhammer. In-game, it looks more like a Benelli or Mossberg pump gun. It reappears in the sequels as a mid-to-late-tier shotgun.
• 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.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Averted, since in this game every gun save the Grenade Launcher, Freeze Ray and flamethrower hit where you aim at regardless of range. The three just mentioned have a minimum range, and the grenades always detonate at a certain 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. Of course, that hits multiple enemies, so it evens out.
• 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.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Averted hard. 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 to get you to the next mission area safely.
• Why You Should Destroy the Planet Earth: Never actually revealed.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The Zombie Shooter games.