Someone once told me that all bad things come in threes - something which, more than anything else, shows how obsessed we humans get with spotting patterns in things. A few weeks later, after a spell of good luck, someone told me the same is also true for good things, and buses - you never just get one, as they always come in threes. The same may be true for Alien Breed, now completing its trilogy, although it's neither good, bad nor a bus. Instead, it's just OK.
If you've read our review of the last instalment in the Alien Breed trilogy, you'll already have a good idea of what to expect from this one. A top down sci-fi shooter with an emphasis on horror (or at least, a tendency to make you jump) Alien Breed 3 continues the series' trends, as you explore the dark corridors and dingy hallways of the spaceship Leopold, upon which you've been trapped since the first game.
Kill it with fire.
And in its favour, Alien Breed 3 does manage to make you feel uncomfortable while you're wandering around the innards of the unwelcoming ship. As a horror game, it's only fitting that you should never feel too safe, and enemies have a tendency to pop up all around you - often literally bursting out of the floor, meaning you can never let your guard down.
Of course, by using the left stick to move around, the right stick to aim, and the right trigger to fire, it is possible to defend yourself, but ammo, even on the lowest difficulties, is fairly sparse aboard the ship. Forcing you to rely on your crummy little pistol for all but the biggest enemies, the sparsity of ammo makes the game a lot scarier, as you're forced to tread the line between using up your precious ammo, and absorbing as much damage as you can take before you whip out a bigger gun.
Unfortunately, the game's let down by exactly the same weaknesses as the other games in the series, although this was somewhat expected, seeing the short gap between the second and third instalments hitting the shelves. With a poorly written and voiced story bridging each chapter, there's little incentive to play on. Making matters worse, whenever there's a development in the story mid level, you'll either get text appear, silently, at the bottom of the screen (meaning you either don't notice, or don't get chance to read it), or there'll be a voice over, whispering something you can't quite make out, with no subtitles to back it up.
This is the first boss fight in the game. It's also incredibly frustrating.
The co-op, too, which again could have made Alien Breed a lot more fun to play through, is broken and effectively a waste of time. Inexplicably forming a separate set of levels from the main adventure, the co-op mode is even less story driven, and won't let you change the difficulty, turning what could have been at atmospheric scare trip for you and your friend, or other half, into a bland face-off against hundreds of enemies that simply absorb crazy amounts of damage, leading to a lot of deaths, and even more frustration.
With only five levels making up the main game, and a number of poor, and frustrating boss fights along the way, Alien Breed 3 is a disappointment - although it's one we were sadly expecting. While it may seem good value at only 800 points per episode, of you were to buy each instalment, you'd end up paying over £20 for the entire series - and at that sort of price, this can't be recommended.
In the end, Alien Breed ends up going out in the same way as most other trilogies - with a final instalment that, although it's better than the middle one, still can't quite match up to the first. And when the first one wasn't that good either, that's simply a disappointment.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
