I shot at the horde of aliens with my grenade launcher, blowing a few of them to bits, until I ran out of ammunition and I was left shooting at them with a flimsy pistol. I took a few more of them out with the pistol before rushing over to the gun crate, which spit out a random gun at me (a machine gun this time), and I got back to efficiently slaughtering the rest of the aliens. Yep, Super Mutant Alien Assault is a pretty rapid, hectic game, but it is also extremely fun.
Many Missions
I was able to try the game out at PAX East 2016, where I played alongside a member of the Surprise Attack team, as the game supports both single-player gameplay and up to two people playing multiplayer. Out already on Steam Early Access and due to hit PlayStation 4, PS Vita, and Xbox One later this year, Super Mutant Alien Assault is being published by Surprise Attack is and developed by Cybernate.
Playing as security bots stuck on spaceship filled with humans in cryostasis, players are charged with working their way through single screen levels in an effort to protect the dozing humans and the spaceship from hordes of alien intruders. Each level has a different and random objective that needs to be completed before moving on.
“(The objective) could be just waves of enemies that you need to fight off… Could be you need to restart the hyperdrive, so that would mean you need to deliver the canister from point in the map to another point in the map,” the Surprise Attack employee told me.
Weapons Galore
To achieve these objectives, players are given access to an arsenal of weapons, which can be accessed through weapon crates in each level. The crates spit out random weapons, chosen from a list of weapons that have been unlocked by progressing through the game. In the beginning levels, there are only one or two weapons that might be spit out of the crates, but as players unlock further weapons by advancing through different levels, that number can grow as high as 20 or 25.
Abilities, side arms, and explosives, such as grenades, may be unlocked as well by progressing far enough.
I believe there are about 12 or so levels to get through in each play through. They are split into groups of four, with the fourth level always containing a boss.
“So, you’re playing three individual levels, and then you fight an end boss at the end of that galaxy,” I was told.
From what I’ve played, it doesn’t seem like it will be an easy task to get to that last boss, as enemies evolve and grow stronger after each level and the levels are all randomly generated. Even so, I’m excited to try when Super Mutant Alien Assault releases later this year.
