FORCED, as it’s listed in block caps in my Steam library, isn’t just another ARPG or dungeon crawling hacking and slashing click-fest as you might first assume. In a nutshell FORCED cleverly combines the puzzle-y goodness and seductive challenges of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, the less-is-more customisation and twitchier targeting-based combat of Bastion, and the kind of frantic survival co-op madness reminiscent of Magicka and Alien Swarm. I love that it has no loot to tediously sift through and sell, no inventory Tetris — hell, no inventory — no experience points, no leveling, no grinding, no unwieldy hotbars chock-full of timers and symbols, no woefully unsatisfying stat increases like +1% chance to critical or +5% resistance to fire damage, no specialisation that irritatingly locks you in for the rest of the game, no convoluted skill trees, no mind numbingly inevitable dungeons, no quest drudgery and the typically awful (and pointless) dialogue accompanying them, no long-winded time wasting story that takes itself too seriously — FORCED just lets you get straight down to what matters: the trials and working out how best to conquer them.
To follow on from where Gregg left off with with his fantastic review, Team 17 have finally announced a launch date for Alien Breed 2: Assault, which is set to launch on Steam and XBLA on Wednesday 22nd September. The second chapter in the Alien Breed series finds the player taking control of Conrad, Chief Engineer aboard the dying ship Leopold, and continuing his fight for survival across the fatally damaged space vessel. In addition …
A few weeks ago I finally decided to buy the Alien Breed: Impact double pack for myself and a friend. For those of you who aren’t aware, Alien Breed: Impact is the PC version of Alien Breed: Evolution which in turn is a reboot of a classic franchise by Team17 originating on the Commodore Amiga in 1991. The main reason I purchased Impact was simply because of one thing: Alien Swarm. Actually make that two …