Developer: Rocket Bear Games
Publisher: Rocket Bear Games
Platform: PC, Mac
Infested Planet – Review
Aliens, aliens everywhere. Imagine yourself being surrounded by enormous packs of extraterrestrial creatures and a shotgun in your hands. Teammates support you from every side and you are ready. Ready to kick some serious alien butt!
Story
There’s little to non story at all in Infested Planet but let’s be honest, you don’t want to be playing games like this in the hope of getting a fantastic narrative. This is a game a la “kill them all” and that’s all you need to know really. However, there are in fact story based missions, where you’ll basically follow a strange signal that’s transmitted somewhere on the planet. Doing so will lead the squad to the heart of the infestation and then the real games begin.
At the beginning of each mission (story based or random), a small summary of what is asked of you and what the main objectives are pops up on screen. Then it’s simply: press go and let’s exterminate some alien vermin!
As pleasant as it was, the story mode was not very lengthy and could’ve used some more levels to develop the plot in a deeper way.
Graphics
The camera is fixed on a top down view as we’re used to in this genre. A nice mix of colors brings life in the simple but effective map designs. All information that you’ll want to keep an eye on (like health bars and available upgrades) are clearly shown on screen which makes it easy to keep an overview about the situation at hand.
As the title already plainly gave away, this is a game about a huge invasion of aliens and yes, the screen will in fact become overwhelmed with a lot (!) of aliens. Enormous groups of little buggers will come creeping at your squad and bases and it’s indeed as awesome as it sounds. Graphically, the game handles a screen full of movement wonderfully and I haven’t noticed any delay or hick-ups on this part.
Sound
The soundtrack is nothing extraordinaire and you probably won’t even notice much of the music while playing as your focus will be elsewhere. If you do put your attention to it, you’ll hear some electronic songs which fit the theme perfectly. The music is composed by Sinewave, for those who’d like to hear more.
Gameplay
Infested Planet makes use of an interesting mixture of the tower defense genre and squad based gameplay. You take control of “The Devils” a well trained and brutal squad who are given the assignment to rid the planet of those nasty little invaders.
Every soldier starts off as a simple rifleman but with enough points earned, you can upgrade the team in all kinds of specializations like officers, snipers, flamethrowers and a couple more. Each class has his own merits and it’s usually smart to have a nice variation in your group. How do you earn these points you say? Well, every time you capture an alien base, a reward will be granted through which one can buy those specializations or buildings that provide equipment and support.
As you go through the story mode, new abilities will get unlocked like airstrikes and rockets. The difficulty goes up in a steady pace so it’ll eventually be necessary to use every option at your disposal in the best strategic way or a victory will be really hard to accomplish.
When you come to the point where you’re thinking: “Hey, I’ve everything under control now”, the game keeps putting you on edge by letting the aliens mutate in all kinds of irritating ways. To name a few: when the Devils capture a base, the opponents get a speed boost or they’ll regenerate health or new, stronger enemies suddenly pop up. In total, there are 33 different mutations in the game. Things like this keep Infested Planet interesting and new and as this isn’t even enough, the maps and mutation system are completely random, so no battle is the same as another one.
Besides the main storyline and side missions, there’s a weekly challenge and skirmish mode which adds greatly to the replay value. The skirmish mode is highly customizable as you can change the map size, the amount of hives, which mutations should develop, how big your team is and so on.
The only thing that feels like a missed opportunity is the lack of multiplayer and coöp. I can only imagine how fun it’d be to take down horde after horde with a friend on even more challenging maps. You’d have to synchronize your actions and being strategic would be an absolute must. Maybe something to keep in mind for a possible sequel?
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a nicely priced game that’s not very hard to understand but can prove difficult to master and keeps adding new elements in the mix, then you might want to take a look at Infested Planet. I had a blast diminishing the alien population and in fact, I still do. The tower defense/squad combat combination works like a charm and really makes you think tactical. That’s what strategy games are all about eventually so if you love the genre, you’ll certainly love this.
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