Alien Soldier just has a tremendous amount of
energy, and it's impossible not to get swept away by it. After the control test screen you immediately start off zipping your way through groups of enemies, while facing your first boss within the first twenty seconds of the game, all the while
Runner AD2025 takes the Genesis soundchip for a complete spin. Not a minute later, and you will be facing a giant bipedal ant as your next boss, before moving on to a turtle samurai and a weird-ass thing with hyperactive eyes called Sniper Honeyviper while bombs are falling from the sky. The announcer is bloody awesome as well with his striking soundbites (READY? FIGHT! GOT IT! LET'S GO!). From both an audio-visual and gameplay standpoint, Alien Soldier does its tagline (VISUALSHOCK! AUDIOSHOCK! SPEEDSHOCK! NOW IS THE TIME TO 68000 ON FIRE!) full justice.
Though Alien Soldier is classified as a run 'n gun, it's very much unlike any run 'n gun out there. You have multiple Forces equipped with their own limited ammo supply, which slowly regenerate after they remain unselected for a certain period of time, and is something you'll more heavily rely on than the full ammo restocks by picking up ammo boxes of the same type of Force you have currently equipped, which you want to do because picking up ammo box also upgrades your maximum ammo capacity for the Force you have currently equipped. Avoiding damage is done via the Zero Teleport which zaps you from one end of the screen to the other and lets you pass through everything unharmed, or by performing the Counter Force which turns projectiles into health pickups or reflects them back to sender. The huge player sprite and the limited amount of screen space means there's not a whole lot of room to jump over things or move around in, so the most logical choice for the designer was to include the ceiling in the playing field as well, as you can shift your own point of gravity to walk on the ceiling (if there is one). Stages are short breaks where you're meant to refill your health from fallen enemies before facing another boss, of which there are many. You can take several hits before dying rather than going out in one hit, though not being at full health prevents you from doing the powerful Phoenix Force. Just getting used to the controls takes a long time because they're so unorthodox.
Basically, Alien Soldier features a larger emphasis on long-term planning and ammo management as opposed to only shooting everything until it dies and picking up the right weapons when you're given the opportunity. Because Forces only regenerate their ammo when they're not selected, you always want to select another Force the moment you don't have to use the other one. But standing still to regenerate ammo while nothing happens isn't really an option since a time limit is constantly ticking down, and standing still isn't all that fun when more efficient time/ammo managed playstyles exist. The Force you'll be using depends on the resistances of then next boss you will face, as some Forces are stronger against organic enemies while other are stronger against mechanical enemies. So if you end up messing up, you'll have the improvise with the future in mind. So you might end up not being able to use a Phoenix Force against a boss for dealing YUGE damage, and end up having to take it down the old-fashioned way. Some kind of planning is involved, which will affect your route throughout the game.
The weapon select wheel is made with this in mind, as it allows you to preview the ammo count of your Forces before you select them and cancel the ammo regeneration. While it may be annoying that switching weapons locks you into place, I think it's more or less a drawback from the limited amount of buttons on the Genesis, as the D-pad will be used for cycling between weapons, A brings up the weapon wheel, A and C lets you equip the currently selected weapon, while B lets you fire immediately with the selected weapon. One button Thunder Force-style weapon switching would have you cycle through weapons and select them immediately, unintentionally having you cancel the ammo regeneration for weapons you don't want to actually select. I suppose you could leave the D-pad for movement while the weapon wheel is active and use B/C to cycle left/right through the wheel, though I have to question the intuitiveness of such a setup. In any case, you're not expected to frantically switch between weapons under pressure at any point in the game, and you're often given enough free time during fights to switch your weapon. I'd say this is the best they could have done with the Genesis controller.
Most bosses have to be made with the limited ammo supply in mind, as trying to kill the boss while all four weapons are empty would suck as you cannot refill your weapons other than not using them, so the bosses themselves cannot be too long. Alien Soldier manages to hit that sweetspot of bosses going down in reasonable time with limited ammo (provided you know what you are doing), though your ammo management skills will be tested when the game decides to throw multiple bosses at you in a short span of time without ammo boxes to rely on.
Some bosses (like Silpheed Force, the moth and the plant before Back Stringer) also feel like they're there to be more of a drain on your resources than trying to kill you dead. As in, they're easy, but you might end up wasting more ammo than necessary in the process of killing them which in turn affects your options in the boss fights coming right after, who might not be as forgiving in their methods of murder. It might make some bosses feel underwhelming because they can barely damage you, though in the grander scheme of things I'd say they're a good thing for the pacing of the game, easing up on the difficulty at first glance but having noticeable consequences later on, and still leaving some room for improvement in terms of ammo-efficiency and speed (though Silpheed Force could at the very least actually move to your side of the screen instead of attacking when you're not even in reach), which is where the Phoenix Force swoops in.
The Phoenix Force is an augmented Zero Teleport which can only be activated on full health, and damages everything you pass through, insta-killing most standard enemies and dealing significant damage to bosses. However, to prevent players from constantly spamming the Phoenix Force, using it sacrifices a small bit of health to prevent you from using it immediately afterwards. That health can be regained during fights by using the Counter Force on incoming projectiles which turns them into health pickups. On SUPEREASY one small health pickup of HP is sacrificed on using the Phoenix Force, and on SUPERHARD two small pickups' worth is sacrificed. The implications here are obvious: not getting hit -> deal YUGE damage on bosses w/ Phoenix Force -> ammo is conserved -> counter force projectiles to be on full health again -> repeat
Not only does not taking damage prevent you from dying, but it allows you to lay the smack dab on the bosses' asses even harder. It also kills the bosses even faster, so it saves time as well and has them cycling through their attacks not as often. For this reason it makes sense that you're awarded with a speedkill score bonus depending on how long it took you to kill the boss. The stages themselves can also be sped through using the Zero Teleport, and a lot of the stages are neatly designed with this in mind. The stage after the first boss for example allows you to teleport through entire enemy formations at once, but when you get to the second boss intro the snowflies at the end will fire one/two bullets at you which you can counter into health so you can be at full health again after having used up some health in the process of Phoenix Forcing through the stage. The floating platforms in Act 3 are all one Zero Teleport distance away from eachother, and the vertical differences are made lenient enough when Zero Teleporting.
Having no choice but to use the Phoenix Force when you're at full health instead of being able to do a Zero Teleport when at full health because you wanted to save up the Phoenix Force later is a great thing, because it's the developer's way of saying of
no, use it often, use it NOW. It's a volatile maneuver meant to encourage aggression, and should be immediately used so it can be used immediately again. Using it defensively as a means of escape despite having the opportunity is just a waste. I absolutely love it when the game encourages you through its mechanics to not take damage which then allows you to speedkill, like POW Mode in Shinobi. Not only are you fucking invincible, but you're Sonic the Hedgehog as well.
A peculiar feature of the Phoenix Force is that it deals damage per-frame, which you can use it combination with the limited scrolling speed of the camera to transform the Phoenix Force from a highly damaging move to a straight-up insta-kill. What happens is that the camera just can't keep up with your speed and kind of catches you on one side of the screen, causing your Phoenix Force to do a lot of damage in a static position as opposed to how it usually works where you just pass through and the damage is spread out over a straight line, so when the boss' weakspot remains on one position (usually as a result of the boss not being able to move beyond an invisible wall or the camera not being able to catch up) and the Phoenix Force does as well, the full damage potential is realized and the boss can die pretty much instantly. This can not be performed on all bosses as not all bosses hang around the edges of the screen, though in speedruns you can see how the first two bosses will die in a single Phoenix Force without being able to perform a single attack against you.
I'm not sure whether that is intentional or not, as the Phoenix Force damage output being strongly variable depending on the boss' position on the screen and weakspot locations surely must have been discovered during playtesting. Though there are signs that they knew about it and designed some situations with this in mind. The very first boss you encounter can be Phoenix Force'd to death in one move when its head is right next to a box placed in the arena of the fight, boxes not being a common presence in boss fights, giving off the impression that you're dealing more damage because you're ramming the boss against another solid surface. The second boss starts off at the right side of the screen, allowing you to hover up in its face and Phoenix Force it into the imaginary wall the moment the fight starts. This allows you to deal with the initial bosses much faster and
feels good to execute, though I can't shake the feeling that I'm abusing a glitch. It can be used to kill Xi-Tiger the moment the fight starts after liberally applying flames, turning the fight into a massive anti-climax, especially after that hype transformation cutscene. It feels less like an intended mechanic and more like an accident which the game wasn't
quite built around. It feels incredibly satisfying to pull one off, don't get me wrong, but the opportunities to pull them off feel more coincidental than intended.
The Counter Force being bound to a double-tap input is also most likely a workaround of the limited amount of Genesis controller buttons, though it has some nasty side-effects. You perform a Counter Force by double-tapping the fire button, though tapping the fire button does make you spend ammo. For continuous fire weapons this isn't much of a problem, but for high ammo consumption weapons like the Lancer it very much is. You could switch your weapon before an enemy performs and attack that can be countered, but that does not answer the question for why Counter Forcing has to consume ammo. If the answer is that it should discourage spamming, then that's ridiculous because a lot of attacks can only be consistently countered without taking damage by repeatedly spamming Counter Force. Only a few attacks in the game need precise timing to be properly countered.
The bosses themselves are also very varied, not just in graphic design, but also in the design of the fights themselves. Most fights do introduce something new or have an unique arena in which the fight is set which plays a large part in the fights themselves. One boss will send crabs after you which lock you in place if you step on them, another boss takes place on a giant devoured moth caught in a spider-web being dragged down to the bottom of the screen by mini-spiders until it is completely gone, another boss takes place in complete darkness where the only way to see is to light up the place by firing your weapon, another boss has you fighting a wolfman gunman riding a giant cybernetic horse while avoiding incoming hurdles and his gunfire. It can't be said it ain't creative. Though a lot of these little mechanics and hazards aren't really built upon and are mostly boss-unique, they come in such large numbers to compensate and make each boss fight feel more unique as a result. The only mechanic which I do feel is greatly underutilized is the ability to walk on ceilings, which almost never sees any use during boss fights. Only in like four or five out of the twenty-five.
Seven Force kicks fucking ass. The sheer set-up and that alarms-blaring music does a lot to make this fight a memorable one, from the dramatic screen-flash transformations to the constantly shifting setpiece (going from duking it out in a cave to rolling it out in a cave to a mid-air fight to a fight in front of a temple to a fight underwater after the temple dramatically collapses as the camera slowly pans down to you and Sirene Force in the final face-off), Gunstar Heroes got nothin' on this. The only real weakpoint being Silpheed Force's inability to hit you if you just stick to the left. That, and there being only five phases instead of seven as the name implies. Treasure says that Alien Soldier isn't an unfinished game but merely one with large ambitions unrealized, but you can't fool me there. Definitely my favourite boss of the game, these kind of multiple-stage bosses are always cheating in that regard.
The final boss, Z-Leo, is one giant pushover. Most of it is sticking a Zero Force in his face which is his only weakness (Zero Force being a fallback attack when you're firing a weapon with no ammo left), and reflecting the fireballs my mashing Counter Force around his torso after each attack he performs. It's way too easy, aside from his awesome shoulder-cannon attack which is cycled through at complete random. It doesn't help that around the end of the second act the game loses the flow of progression between stages, and makes it feel like you're abruptly shifting between random stages *cough* cut content *cough*. Suddenly we go from a spider web to a space elevator, and from there to some random winter planet? It's hard to infer from the game who Z-Leo even is or what you are even fighting for. You see some kind of silhouette in the cutscene at the end of act 2 but I can't for the life of me figure out what it's supposed to represent. Xi-Tiger is similarly a pushover, and Epsilon 2 isn't that big of a deal either. I think the end bosses could have been longer to make them stand out more, preferably through more phases like with Seven Force.
The RNG in Alien Soldier is
very rough to say the least. Boss attacks are picked at random rather than through cycled at random through a list until each attack has been picked and the list is refilled. This causes some issues when it comes to speedrunning (what the game is designed around) where the boss needs to perform a certain attack to be the most vulnerable for a Phoenix Force or just your regular weapons, making the issue of getting the fastest kills often a matter of luck. The most notable example is Z-Leo 'throw the platform in the air while shooting at you from beneath' attack which can be cycled through at at random, sometimes multiple times in a row. The problem is that you can't damage Z-Leo during this attack because you're thrown several hundred feet above him, making the attack a huge time-waster. Though it's random enough that it can be never performed in the first place, in my first Superhard 1lc, Z-Leo never even used the attack. It'd be better if the attack was triggered if Z-Leo was damaged beneath a certain health percentage. If you're seriously grading players on destruction time, then it's worth balancing attacks so they all take equal time to deal with.
That said, outside of choosing attacks, the RNG in Alien Soldier does see some interesting applications. For example, in the Antroid fight, the Antroid will flip backwards a random amount of times before making the big leap. Artemis Force will perform a wind-up animation for a random amount of times before leaping if you're hovering in the mid-air ready to perform a Phoenix Force when she is leaping, and the timing by which the first Act 2 boss leaps out of the water is also slightly random. Here the bosses try and fool you into going for the attack too soon or too late, which is where you're supposed to react in time properly rather than just memorize. Artemis Force on Superhard is also a good example for something else, where it can shoot either a straight but incredibly fast fireball at you which you have to counter in time, or a slightly less fast fireball with a tricky trajectory bound to curve overhead and and behind you if you are close enough, or miss you entirely when you're too far away, but then you can't counter it for health and move in with a Phoenix Force. RNG applied to less direct elements like attack telegraphing, trajectory and spread will see more of a focus on reflex than memorization, without giving the player the perception of being always screwed because of luck, because in this case it doesn't make attacks easier or harder because of luck.
Weapon balance-wise things are kind of jank, Flame/Flame/Lancer/Lancer is the way to really go with an optional Homing or Buster in place of a second Flame to make clearing out regular enemies a bit easier. Buster Force is your straightforward peashooter, but it becomes useless against practically every boss in the second half in the game. Buster Force is useful against stuff like snowflies, but doesn't do a lot of damage against bosses. Flame is great and can kill any meatbag well done. The damage feedback is intuitive enough that anyone can tell the difference when they're dealing graze damage or when they're dealing full damage by jamming the flames right into a boss' weakspot accompanied by strong damage flashes and a loud BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT. Homing seeks nearby targets and makes it easier to hit a boss, though damage isn't as great, and against large swarms of enemies it has the tendency to target the wrong enemy. Sword is more of a back-up weapon as its ammo consumption low and its damage output constant and reliable, but its ammo regeneration time is ridiculously slow. Lancer is your primary mecha boss killer and fires a straight but powerful beam which needs to be fired accurately so it's not entirely wasted. But since bosses die best against Flame/Lancer and both have solid performance within the regular stages, you probably want to stick to them. There's also the issue of upgrading max ammo capacity, which can be done by shooting an ammo box with your weapon so its pick-up automatically becomes identical to your currently equipped weapon (a brilliant time-saving feature, as opposed to waiting until it cycles to your current weapon) and then picking it up, but switching to another weapon does not upgrade the max ammo capacity, so you don't want to be exchanging weapons at all unless you have to.
There's two difficulties, SUPEREASY and SUPERHARD. Though despite what the names suggest, they're actually just Hard and Expert difficulty. You're going to have a hard time at first regardless of what difficulty you pick, the difficulty naming scheme is there to trick you into believing that SUPEREASY is as easy as it's going to get. Though there isn't that much of a major difference between the two, it almost feels disappointing when you do clear SUPEREASY and then tackle SUPERHARD directly afterwards. Compared to SUPEREASY, SUPERHARD sees some removed full health pick-ups, increased enemy numbers in stages, altered obstacle placement (with regards to mines), Phoenix Force sacrificing two small pickups worth of health rather than one (even though it doesn't really matter since most opportunities for countering things into health come in groups), some enemies have more attacks, and some bosses have new attacks as well.
The last one is particularly disappointing, as the only new attack I've seen in SUPERHARD is the additional fireball variant for Artemis Force which turns the fight from shaking hands to an actual test of reflexes. Other than that I've only noticed that Silpheed Force has a larger response window against your attacks, most bosses played out the same to me. Either I went too fast before they could even occur, or they weren't even there to begin with. While SUPERHARD does definitely tighten the screws more on some stages and I definitely prefer it as the must-play difficulty, compared to SUPEREASY it's just not the step up I expected.
However, when everything is pieced together, and you get a proper run going, it is a beauty to behold and to perform. Not many games allow you to step up hyper-aggressively and take the fight to the boss with every facet of the gameplay system encouraging you to do so, instead of being a passive bitch who can only poke after the boss is recovering. Unique controls, unique gameplay and a unique set-up make for a highly unique game. Goddamn, Alien Soldier is fun.
