Sequels can be an extremely tricky thing, because you want to capture the spirit of the original title while vastly improving on the formula with new gameplay elements and concepts for a fresh new experience. The same can be said for a remake, because you want to preserve the original while including some new elements that makes the title stand out from the original. But the remake of a sequel seems like a case of double jeopardy for anyone that wants to take the task on. Sigma Team, who chose to recently remake Alien Shooter, spent some extra time on its sequel. The result is Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded, a game that improves on many aspects of the previous title and ensures that your chainguns will be humming for some time to come.
The first Alien Shooter didn't really have a story at all – instead, your objective was going through every level of an underground laboratory and blowing every creature to pieces. This time around, Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded comes with a story that binds together the seventeen missions in the game. In the year 2027, the M.A.G.M.A. Energy Corporation contacts you for your talents as a well known mercenary. Due to a situation that's strictly need to know, you're sent to a California base and instructed to contact General Baker, who has been working with the company on secret projects for the Army. Of course, once you get into the base, you discover that there's much more going on than it would seem. Aliens have invaded, and it's up to you to discover what M.A.G.M.A. was up to and put a stop to it before the rest of the world is attacked and destroyed by these things.
Players still choose from one of eight characters; in fact, these eight characters are the same from the original game, so if you've played the original you're somewhat familiar with the people you'll be taking into battle. There are a couple of significant differences, however. For one thing, your soldiers have six character stats instead of four this time around. Health, Strength, Speed and Accuracy make a return, and they're joined by Intelligence and Perks. Your Intelligence impacts the quality of the implants that your soldier can use, which further improve your stats. Perks, on the other hand, affects both your character and rest of the game as well. For instance, you can select a perk that lets you regenerate, mentally control monsters, or easily discover hidden rooms and items. What's more, every task that you complete or monster you kill adds experience points to your character, adding an RPG-lite element because you can improve your stats.
Your character is then sent into battle with a couple hundred bucks in your pocket, a hundred rounds, and a basic pistol. No longer will you be provided with unlimited ammo, so you'll have to do a certain amount of scavenging around every level to collect cash that's lying around, as well as ammo, weapons, and other gear that can be used or sold. Searching is actually much more important this time around for a number of reasons. First of all, the world is much more detailed and interactive than before, and you'll find items on shelves, in boxes, and completely off the direct path to achieve your mission. Second, you'll use computers and other gear to progress, although surprisingly there aren't as many turrets that you'll be able to control within the game. Instead, you'll be given access to vehicles with turrets attached to the roof, which you can use to blow everything to pieces. The only downside to these segments is that they tend to drag on for way too long, and there are some missions where it's essentially the entire point of the level, which gets boring rather quickly.
As far as firepower, weapons have been consolidated into five separate classes: pistols, shotguns, machine guns, grenade launchers (or rockets), and energy weapons. Each weapon that you pick up within the game has a specific amount of damage that it causes, which can be improved upon by your Accuracy stat. After a while, you'll quickly discover a weapon that you really love and will frequently rely on that firearm to get you through battles (the chaingun was my best friend). However, you're no longer provided with stores to purchase and sell equipment at the end of every mission; instead, you have to track down computer terminals and access shops that will allow you acquire, repair, and get rid of excess gear so you're completely ready to take on the aliens. By the way, you'll actually be able to stockpile multiple medkits this time around; they will automatically be used once your health gets to a certain point, which is key during large attacks.
Like its predecessor, you're frequently besieged on all sides by dozens upon dozens of beasts. This is much more than simply having to deal with mindless waves of enemies that you can hole up in a corner and fend off; instead, you'll find that monsters will start to attack you from one direction, and as you start getting used to those attacks you'll discover that creatures have burrowed through the floor and are attacking you from behind. They'll also start teleporting in thanks to these machines that beam creatures of ever-increasing strength to your location, forcing you to adjust or even retreat to safety. As you discover the best way to attack these creatures they start spitting acid, using lab weaponry, or flinging themselves at you. This time around, monsters come in many diverse forms, such as spidery looking creatures, lizards with guns, and exploding tick-like insects. The colors of the organism indicates their attack strength and gives a hint of their attack as well, so you have a chance to know what's coming at you; you might not have the best chance to fully respond thanks to the large numbers of beasts coming at you, but you have a sense of what's sapping your strength and what you're blowing to pieces across each level.
Levels within Reloaded aren't like the first game at all; in fact, each level within Reloaded are easily twice as large as the previous game. Each features multiple tasks that you'll have to complete to progress to the next section. For instance, you'll be sent out to acquire a piece of gear, but access to the item is blocked by flooded rooms that need to be drained. Of course, you'll need to turn on the power to the pumps, all while fending off attacks. However, because you're fighting through these more-involved environments with multiple paths, you'll now find that you can get stuck on objects much more than ever before, which can be deadly in the middle of battle or completely prevent you from moving forward, forcing you to restart a level. This isn't that big a deal if you've just started a mission, but if you've spent more than fifteen minutes working on a stage only to get stuck close to the end, it's really annoying. You'll also be tasked with interacting with more NPCs who will provide you with some side missions and even help you out during some sequences. You won't be able to direct these soldiers during fights, and in some cases, you'll even have to help them out because they won't attack where you need them to, but it adds a little variety to the monster blasting, which will take up to a dozen hours to complete if you're hunting through each level for secrets.
With all of these improvements, it's still severely disappointing to discover that there really aren't many adjustments to the gameplay modes within Reloaded. There's still no co-op for this game, which just seems completely natural for a game like this. Once again, Easy and Medium can be challenging whereas Hard and Impossible can be extremely difficult thanks to the numbers of monsters and the damage resistance these creatures demonstrate. You still can't carry over equipment or stats from previous campaigns, so you have to create new profiles and choose new difficulty levels if you want to start over and test your skills. Walls are still very opaque, so ambushes are still deadly. In fact, they can be even trickier because there are exploding things that can catch you unaware and injure you.
Along with this is the fact that the survival mode is practically the exact same as it was in the previous game. You still have the option to Stand Firm in a field or take on Gun Stand in the middle of a street and blow away as many creatures as possible before you're overwhelmed. The new addition is the "Career" survival mode, which provides you with a number of stats, perks, and three lives, and tasks you with blowing away a large amount of creatures. After you reach an arbitrary experience level, you're allowed to improve your stats and continue on destroying each wave until you succumb to their attacks. You're also provided with the chance to select a new weapon to take with you into battle. This is a nice addition to the survival mode, and while it's a decent test of your skills it's strange to suddenly discover random power-ups that sometimes spawn after some attacks. These range from mind control of creatures to dropping bombs (literally) on areas of the ground or freezing beasts. Having these randomly tossed in feels a bit odd – enjoyable nonetheless when you trigger the attack, but odd because it's not included anywhere else in the game.
The top-down isometric presentation of Revisited, once again, is as engaging as the first title thanks to the number of objects in the environment. And due to the larger size of each environment, you'll see a number of items that you'll be impressed by even though you're only presented with the same two resolutions (1024x768 and 800x600). As I said before, many of these items can be interacted with, and there are plenty of items that can be destroyed. There do seem to be a few more death animations for monsters, which makes sense considering that there seems to be different kinds of aliens that you blow apart. At least the sound has been somewhat improved, because while the music still has a driving rock rhythm that kicks up during the middle of battle, there's voice over work during missions which are decent.
The Verdict
Larger and more in-depth than the first remake, Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded packs a nice amount of fun into an incredibly small package. For only five bucks, you're receiving a dozen hours of solid alien blasting play, as well as some decent survival mode features. I still wish that there was co-op, improved visuals or more modes to play through, but this is a definite improvement for the franchise and a step in the right direction from Sigma Team. 
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