Discover your moment on Lufthansa.
There are a few aspects of gameplay that are poorly implemented, while others are simply puzzling. For starters, I found it annoying that - even though I had a full complement of "troopers" for every mission - I often had woefully inadequate weaponry to deal with the aliens. While you can acquire new technology to make mundane items like fire extinguishers quite deadly, the need to do so on each and every mission grew extremely tiresome. Adding to that irritation was the fact that the effects of your weapons vary from mission to mission. I'm sure that this was done to keep players off guard and to simulate the aliens' ability to adapt. Still, it can be quite infuriating when your Big Orange Gun wipes out bad guys on one map, then multiplies them on another.
Character selection and movement is also a bit problematic, as it can be difficult to tell who you have selected at any one time. It's tough to tell which players you've successfully deselected - a problem that results in cooks and other ill-suited personnel being sent into hostile situations. This is mostly due to the clutter that often results from having multiple characters in a small space on the screen. Like several other real-time games, Enemy Infestation also has a problem with characters standing idle after taking out their first target. So even when a swarm of alien grubs comes through the door a few feet away, your characters may not always attack them until you specifically tell them to. And we are talking about a terrifying alien menace here, after all, so would it be too much to ask to see these characters move a bit faster (run) once in a while?
The sound effects for the aliens are very good. Most of the other sounds in the game are pretty bad. The voiceovers for your characters are particularly irritating, as they mostly sound like the work of Australians trying really hard to sound like Americans (and really annoying Americans, at that). On a related note, the game seems to use the same sound bytes when your characters pick up an item and when they get hurt. I thought I was commanding the geriatric brigade half the time, with my guys groaning in pain just from picking up a can of hairspray or a book.
Another annoyance is the game's predefined level of difficulty. While the game builds up from being fairly easy to downright hard, players who can't hack the more challenging levels are simply out of luck. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Hard-coding the difficulty level presupposes that all players everywhere possess the same level of skill, interest and experience. Allowing players to tailor the gameplay experience to suit their tastes and talent might just make the game more approachable and enjoyable to more people (which is the whole point, eh?).
Certainly the biggest surprise in the game, however, is the curious multiplayer support. The features that are there are solid: cooperative mode over IP or IPX links for up to four players using any of the game's 26 single-player maps and 10 multiplayer-specific maps. Also, when the game begins, you must "call" your characters by clicking on them - sort of like a big kickball game in space. For some reason, however, you cannot play the part of the aliens in multiplayer mode - everything is coop only. This is even more baffling when you consider that a cheat code will allow you to control the aliens during the single player game.
Despite these flaws, however, Enemy Infestation is an enjoyable and addictive game with good gameplay and plenty of aliens to stomp.
User reviews
Write your own review Be the first one to review Enemy Infestation (PC) and share your experience with the CNET community!
%20Search%20Result%20reviews%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/search-results/enemy-infestation-pc/4505-5_7-30984162-2.html){kind=small}