Finding a reactor shouldn’t be this difficult. That was basically my problem during twenty minutes with Alien Deathstorm at Gamescom. Somewhere inside the base was a reactor without power and I needed to get there, but several parts of the facility were on fire, the obvious routes didn’t always get me where I wanted and there were creatures walking around that weren’t particularly interested in letting me search in peace. By the time I really started understanding the place and how carefully I needed to use my supplies, my twenty minutes were almost over.
Alien Deathstorm is being developed by Rebellion and puts you in the boots of a Combat Engineer, which explains why I spent considerably more time messing around with the environment than I expected. Yes, I had weapons and there were plenty of things to shoot, but simply blasting my way towards that reactor wasn’t going to solve much. Fire blocked several parts of the facility and forced me to search for valves, check different routes and actually pay attention to where I was going. I regularly entered a room hoping it would finally lead me closer to my objective, only to discover another blocked route or something else I needed to deal with first. And while I was trying to figure all of that out, I also needed to make sure I didn’t run out of bullets.
I might need those bullets later
Ammo wasn’t exactly everywhere during my demo. I learned that rather quickly and started checking my surroundings much more carefully instead of simply rushing towards the objective. Skipping a room suddenly seemed like a pretty stupid idea when there could be ammunition or something useful waiting inside, especially since I had no idea what the next part of the facility would throw at me. It turned scavenging into something I actually wanted to do instead of another distraction between fights.
And there were definitely fights. I encountered several types of alien mutations during my session, ranging from smaller creatures to much larger ones, and they didn’t always have the decency to attack me one at a time. A few smaller enemies weren’t necessarily a huge problem, but things became considerably more hectic when several started coming towards me while something bigger was lurking behind the corner too. I had to keep moving and make sure I wasn’t wasting too many shots, because emptying half my ammunition into one encounter might solve my current problem but leave me in a pretty bad situation a few rooms later. That made having a gun less reassuring than I expected. Alien Deathstorm certainly has more action than something like Alien: Isolation, but I never reached a point where I felt comfortable firing at everything that moved. Missing several shots against one smaller creature genuinely annoyed me because those were bullets I wasn’t getting back, and after a few encounters I was already thinking about how much ammunition I wanted to keep in reserve. In true Alien fashion, you can print extra ammo but you’ll need the right currency for it in order to do so, so it’s not limitless at all, which was pretty exciting for sure!
Someone really needs to fix this place
The facility itself gave me enough trouble even when nothing was trying to kill me. Fire had spread through several sections and sometimes the route I wanted simply wasn’t available anymore. I had to find valves and shut them down to deal with some of those hazards, after which I could continue searching for another way towards the reactor. It meant I spent a surprising amount of my twenty minutes looking around, opening up routes and occasionally wondering whether I had completely misunderstood where I was supposed to go. That searching worked well with the limited supplies. Whenever I found another room or corridor, I wasn’t only thinking about whether it would finally take me closer to the reactor. I wanted to know whether there was ammo somewhere inside too. With the clock ticking during a Gamescom appointment, I found myself in the slightly ridiculous position of knowing I should probably make progress while still checking another corner because I really didn’t want to enter the next fight with an almost empty weapon.
The setting helped too; there’s plenty of machinery around and the place looked like something had gone seriously wrong long before I arrived. Since you’re playing as a Combat Engineer, interacting with the facility also makes sense within the game instead of feeling like someone simply scattered a few valves around because there needed to be something between combat encounters. I wasn’t there purely to kill whatever had invaded the place; I had a technical problem to solve and unfortunately quite a few creatures were standing between me and the solution.
Very different kind of danger
I happened to play Alien Deathstorm around the same time as Alien: Isolation 2, and switching between the two was rather funny. In Isolation 2, I was vulnerable and desperately trying to avoid the Xenomorph. Here I finally had a weapon in my hands, but Rebellion found another reason to make me careful. I could fight back, I just couldn’t afford to forget how much ammunition I was spending while doing it. The larger enemies in particular made that interesting because concentrating all my attention on them could leave the smaller creatures free to close the distance. When several enemies appeared together, I needed to decide what was causing the biggest problem instead of immediately unloading everything into the first thing I saw. Between those encounters, I went straight back to scavenging and trying to figure out where the hell that reactor was.
I expected something much more straightforward when I saw Rebellion’s name attached to Alien Deathstorm. There’s obviously plenty of shooting here, but my short session also had me exploring, managing limited supplies and dealing with a facility that was doing its best to prevent me from reaching my objective. Twenty minutes really wasn’t enough to see how far any of those ideas eventually go, but it was enough to make me curious.
Early conclusion
Alien Deathstorm gave me a lot to do during a very short demo. The reactor mission combined exploration and scavenging with more action-heavy encounters, while the limited ammunition made me think about how I approached those fights. I definitely needed more than twenty minutes with this one, and I’m looking forward to seeing more.