Alien Breed Evolution

Once I wreste the game from Brown, it controls as intuitively as it looked. Whereas before you basically fired in the direction you were moving (bless the one-button joysticks of yore), the new two-stick system allows for independent moving and aiming. Once you adapt, it affords a much greater degree of flexibility and precision in firefights, as you strafe and dodge with one stick and tweak the aiming with the other. Within a matter of seconds you feel fully in control, without the need for a nannying tutorial having to point every single detail out. Good start.

Equally helpful is the laser targeting system, allowing you to see exactly where your shots are heading, and especially useful when you're retreating and down to your last few clips. On the odd occasion that you want to spin the camera around to get a better angle on the proceedings, you can tap the right bumper to rotate the viewpoint in 90-degree increments. There's no option to zoom in or out or change the tilt of the camera, but it's not something you feel you need either.

Another useful addition is the mini-map in the top-right corner of the screen. Rather than leaving you to painstakingly explore every portion of the ship in the hope of reuniting a specific door with a specific key, waypoints appear to tell you where to head next. Admittedly, it does feel as though the game is holding your hand a touch, but it is designed to remove frustration and keep you in the game. Enemies will not respawn endlessly, either, in case you were wondering.

According to Brown, the higher the skill level, the more accurate you'll have to be with your shots, and the more damage you'll take if you get hit. Ammo won't be as easy to come by, and you'll find yourself doing a great deal more ransacking than usual. If you want to simply blast away and not worry about ammo too much, then that's catered for too on the lower end of the three difficulty settings. Various save-points are scattered around each level, too, although it's up to you to use them - the game won't checkpoint for you. Another element that is very much up to the player is whether they immerse themselves in the storyline. With audio logs littering the decks, you can find out a little more about the back-story in a manner reminiscent of Doom 3 and BioShock, but if you prefer to focus on the action, the game won't punish you for it.

As with all XBLA titles, a free trial version of the game will be available. The interesting thing is that this trial operates as an eight-minute snapshot of the game in full flight, as opposed to merely serving up part of the first level or so. This may be a wise decision, as the first chapter takes a few minutes to warm up, the game offering you a chance to get comfortable with the controls before throwing too many enemies at you.

Speaking of enemies, the first few chunks of the game offer a glimpse of some fairly standard foes, such as little scurrying face-hugger types, and larger stag-beetle-esque Chargers. By chapter two, groups of Chargers work as a pack, where a healer operates at the back reviving any of its fallen comrades almost as soon as you've killed them. Getting rid of these packs involves wading in and taking out the healers first so they can't dispense any of their pesky magic. Even by this stage, the general level of sophistication looks promising for the rest. You can expect 12 different enemy types in total (each with variations within their own class), and "eight to 10" weapons, including all the usual sci-fi shooter favourites like shotgun, pistol, assault rifle, flamethrower, rocket launcher and grenades.

One nagging doubt is just how the gameplay can scale to extended play over three episodes - especially when you consider that it was possible to complete the whole of the original in around 40 minutes. But Brown insists the environments and gameplay will evolve significantly as the story progresses. We're duty-bound not to reveal any spoilers, but it sounds as though Team17 has some promising ideas. Also interesting to note is how the game's co-op campaign storyline is different to the solo one. Missions will be designed around the nature of co-op play, and leaderboards will feature as well, with time and efficiency-based rankings offering that all-important replay value.