Aliens: Infestation (DS)

We’re in the pipe, five by five.

Aliens: Infestation sounds like the name of a mid-at-best fanfic set in the Aliens universe. The subtitle itself is just lazy and a bit cliché, kind of like having the subtitle Resurrection, Requiem, Rebirth, Armageddon, Apocalypse… The list goes on, though plenty of Rs in there. That opening line hurts me a little bit, deep down, because I had an idea of writing an Aliens fanfic, with the subtitle Infestation back when I was about 18 or 19, the best I could come up with at the time was an opening draft which I quite liked. It opened with a colony’s log, stating that things were not going well. Emergency lockdown procedures had been activated, communications array is damaged, and fires had broken out in numerous sectors. The number of colonists sitting in the low 20s, before dropping by a couple of digits. It all gives the feelings of the aftermath of a disaster and it being an Aliens fanfic, you better believe it was a Xenomorph related disaster. We then jump back two weeks, and that was where the draft ended. I just couldn’t figure out at the time how I was going to go from A to B. That’s strictly speaking not true, the route was going to be Weyland Yutani doing something stupid, as they are prone to do and using the colony as a test bed of sorts, maybe via the means of a controlled incident. I wasn’t terribly original. This being said, I can’t be 100% sure what the original plan was, in fact, I had buried this memory deep underneath my “excellent working memory” of games. I should note that my memory is pretty shocking at the best of times, but I can probably tell you all the secrets in Episode 1 of Ultimate Doom. So, make of that what you will.

Sadly, there isn’t too much of a digression this time before we get into the game in question. There is only so many times I can talk about my previous traumas that have been inflicted on me by the Aliens franchise and how I am weirdly drawn to these titles because I enjoy the adrenaline rush of being scared out of my mind. What I will say about Aliens: Infestation is that it was the last physical DS game I bought brand new. Released in September 2011, approximately 6 months after the release of the 3DS in the UK. I can’t remember how I came about this game, I must have caught wind of a 2D action platformer for Aliens, which seemingly came out the blue, following the flop that was Aliens: Colonial Marines. Perhaps when I was younger my finger was significantly more on the pulse of upcoming games. Nowadays I am so firmly under a rock, but this is quite a cosy rock of nostalgia and discovery. Aliens: Infestation came out at a time when the expectations for a new Aliens game were absolutely rock bottom, you need to understand that Infestation came out 3 years before Alien Isolation did.

Developed by WayForward, a company who with a rather mixed history of releases. Probably what catapulted them to particular repute was Shantae, which I must admit I don’t have much of a history with. Other than that, they had a tranche of licensed video games based off cartoon properties, including Justice League, Spongebob, Shrek and even American Dragon: Jake Long (I had honestly forgotten that was a thing, but seeing that name brings back some oddly vivid images). It should be noted that WayForward have done some absolutely amazing games, past and present. Besides Shantae, games like Bloodstained and River City Girls immediately come to mind. Perhaps at the time of release, the news of it being developed by WayForward wasn’t the most exciting news, but I can imagine bringing it up now would definitely get some people looking back with renewed interest. Based off some of WayForward’s catalogue, it shouldn’t be too surprising that their approach to Aliens was to make a MetroidVania of sorts. I say of sorts, because on reflection I would say that this game hits the bare minimum requirements of being a MetroidVania, but I would probably file this more under an action/platformer with hints of MetroidVania.  

Part of the reason why I am hesitant to call this game a MetroidVania is more around the structure of the game, being divided into 5 missions, with missions 1, 3, and 5 taking place on the game’s main map, the Sulaco. Oh yes, that Sulaco, the one from Aliens. If you are having flashbacks to Aliens: Colonial Marines, I hear you but trust me on this one. Every time you return to the Sulaco you can explore a little deeper, but there is something about this game flow that doesn’t quite feel true to the MetroidVania styling. Mission 2 takes place on LV-426, as if the atmospheric processor exploding and leaving a vapor cloud the size of Nebraska wasn’t going to leave part of that planet being a barren wasteland. Okay, that is unfair, I don’t believe the LV-426 section of the game was set at Hadley’s Hope, but at an unspecified military outpost. It is, however, within driving distance of a crashed ship, presumably the one from Alien. I can’t imagine Hadley’s Hope was too far away from that site either. Also, I don’t know how big Nebraska is, but I imagine it is one of the bigger states. Not Texas big, obviously. Mission 4 takes place on Phobos, the Mars moon. Man, if it isn’t demonic invasion, it is Weyland Utani and Xenomorphs, give Phobos a break!

So, let’s backtrack a little bit, back to Mission 1 and get the plot in motion. The USCM aboard the USS Sephora, find the USS Sulaco adrift in space, a life form is detected on the ship and they send over some marines to find and recover that life form. Yes, the astute of you may think, this is awfully similar to Colonial Marines! Something I remember catching on my playthroughs of this game, but don’t worry, as far as I can tell, Corporal Hicks is still dead. Upon boarding the Sulaco, you are introduced to your playable characters, yes this game has playable characters! We have Cameron, I presume named after Aliens Director, James Cameron, a gruff and tough but seemingly fair leader. Whistler, a private and clearly incredibly green around the gills. There is Johnston, who is the games equivalent of Vazques, and Paulson who… Umm… I don’t actually know anything about him. The game has an initial sequence where these characters interact, but after that, all dialogue is between the character you are playing as and Patrick Steele, you’re acting commander in chief. Still, what I will say, that opening bit of dialogue between those four characters was better characterisation than we got throughout the whole of Colonial Marines. These four characters, effectively, act as extra lives and the game features a perma-death system where if a character falls in combat they are either dead or having been taken to a hive location where they can be rescued. Though, I can’t say for certain if they are a ticking time bomb after you rescue them, as I never really explored that, opting to play the game as death-less as possible. Should a marine fall in combat, you can find other marines around the various maps who will join up with you if you have a team of less than 4 marines. Any marine found will be added to the marine dossier in the game’s Extras menu, which gives you a detailed profile on each character. Depending on who you are playing as, I imagine there is a bit of variation in the dialogue, so theoretically, there is a potential for replayability here.

So, we spend the first few minutes of the game, exploring a deserted Sulaco, trying to locate a datacentre to download the ship’s schematics. The opening of the game does a great job of building the tension as you are alone, but don’t feel it. There is also a jump scare moment as a dramatic string plays and a cat falls from the ceiling. This happens a few times over the course of the game, which seems unnecessary after the first instance. You’ll crawl through some vents and encounter some Xenomorph hive space, and eventually a dead body of someone from a third-party paramilitary contractor, shortly afterwards you will encounter some automatons, and blast your through them with your trusty pulse rifle. This Pulse Rifle holds 95 bullets in its magazine. Weird choice, the digital display goes up to 99, and that has been a staple of Alien games for the longest time. You also have grenades in your underbarrel launcher, which makes me absurdly happy, it’s the details I like and giving the Pulse Rifle some justice is always nice. Eventually, as you explore, you’ll get yourself a motion tracker, which… Why didn’t we have this to begin with? I mean, we’re doing a search and rescue mission, you’d think that going in equipped with a motion sensor would be a given? Budget cuts, I swear. After we get the motion tracker, we are given a location on the map to investigate, and this is where we encounter our first Xenomorph, a rather nasty looking warrior harassing some woman. This encounter is a bit like a mini-boss, this Xenomorph is a lot tougher than any standard enemy you will be encountering from now on. But after it is defeated, the gloves come off and Xenomorphs will start ambushing you in rooms that were previously empty. This is where your motion tracker is vital, on your map, it will highlight enemies in rooms, even if they are waiting in ambush. It’s less of a motion tracker and more like a lifeform finder.

 

 

It isn’t too long before we encounter our first boss fight, and the first time you do this encounter you will probably get absolutely wrecked. As you fall deeper into hive space, we encounter, what appears to be a Queen. The Queen will chase you around, attacking you with claws, bites and a tail attack, you have to shoot her in the crown portion of her head to do damage (It flashes green when damaged). The easiest way to do this is to stand on one of the low platforms in the room and be near the edge of it and blast away at her, with any luck you can stun lock her and drop her after a couple of clips. This is a common thing you will encounter with the bosses in this game, they are surprisingly tanky. After the Queen is defeated, you’ll find the woman again and then you’ll move from the Sulaco to a mission on LV-426. As mentioned previously, it is a bit of a weird element of the game flow, most MetroidVanias take place on contiguous maps, Aliens: Infestation doesn’t, and in my opinion it somewhat hampers the experience a little bit. The sections on LV-426 and Phobos being disconnected means that when you are in those areas you can explore everything there is to offer in those locations, and it also means that exploring the Sulaco isn’t worth doing too much until you reach the chapter 5. That’s not entirely true, but the majority of goodies to find on the Sulaco are locked behind late game items.

Whilst we are on LV-426, we will find a new weapon, the Shotgun, which is okay, I guess. Never been a huge fan of shotguns in Alien games, close encounters with Xenomorphs are not a good time, what with the teeth, claws and not forgetting the acid blood. With a little bit of exploration you will also find weapon upgrade kits, each weapon in the game can be boosted to +3, though I wouldn’t be able to tell you what that actually means in terms of damage output. From here, I don’t want to get into too much of the nitty gritty of the story and game flow because we have kind of covered everything within the first mission and going into the second mission. Something that is a little disappointing with Aliens: Infestation is beyond the weapon upgrade kits, and the odd additional Marine, there is little reason to go off the beaten path or explore all that thoroughly. There are no additional hidden extras to find, which I think is a bit of a missed opportunity, even the Smartgun, the BFG of the Aliens universe isn’t hidden and there is little reason to not use that weapon once it becomes available.

The game itself isn’t terribly long, which can be seen as a good thing. Unlike a game like Metroid, where you obtain abilities that make the exploration a bit more interesting, opening up alternative routes and also secret ones, every item in Aliens: Infestation is just a different flavour of key, meaning that the gameplay itself doesn’t actually change, fighting enemies doesn’t really change too much and neither do the exploration options. Sure, your usual upgrade avenues like a double jump are probably not applicable in this setting. So, with that in mind, I am somewhat torn. I really enjoyed playing the game, but the way it is, would I want it to be any longer than it actually is? Perhaps if the entire game was set on LV-426 or Phobos, and you go between sprawling maps, a bit like how Portrait of Ruin or Order of Ecclesia did its world, discovering different Weyland Utani research bases that have different breeds of Xenomorphs. I think the game played a little too safe with the enemies, Aliens as a franchise has a lot of potential with variants on the Xenomorph. The game does introduce a new Xenomorph variant, which I believe is based off a gorilla, but beyond that you spend most of your time fighting Drones and Warriors. It’s a bit of a shame, but it is what it is.

I may sound overwhelmingly negative towards Aliens: Infestation, which I would admit is a bit unfair to it. I think in hindsight it is easy to point out the flaws and shortcomings of the game, and in doing so I am, sadly, glossing over the successes. Perhaps it is because I have been viewing this game through the lens of more traditional MetroidVanias, which sets expectations of gameplay, and I would highly encourage anyone else who picks this up to not go on with those kinds of pre-conceived notions. Aliens: Infestation is best interpreted as a straight up action game, to a certain extent I would argue it is quite similar to the SNES Alien 3. Each level is a mini-maze of a map with multiple missions on it, though SNES Alien 3 is a little more open in the order you approach the missions. The perma-death system and recruitable marines are an innovative approach to the archaic lives system, and the fact they can add a bit of variety to the dialogue in the game is a nice bonus. I think it is also important to say that Aliens: Infestation is fun to play, which is a factor that does supersede a lot of my criticisms. No game is without its flaws, and I have always been of the opinion that if you have to get incredibly minor and inconsequential with the flaws, it just shows how much you really enjoy the game. You find faults because you care. Sometimes, I admit, I care a little too much, and whenever Alien games are concerned, that is definitely the case. 

Coca-Cola Kid (GameGear)

 

Coke fuelled adventure to rescue your teacher!

 

Before we had Pepsi Man, we had Coca-Cola Kid. Well, I say we did, Coca-Cola Kid was apparently a Japanese mascot for Coca-Cola. I say apparently because I have done a couple of cursory searches and not coming up with as much as I was hoping, just more information and reviews about the game. So perhaps, if he was indeed a mascot, it was an incredibly short-lived thing or just existed for the purpose of advertising via the means of a Game Gear game. But, who is the Coca-Cola Kid? You may find yourself asking, well, it isn’t a reference to the 1985 Australian romantic comedy The Coca-Cola Kid.

Based on “The Americas, Baby” and “The Electrical Experience” by Frank Moorhouse, this Coca-Cola Kid is a marketing executive who is trying to understand why a small Australian town is resisting the urge to consume coke. It turns out they all drink a locally brewed soft drink made by an old man. During the course of the movie, our Coca-Cola Kid, learns the errors of his ways and the part he plays in BIG COLA, and I assume he falls in love with the old man, and gives up his high paying job to live a quaint and quiet life… Hang on, I’ve been watching way too many Hallmark movies with the wife. Though that synopsis sounds exactly like one of the many dozens of films we have watched together. Regardless, I feel I should probably watch this movie at some point, just because it all sounds incredibly silly, and based on that plot, is it supposed to be an advertisement for Coca-Cola or is it a warning about beverage giants? I also must question the Wikipedia entry on this film, as it mentions “Humorous subplots involving the office manager’s violent ex-husband”, hold the god damn phone for one moment. Humourous and violent partners really don’t belong in the same sentence. It was the 1980s… A different time. A time before Pepsi Man.

 

Let’s fast forward a decade, it is 1994, only five years away now, and we see the release of the Japanese exclusive Sassou Shounen Eiyuuden Coca-Cola Kid. Now, my Japanese is rusty and translating Japanese can be an absolute pain in the butt, admittedly the only word I knew for certain was Shounen being boy. Sassou can be translated as dashing, or gallant, that first meaning will be important down the line. Eiyuuden seems like a truncation of Eiyuudensetsu, for heroic tale. So for a translation of the full title, we could go with “Tale of the young dashing hero”, which was the Google Translate approved version, I’m more partial to something like “Dashing Boy’s Hero Tale”, though I suppose there is no possessive particle being Shounen and Eiyuuden, so that probably wouldn’t work. “Heroic Tale of the Gallant Boy?” I’m getting way too caught up on a comfy translation of what is possibly seen as a subtitle to the game. What can I say, I find language fun!

Anyway, moving past the title, let’s talk about Coca-Cola kid himself, named Koki (Or Cokey in the fan translation). Not sure why they didn’t go with Koka, possibly as that would sound too similar to the product itself and because Koki sounds cuter, more child-like. I promise the language hat is coming off now. Also, going forward we will refer to the character as Cokey to fit with the fan translation. When we see Cokey on the title screen of the game, he flies in on a skateboard, circling a Coca-Cola logo, it was the 90s, of course he is into skateboarding! He appears to be wearing a large white overshirt with a yellow t-shirt underneath, white shoes and a yellow cap, which he wears backwards. This character design really is some kind of condensed concept of what a cool kid would look like in the 90s according to nearly every media source going. I imagine he drops some absolute sick slang and sees himself as pretty rad.

 

Certified bad-assery aside, we actually have a cutscene before we hit the title screen, which sets the plot in motion for the game. It’s an ordinary day at school, Ms Sakurako, which for some reason I really struggled to read during my Let’s Play of this game, is approached by Mr Iwayama whom I assume is another teacher. However, he throws off his disguise, gets a mohawk and knocks out Ms Sakurako with, what I assume is a gas bomb of sorts. Mr Iwayama proceeds to kidnap Ms Sakurako for reasons, honestly, I have no idea why any of this is happening because at no point are we provided a motive for this. Typically there is more detail in the instruction manual, older games love to have significantly more in-depth story there, for obvious reasons, old games older action games were light on story to use game space for… Well… Action. Anyway, Cokey overhears Ms Sakurako’s scream and embarks on his adventure to rescue her, because this is clearly not a matter for the police, but for a child with a clear coke addiction. Coca-Cola addiction that is, obviously. Is this happening during school, or has school ended for the day? The questions are mounting.

Following that opening, and the title screen we jump straight into the game, Cokey rides onto the screen as the game tells us we are in the Downtown stages and we’re good to go. The game plays like a pretty straightforward platformer, we are trying to get from the left to the right, jumping with one button and attacking with another. In the Downtown area we have kickboxers and robotic birds as our adversaries. Trying to deliver jump kicks to the birds seems to be quite wonky, the game’s hitboxes are a little whimsical at times. So, something I thought as I was playing through the first few stages, the game allows you to pick up lots of momentum and has ramps and different routes through the level. It all feels very much like a Sonic game, and much to my surprise when I looked into this I learnt the game was developed by a company called Aspect. Aspect have a handful of games in their library, two of them are Sonic 2 and Sonic Chaos for Game Gear. I feel this helps contextualise some of the design choices in this game, and this goes beyond the momentum mechanics and alternative routes. The game structure is the same as Gamr Gear Sonic, with 3 stages per world, the 3^rd stage being a dedicated boss stage. There is one more thing that convinces me that this game is essentially a Sonic game.

Cokey has a dash attack.

I did say the word “dashing” in the translated title would make sense and come into play! By holding down on the D-Pad, and pressing the jump button, Cokey will power-up like some kind of Dragonball Z character and releasing down will send him shoulder barging his way forward at high speed, hitting enemies, destructible items, and going down slopes keeps the dash active allowing you to move across the stage at quite high speeds. Jumping during a dash will you into a long jump, allowing you to clear large gaps and probably overshoot the platforms you want to land on. This is a common issue I have with games that have speed implemented into it, a lot of the time there is also precise platforming and the two things don’t mesh well, for obvious reasons. Alongside these moves, Cokey has an additional mobility move, and that is wall jumping. Wall jumps are done in the same way as New Super Mario Brothers, there is no timing involving, coming into contact with a wall will have Cokey slide down it slowly and you can jump off whenever you please. With the dash attacks, walls jumps and long jumps in hand, this game does open the opportunity for quite impressive speed runs as you fly across the screen.

So, besides the moves, you also get a few different pickups, two of which seem to fully disappear from levels by the 3^rd world, a lot happens in the 3^rd world, we’ll get to that after this. A lot of the time, you will find either coins, coke in two varieties disposable cup and glass bottle (Classy) and additional one-ups, and some areas can make you pretty flushed with these items. Along the straightforward route of stage 3-1 you can get 2 one-ups in a row, and these items respawn when you die, so, that’s an infinite one-up trick just waiting for you. You can also get large silver coins. Coins are used at the end of the world, and they can be used at a vending machine to either buy a continue, buy a health upgrade, or buy an elusive Coke disc, an item that provides Cokey with not only a projectile attack, but if he takes damage whilst he has a Coke disc, he doesn’t lose health but he does lose the disc. It’s… Not very good, truth be told, odds are when you enter a new world you will probably take damage early on and lose it and never get a chance to use the power-up. I was able to find a Coke disc in stage 1-1 in a hidden area, and perhaps there are more of them throughout the game’s 10 non-boss stages, but I never found them. The last power-up that needs to be talked about, just because it is just so bad. Remember that Cokey was is portrayed as a potential radical, rebellious sort, one that likes to skateboard? The skateboard appears as a power-up in the game in the first two worlds and makes you invincible, moves at a moderate speed and accelerates greatly as it hits slopes. Sounds great, but here is the rub, colliding with boxes, or other destructible terrain elements will cause you to lose the skateboard, and a number of times, these skateboards are placed pretty close to something that will cause you to immediately dismount it. It all feels like a functionally useless power-up, even more so when dashing and dash jumping is a much faster means to get through a level.

Despite being, essentially, an advertising game, Coca-Cola Kid becomes surprisingly light on the marketing. Sure, the first world, Downtown, has you flying by several stores with large Coke banners, but once we get to the Ruins, the third world any and all advertising is gone, it would have been cool to have the level have some run downs remnants of Coca-Cola billboards, maybe some broken vending machines, etc. But, no, heck the Ruins levels also barely have any health pick-ups from what I saw, and there is this one enemy who will be the bane of your existence in these stages. After that, Cokey heads to a Steel Mill, which really gives me Metropolis Zone vibes, before we arrive at our final destination, the Disco. This surely would have been a peak location to have Coca-Cola advertising, y’know, bring it all home, remind people who have been Coca-Cola starved for a whole two worlds to remind them who commissioned this game (I assume they did). There is something Coca-Cola signs in the Steel Mill and Disco, but I had to replay the stages and actually pay attention to the background to notice them. That probably says more about me!

So, after jumping, dashing, kicking, skateboarding and generally just bad-assing your way your through all the stages, beating the bad guys and rescuing your teacher, she thanks you with a massive hug. It must be quite a tight hug as Cokey expresses that he is struggling to breathe against the teacher’s chest, before falling to the floor, unconscious or dead, it is hard to tell how badly the boy was suffocated by his teacher’s bosom. Roll credits. Well, that was weird. Mostly just the ending. The overall game is quite enjoyable, though it does suffer from similar issues I have with Sonic games in general. Sonic games want to put an emphasis on speed, however, visibility of upcoming danger is very limited, the skateboard epitomises this perfectly, with some of them only a few meters away from something that will knock you off them. Sure, you may say that the speed element is more for people who know the stages well and it is a show of skill to blast through them. The game is short enough that is it isn’t the hardest thing to commit levels to my short-term memory to make it appear I am competent at speedrunning this game.

It is a shame that this was only released in Japan, though it was also a Game Gear game, I can't say for certain how well the Game Gear did internationally, perhaps it wouldn't have done that well. Overall, the game is quite fun, when you are not being harassed and bullied by certain enemies or failing at some of the games awkward platforming challenges. For a game that I feel only exists as a further extension of Coca-Cola’s on-going dominance of hearts, minds, screens and just anything they could try to slap their logo on, it is a fun little game to play through that doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth, unlike other advertising games.

I did a full Long Play on my channel, available here:

https://youtu.be/J9kF7Q5SG74