 SEGA DRUNK Several months back you may have stumbled across my Gunstar Heroes review, where I summarily slobbered all over the game and for good reason. It's hard to even cobble together a review of a game like that when all you have to do is just shout from the mountain tops, look at this frickin' game! Treasure, the developers behind Gunstar Heroes weren't satisfied with that game though so they went on to create Alien Soldier, which was only released in cartridge form in Japan and Europe, and in the US it was only released on the short-lived SEGA Channel. Don't worry, thankfully this crazy ass game is available worldwide on the SEGA Ages Vol. 25 collection for PS2, along with Gunstar Heroes and Dynamite Heady, and it's also on the original Wii Virtual Console and on Steam for like $3. So what the hell are you waiting for? What you want some random guy on the internet to tell you it's okay to play Alien Soldier? This game is frickin' spectacular, right away it's so easy to get caught up in Alien Soldier's frenetic energy, crazy visuals, and even crazier enemy design. This game is not entirely what you'd think, however, it's structured differently than Gunstar Heroes. Alien Soldier is like if Gunstar Heroes were just one huge boss run. Yeah, there's over 20 stages and they're all very short, so the emphasis here is on the one-on-one battles you have with these batshit, crazy look and creatures. Good lord, how do you even begin to imagine to create something like this? Hey, your character is no picnic itself. As you play as the bird-faced, epsilon eagle, and you can double jump, float in the air, cling to the ceiling upside down, dash, and if you're at full health, you'll wreck any enemy in your path, and you can even somehow turn enemy projectiles into health if you press the B button twice at the correct time. That's an awesome idea that introduces something new to this style of game, and you'll want to get good at that as quickly as you can because that's probably the most important aspect of the gameplay, not only to keep you alive until the next boss fight, but to keep you at full health so you can kick ass with that dash attack. So yeah, there's a lot of abilities here at your fingertips, so there's always an incentive to keep playing so you can practice and master all of them. And man, once you get good at this game, it's so fun. For weapons, you get a choice of six different styles to choose from, and I love that you actually get to try them out before playing the game. Imagine that. You also get the opportunity to practice all of your abilities. That's just good common sense right there. Anyway, you can pick four weapons between the six and you can switch between them at will. One interesting mechanic here is the ability to switch between the regular run and gun shooting and a fixed style shooting where you're standing still, and that gives you a better chance to aim properly. While this never would have worked in a game like Gunstar Heroes, it works great in Alien Soldier because after all, it's just one-on-one boss fights. There's not too much chaos outside of the chaos in your brain after seeing some of these monstrosities. So yeah, obviously you know my feelings about games like Alien Soldier. This game is just the frickin' best. The only drawback is that there's no multiplayer. Oh well. Still, if you want to just lose your mind playing a game, make stuff go boom and indulge in some nightmare fuel by looking at some of these enemies and please, by all means, play the hell out of Alien Soldier.