Aliens Armageddon/Aliens Pulse Rifle

Aliens Armaggon is a 2014 Arcade shooter where Earth has been infested with Xenomorphs after a ship comes crashing down from orbit. So I designed this 3D printable Blamcon Pulse Rifle, with working ammo counter, and now I’m ready to defend Earth against our unwelcome guests, Let’s Rock.

This is my first time playing this game and my 12 year old self just can’t stop giggling, neither can my older self. Playing an Aliens game with a Pulse Rifle is a dream come true. The light gun and arcade port are in sync using new Blamcon Firmware and Total Rec oil from Integrum Retro, so the recoil from the gun is synced with the game, and the ammo counter works, which just adds that extra level of realism and engagement. This game is amazing, Raw Thrills makes games that feel as much amusement park ride as immersive game. I often feel in Light Gun games there’s a separation between the thing you’re shooting and and the environment in which it exists, not here. The Aliens come out of broken buildings, destroy objects or grab soldiers, it really feels like this is a real place and you’ve got your boots on the ground. The bosses are huge, beating them consists of shooting highlighted weak points as fast as you can. There’s a lot of variety in the way they move, the way they attack, and how you engage them, like here when you mount an APC with a turret as the boss chases you. It’s crazy intense and I don’t think I blinked once during the first boss fight. There’s plenty of weapons to try, they give you the smart gun early on, and I don’t quite get this one, it has the same ammo capacity and rate of fire as your rifle so it doesn’t feel any different. The big part is you move slowly in these scenes or not at all. The flame thrower, on the other hand, is a ton of fun, it has a very low ammo count but it’s a wall of destruction. You get grenades throughout the game, the fire key for them is the Pulse Rifle grenade launcher and that never gets old. 

The variety of enemies in this game is really good here, and they all have distinct move patterns and ways to attack, small enemies leap at the screen where Xenomorphs will charge at you and rip you a new one. You’re constantly bouncing back and forth between different types and a quick threat assessment changes how you handle each scene. You can also see the LEDs flash on my arcade when I get hit, that’s a cool touch. 

My personal favorite weapon is the shotgun. Has a lot of weight and the scenes where you use it require a lot of snap shots, the reload being the pump on the Pulse Rifle just gives it that chef’s kiss. If I do have to level an issue with this game, and many like it, it’s the on-screen crosshair, and this seems to be true for many of the better modern arcade light gun games I’ve played, I think there’s a thought that slowing down the on-screen crosshair makes the gameplay smoother, but I find it frustrating when I swing my gun across the screen and have to wait for the cursor to catch up, I get how this can help with aiming but I find it more annoying than helpful and it causes me to slow down how I move my gun which often leads me to getting hit when I could have avoided it. A bit of it is the lag on my TV and it not having a very fast response time but still, this is something I wish there was a setting for. It’s not a game breaking thing, but still I wish modern light gun games ditched the smoothing all together. When I made Blamcon Shooting Gallery, which is free on Steam, I found this kind of smoothing was so entrenched into unity it was actually hard to get rid of. You don’t notice it with a mouse since it’s not a 1:1 movement like a light gun is but for a light gun, please just don’t. 

I gotta say though, this game is intense, there’s always things moving around coming at you, and keeping you on your toes. With the Pulse Rifle being close to 6 pounds and front heavy, this may be my new workout.

If I gotta throw some tips, it’s keep shooting, I found after a while that you could reload with the trigger down and the reload time is less than a second, so there’s no reason to be on canon and fire in bursts, it’s spray and pray for the win if you want to do well.

The final level has a cool part where they run you through all the guns, all in the right context. It’s just a really cool way to try each gun one more time before the finale. And then they throw one more weapon at you, the grenade launcher, as cool as it seems this is probably my least favorite weapon, shooting it at enemies on the ground seems almost random, you’re better off shooting for a direct hit. It is a cool thing to shoot at the boss with though. This 5 hit sequence is cheap, I think they do it on purpose so you get the bad ending first. I think they kinda deserve it for leaving you behind. The next time through is definitely easier..