Alien Death Mob

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter

Players: 1

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Review:

Alien Death Mob is a 2-Stick Shooter released on PC in 2021 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023. This game sees Earth under attack from an alien invasion, with players taking the role of a lone gunman who seeks to fight off the… well… mob of deadly aliens.

The presentation here is simple but not bad, with the visuals taking the form of 2D pixel art visuals with a lot of color but without much detail, which is probably for the best given the massive numbers of enemies that will be on-screen at any given time. This is backed by an energetic synthesized soundtrack that you will probably not be paying any attention to because you’ll be so focused on the action.

This game is frenzied, fast-paced, and intense. The “mobs” in the title is no exaggeration, as you will be absolutely swarmed with enemies at any given moment, and even with your weapons pumping out a liberal amount of projectiles, you’ll still struggle to tag them all with your bullets. You’ll quickly find that your survival in this game absolutely necessitates picking up the temporary power-ups that will continually be littered around the area, giving you extra firepower to beat back the enemy horde, and shields to grant you a brief amount of invulnerability to get through to a particularly troublesome enemy or get yourself out of trouble and back to relative safety.

While the difficulty here is extraordinarily high, that’s not to say that this game is terribly unfair. The player is given indicators showing where off-screen enemies are coming from, weapon pickups are (mostly) devastating and will give you a real sense of power for the brief amount of time they last, and when you get close to enemies or their gunfire, the game slows down a bit to give you every opportunity to dodge out of the way.

There are a few issues with this game. I wish the game would stack or queue obtained power-ups so the game doesn’t penalize you for chasing one down when you already have one. I also feel like this game takes an agonizing amount of time for the player to respawn after death, with the on-screen power-ups expiring as you wait to be let back into the fight. And naturally, this game’s high challenge level is going to be a natural deterrent to some players who may otherwise enjoy it. Finally, while this game’s $5 price tag is pretty good, once you compare it to the $2 price of the PC version, it’s hard not to be frustrated at the realization that this game is getting a 150% “Switch Tax”.

Still, despite a few frustrations and a high difficulty level, Alien Death Mob is a pretty solid 2-Stick Shooter that challenge-seekers will absolutely want to get their hands on. The intense, fast-paced action is great, and the game does a good job trying to give players every opportunity to overcome the massive challenge it places in front of them.

tl;dr – Alien Death Mob is a 2-Stick Shooter that has players fending off massive hordes of enemies in gameplay that is fast, frenetic, and challenging, while still giving players every opportunity to overcome this massive challenge. This is not going to be a game for everyone, but players looking to take on tons of enemies with a spray of gunfire should give this game a try.

Grade: B-

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