Alien Arena 2010 - What the heck was I thinking?

System Requirements:
Video: 3D Accelerator.  That's all you  need to know.

     Well, it had to happen sooner or later, but I didn't want it to be so soon.  Alien Arena 2010 is a sucky online first person shooter not even worth hard drive space on your computer; but before you decide not to download it, I'll give you some reasons why.

User Interface:


     The menus in this game are very poorly designed, and navigation and option selection is a pain.  How hard is it to make a menu?  Well, with some random clicking I figured out how to navigate through the menu, and realized there were a couple good features.  You can select a character model, change your color, change the handedness of your character (as a left-handed person I've always complained how all first-person shooter characters are right-handed), and you can change the reticle shape.  But figuring out how to access these features is harder than it has to be, and they don't make up for the overall suckiness of the game.
    Joining games is a pain.  It's hard to tell what game mode a certain lobby is, and it's not easy to know how to join one. Sometimes when you double click on a game it does nothing, and there's no 'join' button.
    Exiting the program is just nonsensical.  Every time you go to exit, the game stops responding and windows closes it down.  What heck was that?  They couldn't program something into this game to close it down automatically?  They had to get Windows to do it for them? Lame douche bags.

Gameplay:
 
     This game sucks even more than the menus do.  First of all, you have a 50% chance of the game closing down on you if you try and start a new game, and a 25% chance of having the game freeze up and do nothing, which can only be remedied by and Alt-F4.  So right off the bat your chances of being able to play a game are slim.  When you manage to join a game that isn't faulty, you realize how bad of a decision it was to start playing.  The lag is inconceivably inconvenient.  It's impossible to shoot at enemies with a normal blaster, and your only hope is with the chain gun.  The controls are normal, and the fact that weapons have more than one ability is great, but who cares if you can't navigate?  It's not that my connection was bad.  Crossfire plays just fine, and I'm on a hard line instead of a wireless connection.  So why in the name of all that is unholy do I fail to receive information from the server?  Maybe it's the other peoples' connections. If so, that means everyone else's connections are bad, and there's no reason to play if that's the case.
     And speaking of 'everyone else,' I'm surprised people still play this piece of s**t game.  I mean, there's even a forum for it, as if the designers thought this globulation of cow feces would be considered riveting enough for people to join a community.  I logged on to the IRC, and to my expectation no one was on.  I'm sure anyone on the forums, if there is anyone, is probably a basement-dwelling urine-bather and isn't worth the time.
     Tangent aside, this game is not worth playing offline.  There is offline practice with bots, but that grows boring very quickly.  They're not too hard to beat. There were other game modes that I was surprised existed, but for fear of my eyeballs burning from their sockets, I decided not to delve into the cess pool of Alien Arena 2010.

Graphics:


     The graphic quality of this game is gut wrenching.  All I need is a 3D accelerator card?  There got to be something wrong with that.  But that doesn't mean bad graphics.  Lego Racers (my first 3D accelerator game) had pretty good visuals, unlike this game.  Maybe I'm giving Lego Racers too much credit, but this game is an eyesore.  Character models are okay, but weapons, objects, and scenery look pretty terrible.  and you have to take this into context: this is Alien Arena 2010.  Maybe you're thinking they made this in the 90's when we thought we'd see aliens by 2010, and they were trying to make the game more futuristic-sounding. Nope.  This game was actually made in 2009.  They should have been able to make a better-looking game, even if it is free. I usually say that I get what I paid for, so I shouldn't complain about a free game.  But the hard drive space is not worth the loss.  And the time you spend to download, install, play, and realize the waste of time is not worth it when you could spend time playing games like Crossfire or the Halo Free Trial.

Sound:


     The sound in this game wasn't that bad.  It is arguably the most flawless aspect of this game.  The alien gun noises are very alien gun-ish.  But they get annoying.  Fast.

Verdict:


     My verdict is this: what the heck was I thinking when I downloaded this?  Did I think I found a hidden gem?  I don't know.  I just wasn't prepared to its suckiness.  But I will give this game props for having a left-handed character ability.  Being a lefty, I like knowing someone out there cares; I just wish that someone could make a game right.  I'll give this one a 3/10.  I'm not putting a link for this game.  If you're the kind of person who would like to find out what I'm talking about, then just go to cnet and search it.  But it's on your head.  If you find it's better than I said, let me know.  Otherwise, don't say I didn't tell you so. As a friendly warning, don't play this.  Good night, young people, and heed my words.