Review: Anarchy Online: Alien Invasion
by Myrmidon

Anarchy Online. A game that, at one point in time brought a frown or grimace to your face, now brings a laugh, or grin.

This doesn't change at all with the newest expansion pack, Alien Invasion. Alien Invasion is packed full of new features that might seem subliminal at first, but are really quite large, and cared for, short of the. . . well, invasions themselves.

The first things you are bound to notice, or probably experience are the GUI changes, the loading screen, and if you’re a newcomer, the new ICC alien zone you go to as a newbie. The new loading screen is pretty cool actually, similar to the last one, but the simple changes make it much more pleasant to look at. The new training grounds are very, very different from the old ones. The intro after making your character and running into the tunnel is pretty cheesy, you pop into a ship, a message saying something along the lines of “You can’t move” pops up, and well, one of the worst voice-overs that has ever graced these ears is played, and you crash. You awake on a nice little island right in the middle of nowhere, red lights are flashing and the door is blown off, you run out to climb up a ladder, greet your newbie trainers, and start your long path to the coveted level 220. Along with the new training grounds, which will allow you to see your first alien invasion of some sort, you now have 2 experience bars: regular experience and alien experience. The regular XP is gained as usual, as it always has, and probably always will be: through killing monsters, while the alien XP is gained by killing. . . aliens.

To kill the aliens, you have to build a city, which is an EXTREMLY expensive ordeal. Newbies need not apply, for cities cost hundreds and hundreds of millions. However, they do look very stylish and it's always nice to say “Hey, I've got my own city!” This is also how you fight aliens: each city has a stealth shield which you can turn on, and off at will. Shutting it off basically makes you a sitting target, and the aliens just want to have lunch “with” you, and your command center. After you shut said stealth off, aliens target your city and you should get large numbers of organization members together to kick some alien butt. It is seriously recommended you get no less then 15 players to repel an invasion, best if they are all similar in level. After a specified amount of time, they invade, bringing with them large ships, awesomely detailed models and intuitive textures. The whole experience is very cool, however, they have some of the worst pathing of all time and they just kind of “pop” out of the spaceship which really ruined it a bit for me. If they at least floated out of the ships, the whole thing would be much more immersive. If you like difficult combat, you will love this part. You can generally determine the difficulty of aliens by their size: the small ones: easy, the big ones: hard, the super-huge General who shakes the whole screen while walking. . . you be the judge. Anyway, after defeating The General, you usually grab your buddies and invade the aliens on their territory, busting the ship(s) they came in on. After the whole ordeal is over, you feel a certain satisfaction of defending against impending city destruction, along with the credits injecting into your veins from finding a coveted piece of alien technology, in the form of weapons, items, and other things.

Speaking of it, the new weapons are pretty awesome, in both look and damage. In my opinion, the new axes and 2 handed swords are sweet, showing that when you wield those babies, you sir, are the man. Also, if you have way too much time on your hands, and plenty of credits, you can get the new social clothes. They range from the latest styles to a hill-billy overcoat, which I might add, is hilarious.

Alien Experience and Perks

I mentioned the alien XP earlier, now I am going to explain the meat and potatoes of what it actually is. I've said how to get it, where to get it, and all that jazz, but the real joy of getting it is when you get an Alien Level. These puppies don't get you any IP, your guy doesn't do a back flip, and you can only get 40 of them. However, the reward is very, very cool:

Alien Perks. They rock. A lot. Every alien level gives you one point, 40 levels give you - count it, 40 points. That, folks, will turn you into a machine in PvP combat, and possibly, maybe, even twink an Atrox into quality level 300 symbiants. For everyone who thinks he just read Chinese: Symbiants are THE Implants in Anarchy Online. They range from adding tons and tons of stats to certain weapon skills or just plain damage. For instance, Adventurers get an Alien Perk called “The Call” which, at level 1 gives you minor stats, but the perk ability it gives you changes your damage type to cold, and increases your cold damage output pretty much. So all you Adventurers pull out those Shanks of Maze, turn into your favorite polymorph, and whack away. As far as other classes, and races, every class gets at least one class-specific Alien Perk, one group Alien Perk, and a whole set of general Perks, some very interesting that I would love to have, but don't have the alien levels to get right now. Such as two very cool Nano boosting perks, and two others that boost your races' “primary” and “secondary” stats. All-in-all, the Alien Perks really are worth the expansion. Yes, they are that good.

Conclusion

Overall, the expansion boasts great new content, cool weapons, fresh looking monsters, the massive cities and insane perks. However, all the old content is getting a bit aged, especially the graphics, and it still boils down to killing hecklers for your main way to gain experience. I'm going to have to give the new expansion two thumbs up. This partly excepts the invasions themselves, they could use a bit of work and tweaking (which it is getting a lot, right now). I also really wished they would put in the player-merchants in cities on time, because I was looking forward to those quite a bit.

If you don't have a high-level character, I can't recommend this to you too much. Most of the things take advantage of higher up characters with lots of credits. So unless you can find a great organization, I advise you to buy the regular game and Shadowlands, get a level 150+ character, and then go out and spend your money on Alien Invasion. When you get that high, you will very much enjoy the many additions.

This expansion is better then most, not as good as some. I'm gonna have to stick it right in the middle. It doesn't add anything groundbreaking or totally awesome, but it does add a lot of content that anyone can enjoy, especially the new weapons, clothes, and perks. If you have Anarchy Online, Shadowlands, a high level character, and lots of free time, credits, and well, a lot of everything in this game and are getting bored of leveling, farming, or whatever, this expansion is just the fresh addition you've been looking for. If you're a veteran, grab it now. If you're not, think about if you want to spend a lot of time in a game and if you answer that question with “Yes”, then Anarchy Online (Alien Invasion) might be the game to make you quit your job.