Party for the weekend: turn-based strategy game I am not a Monster: First Contact (review)

Hello Earthlings, my name is Captain Laser and I am currently sailing through the endless universe on the Albatross. I am here to protect you from all the alien scum that is beginning to proliferate. Specifically, large green lizards that can take the form of normal humans and infect them with some kind of crap. Luckily I'm not alone in this, I'm helped in my fight and uncovering the truth by various passengers or crew members.

You'll learn all this in the opening minutes of this perfect turn-based strategy game. Right from the start, you'll definitely be impressed by the old school visuals, with graphic effects and soundtrack evoking the atmosphere of 1960s TV shows. As well as effective short spaced animations throughout the game. You'll soon realise that this game doesn't take itself seriously. Especially after the end of the first tutorial mission, which takes a surprising twist at the end. And there are lots and lots of similar twists throughout the game, so the story, while simple, will be interesting until the end.

How does the game actually play? Throughout each level you control different characters that you get at the start of the mission. The characters are really varied and because of that they also have varied abilities. Each character can carry two weapons and two items. Some characters have a weapon/item fixed, so you can't change it. Otherwise, during the game you will come across a large number of these items (medkits, teleports, recovery beacons ...) and weapons (pistols, lasers, missiles, grenades ...) that you can use to change your fighting style. In addition, combining them creates a special ability - e.g. make a robo-spider, a shotgun, a healing arrow ... or use invisibility ... There are a lot of possibilities, so you need to combine them as best as possible.

All these items need to be found first. Either they fall out of the corpses, or they can be hidden in one of the crates that are stacked on the map. The ship map gradually expands throughout the game as you get to the next section. The missions are a bit repetitive (especially towards the end), but you can still see the authors' great effort to vary them. And some of the ideas really surprise, such as the missions in space by the ship's thrusters, where you have to combine character movement very well, and still keep track of the dropping oxygen levels.

In the missions themselves, you walk around in real time until you spot the enemy. If he hasn't seen you, you can still covertly plan your character placement and then attack with the ambush bonus. This is because each of your characters and enemies have a health gauge, and each weapon has a set number of hit points. Covering behind an obstacle, or using some special thing (converting hit points to health, invulnerability ...) can also play into all this. In most missions I found the difficulty setting adequate, but in a few cases it could use a good tweak - offering to lower the difficulty after a few failed attempts to complete the mission. Then the characters become practically immortal, but you still have to try.

The game is divided into 5 episodes and about 40 missions in total, and the missions of the last episode, which try to conclude the adventure, can be a bit tedious despite their interestingness. But with good batching - two or three episodes per night, it's easily manageable.

Hardware-wise, there's nothing to complain about, the game ran fine even on a laptop with an old i5-4300M and Radeon HD 8790M graphics. It's just that the CPU fan had some work to do.

Verdict

Overall, this game is a pleasant surprise. I like turn-based strategies - and this one works well, plus it has its own distinctive presentation and style of humour. Given the low purchase price, there's nothing to quibble with in my opinion. So go ahead and try to save the Albatross (and maybe all of humanity) from the green lizard's fate.

Playing Tips

• Don't be afraid to try and experiment with different weapons and special character traits. You might find a better way to your goal that way.
• Steam and GOG editions are a little different, so watch out for that