Last year, Meridian showed us a top view shooter like no other. Now they finally bring a sequel to their most appraised game, Alive 4-Ever.

Alive 4-ever Returns ($0.99 – On Sale)

Alive 4-Ever Returns was redesigned based on a new game engine. But did the game truly improve and is it worth a look at?

Presentation

Taking note that Meridian decided to reengineer how the game worked, it is evident that many details went into consideration. One of the first things you’ll notice is the graphics. The environment now has a realistic feel that puts you in combat. Everything from blood splatter to bullet shells looks better. You will also find that a few new weapons have been added, such as dual handguns and sticky grenades.

Although the story doesn’t quite seem to catch my attention, the fact that you can customize your character with newer features, made it worth it. If you happen to finish the 40 levels of campaign and still want more action, there’s always local wifi coop, a feature that was not released upon launch of the first title.

Controls

If you’ve played any shooter, the controls are what you would expect. A virtual Dpad allows movement, while a virtual stick on the right autofires whenever you touch and hold in the area. As you level up and equip skills and abilities, they will appear on the bottom of the screen. You can then tap on their icon and for a given seconds, you will have that powerup.

Other controls will appear on the far right side of the screen, such as icons when you need to grab a certain item or rescue survivors. On the upper right hand side you’ll see the current weapon being used. You can swipe to switch between primary and secondary or tap to manually reload.

Gameplay

Just like the first A4E, you have a campaign with 40 levels, where you are given a primary objective and a challenge. You have to complete the objective, whether it be to rescue survivors, kill a certain amount of zombies, or survive for a certain time, in order to unlock the next level. If you weren’t able to complete the challenge, you can always replay the missions.

However, by completing challenges you unlock weapons and equipment. Every time you level up, you get skill points to use on your character’s traits. And skills are unlocked based on your character’s level. The variety in environment prevents the game from being too repetitive. The RPG style elements applied to this shooter are a nice touch. This gives you the option to not only develop one, but 4 different characters in the game. If you find that career was too easy, you can always up the difficulty or try Survival Battle or Horde Mode.

The objective of both modes is to survive for as long as you can, however, Survival mode brings out all the enemies at once without any breaks, while Horde tells you how many creatures you must kill to clear each wave. Make sure to pick up cases of ammo, as you will run out quickly. It is also a good idea to have powerups, they come in handy.

Then the most anticipated feature, one which we don’t really get to see in many shooters, is co op mode. If you feel you need extra help, or just want to team up with a friend, you now can over local wifi. Fight off the evil zombies with up to 4 people next to you.

If you get lucky, you might also unlock achievements throughout the game, courtesy of the OpenFeint social platform.

Suggestions

I didn’t run into any real issues or bugs in the game, but there are some minor flaws. For one, the story doesn’t really catch my attention. And then I don’t really need to know whats going on, other than the fact that I must complete certain given objectives. The other flaw is the gameplay. Although it has way better graphics and added modes, including coop, the story tends to follow the same guidelines as the first. By this I mean that you go into each level completing tasks, just as in part 1.

One final request would be to make co op available through online, not just local. Its a good feature, but most likely my friends won’t be near by all the time.

Conclusion

Alive 4-Ever Returns did a great job in refining graphics and adding more features to the game. It was already a pretty awesome shooter, and now it just 1 up’d any shooter out there that is thinking of having co op play. Then the added RPG style gameplay triumphs this game once again. If you are a fan of shooters and especially Part 1 of this game, I would say to grab a copy of RETURNS, while its 0.99¢. It is sure to keep you busy for a while.