If you've been reading elsewhere you may of noticed that I've been burdened with a huge amount of work and stress. There really is not much time for gaming. But I wanted to play something and the few hundred games on the backlog somehow did not appeal. Even the really good ones.

GOG has a weekly sale and something about 'Infested Planet' caught my attention. It was not quite what I was expecting, but I've logged a good number of hours over it in the last two days.

Alien Bugs! Swarms of them! Since you can't talk your way out of the situation, you go to plan-B. Lots and lots of shooting the alien scum that slowly marches towards you like a more leisurely version of Starship Troopers, but without the ideological commentary.

There is a story to this game, with the banter between the military and scientists. But it's basic fluff you'll likely skip to in order to get to the next mission.

You begin with a squad of 5 riflemen and must march through a map to protect and capture node points. If you stay on a nodal point for long enough, it becomes yours, and gives you Build Points to strengthen your control of the map. Most missions involve capturing all points on the map, or at least surviving long enough without losing them all.

There's not a lot of variety in the missions in the original campaign, but they can all be replayed again and again and in various difficulty levels depending on how much of a challenge you are after, or for your own ego.

Nodal points are most likely controlled by the aliens to start off with. Unlike your team, their bases slowly and constantly spawn crawling bugs. The screenshots make it look like an overwhelming force, but for the most part you can manage taking down a base with two or three of your riflemen.

To make this a challenge bases are defended by alien turrets and extra spawners. There are in game events and timers on the map that will temporally increase the output and regeneration of these structures and you have to balance what you are targeting.

It also can be a game of knowingly leaving one of your captured points undefended while you take down a larger threat, and hope you can get back to it before it is captured again by the enemy.

To help you with this you can spend Build Points gained from capturing nodes to lay down your own turrets to act as cleanup duty. These weapons will slowly autofire on any approaching hostile, and are good for controlling choke points until you are ready to advance.

You also have a set of special weapons that require an ammo resource, instead of build points, to use. If you target a structure, and have a troop in range, and enough ammo, your troop will auto fire with generally enough power to take out small structures in one hit. If you run out of ammo, just keep shooting until you have more.

Don't worry, it will make sense in game.

Alternatively there are ammo crates scattered in maps, if you have one of your team stand next to one, they will increment your ammo at a rate to fire at least once a second until the crate runs out.

Alternatively you can use the points for other structures. Such as a helipad that will allow you to spend 10 ammo and summon an airstrike on an area.

This has its uses, but I found saving up for enough ammo points to be a waste when I had a combination of troops and enough ammo to do targeted strikes.

Build points can also be used to reclass your riflemen. Other classes are unlocked as you play the main campaign and each as their own differences.

• Shotgunners have a slower but powerful spread weapon, they're good for taking out tight bunches of bugs.
• Flamethrowers are similar but focus on a constant damage over time effect.
• Officers boost speed and moral to nearby troops.
• And Snipers have a very slow reload timer, but their huge range and ability to take out enemy turrets makes it worth having one when they unlock.

And that's the basics of the game! At some point you'll have a map screen to do runs with bonus side missions. These allow you to gain extra credits in order to unlock the above mentioned troops and structures.

The most useful one here is a base upgrade that will allow you to auto-heal your troops. While you can buy a once-per-mission unit that can be pulled along with you to heal on the battlefield I mainly found them useful when they were given as part of a mission itself.

There's two DLC to the game so far. One is a set of new weapons and upgrades, and the other is an entire new campaign. Rather than a linear set of missions, it has you fighting for control on a overworld map. There's enough content in this one to count as a proper expansion beyond what we normally see with DLC.

Graphically the game is rather clean. It's easy to tell what is what and you'll get iconographic popups pointing to areas in distress. The use of colour and design in pretty much everything is really well done. If you want a criticism it is that the helicopter graphic looks like some rushed job in a flash game.

On the audio side I keep hearing beats that sound like they are from parts of Half Life 2 in the music. It's nice ambient music, but feels a little familiar and I'm unsure if it is coincidental or an homage.

Sound effects are overall good, and are tied to how zoomed you are into the map. Thankfully done in a way that I did not miss an audio/visual clue that I should stop what I was doing and rush my troops to other areas of the map.

Infested Planet is fun! It's not super amazing, or something to play just to waste time. It's simple action entertainment and is rather good at what it is doing.

If you've been looking at this type of genre and got the impression that the default difficulty would be too much, I'd urge a second look. While you can crank up the challenge I can say that even slow reaction users like myself managed to play it without looking to see if there was even a pause button.

Game Acquisition: GOG (Weekly Sale)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 9 December 2017
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS:Windows XP or later
Processor:2.2 GHz
Memory:1 GB RAM
Graphics:256MB OpenGL 2.1 Compatible
Hard Drive:300 MB HD space