Zax: The Alien Hunter Demo

When the term shooter is mentioned, it’s images from Doom and Quake that come to mind, not Diablo and Dungeon Siege. In fact, the first/third person perspective seem to be the only two sensible options, given the nature of the genre and the fact that you have to relatively close to the action in order for it to be called a shooter.

Zax: The Alien Hunter is a top-down shooter, which is about as weird as you think, given the previous definition. In essence, the game plays out as a real-time shooter, with you being able to kill enemies using different kinds of guns and ammunition, but the perspective is as isometric and you might feel like playing a hack-and-slash most of the time, especially since there are also some RPG elements thrown into the mix as well.

The story revolves around Zax, an alien that crashes into a strange planet as he was passing near it. Here, finds out that the native race, called Korbo, is being oppressed and enslaved by a mighty robot by the name of Om, which controls a massive army. Since he has nothing better to do, Zax decides to go against Om’s armies on his own, in an attempt to liberate the Korbo and reclaim their planet.

As previously mentioned, there are some role-playing elements as well, which means that you have to collect a few things along the way, in order to unlock better gear and make progress easier. In essence, the crystals you stumble into can be used to research new weapons, a process that’s handled by Zelon, which is the A.I. of the ship Zax was in when it crashed.

The game’s visuals look like something you might see in the first Diablo game, or any other hack-and-slash RPG from that era. The environments and the enemies are quite detailed on the other hand, so you should have no trouble distinguishing objects from each other. On the other hand, it really doesn’t feel like a shooter too much, despite what the developers might want to make you believe.

All things considered, Zax: The Alien Hunter tries to be two things at once, yet it fails to be any of them in the end. The isometric perspective and the lack of visceral action do not make for a very good shooter, while the narrow environments and the lack of solid RPG elements ruin the hack-and-slash illusion as well.