I have a headache. It’s not from too much imbibing in holiday refreshments and it’s not from staring at my 10" netbook as it’s attached to an external display. No, I have a headache from trying to play Alien Breed Evolution from Team17 on my Xbox 360.

You see, as I’ve said in the past (see Hyperballoid HD review), I don’t have a 46 inch TV. In fact this one is probably about 32 inches at best and Alien Breed Evolution really, really, needs a big screen TV. That to me, is a complete design failure. Why? Because it gives me a headache when trying to squint my eyes and determine what I’m looking at. The only other option would be to play with my nose up against the screen. Hell, even games like Neverwinter Nights (with a similar view and control scheme) allowed you to zoom in.

So this review has taken some time as I can only handle about 10 minutes of the game at a time. It’s strange that a developer would decide on the Unreal Engine and then make the game an isometric top-down shooter. I mean the engine is so robust and to pull the gamer up out of the action into an overhead view is just strange to me. Even a third-person, over the shoulder vantage would have been better. Or ideally, an option on how to play, FPS, TPS or top-down. Because frankly, it seems like I’m missing all the action and excitement when I play this game.

That’s not to say the game is crap, because it’s not. It’s actually a fairly decent action game aside from the limitations I’ve outlined above. There is a storyline to follow and while it’s mostly run-and-gun action on rails (with minor deviations) there are some sort of puzzle pieces that you have to fit into place at times to get from point A to B.

The game is a top-down isometric action title where you are cast in the role of a survivor of a spaceship crash and have to help get the ship restarted before it’s overrun by insectoid aliens or crashes into something much, much bigger.

This is a quote from the game’s Xbox.com page and made me chuckle:

Experience high quality and attractive visuals, all rendered in high-definition resolution, and rich, atmospheric sound effects. Epic’s Unreal Engine3 powers the game and sumptuous visuals.

The graphics are, well from what I can see, decent. I mean they look like they’d be totally awesome if I had a projector that let me play on a 90 inch display. But as it is they’re so small on my 32 inch screen and the game is so dark (environmentally) that really much of the graphics work is simply lost. However, I have taken note of the fantastic fire and heat visuals. The flamethrower is quite cool as well.

The sound is quite good except for the fact that they seem to have forgotten that most modern games have voice acting. So you have to read most dialogs, which is again, headache-inducingly small print.

The game boasts two single player modes (story and free play where you can go back and play any level you have cleared) and two ways to play Co-op (local and online). Thankfully, they didn’t choose to go split screen on the local or it would have been like watching ants socialize, if you catch my drift.

The co-op lets you and a friend take on pretty heavily populated levels (in regards to bad aliens) that require you to find someone or do something. It’s pretty nice as I always like a good co-op session even if I don’t generally know the other person thanks to XBLA.

The game offers a whopping 20 pages of help (which I didn’t even bother reading until I began writing this) which is all light blue text on a dark blue background. While it does maintain the atmosphere of the game, it’s hard to read. Plus I love the controller icons for the sticks when you cannot tell if it’s left or right. Luckily, it doesn’t take much to figure out.

Now I’ve logged several hours into the game and am close to the end as it only has 5 chapters. It’s an episodic deal so this is the first, gives you a couple hours of gameplay for a couple hundred Microsoft points (800) and then you have to wait until the next comes out. Hopefully, they’ll read this review prior to publishing the second piece and remember to give us people without monster energy-guzzling TVs something to look at and play without the need for Tylenol or bi-focals. Each level takes between 30 minutes and an hour or so depending on how thorough you investigate the ship and how fast you shoot up the bad guys.

NOTE: I’m taking the Xbox to a friend’s for New Year’s Eve and he’s got a large TV so hopefully I’ll better appreciate the graphics and report back next week.