Alien Shooter: Vengeance: the ultimate bug, reptile, tentacled, fire breathing lizard hunt. You, the expert combat veteran, have been hired to jump in and clean out the ultra secret research facility that has been invaded by all sorts of nasty alien creepy crawlies.

The game opens up with a choice of avatar and special ability. You're able to choose between night vision, quick learning, enhanced healing ability, and others. Then, you're able to add to some of your skills. The game has a fairly simple character advancement system where you can enhance skills as you advance in levels. The skills primarily deal with specific weapon categories - shotguns, pistols, grenade launchers and the like - but also include attributes such as strength, health points, and dexterity.

Once you have you figured out all this, it's off to work you go, whistling all the way. Well... perhaps not so much in the whistling department.

Once inside the complex you will be given certain tasks to perform: rescuing people stuck in the facility, collecting certain items or just investigating the extent of the alien incursion. When you do run into the nasty little buggers it's typically in the form of a seemingly endless wave. The advantage to seemingly endless waves? It's really hard to miss hitting something when you pull the trigger... And it really gets fun when the giant dinosaur lizard baddies show up carrying missile launchers.

Throughout the game you will have the opportunity to select various weapons for your own personal use. Pistols, shotguns, machineguns, rocket launchers - and even a few energy weapons. Each option has its own advantages when dealing with the multi-legged baddies.

There are a number of points in the game where you will have an opportunity to drive a vehicle or control a remote weapons platform. This is where the gratuitous violence really hits home. The shear volume of baddies that appears during these times causes video lag and the bodies pile up quick.

The game is played from an angled top-down view and is fairly easy to control. I tried playing it with a gamepad and quickly disabused myself of that idea - the game is much easier to control using the keyboard and mouse.

The graphics quality of the game is good, and fairly detailed. Most of the game environment is destructible, which makes for a lot of flash-bang fun. For repeat outings, once you've completed a mission, it's added to a list of replayable missions, affording you a chance to search out all the hidden items and collect lots of moolah to buy bigger and better weapons.

The game designers have a few points in the game that show their extreme attention to detail that I find very cool. One is that when firing projectile weapons, especially machine guns, you will hear the gun firing and you will also hear the sound of the empty casings hitting the ground, and if you look closely you will see piles of casings appear around your character. Another point is when walking or driving through the muck and the mire of death and destruction that you sow, you leave tracks. Pretty disgusting I know, but very cool all the same.

As a note, this is an extremely graphic game and I would highly recommend that you not allow young people or those with weak constitutions to see you play the game. The gore factor is extreme.

If you're feeling frustrated and have a strong desire to cause massive amounts of destruction, then this is definitely a game for you. So: grab a gun and your alien bug repellant and we'll go on a creepy crawly nightmare bug hunt.

'nuff said.