Playing Tips

You are battling to complete your mission objectives whilst being hunted down by a fast, dangerous alien foe. You need both speed and clear strategic thinking to keep them at bay, or you’ll quickly be rounded up and killed.

Firing. Tap the weapon icon (lower right of screen) to fire, or keep it held down to repeat fire. When playing with the normal difficulty setting, the weapon will auto target the nearest alien. You can also aim your fire by tapping the screen or strafe fire by dragging your finger across the screen.

Try to conserve your higher strength ammo. Use your flamer ammo carefully – you can seal off areas for periods of time with flame, but you’ll harm yourself if you venture into the flames yourself.

Keep a close eye on the weapon temperature gauge. If your weapon overheats, it will misfire and not work until cooler.

Moving. You can enable the accelerometer for movement via the options screen – you can set it to just have left/right turning, or just forwards and backwards moving, or all directions. If you choose not to use the accelerometer, it is best to keep your thumb on the d-pad on screen, gently rocking it left/right to turn or forward/backwards to move.

Ordering. When the game starts, any other commandos in your squad are initially ordered to follow you. To give orders, first tap the top left scanner to enter the order screen. When in the order screen, the selected commando flashes. Change the selected commando by tapping the mini commando icons. To give a move order just tap the map to give a move order to that location. To give a follow order, tap and hold the commando (on the map) you want to follow. Or to give a guard order, just tap the location you are in. Note that when a move order is completed, the commando will revert back to a guard order. Note that when you tap the play icon in the top right, you will return to the play screen having direct control of the selected commando. If you give yourself a move order, you can track it on the play screen scanner – this is handy to help navigate a route. Try to give orders so that commandos give cover to each other. Wherever possible, try to block the alien path.

Pickups. There are various items you can collect - just walk over the spinning icon. To use a medipak or any collected item, select it using the menu in the top right. Mines are picked up and put down using the top right menu. You can safely walk over a mine. Aliens are killed violently on a mine, but they slowly learn to keep clear and also very occasionally will make it past a mine.

Aliens. Some aliens are aggressive and will charge at you regardless of your firepower, whereas others will try to avoid being shot, turning or even running round to approach you from behind. Some aliens can fire at you – try to dodge the fire if possible.

Doors. Most doors automatically open when walking into them and automatically close afterwards. These doors can also be shot open and destroyed. Some doors require a door passkey to be found and used in order to open them – this is clearly displayed on the scanner. Doors shown in a yellowy green on the scanner are bulkhead doors that can be manually opened or closed by a commando (use the top right menu to do this). Aliens cannot open these doors. There are some doors at extreme edges of the map, which cannot be opened by commandos.

Tactics. Often you only need to complete a mission with just one commando surviving. If this is the case, and you have other commandos in the mission, consider sacrificing commandos to help buy time for the others – e.g. act as a decoy, or repeatedly flaming past congested areas – clearing it, but also giving a certain death to the commando!