The Collection Chamber: ALIEN ANARCHY: THE VARGINHA INCIDENT

Varginha, Minas Gerais, January 20, 1996...

A veritable war operation is mounted to cover up the landing of an alien spacecraft. Thwarting the military forces involved, some aliens flee toward the city, where they are spotted by several witnesses. You are one of these witnesses and are given a very special mission...

Perceptum Informática is proud to present the first 3D action game developed especially for the Brazilian public. Take command and join this adventure. You have complete control of the action: walk, run, jump, swim, look in any direction, activate mechanisms, and fire various weapons! Enjoy the digital stereo sound and CD music, composed especially for the game.
Witness the capture of an alien spacecraft by special troops.
Make contact with a surviving alien and get through violent security guards to search for other survivors.
Invade a military school used as a temporary military base.
Challenge the fearsome special agents and rescue a deserting soldier in the heart of São Paulo, at the Sé Metro station.
Discover the secrets hidden among the abandoned ships of Guanabara Bay.
Survive and face the terrible conspiracy in southern Minas Gerais: strange alien beings working together with secret human forces in a true underground city - Stonedrome!

~ translated from the back of the Brazilian box

Despite being a Brazilian-production, Alien Anarchy (or The Varginha Incident to give it its original name) has an air of American militarism that comes out of the United States. Maybe that's because the designers at Perceptum loaned out their software using their Acknex Game Engine to the U.S. Special Forces specifically to train their Delta Force soldiers. Judging by how this game came out, I can't see they got much use out of it.

Being designed for first-person-shooters, the Acknex engine is a little behind the times for a game released in 1998. It owes a lot to the legendary Build Engine, with its raytraced pseudo-3D style with scaling sprites for everything except basic geometry. As such it has incredibly limited locales compared to the likes of Half-Life or Quake 2. Everything is designed in right angles and any attempt to deviate from this results in an ugly mess. Had this been a full-priced game, it would've been lambasted, but being an uber-cheap budget title (at least in the UK) gives it some grace.

While you have the Bioproc in hand, you have no room for a sub-machine gun (left).
The first-aid kit heals you, while the helmets add to your shield (right).

Its theme is a rather good one, involving alien conspiracies and evil scientists. You play as a farmer whose once empty field is suddenly filled with a crashed UFO and a dozen grey aliens with shellshock milling about. Then, a cavalry of army goons arrive and shoot at them all - and you if you get in the way. Once you've found cover, one of those intergalactic beings entrusts you with saving their lives. Massive career change from a lowly farmer to one-man vigilante killing machine. From here, you'll navigate several large maze-like levels with a machine gun aimed at an unending surge green army guys. For a game that inspired the actual army, it's surprising they're the bad guys here.

In a rather nice twist in concept at least, you do have the option to play stealthily. From the second level, if you haven't sounded the alarm by raising your weapon or entering restricted areas, the soldiers will leave you alone. I never quite managed to get to the end of a stage without blood on my hands or see how one could, but it's apparently possible.

Other than a machine gun and a grenade, the bigger weapons consist of a missile launcher (left)
and alien offensive called the Quantum Imploser (right).

Health, ammo and shield pickups generously scatter the stages hinting that the game expects a more bombastic approach but brute forcing your way to the end isn't always the solution. You only get to wield a handful of weapons - some conventional, one alien - but sneaking past patrols or sabotaging equipment is just the ticket to save some ammo. The controls themselves are a bit twitchy, sticking to the aging hand-cramping combination of arrow and navigation keys. Strafing is significantly slower than moving forward or backwards and looking up or down is so unusable sensitive you can almost hear the snapping of your character's neck. It's clunky, not just by modern standards but for its time too.

To help with the large levels, the game throws in an alien communicator device called the Bioproc into the mix. This not only acts as a translator to receive level objectives, but also a map. The latter is absolutely necessary, but you cannot carry a weapon while looking at it. You press TAB to get it up, but when you do the same to put it away you become annoyingly defenseless. You'll have to press one of the number keys to once again arm yourself.

You can swim in bodies of water to access new area (left).
Perfect stadium seating for a footy game, complete with dead bodies on the field (right).

What's striking is how many subtle Brazilian-isms feature in the game. The sci-fi plot is based around a real national legend that took place in January 1996. An alleged UFO crashed in the countryside followed by a military coverup that would make an exciting episode of The X-Files. Forget your Roswells or Area 51s, this is Varginha, Minas Gerais. Beyond the glowing alien eyes peering out of the rainforest, the game also features the subway tunnels of São Paulo and an army base near Guanabara Bay. I also noticed a couple of nod to Brazil's national sport - football.

Knowing its background, I really wanted Alien Anarchy to succeed. The legend behind it is right up my alley, and coming from a country rarely seen in gaming sphere makes it all the more fascinating. Unfortunately, the incident at Varginha cannot do enough to raise this generic and poorly designed shooter away from its budget game roots. Disappointing, but I'm still glad to have come across it.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox to bring the game to modern systems. Manual, UK version, US version and unique Demo included. MP3 soundtrack added as a separate download. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 437 Mb. Install Size: 482 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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