Gene Troopers

Gene Troopers is a Space Opera-themed First-Person Shooter developed by Slovakian company Cauldron HQ and published by Monte Cristo Multimedia.

In the aftermath of the war of 2060, while the victorious Galactic Empire has grown in power, rebel organizations still exists to battle the government. Powerful corporations under the Empire's control started developing genetically enhanced soldiers, the Gene Troopers, created from unwilling "volunteers" consisting of both humans and aliens, to maintain order.

Bridger Johanssen, a human and the Player Character, is one of these of these civilians. When his daughter, Maureen, was taken from him, and Johanssen restrained to be converted into one of the Gene Troopers, a rebel attack interrupts his conversion procedure. And to get his daughter back, Johanssen joins the rebels to battle the Galactic Empire.

Alongside the usual format of running around and shooting enemies from a First-Person POV, players as Johanssen can also extract genes from fallen enemies to upgrade his abilities and modify new skills.

The game was released in 2005 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation 2.

Are you ready to DIE for the Galactic Empire, soldier? — AL

• Aerial Canyon Chase: Planet A412 is a lengthy chase across a Derelict Graveyard of gigantic spaceships on a desert planet, between enemy drones and the rebels, with Johanssen controlling a turret from behind. More often than not the chase will lead through tunnels and between canyon-like walls.
• Alien Blood: The alien enemies bleeds a colourful kaledioscope of blood when shot at, from green to blue to purple.
• And the Adventure Continues:
  Johanssen: With this new threat, Mareen is still not saved... my fight is not yet over...
• Antagonist Title: The Gene Troopers are bio-enhanced beings under the Galactic Empire's and The Keeper Ithaka Wassali's control, and a recurring enemy near the end. Johanssen was supposedly one of their members, but ezcaped his conversion lab with his mind intact and helps the good guys.
• Assist Character: Several levels grants Johanssen another member of the resistance, like Keysha, AL, Trigger, Egmy, Ruen, each of them capable of gunning down mooks on their own.
• Bar Full of Aliens: There's one Johanssen and the resistance crew repeatedly stops by, populated by humans, Human Aliens, and Starfish Aliens of all sorts.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: The stage on Planet Nemesis, a lava-covered world, where Johanssen and the rebels battles enemies on floating platforms and bridges above the flaming environment.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Forest-themed stages contains a bipedal reptilian monster enemy whose sole attack is their barbed tail, which they use to Tail Slap their targets.
• Car Fu: Jungle stages occasionally has a high-tech buggy Johanssen can capture and use to travel across the territory, besides ramming them into enemy mooks along the way.
• Cool Shades: Keysha is never seen without her shades. Somehow, none of the other characters are shown wearing sunglasses, and she's the only one who does so.
• Dialogue Tree: The game tends to have conversation moments between Johanssen and various NPC characters, though most of the time the outcome's the same (save for maybe missing a few clues for the wrong dialogue path). The only choices that matters is the one he needs to choose to save Maureen at the end.
• Destroy the Security Camera: Surveillance cameras shows up in a few enemy facilities, notably the very first area when Johanssen escapes the lab with some rebels. They raise alarms when Johanssen or one of the good guys is in sight, and some equipped with turrets can open fire, but they can also be destroyed.
• Enemy Scan: Johanssen's "Battle Vision" ability, which allows him to access stats and danger potential of different alien mooks.
• Expy: Keysha is a blatant one version of Trinity, being an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl and mysterious lady in latex with sunglasses and short hair hair that resembles Carrie Ann-Moss' from the films. Just swap the black in her clothing with white.
• Fish People: Johanssen's assist character on the water planet, Egmy Foatinar is a blue-skinned fish-alien whose hands are visibly fins. As the level is aquatic-based, her fellow Rainwater aliens are based on this trope as well, as are the hostile alien mooks.
• Forced to Watch: Johanssen finally reunites with his daughter, Maureen, only for Ithaka Wassali to reveal herself as the controller of the parasites, and that she has infected Maureen with one of her creatures. She then proceeds to seal herself and Maureen inside two separate force-fields, before ordering her minions to kill Johanssen while making the paralyzed Maureen watch. If Johanssen defeats all of Wassali's Gene Troopers and robots, Wassali then forces the parasite inside Maureen to emerge and attack Johanssen, with Maureen still frozen on the spot.
• Gatling Good: Beside's Trigger having a Gatling cannon on his shoulder? One of the late weapons Johanssen can obtain is the Mass Blaster, two Gatling guns attached to a single trigger. More Dakka indeed.
• Giant Mook: Gene Trooper brutes and Large Mechs, muscular enemies twice the height of an ordinary person, who tanks quite some hit before they go down. They tend to favour heavy weaponry like rockets and flamethrowers, too.
• The Grays: AL, one of the resistance members (in fact the first one of them who greets Johanssen in the opening stage) is based on a grey. Unlike other aliens though, he can speak perfect English. He's also revealed to be the Last of His Kind later on.
• Guns Akimbo: If Keysha is around as an assist character, she tends to use double pistols. She can target two enemies at the same time as well.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Of the Death Is Cheap variety. In order to save his daughter Maureen, Johanssen allows the last parasite inside her to enter his body, before throwing himself into a furnace. But the parasite resurrects him, and Keysha sacrifices her energy to bring Johanssen's mind back. Johanssen's following mission have him finding a cure to revive Keysha's energy. Approximately NONE of their respective sacrifices actually stays to the end.
• Hidden Villain: President Horacious Prowler, the supposed head of the Galactic Empire, was actually a pawn controlled by Ithaka Wassali, The Keeper, via a parasite.
• Invisibility Cloak: One red-skinned, reptilian-looking alien enemy type has the ability to turn invisible, using this ability to sneak upon Johanssen or one of his allies. However they're prone to Invisibility Flicker allowing them to be spotted.
• Innate Night Vision: Johanssen's "Night Vision" ability (well... what the name said), which is his first unlockable new power.
• Lightning Gun: The Raz-Or Blaster, whose projectiles are blue jagged thunderbolts.
• Locked into Strangeness: Keysha somehow turns blonde after Johanssen revives her, by allowing her to absorb his energy.
• Mecha-Mooks: Occasionally, there are robotic enemies opposing Johanssen and the rebels. They first appear in an early stage near a military installation, but in the final stage where everything is automated robot mooks starts coming up in large numbers.
• Mind over Matter: Johanssen's Death Grasp ability allows him to lift objects with his mind, thanks to his genetic enhancements. He needs to be equipped with a special tech glove that's seemingly compatible only with Gene Troopers, though.
• No Time to Explain: In the opening stage, AL siad a variation of this after Johanssen wakes up.
  Johanssen: Who are you?
  AL: No time for introductions. You have something that doesn't belong to you.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Keysha and her kin are a race of alien vampires, who calls themselves "e-vamps", or "Energo Vampires". Instead of sucking blood, they absorb energy through touch, draining the life of their targets, and can freely reverse the process where they expel their life-force to save others, as demonstrated by Keysha's Heroic Sacrifice when she transfer her life-force to save Johanssen's. Keysha lampshades it at one point that "humans are far more blood-orientated than e-vamps".
• Outrun the Fireball: Johanssen and Keysha does this in one cutscene after the stage in an exploding hangar.
• President Evil: President Horacious Prowler rules the Galactic Empire with an iron fist, orders captives to be converted into his private Gene Troopers army, and is responsible for ruining Johanssen's life... or so it seems. As it turns out, The Keeper, Ithaka Wassali, is manipulating Prowler with her parasites and the game's true villain
• Puppeteer Parasite: In this case, however, the parasites turns out to be vehicle-sized, gigantic monsters, who can shrink themselves to control victims from the inside. Exhibit A: Maureen.
• Shout-Out:
  • Upon finding out the ancient artifact inside himself is taking over, and to save Mareen as well as all his loved ones, Johanssen then decides to throw himself off a railing into a vat of molten steel, much like Ripley's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Alien³. His Crucified Hero Shot, background music, and camera angles even looks similar to the film's. However, he got better.
  • Planet Nemesis, and the entire stage set on it, appears to be based on Planet Mustafar from the then-recent Revenge of the Sith.
• Shoulder Cannon: Trigger, the Cyborg member of the resistance, have a gatling cannon built into his shoulder. If he's available as an assist character he easily provides most fo the backup.
• Starfish Aliens: The game have it's share of odd-looking, weird alien creatures, from snail-headed humanoids with spindly limbs to insectoid creatures and andromorphic blobs. They're either randos in the alien bar, or shows up as lesser alien mooks.
• Threatening Shark: The water planet stage has a tank containing an alien hammerhead shark that serves as an obstacle since Johanssen needs to retrieve an item inside it's tank. The solution is to trigger a switch that releases tranquilizers into the tank, which paralyzes the shark momentarily.
• Token Non-Human: Zig-zagged with Al, the Gray member of the main resistance unit. Who appears to be the sole extra-terrestial in the group, but when their ranks includes the genetically-modified human Johanssen, the ex-human cyborg Trigger, and the Human Alien "e-vamp" Keysha, the token alien doesn't seem so token after all.
• Translator Microbes: Johanssen seems to have these installed in him as part of his Gene Troopers modifications. While some of the aliens understand English, most of them tends to speak in unintelligible alien gibberish where the dialogue would be in bracketed subtitles.