Alien Trilogy

"Chest-bustingly terrible."

Alien Trilogy was one of the first games released for the PSX and if I am not mistaken the first person shooter based on the Alien universe ever. Now, can you imagine how incredible the words ‘'first person shooter based on the Alien series`` were back in the early days of the PlayStation?, well, not as incredible as the yawns of boredom from both first person shooter and Alien fans after it was released.

Plot:
I am not exactly sure if this is actually based on the movies despite what the title says, because the cut scenes seem completely random and the generic mission objectives have nothing to do with any of the films. Like anybody cares anyway.

Graphics:
About as good as those of Doom, except Doom was released ten years before this game. Being honest, the gloomy environments look quite decent, but the Aliens are practically indistinguishable from each other. Then there is the fact that there is approximately three different backgrounds and maybe four types of aliens in the whole game, so it gets dull alarmingly fast.

Music:
There is none basically, at all. Fortunately those horrifically creepy trademark sounds your scanner does are still there to haunt you while you play.

Gameplay:
As expected, it is Doom all over again only plagued with Aliens and pitch black corridors. Most levels involve finding keys or batteries or switches and the like to open doors which lead to more locked doors which lead to even more locked doors. Beating the living day lights of everything you have at sight is often the secondary objective.

As far as controls go, the best thing Alien Trilogy has going for it is how simple it is: you can`t crouch, you can`t jump, you can`t look up or down and you don`t even have to aim accurately to hit the enemies. This is a relief because even if the gameplay isn`t exactly bad, playing a first person using the PSX controller is always a severe pain in the ass.

The difficulty is out-of-this-world high. Dodging enemy attacks is extremely difficult and most importantly, you`ll run out of ammo in the blink of an eye and although the pistol has unlimited bullets, it takes about ten trillion hits to kill anything save for the facehuggers with it. In short, running out of ammo at the beginning or middle of a stage means you are pretty much screwed, so save your game only if you have a decent amount of ammo left, otherwise load the stage and try again because simply put, you won`t make it.

And that`s about it, the game is pretty much unplayable after the first four or five levels, when the number of aliens gets crazy high, the ammo mockingly low and the repetition and boredom unfathomable for anyone who isn`t autistic or a masochist.

Overall:
Alien Trilogy was a lazy effort even back when it was released, so saying that it is almost as dated as a floppy disk is one hell of an understatement. Still, I would say it is not a complete waste of time if you are an Alien fan because it is kind of creepy and moody for a couple of hours, but only a couple because it gets old ridiculously fast.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 09/21/09

Game Release: Alien Trilogy (US, February 1996)