""Game Over Man!""

Aliens...one of the cult flicks of the 80's, made it's way to the Saturn in the form of Alien Trilogy as a first person shooter in true Doom-style form. While it has its fine points, a lot of things were missing from this game. It has the Doom-style perspective, looking over the barrel of a gun, and it has the Doom-style graphics, or finding and enemy and blasting it with said gun. However, while this may appeal to most people who are Doom/Quake/Hexen fanatics, it leaves some things to be desired. When you look back on the game, you’ll find that there isn’t much here to separate this title from any other title that you’ll find with a first person shooting theme, so if you’re looking for originality or anything else, you’ll find that Alien Trilogy is the last place that you want to start!

-The Game Play-

It's repetitive; you blast aliens and infected humans to go from level to level, only to repeat the same thing again and again. Your only clue that you've entered a new level, are the scenery changes...just a little bit. There isn't a 2-player option with this game, and you cannot save in the middle of a game, so it’s an all out run from start to finish in hopes that you don’t get wasted in the process. Replay value of this game is very low because once you've been all the way through, about 40 stages or so, it's done and over with.

A multi-player option, like with Doom, would have come in useful and it would have been a riot to play, but, the hopes for something like that, didn't come along with this title in a death match setting. Instead, you have nothing more than a game in which you go against other people to kill Corporate Enemies with the mind numbing boredom of traipsing through the stages, killing anything that moves! If you can get around having to do the puzzles and kill things that get in your way, you’ll find plenty of reference to the Alien movies as you progress through the game! The addition of weapons in different sections of the game probably would have done more to create a more user friendly, as well as fan friendly environment for the gamer to play through, but in all reality, it doesn’t.

Switch weapons, move, and fire. That's all there is to it. Nothing special is required, and nothing much to review about it. It would have been nice had there been maybe a menu interface option here to switch up the weapons, but nothing that can't be overlooked. With enough practice, anyone with first person shooter experience or even those who have non can find this game to be easy enough to pick up and play! If you take just enough time, you’ll be able to ignore the fact that the game features no joystick support and that using the directional pad on a game pad takes a little practice. Suffering slightly from Ghost Control, you’ll find that in certain areas of the game, there are instances of the control not moving fast enough, or there isn’t enough precision to allow you a good, clear shot at your enemy.

-The Visuals-

First, the levels are well drawn and detailed, fairly huge, and have little in the way of imagine breakup or slowdown. But, they seem to be repetitive, once you've seen the first four levels of the game; you've seen them all. There is no depth to the way that the backgrounds look, and the lighting is either dark, or pitch black, leaving little to see of what detail there is on the levels you may traverse. Even the enemies have a slightly flat look to them, with animation thrown in so that it doesn't seem as though you're staring at paper cutouts. The animations of the backgrounds are fairly dull.

Considering what type of game this is, and all that you see is the backgrounds, and the occasional enemy, it would have been nice to see some blinking lights, some shadowing effects thrown off from the enemy, something. All in all, it gets an average score. With Doom-type games, the backgrounds are everything and if there is nothing of depth there then there really isn't much to look at. Also, you'll notice that the levels look the same and the only way to tell them all apart, is a small, and short FMV sequence that you get from time to time to separate the different levels in the movie that they are supposed to represent!

-The Audio-

The musical score of the game is supposed to instill fear and dread into your heart while you play...but it doesn't. It's rather quiet in the background and you can hear it every once in a while when your not firing on something that's moving among the shadows. I would have hoped to hear some of the musical score's from the actual movies but you don't hear them here. Somewhat of a disappointment, and they added in what they thought to be great mood music! The sound effects of the game are average at best. The growl of the alien's, and the firing of your machine gun, coupled with the soft humming noise of the machinery around you, is all that you hear.

Again, this doesn't show much for a set of movies that were awesome to watch. It almost downplays the movies, in an attempt to make the game much more interesting, well that isn't the case here either! The graphics suffer from bad lighting, and no depth. That gives it such a low score. Most people can attest to the fact that any first person shooter needs to have depth in the backgrounds because that's all you see for most of the game. These just fell short, and then out, either to programming restraints or time restrictions.

-The Verdict-

It's Doom...but it's not. Instead of giving you grotesque creatures and good lighting effects, it gives you cutout aliens and darkness upon darkness. Nothing much in this game makes an impression, other than those very short FMV sequences that you see to separate the levels! The sound also suffers horribly. Lacking a strong paced soundtrack to play to, and average background noises, there is little to hear, and even less to listen to. Again, trying to take a game based on a movie, and add in something to exchange for another, is sometimes a bad idea...this time, the music was sacrificed! This game is one of those once in a while weekend rentals. If you buy it, then it must be cheap and it does add a number to your growing library. On the other hand, don't count on have too much fun with this game, if you like Doom, then play Doom and maybe leave this one on the shelf.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/02/02, Updated 10/02/02