Alien 3

"More varied gameplay would've made Alien 3 a flawed but exciting platformer."

Don't you just hate games that start out great, get you hooked, but then keep disappointing you and driving you mad as you make progress? Well, I'm afraid Alien 3 just might be one of them. Exterminating aliens with cool weapons, i.e. an assault rifle, a grenade launcher and a flame-thrower, under the pretext of various missions definitely sounds like a good time to me, and it probably would've been, too...in case there was any variation at all to it. But as it is, Alien 3 is a great-looking and great-sounding game that doesn't change one bit from start to finish and frustrates the player in the process.

Graphically, the game is beyond reproach. Ripley's sprite is large and for the most part beautifully animated - just look at her gun swinging by her side as she's climbing the monkey bars - the aliens slightly less so but at least they look presentable, both alive and when blown to bits. The colours in Alien 3 are suitably washed-out, which caused protest from some of the other reviewers, but this is a penal colony, not Disneyland (and personally, I'll take drab colours over a garish palette any day). The backgrounds are multi-layered for that pseudo-3D effect and very detailed, but unfortunately, there are only five or six types in the entire game, so they end up adding to the repetitiveness of the game. But there is another, more aggravating problem: there are scenery elements in the foreground that you can't see through, and there are often aliens lurking behind them. Therefore, you either have to take the risk of getting hurt, or potentially waste ammo. Finally, I would've preferred if more H.R. Giger's artwork were used; as it is, we only get a taste of it in the alien corridors.

The gameplay starts out equally impressively. The levels are huge, the task-based play is exciting because it seemingly requires you to plan your actions out beforehand a bit, and the terminal interface is well-thought out. If not before, the problems do start rearing their ugly heads on level two, however. First of all, the number of terminals begins to drop, and it's progressively easier to get lost without the corridor maps. Certainly, you can get them off GameFAQ's nowadays, but they should've been included in the manual. Also, much back-tracking is required and the fact that you can't combine tasks that take place in the same room that furthermore takes a minute or two and at least ten percent of your health bar to get to (aliens climbing the ladders are next to impossible to hit either with the gun or the flame thrower) is really annoying. Surely Ripley could remember to free the prisoners AND fry a few alien eggs in the process, especially when the eggs in question actually block your path to the prisoners.

Next, you notice that all that planning you thought you needed is pointless because health and weapon power-ups reappear after every completed mission. Some players might like it this way, but I know that I prefer ammo conservation and health preservation, not to mention how tedious it gets having to stop by the medic bay and the weapons room before and/or after each mission. A different approach would also probably help to keep a lid on another annoying feature: enemy respawn. Don't get me wrong, I like shooting stuff and Doom is one of my favourite games ever, but the frequency of the aliens, on the highest difficulty setting at least, is positively insane. Still, I wouldn't mind it that much if a single mistake or worse still, a glitch in the game engine, didn't often trigger a chain of events that may deplete as much as a half of your energy bar. For example: not noticing an alien hiding behind a piece of scenery (-4%) sends you flying backwards into a puddle of acid. Your invincibility doesn't last long enough for you to clear the area so along with the acid (-5%), you get hurt by a face hugger (-4%). Busy shaking it off, you don't notice the adult alien charging at you (-8%) and shoving you into lava pit below (-30%). This is not fun the first time, and each re-iteration gets more frustrating. To add insult to injury, the aliens don't show any of the intelligence they're supposed to possess, as they hardly take notice of you - mostly, they passively patrol their assigned area. If Ripley happens to run into one if them, she gets hurt, while in case she stands as much as an inch outside their beat, the aliens won't react. The aliens' charging right into the fire of your flame-thrower equally doesn't attest to their intelligence.

Finally, the further you get in the game, the more you notice just how uninspired the levels (and, for that matter, the passwords you collect to access them) actually are. There is more to level design than scattering about platforms, sloping platforms - where, probably due to the absence of sprite rotation, the aliens never appear - moving platforms and ladders, but it seems that the game designers at Probe couldn't really be bothered. There is the occasional tricky jump - if there were more, you'd go mad anyway as character control during the actual jump is atrocious - but basically, the gameplay boils down to platform after platform of crouching and shooting. Why crouching, you ask? Well, it's the only way to somewhat safely (collision detection is questionable, which can really make your blood boil in tense situations) dispose of face-huggers and chest busters...which, unfortunately, make up more than ninety percent of all enemies. But let's look at the bright side: at least crouching is switchable so that you don't have to hold down "down" all the time.

I make a point of finishing every game I begin to play but frankly, sometime after stage three or four at best, Alien 3 became so tedious that playing to the anti-climactic end (there is no boss fight, just a non-interactive ending sequence) became purely a matter of fulfilling an obligation. Still, compared to most movie-licence games, Alien 3 does fare better-: while most of them are just plain terrible, Alien 3 has a relatively solid base, which, unfortunately, wasn't refined nor expanded upon. It's as if Probe developed a decent game engine, made one good level, and then for whatever reason decided to make five more that are almost completely the same. This is most unfortunate - with less monotonous gameplay, I'm sure that most players would be more prepared to forgive all other flaws of Alien 3.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/15/05