"A well-crafted game that captures the spirit of the Alien movies"

Loosely based on the movie of the same title, this game delivers pulse-pounding action and nail-biting suspense in the best tradition of the Alien movies. We follow Ripley as she runs and guns her way through fifteen levels of corridors, rooms, and air ducts with nasty aliens waiting around almost every corner.

The setting is the prison colony from Alien 3, but this game plays more like Aliens. Ripley, last surviving crew member of the doomed Nostromo, finds herself on a small planet that is home to a prison colony when her ship crash lands. To her horror, she discovers that there was an alien stowed away on the ship. The alien has started breeding, and soon the whole place is filled with insectoid killers on the rampage. The aliens have captured the prison's entire population and are using them as hosts to breed more of their kind. Ripley has to rescue the trapped prisoners while staying one step ahead of the alien horde.

This is a side-scrolling platformer game. Unlike the movie, Ripley has a respectable arsenal of weapons at her disposal here. A machine gun, flame thrower, grenades, and a grenade launcher, all with limited ammo supplies. Ammo pickups are scattered about the various labyrinthine levels, along with medkits that help our heroine stay healthy as she faces down the alien menace.

Each level has a number of prisoners scattered about. Ripley rescues them by simply touching them. Presumably, she's carrying some sort of antidote that can be administered quickly (like a syringe). An antidote that kills the gestating alien inside the host. This is in stark contrast to the movies, where there was no cure (once you're impregnated with an alien, there's no hope for survival). But this is a video game, so things are naturally going to be different here. The goal for each level is to rescue all of the prisoners and then make it to the exit before time runs out. The ticking clock represents two things here. The time remaining before the gestating aliens burst out of the prisoners' chests, and the time remaining before the rampaging alien horde catches up with our heroine. If we fail to rescue all of the prisoners in time, we see where the remaining unrescued prisoners are as newborn aliens burst out of their chests. If we don't make it to the level's exit in time, the alien horde catches up with us, and our heroine is slaughtered.

Level designs are very labyrinthine here, with numerous dead ends that consume time when you go the wrong way. Ripley stalks through corridors and rooms in the prison facility, climbs ladders and rides moving platforms, and crawls through air ducts to reach new areas. When she enters an air duct, we only see what she can see from her current vantage point (line of sight). The rest of the screen goes black to simulate the feeling of crawling through a dark, narrow passageway, unsure of what might be waiting around the next corner. When she reaches a junction in the network of air ducts, we're shown what's waiting around the corner. Sometimes there's nothing there. Sometimes there's a nasty alien waiting in ambush.

The aliens here are just as crafty as they are in the movies. They hide in unusual places and then spring out to attack when you least expect it. They hide in the floors, in walls, around bends in the air ducts. Many of them like to drop from the ceiling. Some of them come out of nowhere, springing at our heroine from off-screen. This game does a masterful job of capturing the feel of the Alien movies. As a result, it's also incredibly difficult. Ripley has three lives and four continues (the continues are accessed from the config menu). About the only way to successfully play the game is to learn the level designs and be able to anticipate when the aliens are going to show up. Knowing when they're going to spring at you from off-screen and having a strategy for dealing with them goes a long way toward surviving the game.

As if the rampaging aliens weren't enough, there are also areas with eggs that will hatch face-huggers. If one of them grabs onto our heroine, she'll lose health while struggling to get it off. There are also hazards such as pits with spinning turbines that must be jumped over. The jumping in this game is a bit tricky to control. It takes some practice to get used to. We can't control Ripley while she's falling. So to do a short jump, we have to jump and direct our movement just a bit with the directional pad in order to safely land on a nearby platform (as opposed to jumping with the directional pad held down firmly, which will do a long jump).

The rest of the controls are pretty responsive, although Ripley takes a moment to turn around. That takes some getting used to as well. To change weapons, we have to hold down on the directional pad to crouch and then press button 2 to cycle through the inventory. She can fire the machine gun in eight directions. Kudos to the designers! That's the way things should be.

After each set of three levels, our heroine faces off with a boss. An alien queen who aggressively attacks. These bosses require a lot of strategy to beat. They're not easy.

Visually, this game is pretty good. Everything is well presented. The creatures don't have a whole lot of animation (or perhaps it's just that the aliens are moving so fast that it's hard to make out their animations; these guys move fast!). Ripley is well animated and moves fluently. The aliens explode sort of like fireworks, sending sparks of white and red flying in every direction. Not the best of graphical effects. I'd say they did the best they could with it, given the Game Gear's limitations.

Sound effects are decent at best. The machine gun and other weapons have very lackluster effects. I'm noticing a trend here in Game Gear games. I think the Game Gear just isn't capable of producing good gunfire effects. Explosion effects (like when a grenade goes off or an alien explodes under heavy fire) are all good. This game has some great music. The compositions are awesome, sporting multiple instruments playing and quality synthing. Way above average. This is some of the best music I've heard on the Game Gear.

Alien 3 is a great game that lives up to the horror and nerve-wracking tension of the movies. While it does have some flaws, they're not bad enough that they interfere with the game-play. It's a tough game with nicely designed levels, great music, and... most importantly, lots of nasty aliens to contend with.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/05