Aliens : The Computer Game (US)

Copyright : Electric Dreams | Reviewed by : Ritchardo

When the crew of the spaceship Nostromo investigate a transmission from a desolate planet they make a horrifying discovery - a life form that breeds within a human host. Now the crew must fight not only for its own survival, but for the survival of al mankind.

Graphics

As this is a multi-level game with different types of action, graphics vary wildly from average to abysmal from one level to the next. Things start promisingly with a good loading screen, depicting some aliens and effectively sets the mood for the game. The pre-action drawings which tell the story are straight from the film and aren?t too bad in a ?Pablo Picasso draws the comicbook of the film? style?

The first real section of the game ? The Drop uses a vector display similar to games like The Duct and Star Wars and is good for what it is. The other levels switch from badly drawn side-on action to badly drawn overhead action with alarming regularity until we reach the final level ? The crème de la crap. Ripley v The Alien Queen. Presumably, the Queen is so ticked off because she appears to have wandered in off the set of an Atari 2600 game. Truly, the Queen has to be one of the worst drawings of an end of game baddie I have ever encountered ? the fact that you ended up laughing at a beast that is supposed to instil fear pretty much sums the whole game up.

Sound

A few blips, gunshots and footsteps are all you get. In fairness, this does keep with the film?s lack of music but whereas James Cameroon built up tension and atmosphere in his movie, this game only builds up boredom and tedium. The sparse effects that the game does have are very poor indeed.

Gameplay

Things start off confusingly. You can choose to start at any one of the levels without having to play the others first. On the bright side this means you get to see all of the levels in the game. Unfortunately, this means that you get to see all the levels in the game. Because they?re rotten. Rank rotten. From the first level (which basically consists of you moving a pointer over some guns and correctly identifying them) to the last standoff with the Queen ? they get steadily worse and worse. In fairness, level two ? The Drop ? isn?t too bad and would be a fairly solid sub-game in most packages. Sadly it?s not strong enough to carry an entire game particularly as the difficulty level is cranked up to the max and it is near impossible to complete. The rest is a dross mixture of mazes and shooting that will bore you rigid before the almost unbelievable finale. Just like the film Ripley fights the Queen in a power loader and unlike the film the Queen jumps up and down in the air and you have to try and catch it in your robot hand thing. I puzzled over it for a good ten minutes when doing this review and couldn?t work out how you were supposed to kill her.

This is one of the most shockingly shoddy licence games and conversions I have ever played and I still shudder thinking about all those multi-loads.