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"Neither warrants nor rewards the devotion required to play it."

Sims Co., the developers of Alien Syndrome, must have thought they had a real winner on their hands with their top-down action game. They must have thought that they'd made a game so brilliant that its shortcomings would pale in comparison to the riveting gameplay, gluing the players to their Game Gears until the batteries had run flat and then ask for seconds. They must also have thought they'd made a game so enthralling that the players would want to savour every moment of and therefore no save feature would be required despite the game spanning several tedious levels. Furthermore, they must have thought they'd made a game so exciting that the players wouldn't have time noticing the lacklustre level design (well, perhaps they weren't quite as certain about this one, so they put in a really tight time limit). And finally, they must have thought that they'd made a game that controlled so well that no health pick-ups would be needed for the players who made the effort rightfully expected of them. Well, if they did - and the game certainly feels like that - they'd be wrong.

Alien Syndrome is not all bad, or at least it doesn't seem so in the beginning. It's very easy to pick up and due to its responsive controls and fluid character animation, it plays reasonably well. Its weapon power-up system works fine and I liked the fact that choosing the right weapon actually makes a difference. There is certainly a darker side to it, though, and by this I don't mean the Alien rip-off plot, but instead its utterly uninspired level design, nauseatingly repetitive enemies, and most of all, its fatal perspective flaw: the game is supposed to be pseudo-3D, but since it's not presented in the isometric perspective, it's impossible to see the back side of any wall...where, naturally, enemies rather like to lurk.

The initial good impressions don't last long, therefore, and the void is filled by frustration and tedium. The former is caused by many unnecessary deaths essentially due to Game Gear's directional pad which makes it very difficult to select diagonals and thus aim the weapons. This is a well known issue of the system, however, and something which many other games dealt with successfully. The latter is the result of having to start all over again after three continues per four lives each are spent. As far as I'm concerned, this is the cardinal sin of the Alien Syndrome development team as due to its generic levels and cheap deaths, the game is neither exciting nor pleasant enough for most players to endure it.

Alien Syndrome is by no means one of those hopeless games that essentially feel as if a given number of monkeys happened to put together some remotely coherent assembler code instead of Hamlet. It's a game with noticeable potential and a couple of original gameplay features, but it is also a game that was made by a self-satisfied team which smugness got the better of. Arguably, it was never destined for greatness, but a few different design choices could've certainly prevented it from being completely irrelevant in this day and age.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/13/06