Game Attic Halloween #7 – Alien Resurrection (PS1)
Pros:
+ One of the better Alien games
+ Great engine for the PS1
+ Good balance of survival horror and action
Cons:
- Console controls aren’t fluidly precise
- Heavy reliance on scripting
- Some cheap moments due to spawning enemies
You’ll probably recognize the fourth Alien film, Alien Resurrection, as the one you’re going to get stuck with when you buy the new Blu-Ray collection. It represented a pretty far-out-there departure for the series, and took the Ripley character in directions few people seemed to care much for. Considering the popularity of the franchise, and the obvious crossover of a younger, male audience, a video game tie-in to the film shouldn’t be a surprise. The fact that it’s actually pretty good, is.
Alien Resurrection tries to freshen up the series by taking place hundreds of years after the first three films. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been cloned from preserved DNA, so that the military scientists aboard the USM Auriga can extract the alien queen left within her from the events of Alien 3. The experimental cloning process has left Ripley with touches of the Alien’s toughness and sociopathic tendencies – both of which come in handy when the Aliens our reckless scientists bred naturally escape and overrun the ship.
The game starts you off as a weakened and unarmed Ripley in the opening moments of the breakout. Taking a page from Half-Life, you get used to the interface and appearance of key consoles around the ship in relative safety, while scripted sequences of destruction and mayhem occur around you. Once you find your first weapon, it’s time to rumble with the Aliens and complete an updating series of repair tasks across the game’s 10 enormous levels.
Aliens on the attack.
In a neat touch, you won’t do this alone. Alien Res actually has four playable characters you’ll switch among at the start of each level. All characters have the same basic stats and controls, but are differentiated through their starting equipment. Call begins with a motion tracker and exclusive access to a laser weapon, Private DiStephano has an automatic rifle, and dreadlocked Christie sports the twin pistols he carried in the film. These character switches also help to add some variety to the gameplay by restarting you in different situations without resorting to the old “take all your equipment away at the cutscene” cliche. You’ll always switch to a character carrying equal or better weapons, but the loss of medkits and ammo you’ve accrued with the last character resets the “survival horror” vibe and keeps you from simply cakewalking through the entire game.
Gameplay will be familiar to anyone who’s played any recent game with “-shock” in the title. Each level has a set of mission objectives that need to be completed, as well as doors locked by keys or switches. Most of your objectives revolve around keeping the ship afloat (aspaced?) long enough to make it to an escape ship, though Ripley does insist on going off on one of her patently unwise tangents and personally destroying her seven previous failed clones. Nods to the movie are worked in as well, ranging from NPC characters (like scientists and victims) from the film, to underwater sections with Aliens displaying their creepy swimming animation.
There’s no shortage of Aliens stalking the ship, and every single one of them is appropriately nasty. They’re fast, quiet, and deadly at close range. Four to six good swipes will end you, depending on which of the claws, spiked tail, or puncturing inner jaws the attacking Alien decides to use. They can also leap short distances, and knock off a third or more of your health if they connect. They swarm like pack animals too, with groups of three or four not uncommon, and crawl along ceilings and vents to come at you from unexpected angles. The occasional scripted sequence will even have them smashing through locked doors, or chasing hapless survivors out of the corner of your eye.
But the nastiest bastards are actually the facehuggers. They’ll pop out of eggs littering the ship’s corridors, or leap out from behind crates or shadowed corners. Any hugger that closes the distance to you latches onto your face in what amounts to a one-hit kill. The game isn’t over though – you’ll wake up with a new “chestburster meter” quickly draining, and have about a minute to locate and use a portable “autodoc” to cut the parasite out. Run out of time, and you’ll get to experience it fatally tearing out of your chest in first person. Huggers also know how to “play dead,” and will surprise you by popping back to to life after you’ve passed them if you haven’t finished the job.
It’s not all bad news though – Aliens are reluctant to attack you when you’re impregnated (a la Alien 3), so as long as you have an autodoc in your inventory, you can use your condition briefly to your advantage. Round this out with the infrequent military goon bent on preventing your escape, and a few boss fights (with a Queen as one), and you’ve got yourself one bad night in space.
Watch out for facehuggers!
You have a beefy arsenal to fight back with. Every character gets an infinite-ammo pistol good for clearing debris and greasing facehuggers. From there, you’ll find shotguns, pulse rifles, flamethrowers, electric guns, and even grenade and rocket launchers. Each gives a distinctive “kick” through the dual shock’s rumble feature, and the rifle especially rocks and rolls on full auto. Pickups include a recharging flashlight, 360-degree motion tracker, and various sizes of health kits. Health is always very limited. Ammo less so, but you’ll never build up a worry-free stockpile. Both limits give a good balance between survival horror and FPS, and definitely encourage you to stalk cautiously through the halls. Limited save points (you can only save at specific save stations) also promote careful gameplay without treading too far into frustration.
The game sports an impressive engine for the PS1. Everything is full 3D, with levels, platforms, and ladders and vents all present. Polygons aren’t in such abundance as in modern games, but what are here are enough to give the hallways unique and interesting shapes. The film’s rusty color palette is replicated well, and the virtual version of the ship matches what was seen on the screen nicely. Lighting effects are also excellent, with all the necessary flickers, flashes, shadows, and red emergency strobes needed to create an appropriately foreboding atmosphere. There’s a fairly short draw-in distance, but it works well here as the hallways ahead fade into inky shadows with potential monsters hiding within.
Atmosphere is further provided on the auditory front, with excellent environmental effects and Alien screeches right out of the Fox archive. Except for the title menu, there’s no music of any kind. This leaves you to wander eerily quiet hallways, and listen for Aliens through background hums of equipment or clinking of chains. Distant, echoing sounds of screams and gunfire suggest battles elsewhere in the ship, and the chirps of the motion tracker raise hairs on the back of your neck just as they did in Aliens. The ship’s computer, “Father,” also updates on the continually-degrading status of the ship in a calm, monotone voice. Later, even he gets counted among the decaying systems, and his increasingly garbled warnings start to take away the last friendly voice on the ship.
Controls are about as sharp as they can be for an early console title, provided you have the right gear. The standard PS1 pad does the job, but steering around with the D-pad isn’t recommended. If you have the dual shock, you’ll be able to control this just like any modern console FPS (one stick to move, one stick to look). This method is responsive, relatively precise, and very smooth. The PlayStation’s expanded number of buttons give the ability to cycle back and forth through weapons and inventory separately, so there’s little delay in getting to the piece of kit you need. You can even mash down on the right thumbstick to do a quick 180-degree turn – very useful for when Aliens sneak up on you.
The game doesn’t feel like a “gimped” console FPS either. Auto-aim is present but at a minimum, and some skill and quick aiming will still be required. Headshots do count, so precision is both possible and rewarded with extra damage. Alien Res also gives some consideration to body awareness. You can’t look down and see your character’s body, but the camera does move in a very realistic fashion. Running speed isn’t very fast at all, the camera bobs and shakes accurately, and it takes some time to move from standing to a crouch. It’s a neat system that gives both guns and movement “weight” to them, and works well to bring you closer to being in the situation, and further from controlling a floating camera with a gun in front of it.
Aliens can attack from any angle.
Aliens fans might notice a certain wet feeling in their pants by now, but temper that with the fact that the game does have flaws. First and most obvious is that, while this is an amazing engine for the PlayStation 1, it’s also an engine for the PlayStation 1. Flat, low-resolution textures are the only kinds to be found, and texture tearing and warping are the rule, not the exception. Textures don’t appear to be able to show any true translucency either, so effects like hissing steam and blood splattered on walls take on a sort of dot matrix look. Graphics snobs obviously aren’t going to find any advanced effects here, and may dismiss the visuals on sight. Even if you’re a little more forgiving, there’s a lot of ugly you’re going to have to turn a blind eye to. It’s a great engine for the time, and does all the basic atmospheric effects needed, but modern gamers especially are going to need to bring a little imagination to fill in the gaps.
The controls aren’t perfect either. None of the schemes allow for the rapid, precise movement of a keyboard and mouse (you can use the PS1 mouse, but are still awkwardly stuck with a controller for movement), so it’s sometimes hard to avoid taking some hits. Your slow movement speed puts you at a serious disadvantage at close range, and Aliens leaping out of nowhere often exploit this. There are a few blatantly obvious (and cheap) moments of spawning enemies in behind you, which immediately put you in a situation difficult to escape unscathed. The limited auto-aim won’t help you recover from the controller’s limitations either. Luckily, it’s never unplayable if you choose to stick with it.
Both issues make this an odd choice to be, and stay, a PS1 exclusive. It might have made a killing if it was released on PC, where both the graphics and control would get needed improvements. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. A.I. is also a little flaky, and the entire game appears to rely entirely on scripting for any variety. Aliens will nimbly, and impressively, rush down a corridor by leaping from wall to wall – but reload a checkpoint and they’ll do it the same way every time. Or wait for an Alien to stop its acrobatics and land on the ground, and it will default to charging mindlessly at you while standing straight up.
Still, it’s important to stress that these are barriers, but not fundamental flaws with the game. The game itself is still scary fun and solidly designed. It’s easily one of the best Alien games, easily among the top FPS games for the PS1 (much better than Alien Trilogy), and arguably one of the better console FPS’s out there. It doesn’t look like a modern title, but it does play like one, and it balances action and survival horror with some impressive skill. Easy sell for fans of the franchise, and a decent choice for anyone to check out on the cheap.
Developed by: Argonaut Software
Released: 1999
Available: Second-hand only. Plays great on the PS2!
For a PS1 game it looks pretty atmospheric. I think they did a pretty good job of making you feel defenseless at the start.
I love the death throes some of the aliens do when you shoot them and they fall to the ground. That’s still pretty sweet.