Alien³

The Good
The time limit restriction can be lessened by playing on easy. You will have more time, but everything else is the same as in normal or hard. This takes the frustration out of the game without sacrificing challenge. Well, most of the frustration.

Level design is better than the Nintendo and Commodore versions, but monsters still appear way too fast.

The Bad
Even by playing on easy, the time limit still too short for first-time players. I don't think anybody got all the prisoners and find out where the exit was on the first try. Or the second. Maybe the third. And that's for every level.

Nowadays that's not a problem. By playing with an emulator, you can save the game, learn where everything is after several tries, and then you pass the level and save again. But back in the day, people only got a maximum of nine tries and then they had to start all over again. It was too much to ask.

The Bottom Line
It's not as bad as other Alien 3 games. It's good enough to play it a few times.

The Good
In Alien3, you take control of Ripley who has to go through a series of buildings killing aliens while rescuing hostages who are trapped inside. You deal with the aliens by using a variety weapons, including machine guns, hand grenades, flamethrowers, and grenade launchers. You have to use your weapons wisely, as not all of them can destroy certain types of aliens. You are equipped with a radar that you use to track movement. Once you have rescued all the prisoners, the exit door opens and you can proceed to the next level. After every three levels, you need to defeat a boss in order to continue.

The radar can display two different colored dots. Blue dots represent alien movement, while pink dots represent the prisoners. You are the dot in the middle. The use of colored dots to distinguish different objects makes the radar easy to read. When you see aliens come toward you, you need to fire one of your weapons immediately before it appears on screen as they run really fast, because if you don't, you will lose some energy. Sometimes, the radar's energy will get low, meaning that you must find a battery pack lying around somewhere.

The graphics are good, and consist of well-designed backgrounds to make you imagine that you are actually running through deserted buildings, labs, and caves. I actually like the second environment, where you see carcasses hanging on the hook every five seconds. It makes the levels look gruesome.

The music is often fast-paced and is well suited to the environment that you are in. The sound effects are a joy to listen to. Out of the music that I have heard during the game, the best one would be at the end credits.

The Bad
There is not enough variety between the characters. The aliens that you blast away are the same, and the hostages also do not look different. There are actually face huggers in a couple of levels, which come out of pods, but that's about it. You have to defeat the same alien boss all the time.

When I got halfway through the level, destroyed some aliens here and there, rescued two or three prisoners, but suddenly get killed, you have to start the level again. It is as if the prisoners get recaptured and the aliens resurrected. I found this annoying, especially if I have to go quite some distance to get to a prisoner.

The Bottom Line
In Alien3, you basically have to run around, rescuing some prisoners and destroy aliens along the way. You have more than one weapon to deal with them, but killing them is slightly difficult as they often tend to run fast toward your direction. The graphics and sound is very good, and is heaps better than other Alien3 ports.

The Good
Alien³ is a standard, side-scrolling platform that tries, with mixed results, to be more. A similar thing could be said about the film, but I digress.

In the game you get to control Ellen Ripley through several levels set on the isolated, rundown prison complex. The game's animation, graphics, music and sound effects are all above average, but not really breaking new ground.

Ripley is actually a fun video game heroine to control. She is not a typical video game damsel in distress and the programmers wisely gave her more then just one weapon and an army of aliens to kill.

Their are different types of cool weapons that you need to collect in order to defeat different of aliens. You have to locate a set number of hostages in each level, with the aid of a tracking device (which can run out of batteries)

The game manages to create an (appropriately) creepy atmosphere. Its not quite "survival horror", but its darn fun (if you are a horror fan) to be given the chance to hunt down deadly aliens and rescue hostage inside a desolate prison.

The Bad
Sometimes the game's difficult level can slide into the realm of pure frustration.

It is not always terribly kind when it comes to where it puts you (and your rescued hostages) after you lose a life. Having to find batteries for your scanner adds an element of sci-fi realism to the game, but it can become tedious.

Likewise if your character falls from a certain height, your character will lose hit points or die. Yes, its probably realistic (as realistic as sci-fi/horror can be), but it also can be frustrating (especially when faced with a time limit or a character that sometimes seems to slide a bit)

If they really wanted to encourage the player to explore levels, beyond kill aliens and locate hostages, they could have done something differently.

It is also worth noting that all of the hostages in the game look the same and their is not as much variety, as their could have been, in the aliens and alien bosses that you battle.

Last, but not least, the game has a pretty lame ending. Granted, the ending to the film was not terribly good either, (and having the playable character in a video game commit suicide might have generated bad publicity) but having finally beat the game (in my younger days) without Easter Eggs or Game Genie devices, the ending was a bit of a letdown.

The Bottom Line
Alien³ may frustrate and disappoint, much like the film that it is based on. Still, their is something truly enjoyable about taking out an army of blood-thirsty, acid-for-blood xenomorphs with enough firepower to make the head of the NRA blush.