Reviewed: Alien Syndrome

I won’t lie- the Wii was lacking some good multiplayer games for a while. The single player arena was handled well right from the get go (games like Red Steel and Super Paper Mario), but when it came to playing with your buddies your best bet was always to load up Wii Sports and have at ‘er. Unfortunately, you can only play the same 9 holes of Wii Golf for so long until you’re a bloody expert and completely unbeatable.

Enter Alien Syndrome. This game has been out for a long time, but after a friend of mine gave me a copy for my birthday I decided that it was time to get my game on. Actually, we got our game on, but that’s beside the point. As it turns out, my friend (who gave me the game) wouldn’t be playing it for very long. Read on.

Also, I should mention that my digital camera kind of sucks so I posted screen shots of the game that have been taken from www.wiisworld.com- hit them up as they have a TON of great Wii resources. The screen shots are at the bottom of this review.

The Concept and Story of Alien Syndrome

The concept of the game is actually pretty decent if you’re a fan of 3/4 view shooters (as I am). You control a character on-screen with a “birds eye view” of the arena. Basically you run around and kill things, friends optional. The storyline is pretty vague- you’re some army chick (or something) and you’re on a ship that’s been infested with aliens. Your mission is to go around, collect some things, get to some areas, and kill a bunch of aliens.

Seriously, I’m not even joking. But, with this kind of game, the story is kind of irrelevant as it’s the actual gameplay that matters. The premise is very solid, and I had high hopes for this game as a fun shooter for when my buddy and I wanted to roast some aliens (and the flamethrower in the game made that very easy to accomplish).

One really unique feature is this robot that follows you around. It essentially allows you to make weapons/ammo from the items that you pick up along the way, and as your characters level up (there’s a slight amount of RPG element in the game) you’ll be able to use better weapons. Sounds pretty solid, so let’s get to playing.

Gameplay - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

At first you’re playing a kind of training mission (be it by yourself or with the aid of a friend), and once you’re used to the controls of Alien Syndrome (which utilize both the Wiimote and the Nunchuck) you’ll be blasting away alien hordes in no time. Everything appears pretty solid- movement is easy, firing is easy, weapons collection is easy, picking up keys is easy… everything is pretty easy to do.

But, whatever you do, do not hold the nunchuck in any way other than vertical. I couldn’t figure out why the screen kept spinning, and it literally took me 15 minutes of getting ticked off before I realized it was because I had the nunchuck held horizontal. Apparantly that controls the camera, and once I had it figured out I was able to keep the screen steady and actually see what the heck I was doing.

The first 30 minutes or so of the game is actually pretty interesting. Right at the beginning of the game you get to pick your character’s class (which determines things like health, what weapons you can use, etc.). I chose the “sniper” class and my buddy chose the “tank” class. I got a laser rifle, and he got a stick with a sharp thing on both ends. HA!

However, once we beat the first mini-boss we realized it was all the same thing. Run over here, kill these guys. Right over there, kill those guys. Pick up this key thingie, run back over here, kill some more people. With enemies randomly respawning all of the time you are never really sure if you’ve made progress or not, but it’s nearly impossible to run out of ammo since your robot can make you new weapons and and ammo on request. This game could literally go on forever.

What Drives me NUTS about Alien Syndrome

The entire time I played this game I kept wondering if something interesting was going to happen. Every now and then some guy chimes in over the radio about one of your objectives, and once you get your head around the mediocre voice acting you figure out that you need to go to some location within the ship to do something… in reality, as soon as you get to the location you’re treated to a pathetic in-game cutscene and then it’s more of the same.

That’s what drives me nuts. Why have a story if you aren’t actually going to do anything with it? This game would be 10 times better if it was simply kill enemies, upgrade your guns, blow some stuff up, and move on from place to place. Instead of trying to incorporate a weak storyline, focus on those other elements and let me blow stuff away. If you MUST have a story, at least flesh it out so that I’m half-interested in what I’m doing.

Conclusion

The game has a solid base, and if you can live with all of the little annoyance and major shortcomings you may actually enjoy it. The fact that you can upgrade your characters and allow them to use new and kickass weapons is cool, and playing with a friend is always a good time if you’ve had a few beers. The problem is that no one part of this game has any polish, and as a result the entire game feels rushed and weak.

Maybe one day I’ll pick it up and beat it (when I have nothing else to do), but I don’t see that happening for a long time. If you’re looking for a fun game to play either solo or with a friend, move on. This game is more irritating than anything else, especially when that stupid camera starts spinning because you’re holding the nunchuck 1 degree off-center.

Overall: 5/10 - The game is decent, but it’s not in the top 10. Heck, it’s not even in my top 50. Unless you really want to blow some aliens away I’d look elsewhere.

Sound: 7/10 - While nothing is really fantastic, the sound is there when it needs to be and the explosions from the grenade launcher have a nice “BOOM” to them.

Visuals: 7/10 - There are definitely nicer looking games on the Wii, but by no means is it an eyesore. The colors are rich, the aliens look kinda cool, and the environments aren’t lacking either. Alien Syndrome does fairly well in this aspect.

Gameplay: 5/10 - The first little while is fun, but after that it’s the same thing over and over again. Some variation would have been awesome, though I will admit that it’s kind of cool to have my robot make me a laser rifle or grenade launcher whenever I want it to.

Story: 3/10 - Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Story, WHAT STORY?

Screen Shots

These are taken from www.wiisworld.com, as my digital camera sucks and I haven’t quite figured out how to take good screen shots yet. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Game Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.