Xenophobe - Arcade

The crazy split screen... It's only going to get worse.

I imagine a meeting at Midway's office.

"Yes, let's ride the success of Aliens (the film) the idea of huge monsters that kill humans very easily and very rapidly running around space stations and planets, nomming down people like candy and causing something to burst from their chests in that odd parody of pregnancy and birth that results in the vasectomy rate going up each time this film comes on for some reason. Let's take that idea, not buy the actual license (Because Konami has it anyway) and make a game that is basically a big send up of the original material."

Game over? I'm FREE! YES!!!

"However, lets royally fuck up the control system and make it as awkward as hell, unplayable by those casual gamers (you know the ones I mean, people that have never played before and expect arcade games to be intuitive and easy to use while real skill comes from experience) and overwhelm people with this abysmal mess and scare them off because we've already got their credits so what the hell do we care after that."

And they were applauded and given a raise and they made this game.

The controls... The horror... But all because of the controls.

I'm not being entirely fair though. So let me break this stuff down.

In what is supposed to be a 3-player game, Xenophobe can allow up to 3 players to play through the game at once. Each one can wander the space-station corridors, meet up and play together or go solo through the space station in search of the key components to beat the mission. Or play until time runs out and the place blows up. Your main mission being to kill every single alien in the space station before the self-destruct kicks in.

So I'm an alien, fighting other aliens, in a game titled "fear of aliens"...

That being said, the levels wrap around themselves so if you keep heading in one direction you'll end up back where you started, but the aliens can move around too. There's multiple weapons to find and keep for yourself in which you can use to kill the aliens from different guns like the laser, gas and lightning, as well as grenades but you're more likely to blow yourself up with those and the aliens tend to attack from most places. Creeping little critters that look like shelled face-huggers, mid aliens that crawl and pounce, big aliens that spit acid and use their mass to attack and other undesirables along the way.

Sadly, you never blow up on ship, you get teleported out. So you can suffer some more.

The biggest problem in the game is the completely unintuitive control system. You've an attack button, and two actions buttons. One used for getting up and jumping and interacting with the backgrounds, the other for crouching, throwing off enemies, picking up objects and throwing grenades. That's right, one button crouches, the other jumps. At times it's simply easier to just crouch, let the aliens come to you and blast as many as you can before the timer runs out in Xenophobe. Speaking of which, if you find switches and buttons, you can find out how many aliens are left and how much time is left before it all blows up. Usually around 100 or so are in most levels, more in the later ones but with the controls how they are, players aren't going to be keen to find out.

Forget the timer, where's the "Blow it the fuck up now!" button?

Add to this an ever diminishing health count and unfair attacks from monsters you simply cannot avoid and monsters that can shrug off damage JUST to hit you (seemingly, but almost always happens) and you end up with an largely unplayable mess that most players will blunder their way through until they get bored or their credit runs out of health. Usually the former. Steer clear of this chaotic mess of a game.

Alien 3: The Gun - Arcade

Thankfully, more monsters than in the film.

It's an odd circumstance when you take a film that doesn't have much in the way of action and try to fit it into the sphere of gaming that is an arcade game. Players are not likely to pump money into what is basically "Space Monster BOO!" and you can expect even less for them to be entertained by it. It needs a challenge, it needs action and it needs to be unfair enough to force people to keep playing but not too unfair that people give up on the grounds that it's just a sink for credits and cash.

If you can't work this out, you're going to lose, fast.

Alien 3, as a film and basis of this game, does not provide the suitable backdrop for the arcade game. So a little (read: LOTS) of artistic license has been used to work this game. For a start, there's more than one alien (hooray!), there's multiple types of aliens and enemies such as robots, tanks, droids, cyborgs and most of this was never in the original film.

There's quite the myriad of monsters, body parts and action here.

Plot wise, you do follow SOME of it. You're two surviving marines from the 2nd film that have remained on the original ship, except it's been overrun and infested with Xenomorphs. Grab gun, infinite basic ammo and some "kill all" grenades and let the acid-blood-bath begin! Or we would if the game was that fun to play. While battling aliens and other enemies, you get to see set pieces from the film, run across the surface of the planet, see the factory installation of Fury 161, run the gauntlet with the other prisoners and then finally battle the "Plot" Alien boss and dunk it in liquid metal before a showdown with the Bishop Android/Man.

"We'll help!" By which they mean 'Get in the way ALL the time'

Your bosses and enemies are Aliens based, apart from the robot ones which seem to be thrown in there at the last minute and take their cues from Revolution X for annoying boss tactics. Including "Not being hurt when the game wants you hurt instead" and the more annoying "Only one part of my body is vulnerable and you're NOT seeing it any time soon" types that can't help but give you a beating before teasing you briefly like a cheap stripper in a backwards club.

Anyone remember this in the film?

The music cannot really be commented upon, as it is barely heard during multiple playthroughs, the balance seems very one-sided towards the sound effects which come through rather 'tinny' and the odd speech sample makes it sound like ALL the voices were done by one person irrespective of whomever is talking, be it player characters or NPCs. Bullets sound far too metallic and aliens have that odd rasping noise synonymous with plenty of other monster games as if it's been taken from "Bad Sound Effects volume 82 - monster edition"

Or that part where the robots ran around shooting people? That in the film either?

But what of the gun? It's a bulky lump but does feel almost like you're holding something worthy of blasting aliens, but doesn't seem to match the damage inflicted upon the monsters within the game. Mainly because each time you down them, there's a chance they get back up but damaged and attack in a different way, then they could be shot AGAIN and wait a little longer in writhing agony but if you get too close (because you're in an on-rails shooter no less) they might lunge yet again. You have to keep hitting them until they're dead. By dead, we mean they've changed colour and stop physically moving. However the gun is large, meaty looking and has two key functions; the trigger for shooting and a button for hurling out instant-death to most enemies and significant damage to bosses.

Grenades and flamethrowers add to your weaponry, sadly not too often enough.

Items and power ups are far and few between. You might be able to find some health, perhaps a few extra grenades and very occasionally a flame thrower that instantly kills whatever it hits, but will never last long enough for you to make significant progress and the delay between trigger pulling and impact is longer than the bullets so you're likely to be slapped about by the aliens anyway for a while you adjust to the delay.

Red vision, or how to make the game harder by doing very little.

That said, there is some replay value in the game, in that there's multiple routes one can take through a few of the levels and trying to get better and better scores is always available for the competitive streak in some people, but the annoyance and unfairness of the aliens and some of the attacks hitting while ignoring the damage you're dealing, will turn many people away from this game.