Aliens (Arcade)

The Alien franchise has always swung between isolationist horror and bombastic alien-blasting action, something that was true as early as its two first films, Alien and Aliens. The fact the Xenomorph monster works so well as a horror menace is likely what leads to some people objecting to it being made a more easily defeated creature in the more action oriented parts of the franchise, but the truth is they work very well for both forms of entertainment. Konami acquired the rights to the Aliens film back when the shift to action was first happening though, and they decided to further emphasize it to the point it might just be the piece of media that took it the furthest in that direction. However, while a single regular Xenomorph may go down in less than a second here, the liberties taken with the source material end up helping Aliens when it comes to its effectiveness as a video game.

Very little truly remains of the Aliens film in the story of its arcade adaptation, mainly because the story is barely addressed in the game at all. Ripley, potentially joined by Corporal Hicks if two players are playing cooperatively, enters a settlement overrun with aliens with the goal of wiping them all out and saving the little girl Newt while she’s at it. Beyond the setup and recreating the iconic power loader fight against the alien queen near the end, everything else about clearing away the xenomorphs was invented by Konami to make the arcade action more exciting and diverse. Rather than just relying on the bipedal xenomorph form and the face huggers the film featured, an incredible degree of creative license was taken to introduce many more types of xenomorph to ensure that foes have many different attack types and strategies to face you with.

The most iconic xenomorph form is a bit of a chump though, mostly running towards the players so they can be quickly torn apart by weapon fire. They’ll eventually learn to approach in more interesting ways, emerging from the walls and floors to strike unexpectedly, dropping in by way of large cocoon-like bags, and perhaps the strangest expansions to their methods being emerging from moving shadows on the ground and forming out of mobile goo puddles. The scorpion-like face huggers are probably just as weak but introduce enemies you can’t normally hit with your regular standing shots, the arcade cabinet featuring two buttons dedicated to shooting with the second one making your character crouch while firing. This lets you hit the skittering face huggers and other low to the ground enemies, but having a dedicated duck and attack button is a little awkward. This option was likely picked since your character can move freely around the tilted plane of the sidescrolling stages, so ducking couldn’t be assigned to pressing down. Crouching makes it possible to hit pretty much every enemy though, making it seem odd that they would split shot types across the buttons in the first place. Other creatures that break from the series’s lore are flying aliens both as just winged heads and full on gargoyle-like aliens, zombie soldiers who fire actual weapons at you, aliens who hurriedly crawl towards you like dogs, and plenty more. The game can certainly be absurd or over the top at times, eggs spawning face huggers infinitely until they’re destroyed and some xenomorphs in goofy positions that make them look like they’re tapdancing or scrambling to stay on the wall. However, in service to making the run and gun action more exciting, the different forms and strategies on show keep your foes interesting and fresh throughout the entire game.

The bosses definitely benefit most from the developers being given creative freedom on what shape the xenomorphs can take. The alien queen is pretty faithful to her movie self, but other creatures you encounter are a black xenomorph who curls into a ball and bounces around the battlefield, an alien that looks more like an egg sac and surrounds itself with floating embryo aliens you need to destroy, and a pair of electrical xenomorphs who zip about at incredible speeds. Each fight is distinct though, so while it completely breaks away from any realism the science fiction film attempted, it does make for foes who are much more enjoyable to battle. Each one brings some new tactic to the table that you need to react to, and while not every one is particularly impressive, just like the regular enemies, the willingness to mix things up ensures that Aliens keeps throwing new challenges at you throughout. The level designs can provide this as well at times, such as the air vent where you crawl through with only two-dimensional movement options and have a motion detector to warn you if something intends to ambush you from holes in the walls and floor. One stage features acid dripping from the ceiling, another let’s you take a safer high road so long as you can keep on its dissolved flooring, and an elevator section requires you to shoot upward for the only time in the game as you need to protect your ride from having its cords snapped by enemies.

The biggest breakaway from the run and gun formula comes when the perspective on the action changes entirely. Certain stages and boss fights take you from free moving side-scrollers to situations where you’re facing upwards. The action is viewed from behind as enemies either come at you like in the two levels where you’re riding atop a vehicle and need to protect it or as you move around in a set space as you fight a boss. Like most bosses these foes have set patterns and unique attacks and the enemies faced in the moving stages similarly benefit from their different designs, but these do feel a bit weaker since they are either moving automatically or limiting your own movement, meaning they can’t get quite as wild as things like the pinballing roly-poly xenomorph.

The weapons in Aliens are just as important to the action as the shape the alien menace takes, but while they do come in different forms, they are all almost too strong for the game’s good. They don’t destroy the game’s difficulty or anything, but they are all very competent at blasting away baddies so long as they’re in the line of gunfire, and while bosses have the fortitude to stand against these weapons for a bit, the options on the whole do make the game easier and lessen the impact of some of the unique attacks and strategies enemies employ. The default weapon is a rapid fire machine gun, the game reducing you back to this after a death, at the start of a new stage, or for the levels you view the action from behind the characters. It does its job well and doesn’t feel like you’re stuck with a weak weapon thankfully, but pretty much every other weapon is both acquired without much hassle and very good at clearing out enemy aliens. Rockets, homing missiles, a short-range flamethrower, a three way split shot… everything packs some benefit be it strength, spread, or reliability, and since they stick with you for a while, you pretty much end up going on power trips that aren’t likely to end soon.

In a game that takes about half an hour to beat and offers multiple weapon pick-up opportunities, you’re often a bit too strong for the opposition to effectively handle, but to make this even more skewed in your favor, every weapon pickup cycles through the available options so you can pick which one you want to use. Bombs are rarer, activated with your crouch shot button and just being simple high damage items or a set of three missiles in the moving stages, but since your regular weapon options are already so strong, these feel like an unnecessary cherry on top when it comes to making you more than strong enough to handle whatever the game throws your way. Even the power loader mech, a vehicle people no doubt wanted to pilot after seeing the film four years before this game’s release, is paltry compared to your regular options, its slow, short range swipes with its claw arms much less efficient than any of the pick-up weapons.

THE VERDICT: Konami took incredible liberties when it came to the movie franchise it was adapting, but by expanding the shapes the creatures featured take, Aliens makes its foes much more fit for a run and gun action game. One part Contra and another part Konami brawler, the DNA of their previous work comes together into an exciting arcade experience packing plenty of diversity in the bosses, baddies, and hazards, but the guns are a bit too good at the job of blasting apart xenomorphs to make this a truly great action game. It still provides plenty of fun moments that are properly differentiated from each other thanks to the development team’s creativity, but you’re a bit too strong for them to realize their full potential.

And so, I give Aliens for arcade machines…

A GOOD rating. While certainly silly if viewed beside more serious Alien media like the original film or Alien: Isolation, embracing their freedom to create new aliens allowed Konami to create an enjoyable run and gun action game. Yes, it’s silly to have aliens form from goo and attack you, and their horror elements are tossed out entirely for making segments like exploring the vents more about dodging steam and blasting any aliens who poke their head in, but that’s the kind of design that works well in this type of game and it was wise to structure the game around aliens who behave and look this way. The bosses benefit a lot from having strange designs that break away from the typical body shapes of the xenomorph species, each one providing something new in the same way the perspective shifts and level designs do. A bit too much freedom was taken with giving the player power though, and while I’ll commend any game that makes sure your weakest weapon is still satisfying to use, the step up in strength when picking up any other gun option makes regular foes a bit too irrelevant. They practically require their interesting mix ups and approaches once you’re packing the stronger options since otherwise they’d all be cannon fodder, and thankfully those do ensure that the power balance never overly favors the player. At your strongest Aliens still can throw a few interesting challenges at you, ensuring it’s a fun time universally, it just achieves different degrees of enjoyment based on how well it’s currently handling your power.

Aliens doesn’t just adapt the film of the same name into a video game, it alters its content to be a better fit for the action Konami had in mind. Viewed independently of any franchise association and I’m sure more people would be willing to accept the sometimes absurd shapes the aliens take, but thankfully it doesn’t seem like many people find the game bad either. Some designs are silly and the gun-toting action is definitely all about blood-pumping thrills instead of spine-chilling horror, but in the context of its design, that’s precisely what it needed to be. It might not pull it off perfectly since the power balance is a bit lopsided, but it still makes wiping out the alien menace satisfying and fun.