Alien³

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.