Alien: Resurrection (2000): Full Game Overview
Alien: Resurrection is a 2000 first-person shooter developed by Argonaut Games and published by Fox Interactive for PlayStation. The campaign follows Ripley 8 and the Betty crew through the USM Auriga, after the cloned Queen is taken from her in the 1997 film. Alien Trilogy was Probe Entertainment's 1996 PlayStation, Saturn, and DOS shooter. This disc came from Argonaut four years later. The game is on the best Alien games list.
Campaign
The single-player campaign has ten missions. The first nine take place on the USM Auriga, and the last one is on the Betty. Ripley 8 plays seven of those floors, beginning in Detention Block Alpha and finishing on the Betty. Call takes Engineering Deck, Distephano takes Military Systems Complex, and Christie takes Warehouse Complex, each with their own kit. Military scientists grow Ripley 8 so they can cut a Queen from her. The hive then breaks out, and the Betty smugglers are caught on board. The missions follow that film plot, but they stretch the labs, kitchens, and cargo decks into full floors with listed objectives.
Ripley 8 starts in Detention Block Alpha, collects a pistol and a flashlight from dead soldiers, and uses passcards to leave the cells. She contacts Call at the communicator and hands the next floor to her. On Engineering Deck, Call shuts down a generator, then has ten minutes to find four detonators and jettison an overheating lifeboat before she can call Ripley 8 back. Clone Research is a full lab wing instead of a single corridor. Ripley 8 has to destroy the failed Ripley clones on the tables, collect security cards, and clear eggs and Facehuggers before the communicator will work again.
In Quarantine and R&D, Ripley 8 crosses holding pens and force fields and fights the cloned Queen in a cavern. After that she contacts Call and Distephano. Distephano then works through Military Systems Complex, clears the computer core, and reboots Father, the ship's controlling AI. Ripley 8 returns for Maximum Security, where she gathers High Level Command cards, fights through the cell blocks, and destroys another clone in storage. Mess Hall Complex covers the flooded kitchen. Ripley 8 swims those rooms, uses air bubbles to stay under, and contacts Christie after she restores the damaged lines. Swimming Xenomorphs appear in the flooded stretches.
Christie's Warehouse Complex is the largest floor. He carries dual pistols and a rocket launcher, swims past fans to reach engineering cards, and releases the Betty's docking clamps. Ripley 8 then crosses the Docking Bay, where the Newborn first appears in the cargo holds. She drives it off with the shock rifle, then boards the Betty. The last mission is a chase through the Betty's corridors. Ripley 8 turns valves behind glass, leads the Newborn into an airlock, and vents it into space. The Auriga then breaks up in Earth's atmosphere, rather than striking the ground.
Enemies
The hive enemies in Alien: Resurrection come from the film's cloned stock. United Systems Military troops appear as well. The cloned Queen is a mid-campaign boss, and the Newborn closes the Betty run.
- Facehuggers drop from vents and ceilings. A latched hugger has to be treated with a portable AutoDoc before the mission can continue.
- Adult Xenomorphs use the cloned Warrior shape from the film. They crawl on walls, floors, and ceilings and come through panels and grates.
- United Systems Military soldiers hold corridors and labs and fire the same class of rifles the player uses.
- General Perez is a mid-campaign human boss on the Auriga.
- The cloned Queen is fought in Quarantine and R&D. The Newborn is the last boss on the Betty.
Gameplay And Weapons
Alien: Resurrection is a corridor first-person shooter with survival-horror pacing. Saves sit between attempts, and missed shots or a Facehugger that is left on too long force a reload. It was one of the first PlayStation shooters to use both DualShock sticks for movement and aiming, and it also accepted the PlayStation Mouse. The left stick walks and strafes, and the right stick turns the view.
The weapons are a laser rifle listed in-game as a Pulse Rifle, the Lacrima 99 from the film, a double-barreled shotgun, a grenade launcher, a shock rifle, a flamethrower, and a rocket launcher. Call, Christie, and Distephano do not share Ripley 8's full set. Each of those missions starts with the gear that character carries. A motion tracker and a shoulder lamp sit on the HUD. Dark rooms and flickering lights hide the Warriors until they step into the corridor.
Development
Fox Interactive hired Argonaut in 1996 to make an Alien game for the coming film, first for PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Windows. The first build was an overhead shooter in the style of Loaded. Fox then asked the studio for a short game that could appear on screen in the movie. That extra title, Atom Zone, was finished quickly and shows on a Betty monitor in the opening of the film.
After about a year, Argonaut scrapped the overhead design and rebuilt the game as a third-person shooter in the style of Tomb Raider. Part of the team left when that work was thrown out. Camera and AI problems followed. In late 1998 the project changed again, this time into a first-person shooter. Most of the level layouts could be kept, but the recorded actor voices from the third-person build were lost. The game was delayed well past the film. Saturn and Windows were dropped, a Saturn technical demo did not get past that stage, and the PlayStation disc did not reach stores until October 2000, almost three years after the movie credits pointed to it.
Fox sent Argonaut scripts, storyboards, and raw footage from the shoot, and the remaining team saw a private screening of the film in November 1997. Atom Zone appeared for only a few seconds in the finished cut, and Fox later advertised the PlayStation disc with trailers and full-motion video taken from the scrapped third-person build. A Saturn programmer tried to write that port as one huge assembly file, and the work stopped at the demo. The PlayStation campaign then took about a year of crunch before the October 2000 release.
Release And Reception
Fox Interactive released the PlayStation version in North America on 20 October 2000 and in Europe on 1 December 2000. Critics praised the sound, the empty-corridor tension, and Steven Gilborn's return as the voice of Father. The usual complaints were the harsh difficulty, the chunky graphics, and the new two-stick scheme, which many reviewers had not used in a shooter before.
IGN scored the game 6.5/10. GameSpot gave it 4.7/10 and called the DualShock layout almost unplayable. Edge was higher at 8/10. Electronic Gaming Monthly averaged 6.33/10, Game Informer 6/10, and Eurogamer 4/10. Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine scored it 3/5. The two-stick layout later became the standard for console first-person shooters.
Conclusion
Alien: Resurrection is Argonaut Games and Fox Interactive's 2000 PlayStation shooter of the 1997 film. The campaign puts Ripley 8, Call, Christie, and Distephano through the USM Auriga and the Betty, then ends when Ripley 8 vents the Newborn and the ship breaks up over Earth. It sits after Probe's Alien Trilogy on PlayStation, but it came from a different studio and a much longer development.
External Sources
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