Alien Trilogy (1996): Full Game Overview
Alien Trilogy is a 1996 first-person shooter developed by Probe Entertainment and published by Acclaim Entertainment for PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. The player controls Lieutenant Ellen Ripley across three sections taken from the first three films: the LV-426 colony from Aliens, a prison facility patterned after Alien 3, and the crashed derelict from Alien. Each section ends with a Queen boss fight. The PlayStation release was one of the first widely sold Alien shooters on a home console after Alien vs. Predator on the Jaguar, and the game remains on the best Alien games list.
Campaign
The single-player campaign is divided into three sections of about ten missions each. Ripley has to complete a listed objective on every floor, such as a kill count, a recovered item, or a set of switches, before the exit will register. If she leaves before that work is done, the mission repeats. Text briefings introduce each mission, and a few CGI cutscenes sit between the three sections.
The first section takes place in the LV-426 colony and uses floors such as the outer complex, recreation rooms, the medical lab, the garage, ammunition dumps, and the atmosphere processor. From there the campaign shifts to a prison facility with living quarters, a canteen, tunnels, mining and smelting floors, the leadworks, and furnace controls. The last section is inside the crashed derelict, through tunnels, pilot chambers, and egg rooms, and it ends in the third Queen's Lair. The android Bishop appears in the cutscenes and flies the dropship after that fight.
The campaign does not follow the films in order. Ripley is a Colonial Marine, the prison is armed, and Weyland-Yutani soldiers appear as enemies in the second section. After the last Queen, Bishop takes her off LV-426, and the ending cutscene shows a shuttle in orbit with an infected crew. The clip below shows the final Queen's Lair in the derelict section.
Enemies
The hive enemies in Alien Trilogy come from the first three films. Company soldiers and androids appear as well, especially in the colony and prison sections. The only bosses are the three Queens, with one Queen's Lair at the end of each section.
- Facehuggers come out of crates, vents, and wall recesses and attack at short range.
- Chestbursters appear after hosts go down and can be hard to see among crates and debris.
- Adult Xenomorphs use the upright Warrior shape from Aliens. They drop from ceilings or rush along the corridor.
- Runner Xenomorphs, the four-legged dog-host caste from Alien 3, appear in the prison section and move faster in ducts than the upright Warriors.
- Queens occupy a Queen's Lair at the end of each section. Damage knocks the Queen off her ovipositor, and the exit opens only after she is dead.
- Infected colonists and inmates appear in some rooms and attack once they are past saving.
- Weyland-Yutani soldiers appear in the prison section with orders to stop Ripley, and they carry firearms of the same kind the player uses.
- Company androids fight in the colony and prison sections and absorb more damage than the human troops.
Gameplay And Weapons
Alien Trilogy is a corridor first-person shooter with mission objectives added to the usual search for ammunition and medical kits. Progress can be saved only between levels, so each floor has to be finished in a single attempt. The PlayStation and Saturn versions are single-player. The later DOS port added network deathmatch on separate maps.
The weapons are the Colonial Marine set from the films: a pistol, a shotgun, the M41A Pulse Rifle, a flamethrower, and the M56 Smartgun. Grenades and seismic charges open sealed alcoves that contain extra magazines, medical kits, and night goggles. A motion tracker marks moving targets. A shoulder lamp and night goggles run on batteries, and an auto-map covers the denser floors.
Development
Probe Entertainment developed Alien Trilogy in about fifteen months. It was the studio's first PlayStation title and its first major 3D project after years of 2D licensed games. Probe had shipped Alien 3 games on older platforms in 1993, and it was also making Die Hard Trilogy for Fox at the same time. Acclaim held the Alien license, so Fox did not require art approval on the project the way it did on Die Hard. Probe combined the three films into one campaign.
Models were built on Silicon Graphics machines, and wall and floor textures were painted in Photoshop on Macs, with lighting baked into the maps by hand. PlayStation texture warping forced the team to keep horizontal lines out of surfaces until the coders split triangles near the camera. Acclaim's Advanced Technologies Group sold the project on motion-captured Alien movement, and many of the screams, plus the cocooned "Kill me" line, were sampled from the films. Stephen Root wrote the in-game score. Sculptured Software later handled the DOS port.
The coders wrote a custom tool so textures and status data could be mapped onto the models. Artists drew a bas-relief version of every wall and floor panel by hand, laid photograph detail over those surfaces, and baked the light in Photoshop. Probe used a few arcade shooters to set the movement and combat, then built the campaign sections from the three film locations. The story skipped the Nostromo and put Ripley in the Marines from the first briefing.
Release And Reception
The PlayStation version reached North America on 29 February 1996, Europe on 29 March 1996, and Japan on 31 May 1996. Saturn followed in August and September, and the DOS disc arrived that December. Critics praised the film atmosphere, the sampled sound, and the mission goals that gave the shooter more to do than a deathmatch corridor. Confusing floor layouts and a slow pace were the usual complaints.
Electronic Gaming Monthly made the PlayStation disc Game of the Month, then later named it Shooter Game of the Year for 1996. IGN scored that version 8/10. GameSpot gave the Saturn port 7.7/10 and noted softer graphics plus occasional disappearing Aliens. GamePro called the PlayStation release one of the stronger movie licenses of the year, Official PlayStation Magazine scored it 8/10, and the UK chart had it as a bestseller. It was a finalist for the 1996 Computer Game Developers Conference Spotlight Award for Best Adaptation of Linear Media, and GamesMaster put it at 46 on that year's Top 100.
Conclusion
Alien Trilogy is Probe Entertainment and Acclaim's 1996 first-person shooter for PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. The campaign puts Lieutenant Ripley through the LV-426 colony, a prison facility, and the crashed derelict, with a Queen fight at the end of each section. The Alien license expired after release, and Probe did not make a sequel. The next PlayStation Alien shooter was Argonaut's Alien: Resurrection in 2000.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Games | Alien Merchandise
