Some of them are great and some of them make us cringe.
Here are the high and low points of the Alien gaming franchise.
Alien: Isolationis bringing xenomorphs to the Occulus Rift, and its the perfect immersive horror combination.
The problem is thatAliengames have a slightly worse track record than Alien encounters.
Which is why were not waiting to be enslaved by the aliens or the electronics.
They putAlienon the box, and then putPac-Manin the cartridge, and genuinely hoped no one would notice.
It was a worse case of something hiding inside a deceptive container than someone actually infected with an alien.
The aliens looked like crunchy sock puppets, and power-ups let you win by ramming them with your face.
Which is the exact opposite of the movie.
On the upside, your character stomped around, automatically destroying every alien egg they saw.
Meaning this games hero was smarter than almost everyone in all the movies.
And were about as much fun to deal with.
Which is a bad way to make a movie, but an excellent plot for a video game.
Which this game did.
It was a brilliant game, but it was about asAlien-centric asJourney to the Center of the Earth.
Move towards them and punch them in the face is the exact opposite of an Alien encounter.
In fact, if you would even consider touching anything near their face then its not an alien.
And the result was unexpectedly brilliant.
Then humans got a Smart Gun, which automatically tracked and exterminated Aliens with a single trigger.
But early losses due to disorentiation and superior alien physical abilities, later cancelled out by improving technology?
This game exactly modeled how an encounter between a human army and murderous xenomorphs would actually go.
Which is really interesting, but not actually fun for anyone directly involved.
and that joyous potential actually survived licensing deals and software development.
Each species had their own levels and completely different abilities.
Multiplayer was every kind of fun, and still makes most class-based shooters look pedestrian.
Aliens: Unleashed
2003 | Sorrent | Mobile
A 2003 mobile phone first-person shooter.
The game had less animation than turning the pages in a comic.
And only arguably more gameplay.
The best thing aboutAliencash-ins is that they start with the perfect video game plot, andUnleashedscrewed it up.
Its so easy: youre a human, theyre aliens, kill them.
InUnleashed, youre not fighting Aliens, youre fighting military researched synthetic aliens programmed to help train soldiers.
Which went rogue because thats all any of those words ever do.
TheXCOMaspect alone is a more perfect ass-kicking gaming element than Eridium.
Permanent character death is the most important thing anAliengame can have, because youre finally afraid of the things.
In most games, you’re free to respawn from the dead, which removes all the tension.
Which is the key in of alien they simulated inAliens: Colonial Marines.
Or possibly the throw in they hired to make it.
They knew what they were unleashing was horrific but simply didnt care.
Its a true tragedy.
Because it means that the worlds worstAliengame was the one truest to the original plot.
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