Controller Punch!

Game On, Man, Game on!

Just when I was thinking to myself, “Hey, when are they going to make another game for the movie franchise Alien?” I find the website http://www2.sega.com/aliens/ . For those who haven’t been keeping up with current events, so to speak, the new Alien game is set for late 2009 and will be a story-based FPS with multi and co-op. As the year progresses expect your motion detectors to increase beeping rapidly and induce a state of panic.

Now is the time. With the amazing visual aids of graphic cards greatly improved since the franchise’s last ventures into gaming, aliens and the downright creepy environments they colonize are the perfect tools to ply. We’re talking Resident Evil 4 style suspense. Really, people should have been shouting for this game for years, though perhaps the lack of outcry for a game is directly proportional to the outcry over the shoddiness of the Alien vs. Predator movies. The point is, either way, if they do this right, Alien will be back in a big way – and rightly so.

Now my preferred game would be some sort of re-run through of the movie Aliens tape-for-tape, but this might not appeal to… well, people of logic. For example, see my chart:

The vertical axis represents % of awesome and the horizontal axis is a timeline of the movie, 0-30 being the first 30 minutes where Ripley comes to, 30-60 being the initial survey of the planet and frying nerves, 60-90 being the massacre and fallout, 90-120 being the Almo last stand, and 120-137 chronicling Ripley’s decent into hell. Now, as you can see, the movie is exceptionally action-packed, but not evenly spread across. Unlike modern action movies, Aliens had a thing called pacing. A video game recreation, however, would involve almost 40% of the game being walking and talking, with the only action being trying to shoot Newt and operating a power-loader. Both are fun, but let’s face it, Aliens is a crescendo and can’t really work straight through unless it features some sort of lame pin-finger mini-game or power-loader Tetris. So what does all this mean? It means a new story and multi setup is A-OK, as long as you get to cap Paul Reiser at some point.

A-OK is A-OK, but you know what would be great? Great. And all I can think is what if they had designed an Alien game that formatted along the lines of Left 4 Dead? If I remember the old toy line correctly and I do, there ended up being different types of aliens, such as the Bull Alien, Gorilla Alien, and Rhino Alien. These could match smokers, hunters and boomers, the Queen being the tank, naturally. The horde would obviously be masses of aliens coming out of the fucking walls. Best of all? Instead of random civilians trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, you would be Ripley, Hicks, Hudson, and Vasquez kicking serious ass into the heart of the nest. Maybe Drake and his face full of acid can make a surprise cameo. They would even match visible minorities 1-for-1. Not to be? C’est la vie, but alas, a man can dream.

Regardless, I think Sega will have a hit on their hands, because fans of the series like me haven’t been forgetting, we’ve been waiting. Eager for a new game since Alien 3 for the Super Nintendo, but cautious that the game might end up being as annoying as Alien 3 for the Super Nintendo. Waiting in the dark for the chestburster of epiphany to splatter from the minds of game developers that there is ripe potential. Time has been good to the capabilities of an FPS with such a solid atmosphere and back-story, because there is so much that can now be done with it. It would truly be a shame if any sort of rush-job was involved with this product, and we at controllerpunch wish Sega good luck and Godspeed on hatching Aliens: Colonial Marines.

As for duct taping three guns together… I leave game designers with a very dignified

“OH, GOD, PLEASE!!!”

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