Alien Syndrome
Review from Brett and Brett - Thursday, 25 October 2007 @ 8:27am
Release: 13 September 2007
Developer: Totally Games
Distributor: Sega
Video games can turn children into killing machines and if there’s something that needs killing, then that something is unwanted aliens.
They seem to be everywhere you look these days. I once thought I had some Aliens living in my belly button, but on closer inspection they turned out to be lint. Regardless, you can’t be too careful when dealing with the current alien threat so it’s for the best that SEGA have revived their Alien Syndrome franchise for the Nintendo Wii. Video games can turn children into killing machines and if there’s something that needs killing, then that something is unwanted aliens.
Originally an arcade machine, Alien Syndrome was also one of the few decent ports for Commodore 64. The game play was a simple top down shooter not unlike Gauntlet or Paradroid, with the variety of weapons and aliens to kill proving to be the truly interesting part of the game.
Ahhh, Aliens!
Some people say that I’m a simple man with traditional views, probably because of my refusal to use deodorant and thus I was predicting and hoping for some simple but entertaining game play from Alien Syndrome. Like my earlier diagnosis of aliens living in my belly button however, I would be proved wrong.
Alien Syndrome plays from a top down perspective using the wii nunchuk to move your character and the wiimote to aim at or stab your alien enemies. The movement part works well enough but the stabbing and aiming doesn’t really work very well at all. This doesn’t really become an issue until about a half hour into the game because you spend the first thirty minutes of the title watching cut scenes and wandering around a hanger. This wouldn’t really be an issue either if the cut scenes weren’t just static pictures with a pointless story and the hanger wasn’t an empty room filled with a hundred crates that needed smashing to find a key to the next room.
Once your outside the hanger, the action heats up as you battle a hoard of aliens who look like turds using the sloppy combat controls. Maybe I have aliens in my toilet that launch ships from my butt because these aliens look like my turds. Brown turds. The space ship you run through is grey and your player is mostly green. All of this ugly green/turd brown/grey action made me wonder what the other kids where playing these days. I’d imagine it’s probably something better than this. In between all this poop slaying there is the supposedly “Action RPG” feature of levelling up your weapons. I’m not sure if levelling up weapons makes a game an “Action RPG” but if it does then you’d better add R-Type and countless other scrolling shooters to my list of favourite Role Playing Games.
So amazing, I don't even know what I'm doing!
I roped in The NicoleBear™ to take the roll of the other player, who may have been a green girl or the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, I couldn’t tell, and tied another wiimote to The Dirty Sanchez Puppy Dog™ in order to try salvage some multiplayer fun from the title. The dog ended up doing better than The NicoleBear and I combined but none of us enjoyed any part of it. Some websites might say that the multiplayer aspect of Alien Syndrome is “solid” but they are lying to you because they featured the developers diary for a few months and had to say something positive. I did not find the multiplayer to be “solid” , I found it to be insulting to not only my friends, but also my dog. I also don’t like Bono from U2 or parents who let their kids run around in the shopping centre barefoot, but that is probably a more personal issue that doesn’t need explaining here. I’m not even that keen on this new EMO thing that’s going on, but again, I’m digressing from my original goal and that is to tell you not to buy Alien Syndrome for your Wii because it has a boring story, ugly graphics, unremarkable sound, repetitive game play and poor controls.
Summary
Shave your chest hair, pick the lint out of your belly button and make yourself a Alien Diorama, it’ll be more faithful to the coin-op original and you’ll have a lot more fun than playing Alien Syndrome Wii.
Pros
The game loaded and never crashed once.
If you like grey and green and brown you will love the graphics.
You’ve got a friend with Frisbee.
Cons
The wiimote attack controls are unresponsive and sloppy.
The story is about as deep as the lyrics to Def Leppard's “Pour Some Sugar On Me”
The graphics look like they come from about the same era.
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Anyone and everyone can get free insulen needles from the pharmacy, mainly for diabeties, but others use them for shooting up and stuff to, but their theory is that they would rather have people using clean needles than reusing needles and getting infected and going through a whole heaps of drama that the medical system doesn't need.
As for the homeless, I give change IF they ask nicely, being nice goes down well in my books, I don't need some gap tooth weilding abbo from the valley walking up punching me in the back and saying, ey der bruz you got a fukn durrie on ya cunt or sum fukn schrappers?(which actually happened) lol, they also get fed usually every 2nd day via the salvos or the rosies vans that go around.
The worst homeless/beggers IMO even tho their not homeless are people like my Ex, been on the doal since they were 15, pays rent then spends majority of their cash on booze and drugs, using her crappy charm to make guys buy her drinks and drugs since she was 18 when she is out of money, overstays her welcome at people houses, eats their food and doesn't ask or say thank you, Doesn't want to work and ISN'T motivated what so ever to get a job even tho she is dam well able to work, has no aspirations to get anywhere in life and when people tell her to get a job she has 101 excuses about why she can't find one and how hard she is trying, swears after every 2nd word blah blah blah!
Get where i'm comin from?(God i'm glad thats over)
OH And I had to pay rent for her for a while because she spent her centerlink money on the town, but were not in the relationship thread here haha:P basically a freeloader
THAT, in my opinion is worthless scum.
I almost never donate money, but I donate a lot of time -- going by the logic that a, if I save what I would donate now, then it accrues interest and I can help a lot more people with it in a couple years, and b, right now the time I spend teaching/tutoring and helping out at a local independent bookstore do more to help than the money I could give.
I give to causes I believe in, I give money and other things. I'll give blood once they want it from me (damn rules!) and I'll give breastmilk to the Mercy Breastmilk Bank after our second child is born (they prefer BM from someone nursing a <6 month old, so it's more suitable for newborns) and they start accepting donations (they're in the fundraising stage right now).
I'm not likely to give to people begging. I just don't feel it's safe to whip out my wallet and wave it in front of someone that has no money. I'm pretty small. Most people could take me. I don't want to engage in any contact that could put me at risk.
When my mother-in-law talks about her sons (of which she has 3) and their personalities, she compares them using this scenario. If approached by a homeless person "Hey man, do you have a dollar, I need a sandwich", the oldest brother would refuse. The middle brother would give as much cash as possible. And the youngest (my husband) would take him to the sandwich shop and buy him the sandwich. It pretty much sums up 3 ways people deal with it, I reckon.
Having said that, I would give more to charity if our taxes weren't so high. But considering they're basically "forced charity", I figure they've got it covered to an extent. (Re-reading that it sounds like I'm against taxes, and I'm not. Just want to clarify. I LOVE taxes. I'm not a Libertarian by ANY stretch of the imagination)
I've volunteered at several assisted living centres and homeless ministries in my time (I'm sure Starks would be happy to hear me say that Christians definitely seem to know what they're doing when it comes to aiding the homeless population). Though I'm not usually one for interpersonal interaction, working one on one with the "less fortunate" has always been an especially interesting and rewarding experience for me; not so much because of the things I do, but because of the people I meet and the stories I hear.
I've talked to a handful of war veterans, for example, and every one of their stories has been absolutely incredible.
One was a Golden Gloves boxing champ before enlisting in the army for the War in Vietnam.
Another was a member of the 101st Airborne and was amongst the paratroopers to touch down behind enemy lines on D-Day. He was the only member of his squad to survive the assault.
Perhaps the most interesting of the veterans I talked to (whom I actually interviewed as part of a school project) was a fighter pilot in the WWII Pacific Theatre and fought in the Battle of Leyte Gulf (primarily Samar), which was one of the largest naval battles in history.
An excerpt from the paper I wrote a few years back:
"They scream bloody murder about the casualties in Iraq," he said, "What is it, 1200 dead in two years? That's bad, but it really isn't much at all. There [Samar] we had over a thousand casualties in just a few hours. And that's not wounded: that's dead."
It pains me that so many of the Greatest Generation are reduced to homelessness or suffering a soulless existence in some institution.
Oh, right: the topic.
Yeah, I give to the needy.
I donated blood yesterday, it wasnt a pleasant experience.
The actual needle isnt too bad but they had real trouble finding the vein, and moved it about a lot, which hurt. Finally it stopped giving blood and they had to abandon it. I cant give blood for 3 months because they took over 100 ml but its essentially useless as its less than 400 ml.
Not a good day.
